Category: Editorial

Slush Retrospective

written by David Steffen

For anyone who hasn’t been following along, Diabolical Plots was open for fiction submissions for the first time in December 2014 to pick 12 stories to publish one per month for a year as our first fiction offerings. This is my first time editing fiction or handling a slushpile of my own (as opposed to being a slushreader for a magazine run by someone else).

Also, this is a long post–I tried to give useful headings so you could skip to the parts you’re interested in.

WHY NOW?

Anthony Sullivan (my co-conspirator here at Diabolical Plots) and I decided together that we wanted to give this a try. We’d been talking about it off and on for years. So why did we actually move forward with it now? The answer to that is simple–money. We knew that if we wanted to do this, we wanted to do it big–professional rates as defined by SFWA (currently 6 cents per word). We don’t have anything against markets that pay less, but we figured the best way in our control to increase the upper quality of the slushpile is to pay professional rates. And we wanted to make a market that we would be excited to submit to.  We would love to become a SFWA-qualified professional market.

The reason we can go forward with this fiction venture now is because of generous donations both one-time and recurring from users of the Submission Grinder. Those donations go first to site maintenance costs like hosting as well as secondary costs that help us keep up with market news as well as we can. But we’ve been saving what we can to put towards projects that require money like this fiction venture. We could have run a Kickstarter campaign but we both liked the idea of providing something of value and then seeing if people would like to support it, rather than the other way around. We plan to launch a Patreon campaign in the near future–if that and the recurring PayPal donations combined reach a threshold, then we will keep publishing fiction past the first year, if we reach the next threshold above that we’ll buy 2 stories/month for the following year, and so on. I’m not opposed to something like Kickstarter, but I like the Patreon model better for what I hope will be an ongoing venture because its focus is maintenance funding, ongoing income instead of the one-off burst that Kickstarter will provide–at some point a magazine has to hit Kickstarter again and one success does not guarantee another.

MAKING THE GUIDELINES

Our guidelines are somewhat unusual for several reasons. One is that we were only open for a month to buy a year’s worth of fiction. Part of the reason for this is that we intended from the beginning to read all of the slush ourselves, and we knew this would be time-consuming, so we would rather do it on a short-term sprint than to be reading slush around the calendar.

Another oddity is that we only allow one story per author per submission window. There were a few reasons for this. One is to encourage authors to pick their very best work they have available that fits the rest of the guidelines. Another is to make any progress in the slushpile a permanent step–rather than rejecting a story by an author and getting another story from the same author again.

Of course the biggest oddity in our guidelines is the requirement for anonymity–there are a few markets that require this–among pro SF markets I believe Flash Fiction Online and Writers of the Future are the only others. But we’re even more strange in this respect in that there were only two staff members doing all the reading and there wasn’t a separate person to do author correspondence. Our homebrew submission tracking software had to be quite a bit more complicated because of this–it had to hide the author’s identity from us until we’ve made our final decision of accept or reject, and had to allow some basic way for an author to query us to make sure their story was received but without breaking anonymity.

The reason we wanted to make the slush anonymous is that we wanted story to trump all. We wanted to completely remove the possibility that personal relationships with an author would sway our decision one way or the other. And we wanted to remove the consideration of marketing concerns–it’s not uncommon for a publication, especially when starting up, to publish stories from established authors with big fan followings to attract readers. The reasoning behind cherry-picking known authors is that the fan following will get more eyeballs on the magazine and help make the launch more successful.  But personally, we felt that these stories can feel phoned-in because the story didn’t make it into the publication on its own merits. We have nothing against established authors with big names, of course. They got to be big names because they knew what they were doing. But if an author you recognize is in our table of contents, it means that we thought that story was in our top twelve and the name has nothing to do with it.

THE SLUSH

In the 31 days we were open, we received 378 submissions–34 of those on the first day of submissions, 27 of those on the last day of submissions.

17 of the submissions had clear violations of the guidelines. A few of those were stories with names attached against our anonymity requirements. Most of those were stories that were clearly too long for our 2000-word maximum, sometimes by several times. And the one submission that was a synopsis of a non-speculative children’s book that was also triple our maximum word count allowed. I did have to wonder, as I was rejecting these stories unread and with a note pointing out the guidelines violation, what these authors were thinking. Did they not read the guidelines at all? Did they think their story was so good the word count limit was irrelevant to them? Either answer is not particularly endearing . Because of our one-submission-per-author-per-window policy that was the only opportunity those authors got this time round.  Once those were taken out of the running that left 361 valid submissions.

I’ve read slush for a few different venues–Flash Fiction Online, Drabblecast, and Stupefying Stories. Overall the quality of the Diabolical Plots slush was much higher than I expect from past experience, and there wasn’t the glut of serial killer stories and stories about protagonists killing their spouses. This could’ve been because I tried to warn off these things in the guidelines, or because the one-story-per-author rule made authors more selective, or could just because we didn’t specifically ask for the offensive like the Drabblecast guidelines do.

The stories that were rejected in the first round were rejected for a variety of reasons. A slow or uninteresting beginning to the story is an excuse to start skimming–a bad sign, especially when dealing with stories less than 2000 words. Stories where nothing happened, or stories with low stakes. Or ones without strong characters. First and foremost we wanted stories that made us feel something, whether that was humor, fear, fun, love, but it had to make us feel something.

By January 8th we’d finished the first round of reading and held 67 stories for the second and final round of consideration. I didn’t keep statistics on the proportion of personal rejections–but I’d guess them at maybe 10% in the first round. I only commented if I had feedback that I felt would be useful to the author.

