ANNOUNCING ISSUE #2 CONTENTS

Though the issue isn't due out for a while yet (officially on 3/15, but it may be moved up to 3/1), I thought I would, just for fun, announce its expected contents and get the writers' names on the internet in another post, and generally keep the M-Brane fire stoked:

David McGillveray: "Dystopian"

Michael Griffiths: "A Clone of a Different Color" 

Lawrence Dagstine: "A Soul to the Stars"

Tim Mulcahy: "Birth Screams of Angels"

Abby "Merc" Rustad: "Unpermitted"

Lawrence Barker: "Revelation of Wind, Revelation of Fire"

Janett Grady: "New World Order"

James Hartley: "Blinking Flashing Lights"

Jeffery Sims: "Peril in the Red Zone"

What a cool-sounding bloc of titles that is! This issue, as it stands now, runs four pages longer than issue #1 did with no "classic reprints" and no non-fiction articles like my James Blish reminiscence in that issue. So if I include anything like that, it will run longer, which may be okay, but I am waiting to decide that until after I have in my hands the print edition of #1 and know how that went (the PDF, of course, can be of any length, but I need to stay within reason for the print version). Story lengths in #2 are quite varied, ranging from Janett's and Merc's fairly brief entries to Jeffery's novella. The variety of the tales is quite broad, as well. I got several notes back from readers during the early release of issue #1 who commented favorably on how varied the stories were in content and style.  I don't think I ever consciously said to myself, "Let's have a lot of variety here." But I think it was certainly the plan anyway, and I am now quite conscious of it. I see M-Brane SF as more or less an un-themed anthology in a lot of monthly installments,  and I am plotting issues past #2 already with the idea of very varied content in mind. And it's how I read, anyway: lots of variety.

Another thing has struck me as super cool about this project is the fact that I am receiving a lot of really neat, weird, interesting stories from so many different perspectives. I've been acquiring stories from a lot of different places in the world, too: David McGillveray, who has a story in #2, is from England, and then I have stories booked for issues beyond that from writers in Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, New Zealand and Sweden as well as every major region of the US. It makes me excited about upcoming issues and wishing that I could get them published even faster than I can. 

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