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Fear of slush tsunami, I believe. Though the actual names of the editors are up at Ralan, however that happened.
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Anonymous editors? Dunno about that...why does everybody online feel the need to hide behind some other name?
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Pro-rate, but they aren't aiming for SFWA approval. Payment within 30 days of publication doesn't meet the SFWA criteria yet...so if you were accepted now, you would benefit from any back dating by SFWA. The backdating is for the year period prior to approval, during which the mag must meet the criteria--payment prior to publication.
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Yup, and it was a nice e-mail too. Looks like they're wanting to engage the writer base. Works for me. And much appreciated.
Posts: 386 | Registered: Sep 2008
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M.E. (Michael) Ray from Redstone SF here. I sent an email earlier to the people who'd posted here. Ms. Woodbury moved quickly to get me up to speed, which I appreciate, so that I could post. In short: I saw that we got a spike in traffic from here and backtracked, and I'm glad that I did. I learned of a couple of possible issues with our plan/website and addressed them today.
Here's the note: "It's great to be mentioned at Hatrack River! I wanted to address the issues you mentioned: - We are, in fact, aiming for SFWA approval, and that's an excellent point on payment. We will update that to "payment on publication" (done): http://www.sfwa.org/join-us/sfwa-membership-requirements/#qualify If all goes well we'll qualify after a year and get "backdated" -We did not actually intend to be anonymous. My name and website (http://gatetree.com) are on Redstone Science Fiction and we listed our names at Ralan's. Paul is P.C. to nearly everyone who knows him, and it didn't actually occur to me that his real name wasn't listed anywhere on the site. I'll get Paul's name up right away (done). Our first readers are temperamental one-name artistes.
Thanks for checking in, submit soon, before we close (probably April 15th) and be sure to read our first issue in June!"
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Postcyberpunk - Lawrence Person's description is close to my conception of it: "typical postcyberpunk stories continue the focus on a ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information and cybernetic augmentation of the human body, but without the assumption of dystopia". For examples I'd point to Neal Stephenson's _Diamond Age_ or, more recently, Charlie Stross' _Halting State_ (and the early parts of Accelerando).
Steampunk is science fiction and we want good science fiction. I don't think I've seen a single piece of steampunk in our first 200 subs. We're temp. closing 4/4 so send it in soon. ~MR
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Oops...I just started something to be done by the 15th but wont be ready by the 4th. Guess I will see you on the other side of the break.
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BTW, you be interested in a simultaneous submission, honored new guy? Got my wotf HM that could use a home.
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Thanks for the interest! We've decided against simultaneous submissions, y'all know the issues involved. We have a healthy slush pile to clear, and then we'll reopen.
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How many stories filled your slush pile? Just over 200 in three weeks
How many failed to meet your submission guidelines? about 5
How many exceeded the word count? only 2
How many didn't fall in your genre request? So far about a dozen were essentially horror or romance(!?)
What percentage of the stories did you give up on before the halfway point? probably close to half
How many make the final, tough cut? - All the editors have made it halfway through the pile, and we have 1 definite and 9 possibles left from the 15 maybes that made the first cut out of the first hundred.
Our first reader has another twenty maybes in the second hundred. We plan to start with only 1 or two stories a month at first, so we have a lot of paring to do still.
At this rate I think our acceptance will be 2-3%.
I do think that we got a lot of 'trunk' stories the first couple of days and rejected almost all of them pretty quickly. Moving forward, the stories appear to have gotten better on average.
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ME Ray, Thanks for coming back and posting that info. It's fascinating to see the inside info like that. You couldn't finish half the stories huh? I find that the most interesting fact of the lot.
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Actually, I'm impressed that there were so many stories NOT rejected by the halfway mark. I would have expected 80% or more to be rejected by then.
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Yeah, thanks a lot for answering those questions, ME Ray. I agree with tchern, I'd expected the number closer to 80% as well. Well, it is your first issue. Maybe you'll be more quick to bail as you go along (200 stories is a lot to read after all).
Could someone fill me in on the definition of a 'trunk' story anyway? I have read a few guidelines where the editor mentions them in their guidelines.
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A story that you couldn't sell first time around, so you've stuck it in your trunk, hoping a market will come along that will buy it.
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We are sending out letters as soon as we agree the story is rejected. We are on the subs from 3/18 to 3/20.
On a more positive note: We accepted our first story yesterday!
Working through these stories has definitely made me more aware, as a writer, of what an editor is up against. If the market is selective, as we are trying to be, you really have to stand out and not use a retreaded storyline or be cute. Cute is driving me crazy.
