Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction

A mini crowdfunding campaign started today on Moozvine. This website, launched last year, seeks to make excellent short science fiction and fantasy e-books available for all. Some stories are posted for free — readers are encouraged but not required to tip the author. You can read my “Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma” in that fashion. Other stories have a funded threshold. This means that if the funding goal is reached, the story will become available on the site for free, and users are welcome to share the e-books and the web version for free under the Creative Commons license (non-commercial.)

Since this is a short story rather than a novella the threshold is set reasonably low at $400. Anyone who pledges $10 or more will immediately receive the e-book for themselves and the free-for-all option will unlock as soon as full funding is reached. So please take a look, and help me share the project.

I also have two more Europe-related bits of writing news to report. I can now share that my Cthulhumor story “Recall Notice” is going to appear in the Tales from the Miskatonic Library anthology from PS Publishing. Also, my flash SF story “Grains of Wheat” will appear on the Concatenation‘s Best of Nature list later this year. Very pleased and honored to have my story selected!

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I’ll be publishing an anthology of reprint stories in the summer of 2016 titled FUNNY FANTASY. It will follow on the heels of FUNNY SCIENCE FICTION, my 2015 reprint anthology. For this book I’m seeking stories that are:

• Funny.
• Fantasy.
• 500 – 7500 words in length
• Were originally printed in the last ten years (2005-present)
• Were printed in curated venues paying at least $0.01 per word – for this book please don’t send material from token and non-paying venues, self-published, posted on your blog, published in magazine/anthology you yourself edited, previously unpublished, etc. To reiterate, only material published in venues paying *all* contributors at least $0.01/word upfront will be considered.
• Please do not send stories you previously submitted to any volume of Unidentified Funny Objects or Coffee anthologies.

Payment: $0.02 per word + contributor copy.

Rights sought: Non-exclusive print and electronic rights (aka I’d like to include your story in paper and e-book editions of FUNNY FANTASY and keep it in print for as long as I’d like. All other rights remain with the author.)

How to submit:

E-mail submissions as an RTF, DOC, or DOCX attachment to: ufoeditors @ gmail dot com

Format the subject line as follows: FF: <Story Title> by <Author> (Approx. Length)
Example: FF: Dreidel of Dread by Alex Shvartsman (800 words)

In the body of the email please specify where and when the story was originally published. If this info isn’t included I will assume the story breaks one of the guidelines above and send a form rejection.

Response times: I will try to reply within a week or two with either a rejection or a bump notice. Final decisions will be made in the Spring. Since these are reprints and I require no exclusivity, feel free to submit them elsewhere at the same time. Please send one story at a time. Once you receive a rejection or a bump-up notice you may send another.

Submission window: Now through February 29, 2016

If you’d like more insight into the kind of stories I like, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of FUNNY SCIENCE FICTION or any of the UFO anthologies (linked to your right.)

I’m also looking to license an existing drawing for the cover. If you have something that might fit (once again, see existing covers as a point of reference) please e-mail me a link to the image.

#SFWAPro

Are you a YA author shopping around a novel? Authors.me is hosting a YA competition where you can win up to $750 in cash prizes and line edits for your manuscript. Furthermore, it’s an extra opportunity to get your book in front of potential agents and publishers.

Authors.me is a new service for both writers and publishers, something like Submittable with social media elements thrown in. They describe it as a “platform that connects writers, agents, and publishers to discover great manuscripts.”

Click here to learn more about the competition:

www.authors.me/ya2015

Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with authors.me but I did meet with their representative this week to check out their platform, and they seem like good folks. This is how I learned about the contest.

#SFWAPro