CALLIHOO NEWSLETTER Market News for Writers of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Julia West, Editor Volume 12 Number 2 3 April 2008 Website: http://www.callihoo.net IN THIS ISSUE Deadlines Anthologies Sword & Sorceress 23 Market Guidelines Coyote Wild Flash Fiction Online Market Information Coyote Wild Tor Books DEADLINES Where it says "GLs in Vol. X No. Y," these are volume and issue of the CALLIHOO newsletter. The Thirteenth Annual PARSEC Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story Contest Deadline 15 April 2008 [Unpub writers only, SF/F/H to 3500 wds. 1st prize $200; may have 2nd prize $100 and 3rd prize $50. No entry fee. No reprints. Theme 'metallic feathers.' E-subs only by request. Winner printed in Confluence 2008 program book. GLs in Vol. 12 No. 1] Sword & Sorceress 23 Reading 19 April to 16 May 2008 [Print antho, s&s with strong female protag to 9k wds, pays 5›/wd. No sim or mult subs. RT 1 wk. GLs in Vol. 12 No. 2] The Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest Deadline 1 June 2008 [To 15k wds., $5,000 1st, $2,000 2nd, $1,000 3rd prize. No entry fee. No reprints or sim subs. E-subs only. GLs in Vol. 12 No. 1] ANTHOLOGIES Sword & Sorceress 23 [Print antho, s&s with strong female protag to 9k wds, pays 5 cents/wd. No sim or mult subs. Reading 19Apr - 16 May 08. RT 1 wk.] We are happy to announce that Sword & Sorceress 22 sold well enough that we get to do another volume. Norilana Books will be publishing Sword & Sorceress 23 later this year. If you wish to submit a story to the anthology, please follow the Guidelines below. Guidelines Stories should be the type generally referred to as "sword and sorcery" and must have a strong female protagonist whom the reader will care about. See Sword & Sorceress 22 (or 1-20) for examples. We do not want stories with explicit sex, gratuitous violence, or profanity. We are NOT a market for poetry. We are willing to consider stories set in modern times, but we won't buy more than one or two of those for the anthology. No simultaneous submissions. With regard to multiple submissions, do not submit more than one story at a time. If we've rejected your first one, you may send another as long as it's before the deadline. If you have not sold to MZB, please read "What is a Short Story?" and "Why Did my Story Get Rejected?" (on the website) before submitting to us. Reading period: Saturday, April 19 to Friday, May 16, 2008. Stories received before or after this period will be deleted unread. Response time is expected to follow MZB's traditional standards: you should hear within a week if we're holding your story for the final line-up or rejecting it. Deadline: May 16, 2008. Length: up to 9,000 words, with preference given to shorter stories. The longer a story is, the better it has to be. Formatting and Submission: Format with one-inch margins on all four sides of page. Please do not use a header or footer. Your name, full mailing address, and email address must be in the upper left corner, single spaced. Skip two lines, center the text, then put the title, with your name (or byline) on the next line. We're not going to be as rigid as MZB was about pen names, but we expect them to be reasonable, rather than cute. The rest of the manuscript should be single-spaced, with the first line of each paragraph indented 1/2 inch. If you need to indicate a break, put "#" on a line by itself, centered. Do not underline; use italics instead. Do not use bold face. Word count will be determined by our word processor; that way it will be the same for everyone. Save your document as an .rtf file (rich text format or interchange format, depending on what your computer calls it). E-mail it as an attachment to mzbworks@yahoo.com. The subject line should be "SS23-your last name-story title" (e.g.: SS23-Bradley-Dark Intruder) -- we don't want submissions caught in our spam filter. Rights purchased: first rights. Payment: 5 cents per word as an advance against a pro rata share of royalties and foreign or other sales. http://mzbworks.home.att.net/s23.htm MARKET GUIDELINES Coyote Wild [Quarterly online, spec fic to 10k wds. Pays 1 cent/wd. E-subs only. No mult subs.] An online quarterly of speculative fiction and poetry Coyote Wild is a speculative fiction magazine: Speculative fiction contains science fiction, fantasy, horror, or magical realism elements. All queries or complete manuscripts should be e-mailed to Submissions@CoyoteWildMag.com as an .rtf file. Non-Fiction: Coyote Wild publishes critical and humorous essays. We do not publish reviews. You're welcome to send a query, first. In the subject line type "NONFICTION-Your last name-Title (or Query)" Poetry: We publish poetry, but only if it knocks our socks off. All poetry must have a speculative element as described above. We accept up to three poems in a batch from a single author. Send all three poems together as a single submission. Please don't submit more until you've heard back. In the subject line type "POETRY-Your last name-Title" Fiction: Coyote Wild exists because we love stories. Fiction submissions should be no longer than 10,000 words. If you've a piece you're sure we'll love that's longer, send a query. In the subject line type "FICTION-Your last name-Title" Flash Fiction: At Coyote Wild we adore flash fiction, which we define as short stories less than 1000 words in length. In the subject line type "FLASH FICTION-Your last name-Title" Artwork/Photography: We'll look at it. No promises. Coyote Wild is always interested in photography