Douglas Smith's blog

Playing the Short Game (Part 8): Where Do I Look?

Forgot to post about this one, although if you're following me on Twitter, you would've got a notice. Part 8 in my continuing series on marketing and selling short fiction went up last week on the new and spiffy Amazing Stories Magazine site. This one deals with finding markets that publish short fiction. I provide my recommendations on the best online resources for identifying available short fiction markets, and talk about how to use them to select your list of top markets. The lists are slanted to speculative fiction, although I do provide some resources for literary fiction as well.

If you write short fiction or if you want to, check out the series. Here's a list of all the posts so far. And please feel free to comment on any of the posts. It helps me writing them if I know that there are people out there who are reading the series. Assuming I keep to my planned weekly schedule for the series, a new post will go up each Saturday (more or less). If you want to be notified of a new post in the series, follow me on Twitter. And in answer to several inquiries and suggestions, yes, I will be pulling all of these posts into an ebook after I finish the series, which is likely to be sometime in August or September.

30 Countries!: "Jigsaw" published in India

India SF cover with "Jigsaw"My science fiction short story "Jigsaw" has been republished in issue #2 of the relatively new bi-monthly webzine, India SF. which brings me to thirty countries in which I've been published. "Jigsaw" first appeared in the Julie Czerneda-edited young-adult anthology, Odyssey, in 2004. It was a finalist for the Aurora Award in 2005. It is also, for some reason, my best selling short story ebook. Here's the story blurb:

Humans are just beginning to explore the outer reaches of our solar system when the wormships are discovered outside the orbit of Pluto.

Abandoned? Lost?

Or left to be found? Found with charted wormholes in Sol System. Found with incredibly ancient yet perfectly functioning Wormer technology.

Five years later, humanity is exploring the stars.

But now something has gone wrong with the perfect Wormer technology. The orbit of the wormship, The Johannes Kepler, is decaying, and Cassie Morant, ship geologist, has less than twenty-four hours to solve a planet-sized, eons-old puzzle--or the entire crew will die. Cassie's good at puzzles, but this one has a piece missing. A big piece.

Now Cassie has one last chance to save the ship and the man she loves. But time's running out...

If you're interested, you can check out reviews of the story and buy the ebook version of "Jigsaw" online.

Playing the Short Game (Part 7): How to Choose Short Fiction Markets

New Zealand cycling tripPart 7 in my ongoing series of posts at Amazing Stories on marketing and selling short fiction is now up. This week's topic is on how to decide where to send your story first. Hint: start at the top. Next week, I'll be discussing how to find available markets and how to understand submission guidelines. 

I missed a couple of weeks of posting for this series, but I plan to be back on a regular weekly schedule again now. The gap was due to an extended vacation and business trip to New Zealand and Australia. I did a 6-day cycling tour on the south island in New Zealand and fell in love with that country. The photo at the left is pretty typical of the scenery that we were cycling through. We went from Queenstown, over the mountains to the west coast, up the coast, and then inland again, finishing with a beautiful train trip through the mountains to Christchurch. Fantastic trip, and I can't wait to get back there again.

Back to the writing topic, if you haven't been able to follow my Amazing Stories blog series, you can catch up on all of the past posts here.

Playing the Short Game (Part 6): But how do I know it's ready?

The next post in my series at Amazing Stories on marketing and selling short fiction is now up (well, actually, it's been up for a while, but I've been travelling). This week's entry deals with submission fear and knowing when it's time to stop rewriting, editing, and tweaking that story, and to send it out into the world. Check out this week's post here. I'll be skipping a post this week, but hope to have part 7 up next week and be back on a regular weekly posting schedule.

Playing the Short Game (Part 5): Rights and Licensing (conclusion)

The next post in my series at Amazing Stories on marketing and selling short fiction is now up. This week's entry is the second of a 2-week discussion on why you never "sell" a short story. Check out this week's post here.

Playing the Short Game (Part 4): Licensing and Rights (intro)

The next post in my series at Amazing Stories on marketing and selling short fiction is now up. This week's entry is the first of a 2-week discussion on why you never "sell" a short story. These two posts contain information on how licensing of fiction rights work, information that is critical for every short story writer to understand. Check out this week's post here.

Amazing Stories officially launches

I blogged recently about the upcoming relaunch of Amazing Stories Magazine. Well, the official opening of the new site to the public was yesterday, January 21. See below for the press release from Steve Davidson, the new publisher for Amazing Stories.

