Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Anthology Delay

My second anthology appearance of the year has been delayed until next year. Quantum Genre on the Planet of Arts, an anthology of quantum genre stories, will now be appearing in April 2010. It will include a revised version of my story Fluctuations.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Two Year Acceptance

A Few Good Men, my first professional sale, has been accepted by long-running semi-pro Hungarian magazine Galaktika. The reply came just over 2 years after I submitted the story - a lesson in patience to all authors. No confirmed publication date yet, but it looks like a fantastic print magazine.

This is the third langauge for A Few Good Men, having already been translated into Spanish for Argentine webzine La Idea Fija.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Now Reading

This week I've finished Trevor Denyer's excellent debut collection The Edge of the Country, and read Jupiter XXVI, in which I particularly enjoyed David Conyers' The Octagon.

Today I've started on Paul McCauley's Gardens of the Sun, and after much translatlantic delay, my contributor copy of Pow!erful Tales finally arrived. It's a shiny-looking book with lots of atmospheric pencil drawings to accompany the superhero stories.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Further Spanish Translations

The Spanish translation of Up To My Neck In It is now on-line at Aurora Bitzine, with a couple of great illustrations to go with it. This is my ninth story in Spanish. Five of these have been reprinted, and another three stories accepted for translation and publication.

I also had an email from a different translator at Aurora Bitzine who is working on Roadmaker for a future issue. I submitted this months earlier and never heard back, but apparently they now have an extra translator so they seem to be going through their submissions backlog. Not sure when that will appear yet.

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Gondolier in Mirandes

The Gondolier has been translated into its 24th language: Mirandes, a language related to Portuguese. The translation, along with the original English, appears on the Mirandes community blog Froles Mirandesas.

Many of The Gondolier translations appear on this site rather than having been published externaly, so this story is my 13th officially published language, the 6th for The Gondolier, and my 75th publication all together!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

New Twitterfiction

My twitterfic Imagine is out on Thaumotrope today. Technically it was out yesterday, but due to time differences I didn't see it till today. Of course, it's shorter than this blog entry!

Monday, October 12, 2009

Latest Magazines

Jupiter XXVI: Isonoe is on its way, which I'm looking forward to. Of all the magazines I've read, Jupiter most closely matches my taste in stories.

Also out this week is the latest issue of Estronomicon, described this time as being darker than usual.

Go, read, and enjoy yourself!

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Two More Magazines Are Lost

Sad news for the genre magazine world this week, though this is the first I've reported for quite some time.

Web-based fiction mag Pantechnicon is to cease publication. The final issue will be in December. The site has been experiencing technical difficulties, so the final issue will appear on the website of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction.

Also coming to an end after 21 issues is Death Ray, the news stand genre magazine, as reported at SF Crowsnest.

Monday, October 05, 2009

Strict Guidelines

Standard manuscript format for writing fiction is well-defined and well-established, though many short fiction markets aren't too strict on the details. I was looking at formatting for screenplays at the weekend, and it's a hundred times more exacting. There are so many rules for font and alignment, depending on what you're writing! Luckily you can download free screenplay writing software that keeps it all straight for you. That's only the begining though. There's also an endless list of abreviations, conventions and other rules.

Now you're all wondering why I was looking into screenplay formatting, aren't you? Well, that's another story...

Friday, October 02, 2009

Intriguing Tagline

The audio stories published on Hypersonic Tales can now be accessed via podcast site such as HuffDuffer and PodCastAlley. The tagline for my story Up To My Neck In It is:

Speculative fiction story about sewage.


Now, who could resist that?

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Shooting Stars

Rufus Balikind, the galaxy's greatest hunter, appears on Big Pulp today in the flash fiction story Shooting Stars.

I have 2 other short stories featuring the inestimable Mr Balikind. Hopefully they'll also appear on-line one day.

Foreign Market Update

Doug Smith has updated his Foreign Markets List this week. It now includes several of the markets that I've had stories published in recently. It was this website that got me hooked on the idea of translations and Doug has done a great job of keeping it up-to-date for several years.