that evokes strong responses, connects to a story we're planning to run, or resonates with the slipstream and speculative spirit of the 'zine. Send an email query to MacAllister@CoyoteWildMag.com. If you need to check on the status of your submission, e-mail editor@CoyoteWildMag.com Preferred Format * We only accept electronic submissions. Send all submissions as an .rtf file to Submissions@CoyoteWildMag.com. Any other attachment will be deleted unread. * No multiple submissions. * All submissions must be original. Coyote Wild does not publish fanfic. * The preferred font for submissions is either Courier or Times New Roman 12pt font. * Single-space all submissions with an extra line between paragraphs. Do not indent the first word of a paragraph. * Use underlining instead of italics. Use bold for bold. * Use # to signify a scene break. * Use the Word Count feature on your word processing software to determine the word count of your submission. Payment & Rights Writers will never get rich publishing with Coyote Wild. We do this for love of the written word, but we also feel every writer deserves something for the effort they put into their craft. Coyote Wild offers $.01/word for fiction and non-fiction and a flat rate of $10 for poetry and flash. Word count is determined using the word count feature available with most word processing software. Payment via check or paypal unless other arrangements are requested. Coyote Wild requests first electronic rights. Exclusivity for six months from the date of publication as well as archival rights. Our contract also asks for podcasting rights. Podcasting is completely negotiable and will be removed from the contract at the author's request should we accept your submission. Contact Information Submissions: Submissions@CoyoteWildMag.com Questions: editor@CoyoteWildMag.com Advertisers: Advertising@CoyoteWildMag.com http://coyotewildmag.com/CoyoteWildGuidelines.html Flash Fiction Online [Monthly online, all genres, 500-1100 wds firm. Pays flat $50. E- subs only. Mult subs okay, no sim subs. No reprints. RT 3-8 wks.] Notice: Substantial Guidelines Changes As of 3/25/2008, we are no longer accepting submissions for stories of fewer than 500 words. All submissions must be between 500 and 1,100 words. (Stories of greater than 1000 words, if accepted, will be edited to 1,000 words.) Stories submitted before 3/25/2008 will be reviewed for possible inclusion even if they are smaller. We had originally said that we favored the high end of the flash range, and that continues, but we still may accept smaller stories for the May and June 2008 issues. Also as of 3/25/2008, we will be paying a flat $50 for all stories. Since the stories we publish will range from 500-1,000 words, this implies a per-word rate of five to ten cents. What We Look For We publish stories from 500 to 1,000 words in length. We look for previously unpublished material, with the exception of our Classic Flash selections. (Classic Flash stories are old: the copyright must have expired on them. If you would like to recommend one, please email the editor.) They're very short, but they are still stories. That means the best ones have common characteristics. Strong, interesting characters. Even in flash fiction, we want to care about the characters. Plots. A goal, a conflict, a change, a realization, a death, a birth, an "a-ha!" moment--something that happens, something that matters, even if it only happens in the mind of the reader. Settings. Settings are important; that said, it's less important than the characters and plot, so we will accept stories with mundane or undescribed settings as long as the characters and plots are compelling. You can read more about this aspect of what we're interested in at http://www.flashfictiononline.com/about_us.html (see below). We're not that concerned about genre. Many of us, including the editor, have a fondness for science fiction and fantasy, but great flash stories aren't always easily classified. If you wrote it, and you love it, then submit it. We want our publication to be accessible to all ages, so please, no erotica, porn, or superfluous graphic sex or violence. What To Send At the moment, we only accept submissions by email. We accept Microsoft Word, rich text, and plain text attachments, as well as plain text in the body of an email. Fonts, margins, and other formatting don't matter and won't be noticed, for better or for worse; your submission will be automatically reformatted upon opening. Only boldface, italics, and underlining will remain. Send your story to submissions@flashfictiononline.com. (If that fails, use Jake's alter ego's email, oliverhouse@gmail.com. Some people with att.net email addresses are reporting problems.) Please include the genre of your work. This will change which readers get a first look at your story. (You don't want someone who dislikes Westerns to read your Western flash. It won't get a fair shake.) We follow Duotrope's genre classification. We only publish stories consisting of 500-1,000 words. We know that writing flash is hard; authors can submit stories of up to 1,100 words. If we are amazed by the story, we'll work with the author to cut the extra words. (We will probably use Jake's cutting blog to show how these stories were cut, as a good exercise in writing concise prose.) If we can't cut it to 1,000 words, we won't publish the story. Submissions with fewer than 500 or more than 1,100 words will be deleted unread and without acknowledgment. We accept multiple submissions (more than one