EDITORIAL CHANGE

Around this same time I started drafting up the contracts based on Lightspeed’s very author-friendly publicly posted contract. Up until this point we had been pretty focused on the editorial side of things and the technical side of things (tweaking the submission system), but at this point we started getting into the publishing side of things, particularly on the topic of risk and legality. We realized that Diabolical Plots should be registered under an LLC to minimize any risk to our personal finances. And as part of that discussion, Anthony realized that he needed to step down from the co-editor position. We didn’t have a falling out or anything like that. He just realized that his role as co-editor wasn’t going to work out with other aspects of his life. So from that point forward I am the editor of Diabolical Plots.

Anthony will still be a big part of Diabolical Plots and the Submission Grinder and will continue to fill the same invaluable role that he has filled since we first teamed up in 2009–handling all of the technical side of the website administration, and doing the lion’s share of the software development that has made the Grinder the useful tool it is today. In fact, he is hard at work on an overhaul of the Grinder site that will make it easier to maintain as well as providing a lot of shiny new features that will make it even better than it is now. We’re aiming to launch this site overhaul to the public around the same time that we launch our first fiction publication–that date is yet to be determined, but will probably be in a couple months.

THE HOLD PILE

By January 8th we had finished reading and resolving all the first round submissions and we only had the 67 stories in the hold pile left to resolve. By the time Anthony reached the decision that he needed to step down, I had re-read the hold-pile stories and ranked them numerically with plans to compare lists with Anthony. So when I became the sole editor, I was already ready to go and could resolve the whole pile in one fell swoop. I made sure to give personal rejections to all the stories that made it to the hold pile because I hate it when my stories are held for further consideration but then rejected without a word.

I had enough good stories in the pile, and planned to buy so few, that I didn’t venture into any major rewrite requests. If the story wasn’t good enough as-is, then I didn’t accept it–I have made a few small suggestions for small changes and will probably do a few more as I progress from acceptance to publication. There were a lot more stories in the pile that I would’ve loved to accept if the budget had allowed, so there were some very hard decisions in this pile.

In the final twelve stories I was interested to see that there were several author names that I knew from seeing their published stories in pro markets. For at least one of the authors, this was the first pro sale. Judging by names, of the final twelve, seven of the authors are women.  I’m glad to see both sexes so well represented–I know that some publications have a real problem with getting enough women-authored stories in their slushpiles (to the point where they have to make campaigns specifically to bring in more women authors) so I was glad to see that.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Before I do anything else, I need to sort out some business details, defining what Diabolical Plots actually is. Once that’s in place I can finalize the draft of our contract and send it to the twelve authors–in the meantime I’ve requested and gotten preliminary notes from all twelve to let me know the stories are still available.  The twelve authors are free to share their news as widely or as narrowly as they wish so you may have already heard a few of them.

Once the contracts are signed, then I can publicly announce the table of contents–I’m really looking forward to that. And then I can seriously consider what kind of launch date we can manage for the fiction offerings, but I’m still planning to coincide that with the launch of the Submission Grinder overhaul, so it will depend somewhat on that as well.

WHAT ABOUT YEAR TWO?

You may notice that all of our planning so far has been focused on providing a single year of fiction, talking about the budget for a year, the schedule for a year. That’s because, at this point, we don’t have the capital in place for another year of fiction. We’re hoping to change that. Ideally by gathering recurring donations of whatever size through Patreon and PayPal to give a steady stream of funds to kick off the second year and beyond. If the end of year one approaches and we don’t have this in place yet, then I’ll consider doing a Kickstarter campaign to get year two funded and continue to focus on getting recurring donations so that big one-off campaigns don’t need to be run every year. If we get enough to be able to afford to publish two stories a month, then we’ll expand to that. And beyond that we’ll consider expanding in other ways. The sky’s the limit if there is enough interest and support. I’ll be posting sometime in the not-too-distant future about our Patreon campaign to this end. In the meantime, recurring PayPal donations either on the DP page or the Grinder page are the best way to help support both our necessary costs and our harebrained schemes like this.

Award Eligibility Post 2014

written by David Steffen

And now the gratuitous award eligibility post–feel free to skip over it if you’re not interested, but figured there might be someone out there who might want to see it. This post covers works by Diabolical Plots and by me personally.

From time to time people ask me if they can nominate the Submission Grinder. In the past, I thought the answer was “no” because most of the awards seemed to be very publisher focused–so the best way I thought to try to recognize the Submission Grinder would be to nominate Diabolical Plots. But there ARE a couple categories the Submission Grinder qualifies for in some awards, so I’ve listed those two first.

And just to be clear, no I don’t really think we have a shot at anything, but I see no reason why I can’t mention what we’re eligible for.

Writer’s Resource/Information/News Source

1. The Submissions Grinder

I wasn’t aware of this award until this year, part of the Preditors and Editors Reader Poll. Someone has seen fit to nominate the Grinder, so thought it would be worth mentioning.

 

World Fantasy Special Award – Non Professional

1. The Submissions Grinder

Likewise, I wasn’t aware of this award, but it’s another way to recognize the Submission Grinder directly if you want to see it recognized.

 

Best Short Story

1. “Catastrophic Failure” by David Steffen at Perihelion

2. “Always There” by David Steffen at Lakeside Circus

3. “Unraveling” by David Steffen at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine

4. “A Switch in Time” by David Steffen at Perihelion

5. “The Thing About Analyn” by David Steffen at Stupefying Stories

 

Best Related Work

All of the articles that I’ve written here and in SF Signal are eligible for this category, but I’m not going to list all dozens of them. I’ll just mention the one that I thought was most notable:

1. The Best Podcast Fiction of All Time (at SF Signal)

 

Best Editor (Short Form)

1. David Steffen (for nonfiction)

Note that although we’ve been reading slush for fiction publication in 2014, we haven’t published any fiction yet, so only my nonfiction editing can be taken into account. And Anthony isn’t eligible this year for the same reason.

