M-BRANE #18 PUBLISHED

The new issue released moments ago, with astounding new work by Patty Jansen, Joyce Chng, Damon Lord, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mary E. Lowd, Rick Novy and Jaym Gates. It's a fine night on the Brane.

Announcing M-BRANE #18 writers and TOC

M-Brane SF #18 will appear on July 1 with these fine new stories:

"Prototype" by Patty Jansen
"Lux Perpetua" by Joyce Chng
"Weekday" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
"The Ambi-Cognitive Man" by Mary E. Lowd
"Return to the Moon" by Rick Novy
"Lord of Heaven and Earth" by Jaym Gates

And a poem by Damon Lord titled "Cryo-Hell."


The new issue's writers are far-flung, with representatives from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and Singapore, and it is a majority-female group, which pleases me because the previous couple of issues had an extreme gender imbalance in the other direction. I don't apply any sort of gender quota when I select stories, but nor do I want to be one of those male sf editors who seem to always end up with all-male TOCs. I've been actively encouraging submissions from female writers or ones about female protagonists, and I am glad to notice more such items appearing in the in-box.

This month's authors include a couple of familiar names to M-Brane readers. Rick Novy has appeared in the zine many times previously, and he guest-edited our twelfth issue, released as a trade paperback titled Ergosphere. He is also editing a new anthology of near-future sf called 2020 Visions, which M-Brane Press will publish later this year. Patty Jansen, a recent Writers of the Future finalist, appeared in M-Brane last fall and she is also on the staff of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Silvia Moreno-Garcia appeared in our pages a few months ago, and this month offers a science fictional take on vampirism set, like her previous entry, in a future/alternate Mexico (a place that I have come to really like as a location for speculative fiction). Jaym Gates, my co-editor on Little Death of Crossed Genres, appears the first time in M-Brane SF (though she has two entries in the forthcoming The Aether Age). She and Joyce Chng lend a steampunkish flavor to this issue with their highly imaginative tales. Also new to M-Brane is Mary E. Lowd, offering a story about some unusual brothers and sisters on a distant world. Finally, while I don't believe I have published poetry in M-Brane SF before, I am presenting a science fictional poem by British writer and good friend of M-Brane Damon Lord.

M-BRANE #18 ToC late but forthcoming

I'm seriously late on announcing the contents of the July issue...because I haven't actually finalized it yet. The last few weeks have presented an unprecedented volume of submissions and it has been quite difficult to make some rather close decisions. But the issue will be on time and it will be excellent. Also, the July issue may be the last one that has its own print edition since I plan to go to a new quarterly plan (though monthly releases will still happen in the electronic versions). Occasionally, when I am at a loss for anything else to present, I dig up from the bowels of YouTube a "theme song" for the impending issue:

Probable change to print edition impending

In addition to some planned changes with the electronic editions of M-Brane SF and the upcoming online edition, I am considering a major change in the print edition. While the electronic forms will remain monthly, I may move to a quarterly schedule for the print version. The new quarterly version, as I envision it, would be an omnibus of three months of the electronic fiction content and possible some "premium" content not available elsewhere. It's possible that a less-frequent print version might draw more attention than the current monthly facsimile of the PDF version, and it would be possible for me to get it into more distribution channels that what I can with the ways it's been done so far. Also, a quarterly schedule for the print version might be more compatible with other M-Brane Press operations such as the  forthcoming stand-alone books still on the docket for this year and our new fantasy zine, Brandon Bell's Fantastique Unfettered, which we plan to launch in high style later this year.

New site!

As regular readers can see, I've started a make-over of the M-Brane site. This new M-Brane SF-dot-com site will eventually house online much of the content on the regular zine, though the PDF subscription option will continue to exist, as will a new epub version. A new M-Brane Press site (also under construction) will be the place to order these zine subscriptions, buy print editions of M-Brane SF and find news and order information for M-Brane Press books, current and forthcoming.

Cesar Torres reads from THE 12 BURNING WHEELS

Writer Cesar Torres posted this link which goes to an approximately twenty-minute video of him reading before a live audience a couple of stories from his collection The 12 Burning Wheels, published in February by M-Brane. While the audio quality is not perfect, it's entirely listenable, and I was absolutely thrilled to see and hear it. I am very proud to be the publisher of this fine little book, and this was the first time that I got to see someone do a public reading of something from my little press, and I was so happy for Cesar over the evidently positive reaction of his audience.  In case I have not said it enough in the past, Cesar Torres is brilliant writer. His work is beautiful, memorable and achingly good, and if I never have another notable success as a small press publisher, I will always be very happy that I had a hand in showing off his work to the world with The 12 Burning Wheels. The book is available in print from Amazon and in electronic formats from M-Brane (option 4 on that list).