I’m now officially a slush reader for Flash Fiction Online. I’ll be part of a team that collectively helps the editor judge the stories that come in. For anyone who hasn’t heard of them, they are an online monthly magazine which publishes several flash stories per issue. Flash stories are 1000 words or less, and let me tell you, it is not easy to get a full story into just 1k! Many of the staff has a preference for speculative fiction, but they accept submissions of any story under 1k, so literary, mainstream, romance, mystery, anything is fair game.
I think it’ll be a fun opportunity to sample the editorial side of submissions. The duties shouldn’t be too onerous. I’m at the 2nd level of the slush reading, so the worst stuff will be filtered out before it gets to me. And each submission is 1100 words or less, so even if I don’t like the story, it doesn’t take very long to determine. I’ve been through my first round of judging, and was pretty pleased with the experience. I’ve said for a long time that one of the keys to becoming a better writer is to read and critique other people’s work, so this will be a good way for me to do that. When I feel I have feedback that could be useful for the writer, I’ll try to send some back their way–personal feedback is so rare it’s so nice to receive when you get it.
And, for those of you aren’t familiar with FFO’s slush reading procedures, the stories are anonymous, with no author name attached to them. If I see a story come through and I already know the author, I must choose not to rate it, so you may want to think twice before telling me that.
-David
Hi Dave –
Great blog – I subscribed a few days ago.
So, FFO. Well done. With a certain Gary C, too. Everyone is moving to FFO.
Including me- my first pro sale is up in this Oct issue.
(I’m the guy who followed you from the WOTF boards to Liberty Hall. There I stuck. Thanks for introducing me to the place, so many months ago.)
Good luck with the blog – nice tone and interesting articles.
Cheers, Damon
Good to see you, Damon!
I hadn’t realized that was you in the October issue–I’d mostly thought of you as your forum name. Congrats!
And thanks for compliments on the site. I’m glad you have enjoyed it.
I should have mentioned that Gary Cuba, one of the slush readers of Jim Baen’s Universe and a good friend of min, is also one of FFO’s new slush readers.
Cheers!
I know you weren’t addressing me Damon, but I wanted to thank you for the positive comments on the site. We get quite a lot of traffic but few people take the time to comment about what content they enjoy and we appreciate it. I hope you’ll come back to visit us soon.
~Anthony
Anything you post, for the moment, I’ll check it out!
I haven’t been around long enough to say what I like, but unless your reviews are incredibly well written, I would probably be less interested in them, as I don’t know your tastes, or whether your opinion is worth reading. 😉
(I’m sure it is, but interviews and genre issues would strike me as more trustworthy, until I get to know you both as reviewers.)
I would be interested in reading about world issues – there is a huge amount of movement in Steam Punk worldwide, for example – anything that opens it up so that your blog isn’t exclusively US based would be good for me.
I would also be interested in tech – any science news that takes your fancy? Breakthroughs in AR etc?
The interviews of established writers are great, as it is obviously exciting for you as well as the readers.
Akk – post what you want. I’ll try to pass the site around.
D