 

Best Fanzine

1. Diabolical Plots

Next year, instead of Best Fanzine, we’ll be eligible for Best Semiprozine because we’ll be a paying fiction market.

 

Best Fan Writer

1. David Steffen
–For the short fiction listed above, the large number of nonfiction articles here and in SF Signal.

2. Carl Slaughter
–Mostly for interviews

3. Frank Dutkiewicz
–Reviews of Daily SF

4. Laurie Tom
–Anime reviews

 

 

Facebook “naked link” fix

written by David Steffen

Usually, when you post a link on Facebook you get a nice little preview image from the page you’re linking to along with a sample of text from the page. Except when you don’t. Sometimes it just shows the URL and nothing else–and you know that people aren’t going to click through if it’s just a URL.

I’ve had that problem with many links, especially to Diabolical Plots articles. For a while I didn’t know anything to do about it but to try again, and again, and again. Sometimes it would work well after hours, sometimes it would be incorrect for weeks.

So I was very relieved to find that there is very often something you can do about it, a trick that I’ve found very handy. It helps work around the flaw that Facebook hasn’t bothered to correct after years and years of it manifesting.

1. Visit the Facebook developer’s page.

2. In the text box enter the problem URL.

3. click Debug button.

4. On the page that loads click the “Fetch New Scrape Information” button.

5. Now go back to your regular Facebook page and try posting the link again.

 

After you enter the URL you’ll see a whole bunch of technical gobbledygook. You don’t need to pay any attention to that. The important thing is to cajole the Facebook engine into fetching new information about your page. Really, it should just do that whenever you post a link in preparation for making the link preview, but for some reason it doesn’t.

Sometimes this doesn’t work either, and when that’s the case I don’t know of any other solution.

Unbranching Personal Narratives

written by David Steffen

When I was about nine years old I was out at a story with my older brother who would’ve been about eighteen years old at the time. I think it was around Christmastime and there were a few inches of snow and ice on the ground. As we were walking out of the store, minds casting ahead to what we were going to do at home. Before we got to the car, a woman walking alone ahead of us slipped and fell on the ice, ending up flat on her back ahead of us.

If anyone had asked, I would’ve considered myself a compassionate person. But my kneejerk reaction was that we would keep on walking. But, to my surprise, my brother stopped and made sure she was okay. She was capable of responding and had no apparent injury. We helped her up to her feet. Some other people came over to check she was okay and then we were on our way. She was okay and no harm done, but of course I didn’t know that at the time.

That incident comes up in my mind from time to time, especially at times when I have a chance to help someone. I expect my brother doesn’t remember it. The woman probably doesn’t remember it either. But it comes to mind when I have an opportunity to help someone, so I don’t make the same mistake. It was a formative moment even though it probably wasn’t significant to anyone else.

From time to time I wondered why I acted that way at the time? I thought of myself as a compassionate person. So why didn’t I even think to help? I learned the Golden Rule in school and believed it was right, and if I fell I’d want someone to check that I was okay. The best explanation that I can think of is that I was focused on my own personal life narrative and I didn’t see how this stranger fit in–I was ready to get on to the next scene. But that’s no way to go about life. Everyone has their own storyline and maybe sometimes you’re just playing a bit role in someone else’s story–maybe no one will even remember it, maybe they will, but doesn’t matter.

 

Persistence

written by David Steffen

One of the most important traits to lasting as a writer is persistence even in the face of long odds. I’m nothing if not persistent–I’ve sent more than 1500 submissions since I started submitting 6 and a half years ago.

Thinking back on my childhood, there may have been some early signs that I was (perhaps unreasonably) persistent. One particular story happened in 1991 with the release of Super NES game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I’d grown up playing the first two Zelda games on my brother’s NES. I had my own SNES and I was very eager to try out the game. But when the game was released, I didn’t have $50 on account of being an unemployed child. I had my eye on the game at the Lewis Drug down the street, and I was scrounging for pocket change in the couch, doing odd jobs for family, and so on. While I was saving up, I was worried the game would go out of stock and never come back in, so every single night 10-year old me would call Lewis Drug and ask them if they still had the game on their shelves. Somehow I was genuinely surprised when, after the first night or two, they didn’t actually go check before they told me they have it. It never occurred to me that I was most certainly the only one calling every day to ask about an item I didnt’ buy. Eventually I did come up with the cash to buy the game. And I’m pretty sure that when I came into the store the clerk asked me if I was the kid who called every day… before I counted out $50 of pocket change onto the counter.

We Are Multiple Man

written by David Steffen

What superpower would you choose? Most classical superpowers are awesome for combat, but not all that practical in day-to-day activities. Super strength? Guess who’s going to get asked to help everyone move. Fireballs–handy in limited context, maybe, but modern life doesn’t require a lot of fire-lighting on a day to day basis. Metal claws–wouldn’t need to hold pocket knives but you could never get through airport security.

For my everyday life, I would definitely pick the power of Jamie Madsen, aka Multiple Man. Jamie has the ability to create perfect duplicates of himself, each of which is intelligent and has free will. There’s some limit to the amount of how much he can split, but the limit is quite high–something like 50 when he was in X-Factor and more as he masters his power.