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M.E. Ray, welcome! It's always great to have a chance to interact with an editor, especially of an upcoming publication so we can all learn more about you. It's also really cool that you're willing to some of the numbers from your slush pile. Posts: 299 | Registered: Oct 2008
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quote:On a more positive note: We accepted our first story yesterday!
Congratulations to the lucky slob!
If you could be so kind, what is cute?
A story written as a bedtime story for ten year olds?
Or one that is written as humor but elicits groans instead?
(note to self. No more cute to Redstone)
Edited to ask: I noticed in your guidelines that you didn't mention alternate history. I also noticed that you have a history background. So is AH welcomed?
[This message has been edited by snapper (edited April 24, 2010).]
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M.E. Ray was nice enough to sit for an interview for Diabolical Plots, wherein he talks about what sort of stories he likes and doesn't like, why he started up the magazine, and more: http://www.diabolicalplots.com/?p=1324Posts: 299 | Registered: Oct 2008
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Wow, John Scalzi can really drive some internet traffic! He posted a link to the interview on his blog and this is officially a record for our highest single-day hit rate.
Posts: 299 | Registered: Oct 2008
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Brad, speaking of Dreams of Decadence, I got a very nice form letter rejection from them the other day. It's one of those form letters that has checkboxes for various things that could be wrong with your story, but the only two that were checked on mine were "Close, very close" and "Please try us again with something else" Posts: 299 | Registered: Oct 2008
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Cute: a bit like the the Supreme Court decision on porn, "I know it when I see it". Anything that is clearly trying to elicit (pun intended) an, "Aw, that's cute," is right out. We are a cynical lot.
Oddly, I don't go out of my way to read alternate history, probably because I'm trying to get people to learn an approximation of historical truth on a daily basis. However, I do like steampunk, and the idea that scientific/technological change could have sent history down a different path is definitely science fiction in which I'd be interested. ~mr
[This message has been edited by ME. Ray (edited April 28, 2010).]
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In an aw shucks moment, I just got my rejection from Redstone. I do appreciate Mr. Clemmons encouraging comments, though. I am happy that they did read it all the way through.
At the very least that places my writing in the upper half of the submissions they received. I suspect it fell in that 'cute' catagory (had the feeling it was headed that way.
Based on the interviews I read at Diabolical Plots and Snellville, I believe I have a good idea what might work. However, I suspect the competition is only going to get tougher.
Hey Snappa...you know according to the Multi-Verse theory there is a universe where 'Paradoxically Correct' was written by you and accepted into Redstone...so congratulations to both of you guys!!
But for this universe...as I mentioned on Facebook congrats on your third PRO sale Skadder, even if wont be an official PRO sale until 2011. I look forward to seeing your name on the UPDATES section of the SFWA website.
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Congratulations, indeed. We at Redstone SF are excited about our first stories, including Skadder's.
A note on numbers: 204 new submissions & six reprints (in three weeks). (Sidenote: We want more reprints that were pro/semi-pro sales to offline markets - to make them available online).
We have accepted 9 new and 1 reprint. (We are still debating 1 new).
Less than 10% total of the total failed to meet your submission guidelines, exceeded the word count, failed to fit our genre.
"What percentage of the stories did you give up on before the halfway point?" Our asst. editor, Tobermory, read every word. By the time we were a 150 deep, anything she had put a "No" on had to knock me back in the first two pages. In the end I read more than half of about 2/3rds of all submissions.
We are trying to be more science fiction than fantasy, and that has led us to let a few very good stories go. The one we are stuck on is too far onto the fantasy side, but it is very good.
I wanted to ask y'all (I am from Alabama) your opinion. We want to keep a reasonable response time, respond with at least a modicum of feedback, and not be overhwelmed. We'd also like to be open regularly, as opposed to something like Black Gate (who we like), that is rarely open. "Fast, Good, or Cheap. Pick Two."
So, we are going to try being open the 1st to 15th of each month. That way we are consistently open, but have some time to work the submissions and put together the magazine.
An alternative would be to open every other month, which would be less "stop and start", but would lead us to being out of the loop for extended periods.
What do you, as writers, think would work?
(Being open all the time and sending impersonal, heartless rejections could work, but it's not what we've set out to do.)
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I like the 1st to the 15th of the month. I think it gives a sense of always being open. After all, if your response time is good people will wait the two weeks until you re-open, knowing they should hear fairly quickly.
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I also like the 1-15 of every month. I would be more willing to hold a story 2 weeks than a month.
Posts: 232 | Registered: Apr 2010
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although i'm a bit sad. I started a new story tailor written for Redstone and June 1st but I just finished it and it is a solid 5600 words. Good news though -- I have time to finish another story and try to keep it below 4000 words, and hope the other one finds a comfy home to call its own.
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