Two Anthologies: Vacationland and Speculationland

This will be a pair of sister publications devoted to all that is Maine:

Vacationland will feature mainstream/literary stories.

Speculationland will feature SF, fantasy, or horror, having some sort of speculative element.

I'm doing two volumes because people who prefer mainstream fiction aren't likely to appreciate spec fiction, and spec-fic readers won't likely be too excited about mainstream fiction.

Stories must take place in Maine, or at the very least be a central part of the story (say, a character from Maine living in California or on Mars and wishing he were home). Stories should absolutely reflect what Maine is all about in some way--either through historical exposition, or focusing on things that typify Maine: lobster, County potatoes, Bar Harbor, Mt. Katahdin, or whatever.

The subject matter is entirely up to you, so long as you observe what I consider a story to be (which you'll read about on the next page). I mention this here because, in doing a mainstream-fiction anthology, I know I'll be inundated with piles of "stories" that are little more than slices of life. I don't want scenes; I don't want pieces of a character's day; I want stories that accomplish something and arrive somewhere, with characters who grow and change in some way.

Despite my background in speculative fiction, I have written some mainstream stuff. But I haven't worked on an all-mainstream anthology, so this will be a learning experience for me. For writers, know that what appeals to me are stories with bite, with grab, with visuals, with ideas that make me say "Wow!" That's what I like about sci-fi and fantasy and horror, which can bring a certain edge that mainstream stuff cannot. As such, it will be your job to create really vivid characters--make me feel so sucked into your story that I must finish it, even if there aren't spaceships or dragons or werewolves there to bring that sense of wonder to the tale.

I will give a strong preference for Maine authors. Non-Maine authors should be originally from Maine, frequent Maine, or have some other powerful Maine connection. When it comes down to choosing between two excellent stories, the Maine authors will always have the edge.


I don't want stories by people who obviously have no idea of what the flavor of Maine is. I also don't want 500 submissions that take place entirely in Bar Harbor or along the coast or in Portland's Old Port. There is much more to Maine than those things, despite what the tourists think. There are mountains and hiking trails, whitewater rivers, fields of potatoes and blueberries, the Golden Road, the expanse of Baxter State Park. And there's a load of history everywhere you go. So what I don't want is a pile of stories about lobster feasts and clambakes--strive to be as original as you can imagine. Envision what the masses are likely to write about, and then choose something you don't think anyone will write about.

Stories from 3,000 to 9,000 words; however, I am unlikely to accept long stories unless they are very, very good. Long stories mean multiple shorter stories won't make the cut. So, make sure the longer it is, the better it is. Ideally, I'd like to see stories in the 4,000-6,000-word range.

Deadline for submissions is November 30, 2009. My goal is publication in early 2010, with a secondary goal to have copies available for the summer tourist traffic.

Interested?
Click here to learn more.

Escape Clause

SUBMISSIONS FOR ESCAPE CLAUSE

This is Ink Oink Art Inc.'s first annual speculative fiction anthology.

If you're looking for this, you probably know that the proper website is down today-- but here is most of the pertinent information.

Escape Clause:

Who we are: a predominantly, but not exclusively, Westcoast anthology of speculative stuff—fiction, poetry, and art. We’re published by Ink Oink Art Inc. and edited by Clélie Rich. Our splendiferous cover is by Thomas Anfield, and our interior illustrations by Lee Tockar. Our writers so far include award-winners Eileen Kernaghan, Linda De Meulemeester, and Rhea Rose. We’ve got space left, and we’re looking for new friends. Original unpublished work only, my lovelies.

What we want: short fiction (2000 to 5000) for which we will pay $200; and poems up to 50 lines in length, for which we will pay $50. We’re looking for character-driven pieces; for whimsical, absurdist, elegant, horrific, heart-felt, energetic, sad, scary pieces; for hard sf, sf with a bit of give in it, fantasy, and everything in between. Pick one or all of the above. If you’ve put your heart into it, we want to see it. Just respect the word limits.

How we want it: one story per submission please, or up to five poems; as an attachment only (not in the body of the message) in either Word or RTF, with your name/[PTY or FCT]/title in the heading, and send it winging through the ethers to escapeclauses@shaw.ca

Reading period: January 15th to February 28th 2009.

Who's publishing? Kit St. Germain, a writer/actor who lives in Vancouver B.C. and says:

In 2002, I self-published a novel. It was a real learning curve. One thing it taught me was that I wasn't the genius I thought I was, and that I had to find out what the real world rules were-- because everyone else was playing by them. Shortly after the book, I joined the writing group, Helix,(nothing to do with the former online magazine) and I've been there since. Not to put too fine a point on it, the ladies beat me up but-good, and I know I'm a far better writer for it. As I told the folks at Strange Horizons, these girls are so pithy they are practically an orange. I know, I know, I should've been in a writer's group for five years and THEN written a novel. Yes, yes, we're all sooo clever five years from now.