Just think of how much you could get get done! If you have kids, you wouldn’t need daycare. Not only that, but if you have four kids, you could have one of you to watch EACH of your kids to give them personalized attention so watching four kids wouldn’t even be stressful. While you do that, you could also work to bring in money. Or more than one job simultaneously. Another one of you could head out to get groceries. Another one could be off taking vocational training. Or learning to paint. Or going on vacation. That’s only ten–you’d still have another 40 to go if you wanted to. Then at the end of the day, bring all of yourselves back to dinner, merge them all together again, and have a nice dinner with your family, reintegrating all the memories together as you spent all day one-on-one with ALL of your kids and got all the chores done (and went on vacation to unwind). That would be the coolest thing ever.

Unfortunately, I think I’m a little too old to expect sudden onset superpowers.

But that got me to thinking–just an ordinary human being has something kind of like that. Of course you don’t have multiple bodies, but more of a multiplicity of mind. Have you ever gotten together for a social gathering where you have people from work and neighbors and family members, and you find it awkward as you don’t know how to behave among them all together? In a very real way, that’s because you are a different person at work than you are with your family than you are with your neighbors, and the awkwardness comes because those different people don’t know how to integrate.

Everyone does this. They’re a different person when they’re being a father, or a son, or a brother, or at work, or as a customer at a store, or whatever. It’s not a result of dishonesty, but of compartmentalization–the traits that fit into that social group or environment dominate in that group.

So we’re all superpowered, really. The human mind is an amazing thing. Maybe as amazing, in its own way, as being able to spawn up to 50 bodies. Though, if someone knows how to make that happen, I’m in.

 

Based somewhat on Codex post:

I find it interesting (and sometimes disconcerting) how the human mind can compartmentalize or facetize and approach each differing circumstance or situation in such a different way so that in a way you’re a completely different person.


Engineer David is not Dad David. Writer David is not Engineer David. Grinder-Admin David is not Gamer David. Dad David is not Husband David (though those two are of course more closely related genealogically than some of the others). We all wear many hats. Some of us, like my good friend Bartholemew Cubbins, wear entirely too many hats and sometimes find it difficult to remove them or to pick the one appropriate for the occasion.

When I’m wearing any of those hats, I can of course remember wearing the other hats, and I can remember what I was thinking when I was wearing those other hats and what was important to me and what was frustrating me and what drove me. But at the same time, those other Davids can seem completely foreign (until I become them again). It can all work out if they tag team when they’re supposed to, if the more unsocial Davids can be kept away from people.

I can see how that kind of mental adaptability can be a survival trait that comes out of natural selection. I can also see how mental health problems including anxiety disorders can arise when something in this three ring circus of mental and social arrangements gets out of whack.

–This aside brought to you by Woolgathering-Philosopher David when Engineer David is supposed to be in charge, because that’s how he rolls
(To be clear: not saying I have an anxiety disorder, not crying for help, my mind is wandering and I decided I wanted to put the words somewhere)

 

Use the metaphor of Multiple Man and my musings that it would be awesome to be able to split into different bodies to be able to get everything done, but how it’s amazing how we can already kind of do that in a mental fashion.

On Unqualifying for SFWA

written by David Steffen

Note: It has been pointed out to me that because I have qualified and joined SFWA previously, I don’t need to qualify again regardless of rule changes. As a result, I could technically join again any time I wish. For me personally it’s more the principle of the thing–becoming eligible for SFWA was a long-term milestone as I started writing, and so being able to join by being grandfathered in doesn’t feel like actually meeting that milestone anymore. Also, regardless of whether I can technically join or not and regardless of whether one agrees with my qualms about being grandfathered in, the 10,000 word minimum affects anyone who hadn’t met the previous guidelines for full membership before the deadline and is still a change that I consider very problematic in both its strategic implications of keeping out writers who excel at the shortest form and practical effects of reducing potential membership for no clear reason.

For a lot of science fiction and fantasy writers trying to lay their claim to fame, becoming eligible to be a member of SFWA is a major milestone to mark their progress, and I was no exception. At the time, to get the full Active membership you had to make 3 story sales paid at least five cents per word and which totalled more than a certain dollar amount (I forget what the exact total was, a few hundred dollars I think) and where each individual sale was worth at least $50. I reached that goal and became eligible with the acceptance of “Marley and Cratchit” to Escape Pod, adding to my prior sales of “Turning Back the Clock” to Bull Spec and “The Infinite Onion” to AE. So, I reached that goal and there was much rejoicing (by me at least). I was able to join, and could go to the SFWA suite at Worldcon 2012 which was a great place to be.

This year SFWA changed their criteria, to up the professional rate to six cents per word, and also to add a minimum word count of your qualifying stories to 10,000 words.

I generally approve of the upping of the professional rate–it needs to go up periodically to have some relation to inflation, and I think that’s really overdue. Yes, it makes it more difficult for magazines to meet the criteria, but this list of markets is a large part of why SF/F has generally higher standards than some other kinds of short story markets.

I don’t approve, though, of the 10,000 word limit. Presumably there was a specific reason–but what is that reason? It seems to me that this is a strategy specifically designed to keep flash fiction from counting toward membership. I don’t know if this is another one of those conversations where some older members of the organization think that SFWA membership should be kept only to those who have writing as their only job. Could you do that? Sure. But the organization would be small and much more irrelevant, and would explicitly exclude a whole ton of award winning authors like Ken Liu who have day jobs. Who does that benefit exactly?

So, who does this benefit,changing the rules so that flash fiction is less important? I’m not the only writer whose most sales are flash fiction. Is it because the people prompting the rule change don’t understand the form? I’ll grant you, you can’t have a full complicated plot in a flash story like you can in a longer story, but flash fiction has its own appeal that other kinds of fiction can’t do well. Anecdotally, I’ve heard speculation that this is to keep some well-paying drabble (100 word story) sales from getting you to membership, but if you can sell a drabble for $50 you are my hero and I want to pick your brain. I haven’t seen any public statements about why SFWA’s organizers thought this was a worthwhile change.