For my part, I'm writing a blog series on the site on how to market and sell your short fiction, entitled "Playing the Short Game." I now have three posts in the series up on the Amazing Stories site:

Part 1: Introduction - Who I am and what this series will cover

Part 2: Why are you writing? - Deciding on the writing career that you want

Part 3: Why short fiction? - The benefits of the short game to a writing career

The series is aimed at the beginning writer. If that's you, I hope you'll drop by each week. I'll be posting weekly, and my posts (I think) will be going up each Monday. If you're an experienced writer, please drop by as well and add your comments based on your own experience and knowledge. 

And while you're there, check out the new site. There are over fifty bloggers that cover not just fiction topics, but all aspects of fandom. Look around and I'll bet that you'll find something that interests you. Hope to see you there! Here's a page that will list all of my posts in the "Playing the Short Game" series on the Amazing Stories site.


OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

HOLD FOR RELEASE UNTIL MONDAY, JANUARY 21ST

Amazing Stories, the world's first science fiction magazine, is now open to the public.

Social Magazine Website Offers Nearly Sixty Writers and Social Networking For Fans!

I'm part of the Amazing Stories relaunch

On Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013, I will be joined by more than 50 other writers from around the blogosphere to help launch the Beta Test of Phase 1 of the return of Amazing Stories. I'll be writing a blog series, aimed at new or beginning writers, on how to market and sell your short fiction. 

For me, it is especially very cool to be part of the relaunch of Amazing Stories. One of my first professional sales was to AS back in the late 90's ("State of Disorder" in issue #595 -- see the cover at the left) when Kim Mohan was the fiction editor. I still remember the thrill of being in an issue with Jack Williamson and Frederic Pohl. Back then, AS was also one of the few magazines with a circulation large enough to be a "qualifying publication" for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. My sale to AS eventually led to me being one of five finalists on the 2001 Campbell ballot (I lost).

Amazing Stories was the world's first science fiction magazine.  Published by Hugo Gernsback, the Father of Science Fiction, the magazine created the genre's first home and was instrumental in helping to establish science fiction fandom – the fandom from which all other fandoms have evolved.

The magazine itself ceased publication in 2005. In 2008 the new publisher, Steve Davidson, discovered that the trademarks had lapsed and applied for them.  The marks were finally granted in 2011.

Phase 1 introduces the social networking aspects of the site and the Blog Team, more than 50 authors, artists, collectors, editors, pod casters, designers and bloggers who will address 14 different subjects on a regular basis – SF, Fantasy & Horror literature, anime, gaming, film, television, the visual arts, audio works, the pulps, comics, fandom, science and publishing. 

If any of you are interested in participating in the Beta Test of the site, you can request an invitation by emailing the publisher, Steve Davidson.

And here is a link to the official press release from Steve. 

New ebook edition of CHIMERASCOPE now available

Chimerascope coverI am very pleased to announce that I have just published a new ebook edition of my collection, Chimerascope, which was a finalist for the juried Sunburst Award, as well as the CBC's Bookies Award and the Aurora Award in 2011. This new edition is available from all the major ebook retailers. A full set of buying links are provided below.

This edition contains all of the same content and the same great cover by Erik Mohr as the original print and the first ebook editions, but it also includes an excerpt from my upcoming novel, The Wolf at the End of the World, as well as excerpts from three novelettes. And it's also a lot cheaper at $6.99, compared to the original $9.99 for the first ebook edition. 

IMPOSSIBILIA reviewed at Speculating Canada

Derek Newman-Stille has just posted a review of Impossibilia, my first collection from 2008, on his excellent Speculating Canada site. An excerpt from the review follows:

"Impossibilia features Douglas Smith’s fascination with moral questions and morally ambiguous spaces where characters are forced to question conflicting values and ideologies. ... There is no certain ground in Smith’s work and readers are compelled to question every element of their identity and explore whether there is anything such as a fixed identity. Everything is changeable and everything is open to questions.

A collection of short stories, Impossibilia represents an exploration of the ways that the past continues to haunt us. ... Present and past intersect in Impossibilia, and memory is something inescapable. Smith does not focus his stories on the development of new loves (that’s too easy), but rather the fall-outs of love, the casualties of love and the repercussions."

You can read more about Impossibilia here. It was an Aurora Award finalist in 2009 and is now available as an ebook in either Kindle or epub (most ereaders) formats. Click here for buying links for all formats.

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