There’s approximately a week left to submit a story for consideration for UFO3, and I thought I’d write up a slush pile update.
Every submission received through March 22 has been responded to with either a rejection or a bump up to the second round.
We have read a total of 245 submissions so far this month (which sounds like a lot, but is actually a lighter volume than last year. There’s always a huge swell of subs in the last couple of days, though).
There are currently 8 accepted stories from headliners and I’m waiting on two more headliners to turn in stories. Additionally, there are seven stories being held in the “final consideration” pile, and 6 more are currently in the second round.
As ever, things the associate editors and I are seeing too many of include: zombies, alien invasions and probing, stories that we don’t find to be at all humorous, zombies, vampires, puns, and did I mention zombies?
Things we want to see more of are stories with more than a humorous line or two placed somewhere within 6000 words, strong voices, and unique situations or characters. Some of the associate editors would also like a pony, but I realize that you can’t have everything and will settle for more quality submissions.
#SFWAPro
Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction 
I’ve taken it as a challenge to write a zombie story to submit next year, possibly based on my Zoombie: The Quick and The Dead idea which someone had beautifully (but a lot more gorily than I intended) illustrated for me here: http://static.gog.com/upload/forum/2014/02/d37351f939280144f12c95e56aff4ef32b9b1a59.jpg
And don’t be surprised if there’s a pony in there. (The Pony Express sounds like a good candidate.)
(Considering my normal speed, that would probably arrive for UFO6, but I’ll try staying optimistic for now. On second thought, I’m probably already optimistic just aiming for UFO6.)
I look forward to reading it in 2017 🙂
It’s not impossible to sell us a zombie story. It’s just very, very difficult.