As a result of this change, I no longer qualify for SFWA membership. I have 4 individual sales, but they only add up to 9180 words. So I’d need to make at least one sale of 920 words which makes at least $50. This frustrates me, for me and other flash writers like me to be excluded for no explained reason when we meet the other criteria.

I will note as well that the rules on the SFWA website say “Three paid sales of different works of fiction (such as three separate short stories) totaling a minimum of 10,000 words to Qualifying Professional Markets”. Note that it says “three” not “three or more. Which, if that’s what was actually meant, would limit flash sales even more, because getting 10 professional 1000-word story sales wouldn’t count to get the 10,000 if you can only pick 3 of them to count. I’ve been told by members of SFWA that the actual bylaws say “three or more”, which is a relief because then I’d have even further to go–then I would only be able to count 3 of those sales to count 8200 words and I’ve just have to sell longer stories. One story of 2800 words or 2 stories that total 4100 words between them. The trouble with the website being wrong is that it’s the source that newbie writers are going to use to determine whether they should apply or not–so even though the bylaws are the source, this is the public side of it. Hopefully they’ll get the website updated soon.

And I hope that they repeal the 10,000 word minimum. At the very least, I’d like to hear why they think flash fiction isn’t valuable to the SF community, or what other strategy they might have behind this change–I don’t think such a thing would make me happy, exactly, but then we could have a discussion about the topic at the core of this rather than just complaining about the symptom.

In the meantime, I guess there’s nothing to do for it but to consider “Requalifying for SFWA” as a new milestone to reach. Onward and upward!

Podcast Spotlight: Extruding America

written by David Steffen

“Searching for the heart of a nation… in the throat of its people.” Thus is the mission of Extruding America, the brainchild of podcaster Gerard Armbruster. His mission: to deliver a nice slice of Americana straight to your ears with a generous dollop of profundity on top. Such as Stetson Tudd who lives in the state of Washington and has delivered periodic Postcards from Battersea, and… Well, admittedly, Gerard has only one correspondent. But don’t tell Stetson that.

Extruding America is a little tricky to classify. It’s certainly not the short story fare that I usually spend my listening time on. I listened to it on a recommendation, and didn’t really expect to like it since it wasn’t in my preferred format. Since it’s not in short story format I am doing this spotlight in place of the usual Best Of list I do for story podcasts.

But I really liked it. It had me laughing from the beginning with its tag line. And in the end I really felt like I knew the bumbling, well-meaning, lonely Gerard who puts everything into making this podcast and his rambling, philosophical, moody friend Stetson. Gerard’s not great at conducting interviews, but then again Stetson’s not great at being interviewed. Gerard begins most episodes with a target theme, like “Isolation” and a core question in support of that topic that he wants Stetson to answer. But Stetson usually just ends up talking about whatever’s on his mind at the time, which is rarely the chosen topic of the day.

The best way that I could describe the show is heartfelt parody of a show like Prairie Home Companion (or a parody of my mental image of that show since I’ve never listened). It’s heartfelt, but also silly. I especially liked some of the later episodes, after Gerard purchases a recording device which is so sensitive it can even record thoughts and dreams–and it works as advertises, as evidenced by some very hallucinatory recordings. My special favorite of these is Extruding America 36: Ghosts.

Sadly, the episodes of Extruding America started petering out in 2010, and the most recent episode was posted on September 2, 2011. I don’t believe there was ever an official announcement that the podcast was cancelled. Maybe there’s still hope that Gerard and Stetson’s voices will grace our ears once again! Gerard is voiced by Eric Luke, who I have been happy to hear as a voice actor on other podcasts.

 

Father’s Day Fiction Special!

This week, in honor of Father’s Day, we’re posting something a little different. Since I started writing short stories, I’ve been sharing every single one of them with my dad, even the ones I should probably be embarrassed to show my dad. He reads each one and then we talk on the phone about what he liked and didn’t like, what he understood or didn’t understand, what themes the story brought to mind, etc. He’s enthusiastic but honest, and I look forward to every phone call.

Dad’s no stranger to writing. He’s a retired Lutheran pastor and has been writing a weekly sermon for decades, and for fun he has written up some short nonfiction tales about his life on the farm and other parts of his life. But he had never written any fiction. After reading so many of my stories, he decided to write a fiction short story. I found it entertaining and (with his permission) I wanted to share it more widely. I’ve edited for grammar and spelling, and things like paragraph size, but have otherwise left it unaltered. I hope you enjoy!

–David Steffen

PS: Dad wrote the story longhand, photocopied it page by page, and sent it to me in the mail. I typed it out for posting. I expect you’ll find that this medium of communication is very fitting for the story.

 

I Won!
by Richard Steffen

Technology tried to take over my life, but I won! I’ll tell you my story.

It all began innocently a number of years ago. My wife Fern got a cell phone. I asked her “Why did you get a cell phone? What do you need it for? What’s wrong with the phone on the wall?”

She sweetly pointed out that our old phone was stuck to the wall. She sometimes wanted to talk on the phone when she was away from home.

I asked her “What’s wrong with the pay phones you find at truck stops and hospitals? Can’t you make calls on them?”

She just smiled and said “I don’t spend much time at truck stops and hospitals. I like talking on the phone when I’m out in a park, or driving down the highway. I like to be able to make a call wherever I am.”

I asked “What is so important to say on the phone that it can’t wait until you get home?”

She winked at me and said “Sometimes I want to call you and tell you how much I love you. Sometimes I want to call you and tell you what I want us to do together after we go to bed.” She just winked at me again and gave me a big passionate kiss.