story from you to us). We do not want simultaneous submissions (a story sent to us and other publications at the same time). We do not accept previously published works, unless the copyright has expired (for our "Classic Flash" series). Our response times currently range from 3 - 8 weeks. Payment and Rights A sample contract is here (http://www.flashfictiononline.com/docs/ffo-contract.pdf PDF format). NOTE: it's somewhat outdated because the editor hasn't rewritten it to change the pay rate yet. All other aspects are correct, but it is only a sample. We pay fifty dollars ($50) per story. This payment provides us with first electronic rights, including HTML, PDF, plain text, and MP3 (audio) formats. Distribution will be through this Web site and a variety of other electronic means as of this writing, we expect podcast, email, and RSS. This only means that we can publish in those formats; once we publish in one format, the author can do what she wants. For example, if we publish in HTML only, and later the author wants to publish a PDF, she maintains that right. We still have the right to create a PDF ourselves, but we have no right to stop the author from republishing. This payment also provides us with a non-exclusive one-time right to publish the stories in a hard copy anthology. No timelines have been identified for this project. All other rights for the work remain with the author. http://www.flashfictiononline.com/submit.html Our Goals At a high level, our goals are pretty simple. * To serve flash fiction readers and writers with a professional, sustainable market for flash fiction stories. * To promote the general population's reading of great short stories in general and of great flash fiction in particular. That implies a variety of sub-goals: * Provide fiction readers with accessible, interesting flash stories that have a plot, characterization, and, to the extent possible, setting. * Meet the SFWA requirements for being a pro market: 1000+ consistent subscribers, $.05 / word, non-vanity press, and consistent publishing for a year. * Provide fiction writers, and especially flash writers, with links and information about writing. * Promote the short story form to a general audience. * Provide new writers with an additional shot at professional publication. To maintain interest among the general public (and many writers) we need to publish stories, not just vignettes. Stories have characters. Characters have personalities, and they make us care about them. Ideally they aren't merely stereotypes. We prefer stories with strong, interesting characters. Stories have plots. The general reader sometimes reads "great" literature and says, "what was that all about?" I am more interested in the general reader than in the student; more in the acclaim of a thousand readers than of a single professional critic. Stories we publish must have a goal, a conflict, a change, a realization, a death, a birth, an "a-ha!" moment-- something that happens, something that matters, even if it only happens in the mind of the reader. Stories have settings; however, settings are less important to a story than the characters (whom we care about, which invests us in the story) and plot (which puts these characters into situations that test their mettle and make us anxious for them). Therefore, although we'd like to have a well-described setting, we will accept stories with mundane or undescribed settings as long as the characters and plots are compelling. The greatness of a story doesn't depend on genre. The general public likes Law and Order, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harlequin romances, Sands of Iwo Jima, Hackers, National Treasure, King of Queens, Memoirs of a Geisha, and lots of other things besides. I personally have a preference for some types of genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, mysteries), and I think it's reasonable for our publication to reflect these genre preferences because we aspire to publish great stories, not someone else's definition of great literature. (Note that I consider "literary" to be a genre. Call me naive if you like.) That said, we will consider great short stories from any genre, including literary styles. We will initially try to achieve a publishing schedule of two thousand words' worth of stories per month. We may augment this schedule with columns from our editorial staff and "Classic Flashes" for which the copyright has expired. http://www.flashfictiononline.com/about_us.html MARKET INFORMATION Coyote Wild Sherwood Smith says, "In August, I'm going to guest edit an issue of Coyote Wild whose theme will be YA adventure. Their usual team of beta readers will vet everything that comes in first, then pass things to me--it will be so much fun! "See what you have. Coyote Wild pays one cent a word--because it's still pretty much out of pocket, the pay is still good faith rather than SFWA level." [sff.people.sherwood, 30 Mar 08] Tor Books Patrick Nielsen Hayden says, "Yes, we're building a new web site (www.tor.com), separate from our perfectly good corporate site (www.tor-forge.com). "We," in that sentence, being Tor Books, publishers of the largest line of hardcover and paperback science fiction and fantasy in the English-speaking world. Where I work as manager of the science fiction line, and Teresa [Nielsen Hayden] is an occasional consulting editor, yes, even now, even in these palmy days of Federated Media and Boing Boing. . . . What's going on? How's this new site going to work? "Well, as I told at least one