So here we are, I got an insurance reserve cheque and I thought: _Any idiot can renovate their kitchen. It takes god's own egg-splattered numpties to make books._ So that's what we're(I'm) doing. The main reason I want to do this, is that I am surrounded by utterly extraordinary people-- writers, actors, artists, and there are so many more I have met in the ethers. I want to establish the mother of all geeky kitchen parties and bonk a cover on it. And then do the same thing next year, and the next.

Already signed on are award winners Eileen Kernaghan(Helix), and Linda DeMeulemeester(winner of the Silver Birch award for the Secret of Grim Hill) New to me is Ari Goelman whose submission got me fired up all over again. (although I must emphasize that I am not editing, or choosing or anything) The prolific C. June Wolfe, author of 'Finding Creatures,' joins us, as does the charm queen, the ineffable Rhea Rose whose sense of humor and a dash of daredevil shines through everything she does.

Cleie Rich is everyone's go-to person to find out how a thing is really done-- She's an expert's expert, and now she's ours.

Thomas Anfield(cover) is a loquacious(He paints for a living, but people should be paying just to hear him talk) much loved local performance artist and a painter -- take a look at his site http://www.thomasanfield.com/

Lee Tockar is a fellow actor(have a look at the IMDB Movie base) who spends his bench time with his nose pressed into his sketchbooks meticulously handwriting children's stories and illustrating them with a skill to rival Maurice Sendak's-- I've known him ten years. He lives in luminous cocoon of creative electricity. I can't wait for everyone to meet him. I'm so glad we could get him while we can still afford him!

We will add to this site as we go along-- we'll be posting bios and things so keep an eye peeled(ick) and welcome to Escape Clause.

Thought Crime Experiments

This is, as the name implies, an experiment. I want to put together an online anthology of high-quality speculative fiction. I've budgeted USD1000 to buy five short stories for USD200 each. I've written and critiqued speculative fiction for years, but this is the first time I've put up money for it.

What's the difference between giving a story a positive review and actually buying it? I want to see how difficult it is to find five stories I like enough to buy. Once I've chosen five, I'll publish them here, under a Creative Commons license.

Since this project just started and there is no additional information about it, I assume you're interested in the...

Submission Guidelines

Send your story to thoughtcrime.experiments@gmail.com. Include the story as an attachment. I prefer plain text, but any document format is fine. If you want to, you can mention your publication credits, your name, etc., but all I need to start with is the story and your email address. If I buy the story, I'll need to get in contact with you anyway.

In general, I'd prefer you send me a story you've already written and pounded the pavement for and acquired a couple rejection slips for.

Legalities: I'm buying the first electronic rights, and the right to publish your story under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike license (here's my reasoning). I want the stories I buy to first show up on this website, but once they're published I want them to circulate.

There are a number of reasons why writers don't usually solicit other writers' writing, but the big one for me is legal liability. I don't want you to sue me if you send me a story that includes a poisoned croissant, and ten years later I write a story that includes an exploding cupcake. On the other hand, it would be stupid to make you promise never to sue for any reason just so I'll look at your story. So instead of making you sign some indemnification clause with your submission, I ask that you submit your story in the same professional spirit that prevails in a writing group or workshop.

I've never done anything like this before, but nor am I some fly-by-night shyster. I've written two nonfiction books for O'Reilly and I've run this website for over ten years. I'm bound to run into problems doing this, but I want to work with you in good faith to create something incredible.

The usual boilerplate: send only one story at a time, don't send a story that's currently being considered by someone else, don't send a story that's already been bought or published.

Deadline: Let's say March 31st, 2009. If I get five must-buy stories before then, I'll cut it short so as not to string anyone along. If I haven't bought five stories by then, I'll extend the deadline or run whatever stories I have bought. If I promise to buy your story and then cancel the project or otherwise can't follow through, I'll pay you a kill fee of $75.

Length: My overriding concern is "is this worth two hundred bucks?" I'm not going to buy a flash piece for $200, and you wouldn't be happy getting $200 for your novella. So let's say between three and ten thousand words.

Genre: I like science fiction at lot, especially science fiction set within fifty years of the present. It's not as likely I'd pay $200 for a fantasy story, but if you've got a fantasy story set between 1959 and 2059, send it in. I'm not going to pay $200 for a horror story, unless it's a really original parody or something.

More specifically, I like stories that engage with the pop culture of the past, present, or future. I like stories that use the alien to illuminate the everyday, or vice versa. I like hard SF that requires a degree to understand, provided it's the computer science degree I actually have. I like farcical ridiculous gonzo pastiche. I also like space aliens.

If you don't have anything that you think I'll like, send me something anyway. The worst that can happen is I'll say no

TRIANGULATION: Dark Glass

Triangulation is an annual 125-150+ page short fiction anthology that publishes science fiction, fantasy, horror, and any other speculative fiction that caught the editors' fancy. Every year we have a theme: 2009's theme is "Dark Glass". We pay semi-pro rates and are available online at places like Amazon.com. We use Lulu.com as our printer, so if the publish-on-demand thing leaves a foul taste in your mouth, avoid us. We're a small outfit but we work hard to produce a quality product; Asimov's Science Fiction said we were "equal to any issue of your favorite prozine."

No, we don't get tired of mentioning that Asimov's said nice things about us.