How could I argue with that? She was so smart! She kept her cell phone and I got one too. We had many wonderful talks on our cell phones. But I had this uneasy feeling that technology was trying to take over my life.

Technology has a way of sneaking into your life through the back door. My wife Fern got a computer. I asked her “Why did you get a computer? What do you need it for?”

She smiled and said “I can look up information on the computer for my teaching. It will be so handy.”

I asked her “What’s wrong with books? Can’t you look up things in a book?”

She smiled and said “Yes, I could look it up in a book, but a computer is much faster. With a computer I can find the information I need in less time, and then I will have more time to spend with you!”

What could I say! She was so smart! But I still had this uneasy feeling that technology was trying to ruin my life.

When my wife Fern was alive she took care of technological things in the house. When Daylight Savings Time began I would go around the house moving the old style clocks one hour ahead. Fern would reset all the digital ones, it seemed so easy for her. Fern saw technology as her friend; I have always felt that I am at war with technology. Technology tried to take over my life, but I won. I’ll tell you how I did it.

After my wife Fern died I went on the offensive against technology. The first thing to go was the computer. I couldn’t stand having a machine in the house that was so much smarter than me. So I unplugged the computer, boxed it up, and gave it away to Fern’s son Ted. I never regretted that decision. I felt I had won the first round against technology. When I needed to know something I turned to my old World Book set of encyclopedias and looked it up. I felt I had won the first round against technology. I turned to books, rather than the computer.

After I retired from being a parish pastor, I moved to an apartment in Owatonna, Minnesota. My battle with technology continued. After getting rid of my computer I decided the TV was next to go. It had always bugged me when the volume would go up during the commercials, and no one seemed to be able to do anything about it. The content of the programs wasn’t that great anyway, so I simply stopped watching TV. The TV still stands in the corner, but I don’t watch it anymore. I won round two with technology.

My kitchen stove was the next to go. The only time I used the kitchen stove was to fry eggs and boil hot dogs. One day the electricity went off in my apartment building. The digital clock kept blinking off and on and it was driving me crazy. I couldn’t find the directions of how to set the time, so I started turning dials and pushing buttons. Then a buzzer started going off, and I couldn’t get it to stop. I slid the stove away from the wall and unplugged it. I haven’t used it since.

With the computer, TV, and stove out of commission, I had now won round three with technology. If this kept up I would soon be living in a cave with no modern appliances at all.

The next to go was my car. I had always liked my old Chevrolet Malibu which I called James. It was easy to drive with none of the modern gadgets of the newer cars, but it was getting old, so my son David bought me a brand new car with all the modern technology you could ever dream of. It was very thoughtful of him, but my new car has been a disaster from the start.

To get in the car you need to press a number of buttons on a keypad to open the door. I usually cannot remember the numbers so I can’t even get in. When I’m lucky, I get in the car and there is a new sequence of numbers to start it. It usually takes me half a day to get the car going. When I finally head down the street the GPS system kicks in with a voice telling me where to go. With that voice yacking at me all the time I get so frustrated I just go back home and put the car back in the garage. I haven’t used my car now for six months. When my son David calls and asks how the car is working, I tell him it is working just fine. I don’t have any trouble with it at all. I don’t have the heart to tell him it hasn’t left the garage since last summer. Yes, I am really winning the battle against technology.

Without a car I need to walk everywhere. I’m doing okay because the grocery story isn’t very far away. But even walking can be a challenge these days. To get to the grocery store I have to cross a big street with a stop-and-go light and walk signal.

I wait for the walk light to come on and then head across the street. When I am halfway across the street a hand comes up and the light says “Don’t walk” so I head back to the curb and wait for the walk light to come on again. When the walk light comes on again I start across the street again, but only make it halfway. Sometimes cars’ horns are honking and the drivers are yelling at me to get off the street, so I just go back home.

After I ran out of groceries I started crossing the street in the middle of the block, but almost got hit by cars a number of times. Finally drivers were calling the police department about the old man that was crossing the street anywhere and causing traffic accidents. Finally a squad car came to my apartment and a police officer escorted me to the police station and had me transferred to the city jail.

I am now living in a padded cell in the Owatonna city jail. They are very nice to me here. I don’t have to deal with any electronic devices anymore. They bring me food and water and a change of clothes each day. They even give me a few magazines that I can read. My life is very simple now. I don’t have to worry about a computer, or a cell phone, or a TV, or a kitchen stove, or my car, or the stop-and-go light down the street. I can just sit and read magazines, sleep, and eat, and daydream about the good old days.

You see, I won! I am completely free of technology now. No buttons, no buzzers, no GPS voice telling me what to do. What I wonderful life I have. I won!

THE END

 

Editor’s note: For anyone who is concerned, although some of the story is based in real life events, my dad does not live in a padded cell.
–David

 

RichardSteffenHeadshotRichard Steffen is a retired pastor living in Owatonna, MN. His wife, Fern, passed away a few years ago.

An Unexpected Writing Milestone

So I’ve reached an unexpected writing milestone this week: being banned from submitting to a publication after pointing out some questionable business practices. I’ve posted this elsewhere but I decided I’m going to post the email transcript of my conversation with Collidor’s Ray Taylor which ended with me being banned from his publication. I have never done this kind of thing before, but I haven’t said anything in the email conversation I’m ashamed of and I’d rather that people make their own decisions with the words in front of them rather than taking my word for it.

Neither half of the conversation has been edited from it’s original format except when I quoted some text within my emails and responded to them in the next line I added the label “Me: ” to make it clear where the quote ended and the response began.

Also note that their guidelines say that reprints are acceptable.

Share if you like.

