I meant to post this a couple weeks ago, but life intervened. You remember last month we interviewed Matt Kempke, independent game developer? Well, the free demo of his next game, a puzzle adventure called A Stitch in Time, is now available for download! You can also download the entire first game for free at the same location. If you like the games enough, I hope you’ll consider paying for the full version of A Stitch in Time when it becomes available.
Category: Announcements
David Sale #6–What Makes You Tick reprint
Sale #6 today! It will be a reprint of my story What Makes You Tick (which I sold for the first time to the upcoming War of the Worlds: Frontlines anthology). Brain Harvest is an online magazine which specializes in very short, strange stories (up to 750 words). It’ll be posted there for free some time after the anthology is printed, so if you’d like to read what sort of stories Schnarr bought for the antho, you can look at it as a free sample.
By the way, you might’ve noticed that I hadn’t sent out a notice about sale #5. That was no mistake–I have made a sale #5, but it’s to a magazine that hasn’t been announced yet. I’ll send out the notice for that magazine once the magazine has made itself known. ,David Steffen
Fiction Sale #4–Turning Back the Clock to Bull Spec
David here. I’m happy to say I’ve made my fourth fiction sale! ÂAnd good news for my friends who’ve said you would like to read my writing but don’t care for horror: Âthis is the first story I’ve sold that I wouldn’t classify as horror. Â:)
The story: ÂTurning Back the Clock, a time travel story about a man trying to prevent his wife’s death.
The publication: ÂBull Spec, a brand new market edited by Samuel Montgomery-Blinn. ÂTheir premier issue is scheduled to come out in the next couple weeks. According to their website, they’ll be offering stories in print, in e-books, as well as audio versions in multiple languages. The date: ÂNot sure yet. ÂNot Issue #1, but perhaps #2 or #3, Summer 2010
And, as if that wasn’t cool enough, this will be my first professionally paying sale! ÂIt doesn’t yet qualify for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) membership because it’s such a new market, but as long as they prove themselves with longevity and magnitude, then this would retroactively count toward membership.
New Website Launch: Writrade Showcase!
Mark Turner is here today to tell everyone about the launch of the new website Writrade Showcase for readers, writers, and editors. Since Mark is the founder, I’ll let him tell you all about the website, why you should check it out, and details on the free stuff he’s giving away as part of the launch.
Writrade Showcase is a brand new idea in online promotions for writers.
Just launched this week, and offering a big swag of give-aways for the week-long launch, the Showcase takes a different approach to other promotion sites. ÂWe actually do our best to send people away!
Think of it as much as a directory to find the people, goods and services you seek, as it is a social and business network.
Where other networking sites try to keep their members and readers there, we get you to come back each day to check the site magazine for the latest news, announcements and advertising, then send you away to all the interesting places and people that you’re looking for.
Have you published the latest and greatest best-seller of a horror novel and need to tell the world about it? ÂBe sure to add the Showcase to your round of promotional sites. ÂSet up your free profile as a standing advertisement, and join the groups onsite that fit your book to make it easy for readers to find you instead of making them hunt through the membership list. ÂThen, start working the site magazine every day. ÂPost the schedules for your online blog tours, reviews and links to their sites, cover art and book trailer videos. ÂPost some excerpts from your book, give the readers a taser and get them slavering for the rest so they’ll follow your links to come buy.
If you have a magazine, do the same, post submission calls, release dates, new issues, and riddle your posts with links to make it easy for readers to leave us and come find you!
Are you a writer looking for markets for submissions? ÂFind the latest news from the publishers themselves on the magazine. ÂDo you want to post some samples of your work, some poetry, short stories, articles, or just your thoughts for the day? ÂThe Showcase magazine has a category for everyone, and you can post material to it as often as you wish. ÂJust so long as it’s at least vaguely writing-related.
Agents, editors, reviewers, novelists, journalists, shorts writers, promotions sites, publishers, writing sites, artists, graphic artists, poets; for anyone actually in the writing and publishing industry, or readers looking for news on their favourite authors and books, the news will be provided direct from the horse’s mouth, the people in the industry itself.