We define "short fiction" as "up to about 5,000 words or so." We have no reason to impose hard and fast arbitrary word limits, but we are interested in publishing a wide variety of entertaining and literate stories, so the more space a story would take, the more it will need to impress us. If you have an awesome story that exceeds 5K then by all means send it; but be warned that if you're closer to 10,000 words, it will probably need to have the editorial staff cheering and high-fiving each other so much that the senior editor's roommate's poodle runs into the room to see what all the commotion is about. And that dog likes his naps.

We dig flash; there is no minimum word count.

We have no interest in getting more specific about the term "speculative fiction." Science fiction, horror, fantasy, magic realism, alternate history, whatever -- if there's a speculative element vital to your story, we'll gladly give it a read.

We love creative interpretations of our theme, "Dark Glass". Don't ask us what it means -- tell us what it means with a story that convinces us you're right.

We publish both new and established writers; the level of experience for the authors gracing our pages has ranged from "first time in print" to "Hugo winner." The majority of our stories usually wind up being from American authors, but we've had a number of international contributions; we're happy to consider work from anywhere in the world, just as long as it's written in English.

We will run mature content if we like the story. So make sure there's an actual story in that mature content.

We will gladly consider reprints. If the story ran someplace obscure, then it's probably new to our readers; and if it ran someplace high-profile, it's probably really good. Either way, we win!

No poetry. Sorry.

No fanfic, even if it's fanfic of a fictional universe that has passed into public domain. Cthulhu Mythos, I'm looking in your direction.

No thinly-disguised transcripts of roleplaying sessions, no settings obviously based on D&D or other such games. Don't get us wrong, we love to game ourselves -- which means our imaginations are probably too cluttered with elves and dwarves and orcs and the like as it is.

Submission deadline is March 31, 2009. All electronic submits must be sent by that time, all snail mail submits must be postmarked by that date.

Compensation:

We pay two cents per word (USA funds, rounded to the nearest 100 words, US$10 minimum payment) on publication and a single contributor's copy. The anthology will be published in late July of 2009. We purchase North American Serial Rights, and Electronic Rights for the PDF downloadable version; since we're cool with reprints, we really don't care whether we have firsties. All subsidiary rights released upon publication. Contributors will also have the option of purchasing additional copies of the anthology at-cost, exact price TBD.

How To Submit:

Electronic submissions make our lives easier. Please send your story to editor@parsecink.org. Please put your subject line in the format of "SUBMISSION: Story Title" so we can tell you apart from the spam.

We'll consider stories ONLY in the following formats:

• .odt (OpenDocument Text -- format used by the OpenOffice.org suite) -- preferred format
• .rtf (Rich Text Format -- generic document format that most word processors can create)
• .doc (MS Word -- we're not crazy about it, but let's face it, it's the one most people actually use)

Please use industry standard manuscript format. There's disagreement on some of the exact details of the "standard" -- we're cool with that. We're not testing you to see if you can follow each and every niggling detail, we just want a manuscript that looks professional.

If you absolutely positively can't use email, please send the manuscript (with either a SASE or a return email address) to:

Triangulation 2008
134 Orchard Dr.
Penn Hills, PA 15235

No hand-written manuscripts. We gotta draw the line somewhere.

Please, no multiple submissions; only send us one story at a time. We'll get back to you promptly, we promise.

Response:

Expect to hear back from us within two months or less. Feel free to start sending us nagging emails if you haven't heard from us after two months.

Please please please include a phone number in your manuscript header. (See "standard manuscript format" above.) If that's not feasible for whatever reason, please include an alternate email address. As much as we love email, it's not the most reliable technology in the world, and if something goes awry with your address, we're both going to wind up frustrated. (We've responded to every story we've ever received, but we know for a fact that at least a few of those responses got eaten by gremlins lurking in the Internet's many tubes.)

Eligibility:

The senior editor's policy is that, in order for the Triangulation anthology to run a story written by somebody listed in the credits page, the story must be so awesome that the thought of not running it gives him night sweats. Otherwise, writers who personally know or are related to the editorial staff should feel free to submit. We're not worried about nepotism; we tell our friends that their writing sucks all the time.

Please note that most of the editorial staff attends the Write or Die (WorD) critique group which meets every other Tuesday in Monroeville, PA. Also note that WorD is an open workshop. If you live in or near the Pittsburgh region and have ever wanted to force a market's editorial staff to give you detailed feedback on a story, this is your chance.

Who We Are:

Triangulation is an annual anthology produced by PARSEC Ink, the publishing wing of the PARSEC science-fiction association in Pittsburgh, PA. A new edition of Triangulation has been published every year since 2003 (save for a brief hiatus in 2006 when we changed over to an international format).

Triangulation shares an informal relationship with PARSEC's annual short story contest, and in past years Triangulation editors have been recruited as mid-round judges. Authors who do well in the contest may be offered publication in Triangulation solely at the discretion of Triangulation's editors. However, contest entrants are encouraged to also submit their work separately to the anthology. We see the contest stories very late in the process, so if we find a "near miss" that we could see running if the author fixed a few problems, there might not be enough time left for the author to fix them.