Queer antho updates: deadline, payment, art

See earlier post on this page for general details on the GLBT-oriented anthology project. I've decided to have the deadline for it be JULY 15.  I'll read submissions and plan the book between then and Labor Day, with a plan of having the book ready to release shortly thereafter.

Payment will be a combo of two things: 1) $10 flat and e-copy of book, OR no cash but print copy of book; AND 2) Royalty split with writers after the cost of these "advances" is earned off. In other words, after I have sold enough copies to recover the cost of cash payments and contrib copies to writers, I'll split the profit with the writers. M-Brane will keep 50 percent to invest in the future, and the other 50 percent will be portioned out among the writers. Granted, this will only amount to a few cents per copy sold per writer (more on ebook sales than paper sales), but if we sell hundreds (or thousands?) of them, it will add up to a little something.

Art: I'd really like a nice piece of cover art for this thing, and I'd be willing to offer same terms to the artist as to the writers. The problem is that I am not sure how to evoke in an image the essence of "gay science fiction" without it being really cheesy. But an artist would know. One little guideline: I like "retro," but it's not necessary. Art subs can be sent to me as image attachments or shown to me on websites.

Closing to new submission until 6/1

I need a few weeks to concentrate on some other tasks related to the magazine without needing to do a lot of new reading for it.  Though I hate to do it, I am asking that writers hold off until 6/1 before sending me new stories. This will also enable me to get to where we're not booked out ahead as many issues as we are right now. Apologies for this, but it will only be a few weeks.

(This doesn't apply to the GLBT antho--see post below).

General guidelines for "queer" antho

As I mentioned on the main page the other day, I am planning to edit and publish sometime this year an anthology of GLBT-oriented science fiction to be released as an e-book in various formats and also as POD book in my Lulu store and maybe some other venues.  The guidelines are basically the same as for the regular magazine (open to most any word-count though super-short stuff is less likely to score with me, and I'd like it to be science fiction or at least close to it without getting too far into out-and-out fantasy), but with this addition: stories should feature in some way characters that are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or in some other as-yet-to-be-imagined way "queer." The story does not necessarily need to all about that topic, however--the queerness can certainly be incidental and not the main focus. Or it can be all about it, so long as its entertaining. I really want to some amazing stuff that I cannot even imagine myself until I read it.

Also, I should say something about content since this "theme" will inevitably make a lot of people think first of gay sex. I have not yet turned away a story from the regular zine because its content was too "adult," and I won't in the case of this anthology either. I run a content advisory in the magazine and have never said that what I publish is aimed at kids. That being said, I am certainly not intending to publish an anthology of pure erotica or porn. I'll certainly consider some "NC-17" content, but it ought to be artful and stylish and make some kind of sense in the story's plot. So a writer shouldn't just dust off an old masturbation fantasy and send it here unless its been made integral to a real sf story.

Lastly, I really hope to see submissions that cover a range GLBTness...if that's a word. I can imagine getting a whole pile of male samesex stories and just one female one, and I hope that doesn't happen! Though I myself am a dude, I am ready to read some sapphic sf as well. I'd also like to see a range of backgrounds among the writers: straight writers who have something to create in this sub-genre are as welcome as GLBT ones.

TO SUBMIT:  Follow instructions in regular zine guidelines over on the right-hand column, but specify that your submission is for the GLBT antho so it goes into the right stack. Reprints: I may be more interested in reprints for this than I usually am for the regular zine, since there may be some already-published stuff that fits this concept but hasn't seen the light of day lately. So I'll look at those as if they are regular submissions (no need to query first), but specify that it's a reprint and tell me where it previously appeared.

PAYMENT: Specifics to be determined, but it will involve some kind of royalty plan, and it should be at least decently better than the pitiful rate I pay for stories in the zine. But no one should really expect to make much off of this.  I'll have better details up later on.

DEADLINE: To be announced. Certainly not before end of summer, say Labor Day, but I will update this later when I have made a decision on it.

PRINT EDITION UPDATE (again!)

All issues published so far can be gotten in print via the Lulu store. Hurrah!  That will be the future of the print edition for at least the next several issues. 

PRINT EDITION UPDATE

The Lulu store is open with #3 ready to buy. The back issues will become available there quite soon. 

PRINT EDITION UPDATE

OK, I once again had to bag the print-on-demand concept and go back to the old school...

Here's the current status of the print version:

1) #1 and #2 are available in limited quantities.

2) #3 and onward will become available as they are, ya know, published.

3) These print editions are in BLACK AND WHITE. It looks like the PDF edition, but it doesn't have even the limited color of that version. Price per copy is $10.00, shipping included. Sounds like a lot, yeah, but it would have been a lot more if I had done it in color. 

4) Single-issue purchase of any print issue comes with a complimentary PDF copy of the same issue.

5) You may buy a print copy of an issue and a year's subscription to the PDF version at once.

6) Use the PayPal "Buy Now" button over to the right below the "subscribe to the PDF" option, and the various options will appear in a drop-down menu.

EXPLANATION OF PAGE 2

In an effort to clean up the main blog a little bit, I have added a sort of second site that links back and forth between here and there, mostly just to hold some of the static stuff that doesn’t change much, like the writers’ guidelines and the subscription info and some other stuff. It’s a temporary measure until I either get a new template or set up a “real” full-blown website for M-Brane, but it should clean things up a bit, or at least make it so you don’t have to scroll ninety virtual meters down the page to see stuff like the guidelines.

I would eventually like to have a better site (or a better template for this one), but I don’t honestly think that the Blogger site is too bad at all for what it does for me. And it’s totally free. When I can spring for my own domain and someone to help me make a decent site that can handle some more dynamic features, then I probably will. But I’m not going to set up some craptastical website that’s not really any better or more functional than this blog page just for the sake of having the URL for it not have the “dot-blogspot” in the middle of it. There’s a lot of crappy sites out there—even ones for magazines doing basically the same thing that I am—that don’t function well and don’t look very good either. I was just on one for a zine that had all kinds of dead internal links in it, even though it had some front-page updates as recently as this week. A lot of people set up websites and just don’t maintain them, or set up blogs that are still online but don’t have posts more recently than two or three years ago. I think sites needs to have some new content on them with great frequency. I’ll just do what I’m doing for now, and get fancier when circumstances make it possible.

So, if you happened upon this and are not looking for what's here, then click here and go to the main page for current affairs.