web reporter, if we knew exactly how it's going to work, we'd be done. We don't, entirely, so we're not, entirely. "But we know several things. We know that the site will use a blog-like architecture to present an ongoing stream of news, opinion, and observation from various Tor people, myself included, about the SF and fantasy events of the day and about perhaps less-current things that are nonetheless of interest to SF and fantasy readers, such as medieval siege engines, the Van Allen Belt, hoisin sauce, XKCD, and the novels of Georgette Heyer. We know that there will be non-Tor bloggers also posting to the "front page"; in fact we've already recruited several in order to ensure coverage of particular niche areas. (Some of these individuals will be familiar to Making Light readers wave hello, Bruce Baugh and we haven't finished recruiting, either.) We know that the site will also feature new original fiction on a regular basis, illustrated under the supervision of art director Irene Gallo, and that these original stories free of DRM, offered as part of the blog feed and also Available For Your Convenience in a variety of other formats will have their own associated open Tor Books, cont. comment threads, just like everything else on the blog. We know that there will be lightweight "social networking" features for registered users, including the ability to form mutual-interest groups through tagging and the ability to create journals and/or discussions of their own. Most of all, we know that the real point of the exercise isn't to create yet another blog, but rather, a place and a context for the lively, ongoing, wide-ranging, and profoundly self-organizing discussions that have characterized the science fiction subculture since its earliest days. In other words, it'll be a lot like Making Light, except with original fiction and art, more front-page bloggers, a more direct connection to SF and fantasy, and run out of the middle of Tor Books." THE PLAIN PEOPLE OF FANDOM: So this is, like, a big Tor promotional exercise, right? PNH: Only in the sense that Tor is a pretty good brand to put on something associated with science fiction. In fact we mean to cover everything that seems interesting. Entertainment Weekly reviews movies and books and music produced by entities unconnected with Time Warner. THE PLAIN PEOPLE OF FANDOM: So what about the free e-books? PNH: I'm glad I made you up so that you could ask that question! . . . .we've got a little "holding page" currently at the tor.com URL, where we're urging people to sign up as preregistered users. In exchange for their advance support (and their permission to email them our newsletters) we are, For A Limited Time, sending them links through which they can download free, un-DRMed digital editions of various recent Tor books in a variety of formats. . . .Since we're rotating books in and out of the program at a fair clip, the earlier you sign up, the more free books you'll score. However, the munificence of this offer (Slashdotted twice on its first weekend), combined with our vagueness in describing the actual site for which the offer is merely a build-up, has caused a lot of people to jump to the conclusion that the new site will be all about selling and/or giving away digital books. This isn't the case, although Tor does have a bunch of future plans for the selling and/or giving away of book-length digital works, some of which plans may even involve this particular project. But the actual point of this site-- THE PLAIN PEOPLE OF FANDOM: Is to be a Focal Point Fanzine, meyer. PNH: So very busted. THE PLAIN PEOPLE OF FANDOM: We thought so. We recognized the signs. The sensitive fannish faces. The faint but unmistakable aroma of mimeo ink. Exactly whose idea was this? Tor Books, cont. PNH: Well, er, Fritz Foy, former Holtzbrinck CTO and incorrigible ubergeek and the aforementioned Irene Gallo and, er, well yes, both Nielsen Haydens. Not long after the project's initial phase, Teresa was promoted to the Vingean Beyond, from whence she sends occasional messages of encouragement to those of us back in the Slow Zone where FTL and true AI are impossible. But we've been joined by luminaries such as Tor editor Liz Gorinsky, and Gina Gagliano of graphic-novel imprint First Second, both of whom will be helping us find and develop original sequential-art material to add to the site's mix. And of course we'd be nowhere without the energy, enthusiasm, focus, and endless Outlook-calendar meeting notices of professional Web producer Larry Hewitt, hired by our corporate management to turn our gauzy ideas into a properly flowcharted plan. (Look! He has a plan! We must eat his brain!) We cope. THE PLAIN PEOPLE OF FANDOM: So when do you launch? Do you have a beta phase? Are you looking for early volunteers? PNH: Again you anticipate me with the slan-like acuteness of your fine minds! We hope to launch in May. We hope to have a beta-testing phase beginning in early April. SPECIAL, HEART- POUNDINGLY EXCLUSIVE OFFER AVAILABLE ONLY TO READERS OF MAKING LIGHT: Send us email at "tor.betatest@gmail.com" and we'll set you up as beta testers, able to wander around, sneer at the unfinished wiring, write rude villanelles on the exposed sheetrock, tell us what does and doesn't work, and otherwise carry on. Act now! Act without thinking! WORK LIKE YOU WERE LIVING IN THE EARLY DAYS OF A BETTER NATION. Anyway, that's our plan. [http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/, March 11, 2008] End of the CALLIHOO Newsletter for 3 April 2008