(After submitting a story)
RAY TAYLOR:
Dear David,

Thank you again for sending us your work, Marley and Cratchit. While it is still in the queue, I’d like to ask you if you can lend a hand while we get our Appzine off the ground.

Collidor is a community project. We believe that authors and other creative people should be able to earn a living doing just that – creating.

While we are financed for the first couple of issues, we need to demonstrate market potential in order to get to a second round of financing. That means as many advanced subscribers as we can muster through our crowdfunding initiative.

While we are not in any way suggesting that you must donate or purchase a subscription (there are no strings attached to a submission acceptance), authors such as yourself will utimately benefit the more subscribers we have. Your show of support would be greatly appreciated.

https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/0hqF6/ab/32lk04

If you are not in the position to subscribe or donate yourself, you could perhaps help out by promoting Collidor to your own network of friends and acquaintances. With your help we can get the word out, build momentum, and make Collidor the best science fiction market as we lead the new wave in publishing.

If you have not already done so, please follow us on Twitter (@collidormag) and like our page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/collidormag)… and if you can, retweet and share posts to your own friends and followers.

Thanks again for your submission, and keep writing!

Ray Taylor, publisher
COLLIDOR: A Science Fiction appzine for mobile

DAVID STEFFEN:

Ray,
Mass-sending solicitations is an abuse of your submission system, and likely a violation of anti-spam laws in some countries. You might want to check your terms of service with Submittable as well.
In any case, it seems like soliciting your slushpile is barking up the wrong tree. To be successful, you need to get the attention of fans to kick in, not your submitters. Presumably there will be overlap between the two groups, but a submitted story is not an open license for solicitation.
Please do not send more.
,David

RAY TAYLOR:

Thanks for your email. Actually Submittable has a bulk email option on enterprise accounts, however these emails were sent out one at a time. The idea actually came from another author and a number of our submitters already contributed and promoted us on social media without solicitation.

We have also not violated any anti spam laws as you as well as other submitters established the relationship and as a result allows us to communicate with you on any topic we feel might benefit our mutual investment.

And not only is solicitation OK, it is actually possible to set up a Submittable account to charge a fee for each submission. I have elected not to do so as I do not believe in a pay to play model in publishing. I have decided to eat the cost of having stories read where maybe 1 in 10 or even 50 might actually make it to publication.

In that regard I suggest you do your research and get your facts straight before making accusations.

Now of course you are under no obligation as I had clearly stated, but it is in your interest, as in every aspiring professional author, to help promote paying venues for content. The trend in publishing has been a steady erosion of content licensing fees, and this is largely because authors have not done their fair share to support the economy that pays them. Support is as simple as following us on Twitter, liking our Facebook page and asking your own community to take a look at a venue that is not only author friendly but pays the highest rates in the industry (and the plan is go even higher as we gain subscribers and sponsors). Gone are the days that solitary writers can sit in their rooms and write and expect enough cheques will come in to pay the rent. That might still be true for the less than one per cent of professional authors out there, but trust me, you are a very long way from that, my friend.

So you can slog away for exposure and self publish and self promote and hope that by giving away your work you can gain momentum and followers if that is your goal (I suggest Wattpad), or you can help a startup that has as its goal the creation of a high paying market for quality writing. One that also dedicates resources to editorial development and your success and skill as an author. We expect many of our authors will go on to become successful in other well paid publishing venues with our help, and not be forced to work for free or next to nothing.

Basically if you like the idea of getting paid $0.25 a word, benefit from our editorial expertise and the exposure we can bring you, it should not be a problem to consider lending a hand. Many have done so already.

Regards,

Ray Taylor, publisher

DAVID STEFFEN:

Ray,
I’m going to drop Submittable a line, to ask them what their policy is about solicitation.

I think we have fundamental ideological differences here that we won’t agree on, but I wanted to respond to a few of the points:. You can respond or not as you like–I’m not demanding a response.

>>Actually Submittable has a bulk email option on enterprise accounts
Sending emails individually rather than a bulk email doesn’t really change things. Me: The email being tagged as having been sent through “mailgun” doesn’t encourage a non-spam interpretation.

>>We have also not violated any anti spam laws as you as well as other submitters established the relationship and as a result allows us to communicate with you on any topic we feel might benefit our mutual investment.
Me: Asking to receive call for donations was not a part of our communication. It is not only NOT a part of the communication necessary for the submission process, it is a blatant advertisement. Establishing a relationship does not give a free pass for advertising.

>>And not only is solicitation OK, it is actually possible to set up a Submittable account to charge a fee for each submission.
Me: That’s very generous of you to not charge me for sending you content. How exactly does this justify solicitation?

>>I have decided to eat the cost of having stories read where maybe 1 in 10 or even 50 might actually make it to publication.
Me: That’s how starting a business works, yes. It’s an investment of money and in time. If the business plan is sound and you find a market, then your initial investment may become profit when you have enough customers. Making money selling fiction is haaaaard. A lot of magazines out there aren’t making money. There are many reasons for it, including an abundance of free fiction to be had, but I’m sure you know about all that.

>>The trend in publishing has been a steady erosion of content licensing fees, and this is largely because authors have not done their fair share to support the economy that pays them.
Me: So the reason that writers aren’t getting paid enough is that writers aren’t paying enough to the publishers that publish them? A publishing system in which the primary money comes from the writers is flawed. Where is the money coming from? You need to find content from writers. You need to find readers who will pay for the content. There is overlap between these groupsbut you can’t treat them the same and expect to succeed.

RAY TAYLOR:

Mailgun? These were sent through Submittable’s messaging system. You might want to take that up with them in your request. I can look into that on my end.

