Work on the mag is proceeding slowly, but that’s okay. I don’t want to rush it along too fast and have it be a mess. I have increased somewhat my ambition for the quantity of material in issue #1, and am now actively seeking some new submissions for the very first outing. I am about to post calls for submissions on some sites, but have been trying to decide on what exactly I want my listings to say. I guess it’s simplest to just direct everyone to this site where they can read the full guidelines. When I compare, however, what I am planning to do with what a lot of other publishers are doing I start to wonder if I am way out in left field somewhere. For example, my guidelines for submissions have almost no “rules” whatsoever. I was paging though listings and linking to guidelines pages by way of some market listing sites the other night and was astounded at how restrictive, narrow and nitpicky about small details that so many editors actually are. Everywhere I turned there were statements such as: “ANY submissions received before blah blah blah date will be deleted UNREAD!!!” Other stern warnings inveighed against using “rich text format” or NOT using it, attaching or NOT attaching documents to emails, violating various submission windows, submitting for a particular “theme” before the proper date, querying or not querying, and a whole shit-heap of other pointless nonsense that has nothing to do with storytelling. As I read through guidelines, market by market, I found that at least half of them were so imposing with their rules and regulations that I would give up in despair and never send them my story or novel for fear that the reply and rejection would be so scathing that my computer screen would melt upon displaying it. And then that made me stand up, MacBook in hand, and yell, “Give me an effing break, y’all. You’re just a bunch of small press people who aren’t even really paying anyone anything!” Anyway, I am launching a science fiction magazine, and I’d like to see some neat stories and articles for it. That’s about it.
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