And what’s it cost, you ask? ÂThat’s the biggest ‘horror story’ of all. ÂNothing! (Gasp! Horror! Dismay!) ÂYep, I hear my competitors now, gnashing their teeth and wailing to the dark gods! ÂFree!
Why?
‘Coz I’m a great guy! Â(I’m shy, but let’s be honest here, heheh!) ÂNo, really. ÂAfter years of frustrated searches of the net hunting for information from this and that site, I often cried to the gods of frustration, ‘Why doesn’t someone put all this stuff together, in the one place?!’
Then, one day, I thought it was time someone did, so the Showcase was born.
Still only a baby yet, but from small beginnings can arise monsters that will take over the net, to become, in time, the first place each day you need to go for all your news and contacts in the writing and publishing trade. ÂWon’t it be heaven to be able to find whatever you need in one place? ÂAnd far from being ‘hell’ for my competitors, it’s actually a place they can use too, to make it simplicity itself for readers and writers and all others interested in any genre to come find them, and then leave to come to their sites!
A couple of new developments are in the offing. ÂThe Writrade News, a weekly online journal for a formal promotional and news publication, with special access to it available only for professional Showcase members. ÂAnd a possible new Showcase Community online Mall, with up to 200 stores, offering the chance to get into online marketing so cheaply and easily that you wont believe! Â $50 paid ONCE, to sign up, then nothing out of your pocket again, forever! ÂDetails on site.
All new members who join during our Launch Week, starting Mon, 18th and ending Sun, 24th at midnight, will automatically be in the draw for one the great prizes in the give-away basket. ÂYou can even earn extra entries, one for every day over Launch Week that you post an item on the magazine.
The prizes include no less than two free book trailer video packages, one from Dara England, the other from Apex Reviews. ÂThere are books from a number of great authors, including our own David Steffen from right here on Diabolical Plots, ‘Shadows of the Emerald City’, an anthology from Northern Frights in which his story, ‘The Utility of Love’ appears. ÂThere’s also ‘The Curse of Satan’s Collar’ by Dr John W. Miller, ‘Convict Grade’ by Azrael Paul Damien, a couple of great kids’ fantasy novels ‘The Book of Spells’ and ‘The Druiad’, by William E. Terry, ‘Radgepacket’, Tales from the Inner City and ‘More Burglar Dairies’ from Byker Books, and a the first of a terrific, old-fashioned Sword and Sorcery series by Glenn G. Thater. Â’The Gateway’, first in the ‘Harbinger of Doom’ series, is being made available to ALL members at the Showcase entirely for free by Glenn, as a free download, so you can read it right away. ÂNo waiting! ÂAnd finally, with the good stuff left till last (grin), a four issue subscription to Aurealis magazine, courtesy of yours truly. ÂAfter being an editorial staffer there for a while, mostly rejecting works from the slush pile, I finally get to make someone happy with some this prize of some great speculative fiction from Down Under.
So come on along to our launch week, join up and get your entry in the prize draw! ÂAnd at the same time help to support the greatest little promo site in the net, doing yourself a favour in the process by taking advantage of it for your own free promotions and news.
Let’s build it to a million members! ÂCome be one of the first! ÂThen you can say ‘I was there ages ago’ 🙂
Thanks to David, Anthony and the team here at DP! ÂYou guys have been a little guiding light in an otherwise slightly scary darkness throughout the process of getting the Showcase off the ground.
Mark Turner, Writrade.com
Mark Turner was raised in outback Australia. After a stint in the army and and some time working at a bush Base hospital, he returned to university to pursue his love of books. A viral illness cut short his aspirations and he didn’t finish the Lit’ Studies degree. Some years followed dealing with Murray Valley Encephalitis before he gradually got back into his writing. A job with Aurealis magazine followed, till he decided that it was time for his own publishing venture, and Writrade was born. The Showcase is the first of several sister sites; the Writrade News weekly journal and a speculative fiction zine, ‘Voluted Tales’ are soon to follow.