Actually if you go back to what I wrote, I was not suggesting pay to play at all, even though it’s an accepted model, but that authors do not do enough to promote the idea that good writing is worth paying for. Publishing is an ecosystem, and it does not flourish because creators are typically the ones having to accept whatever crumbs are thrown their way, we are in a model where content is cheap but low quality as a result because the best writers do not have the financial incentive to further hone their craft.

If you take the music or book publishing business, publishers no longer invest in new or mid listers until it can be proven they can self promote. This is perhaps unfortunate that people are reluctant to pay for content, but indeed one can’t expect to be paid If you do nothing to change that environment and expect other people to do the work for you. And I have solid data to back that up.

DAVID STEFFEN:
>>Actually if you go back to what I wrote, I was not suggesting pay to play at all, even though it’s an accepted model, but that authors do not do enough to promote the idea that good writing is worth paying for.
Me: You must be hanging out with different writers than I hang out with. That is often the topic in various contexts with those that I interact with.
It’s hard to do much to promote an entity that hasn’t produced anything yet. If I read what you published and I thought you made good choices, I’d promote at the slightest opportunity. I heard about your magazine because another writer posted a link to your guidelines in a writing forum. I have shared that link in other venues as well. It’s not the promotion that bothers me, but the format it takes of unsolicited email advertisement. For all I know, you don’t have interest in the kinds of stories I like to read–I can’t know that until some of it is available for me to read.

>>we are in a model where content is cheap but low quality as a result because the best writers do not have the financial incentive to further hone their craft.
Me: Content being cheap per unit doesn’t necessarily mean that no money is being made. I know some writers who have made some steady income from epub sales, which are cheap but if you can get enough quantity the bulk can make up for it.
And I certainly don’t agree that stories on the market are of low quality if you look in the right places.

>>one can’t expect to be paid If you do nothing to change that environment and expect other people to do the work for you.
Me: I’m not even sure what exactly you’re saying. What work is being done for me? I happily promote fiction magazines that publish fiction I like. I happily contribute financially to fiction magazines that publish fiction I like. At this point I don’t know if you publish fiction I like because you haven’t published any yet (as far as I can tell). I’ve contributed to startups, but generally it will be if the mission statement sounds especially exciting or if the editor is an entity who has picked stories I like in other venues.

What I am taking issue with is not the suggestion of promotion, or the suggestion of contribution. You can suggest those all you want, and I will continue to choose what I want to promote and what I want to contribute to based primarily on the merit of the content produced. It is the medium of the communication that I take issue with, the unsolicited advertisement in email.

RAY TAYLOR:
Well precisely, you are free to choose, I asked without any obligation on your part, and you have chosen not to participate. Fair enough.

As someone who has followed science fiction for over 40 years, I can safely say that the current decline in literacy has coincided with a decline in the quality of writing. While you can state that money is being made and there are indeed good writers out there eking out a living, the harsh reality is that it ain’t like it used to be.

There is an urgent need for curation, and the better paying markets such as Tor (backed by a huge multinational) are unfortunately few and far between. Most paying gigs for fiction pay abysmal rates, as I’m sure you already know. The only winner in this commodity approach to content is in fact Google and to a lesser extent, Amazon.

So there is a way out of this mess. But it does mean fighting the system as it stands, and it takes a community to build it, as the traditional publishers don’t have a clue how to make money any more . Taking an adversarial or what I might call a consumer approach (you claim that not being able to evaluate our content is your reason) is a bit odd when we are essentially both on the same side of the fence when it comes to monetizing content. You would like to make good money and I’m interested in developing a market for that.

I regret you withdrew your submission, even though it was really not what we are looking for in terms of reprints. In general a story should not be freely accessible on the web or at least have some claim for fame such as an award or serious critical acclaim. I question your motives for submitting a story that anyone could read on Escape Pod, and I would have obviously rejected it on those grounds alone. We have a different venue for archival material but it will be on a shared revenue model. At the moment we are only offering that opportunity to a very select group of well known authors with a long track record.

Good luck with your writing career.

Ray Taylor, publisher

DAVID STEFFEN:
I say your strategy is deeply flawed. You say I don’t know what I’m talking about when I don’t want to support your market. Time will tell.

But, that completely bypasses the core question: why spam?
a professional would not stoop to that, whether or not it’s illegal. Which it is illegal.

I submitted a story that’s already available to test the waters. And I learned what I needed to know–I don’t want to work with you, because you spam your contributors, it’s clear to me that you don’t know how to run a publishing company, and you also can’t take criticism. Prove my wrong by succeeding if you like.

From my end, I don’t see any point in continuing the conversation further as I’m definitely not getting anything out of it, and it’s equally clear that you’re not interested in hearing what I am saying.

RAY TAYLOR:
David,

I have sought a legal opinion, and in the United States (and with similar legislation in Canada), the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 defines unsolicited email (which in my case it was not unsolicited) as legally permissible as long as certain header information is not forged (e.g. false sender email addresses, false subject lines) and naturally anything fraudulent. By withdrawing your story you have effectively opted out the relationship with us and there will be no further communications through Submittable.

Just because you received an unwanted email does not make it spam. The reality is you solicited us by submitting a story and by divulging your email address. You had established a relationship with Collidor by doing so and as a result could expect communications that may be to the benefit of our relationship.

http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

As I had stated in my first reply to your email, you should do your homework before making accusations.

Adversarial approaches with publishers are not terribly good strategies for establishing constructive relationships. Furthermore, I take a very dim view of time wasters who are ‘testing the waters’. This is borderline abuse of the goodwill of publishers who dedicate resources to open and unsolicited submissions.

You will receive no further communication from me and any future emails or submissions from you will be automatically and summarily deleted.

Ray Taylor