rynling | Entries tagged with publishing

I’m still daydreaming about the Digital Terrarium magazine, and this is what I’m considering:

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Part of my motivation for creating a magazine like this is that, as someone with a female-coded name, it’s 99.99% impossible to get anyone to respond to my pitch emails, even when we’re mutuals on social media and I send them a direct message to ping them about the pitch.

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If there’s still to this day no real space for soft and queer (and vaguely female-coded?) voices in video game writing – and if there’s no space for someone like me specifically – then there needs to be more space. Simple as.

While driving through the woods, I've been working with some of my favorite people to create artwork for two upcoming short fiction zines: a reprint of Terrible People (which has a horror-flavored murder mystery theme), and a new zine called Green Dreams: Dark Tales of Botanical Fantasy. In advance of flying back to the States, I also ordered reprints of some previous titles. My zines have yet to receive any attention from more traditional literary circles, but they sell well, get good reviews, and have tons of repeat buyers.

I also think my zines (and the various bookmarks and stickers and miniprints that I include with them) look amazing. I'm slowly learning more about typography, layout, and editing, and my art is gradually getting better too. Each new publication is an improvement on the last. I like to think that I'm doing good work. I spend a lot of time in indie litfic spaces, and I also think that I'm doing something that no one else is even coming remotely close to.

I'm considering starting an actual small press, which I'd like to call "Digital Terrarium." I think it might also be nice to create a magazine to go along with it. I'm extremely aware of how much work that entails, and I also understand why I am 100% the wrong person to do it. Still, what I have that I think a lot of "I'm going to start my own press" people don't are reasonable expectations. For a project like this, I also think my moss mentality is useful: slow but steady, unobtrusive and kind.

Scandal Rocks Publishing as Debut Author Is Linked To Fake Goodread Accounts That Review Bombed Peers
https://www.themarysue.com/cait-corrain-goodreads-controversy-explained/

What’s particularly baffling and infuriating here is that Corrain seemed set up for a successful debut prior to the review bombing and deflection coming to light. Crown of Starlight had a strong marketing push behind it and a lot of buzz and positive reviews for early ARCs. Corrain has a two-book deal, the May Illumicrate pick, and by all accounts was headed toward success.

Holy shit. This is horrifying.

I think this is what happened: A debut author who had a large following from the Reylo fandom was in a Slack group with other SFF authors whose novels were also set to debut in 2024. They created "more than nine" sock puppet accounts to leave one-star reviews of the other authors' work on Goodreads. It seems that they specifically went out of their way to target women of color.

Thankfully, the author has been dropped by their agent, their publisher, and various promotional organizations, all of whom made social media announcements this afternoon. Still, the writers targeted by this author had known what was going on for months (since February), and they were told by professionals in the publishing industry to keep their heads down and not say anything. Jesus Christ. What the fuck.

What's so scary to me is that, as mentioned in the passage I excerpted, this author had everything going for them. Why would they do something like this? And, if more than a dozen people hadn't made a concentrated effort to call them out, they would have gotten away with it.

Another potential publication venue closed.

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This is about the closure of another potential publication venue.

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This one is about a writing workshop that might actually be a good fit for what I do.

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Weird Horror Magazine
https://undertowpublications.com/weird-horror-magazine

We are seeking horror and weird fiction from 500 to 6,000 words, firm. We are a home for the strange, the macabre, the eerie, the esoteric, the fabulist, and the gothic. The darkly numinous. The odd. We are not interested in extreme horror.

Weird Horror has two reading periods each year: March 2-16, and September 2-16.

You submit through Moksha (linked via the website) and should include a short cover letter.

Previous issues of the magazine are free to read here:
https://www.weirdhorrormagazine.com/

This is about me querying to review zines for an actual print magazine.

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This post contains some misplaced hope for a potential publication venue.

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A follow-up on yesterday's yelling about the business of being a writer.

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This post contains more yelling about the practical everyday business of being a writer.

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I need to scream about the fiction market for a second. This is probably going to be a series.

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Some flash fiction markets:

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Submissions websites where you can search by wordcount:

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Small Press Publishing as a Debut Author
https://www.bluestoop.org/classes/emily-jon-tobias-small-press-publishing-as-a-debut-author

I will share details that can only come with experience including, but not limited to, writing query letters (agents vs. presses), tracking submissions, the research process, fees, red flags, green flags, how to best navigate technology with productive, simple tools, and, perhaps most importantly, how to handle the emotional pressure of rejection after rejection.

I'm in the process of putting together my newest zine, and like. I think it's actually good, maybe. It's also going to be a bit longer than my other zines, since I'm including actual stories instead of just flash fiction. Maybe it might be worth trying to get my work published by a small press instead of doing it myself? It's something to think about, anyway.

And speaking of flash fiction...

Speculative Flash Fiction Forms with Mary Berman
https://www.bluestoop.org/events/tots-mary-berman-sum-2023

Haven Speculative
https://www.havenspec.com/

Haven Spec is a speculative fiction magazine featuring stories for a 21st century audience. We love stories with a sense of adventure, stories that teach us, that touch us, that leave us wanting more. We publish six issues every year, two of which (the DRY Issue and the WET Issue) are focused exclusively on the climate crisis and themes of displacement (very broadly defined).

In other words, this is a specialist venue for ecological fiction. All of the stories they publish are free to read online, and many of them are quite interesting.

The maximum length for stories is 6,000 words. Submissions are open to "everyone" every other month, while submissions are always open for "minorities."

My thoughts on identifying as a "minority" are complicated. It feels shitty to make yourself vulnerable to a panel of editors by forcing yourself to inhabit aspects of your identity that you wish didn't define you... and then still be rejected. But what can you do.

Apex Magazine
https://apex-magazine.com/

Apex Magazine is an online zine of fantastical fiction. We publish short stories filled with marrow and passion, works that are twisted, strange, and beautiful.

Apex puts out an ebook issue every two months. I used to really love this magazine, but I stopped reading in the summer of 2019 due to extreme overwork and crippling depression. I should really start reading it again. The issues are short, and the editors have good taste. They have a very strong bias toward "dark fantasy" (which is how I'd classify my own work, which is almost horror, but not quite). To give a sense of the vibes, I seem to recall that Elizabeth Bear was involved in the founding of the publication.

Their maximum short story length is 7,500 words, and their submissions are always open. I've submitted work to them before, and their form rejection letter is very kind.