First Fiction Publication
My (Anthony) first fiction publication is now live over at Absent Willow Review.
You can find it here.
Fiction Sale #3–What Makes You Tick
I have good news to share! Northern Frights Publishing has purchased one of my stories for their upcoming War of the Worlds themed anthology. Since I was able to make it into the pages of their very first anthology, Shadows of the Emerald City, I wanted to see if I could make it into more of their excellent compilations, and I’m glad to say it worked out. I also submitted to their Timelines anthology, but got a rejection for my entry there so it’s not a clean sweep but two out of three ain’t bad. JW Schnarr is once again the editor, and I was really impressed by the quality of the stories he picked for Shadows (even if he hadn’t picked mine), so I’m looking forward to seeing who I’m sharing the table of contents with and what they’ve come up with.
My story is titled “What Makes You Tick” and it is the story of an alien autopsy from the point of view of the alien. It’s very short at only 600 words, but it packs a wallop in that small space! I like flash fiction for its brevity, a climax in such a short period of time can’t help but be exciting on some level!
For those who like stats:
Time since I started writing fiction: 2 years, 11 months
Time since I started writing short stories: 1 year, 7 months
Short story #: 22
Total responses before this sale: 209
Total rejections since last sale: 81
Time since last sale: —160 days
Total rejections of this story before this sale: 1
Total rejections from Northern Frights before this sale: 1
New Diabolical Art from Joey Jordan!
Joey was a finalist in the 3rd quarter of 2009 of the IotF contest. Look for her name soon in the winner circle!
You can find the new art here.
Be sure to check out her website under Diabolical Friends to the right.
New Story: “The Disconnected”
I’m happy to announce that my 2nd piece of published fiction has now been set loose on the unsuspecting public. The story is titled “The Disconnected” and is available as a free audio file download from Pseudopod.
Pseudopod is a fiction horror podcast produced by Escape Artists, the same company behind Escape Pod (science fiction) and Podcastle (fantasy). Every week Pseudopod releases one short story in audio format, often reprints from professional publications. Each story has an intro and outro, usually featuring Alasdair Stuart remarking on aspects of life and media that relate to the story in some way or another–his part is entertaining all by itself, let alone the story. A cast of volunteer readers provide the voices for each story. Audio fiction is an entirely different experience from text because it is performed rather than just provided–a good reader can make a good story even better.
The Disconnected is a tale about a possible future, in a world where cell phones have grown so important that to imagine living without them is unthinkable. If I had to pigeonhole it, I would classify it as dark science fiction with a little action/adventure mixed in. The story is not a reprint–it hasn’t been seen anywhere else before this publication. And it’s free, so you have nothing to lose but a half hour of your time. Whether you like it or not, I’d like to hear what you think. You can leave comments on this thread, or you can leave a comment on the story thread at the Escape Artists forums. Negative comments are okay too, though if you dislike the story I’d prefer if you would be willing to explain why. For those of you who don’t like spoilers, you might want to avoid reading the comments below this thread until after you’ve listened to the story.
Whether you liked my story or not, you might want to check out the rest of Pseudopod’s offerings. Their tastes cover a very broad range of horror from zombies to suspense to serial killers to horror/humor to any other sort of dark fiction. My story is the 169th short story they’ve published, as well as a couple dozen pieces of flash fiction. If you are looking for a place to start, you might want to check out my list of The Best of Pseudopod. Over the last few months I’ve listened to every story that Pseudopod had to offer, and here I provide links to my favorite stories of the podcast.
If you like the stories that Pseudopod provides, you might want to consider donating a few dollars to Pseudopod by clicking on their “Feed the Pod” button, but that’s completely up to you.
The Absent Willow Review 2009 Anthology is Here!
The first annual Absent Willow Review Anthology is now available We have a winner!
We performed our super-secret giveaway ceremony. I can’t tell you too much, but it involves both names and hats. And we can now declare a winner!
Congratulations, Cat Barth! Your autographed copy of Shadows of the Emerald City will be in the mail as soon as humanly possible.