Kickstarter Update #4 – Unidentified Funny Objects

August 29, 2012

 

Remember my last blog post? It was all about how the UFO Kickstarter was a little bit behind its curve, and how we were still $1000 short of our funding goal? That was yesterday.

Today, we are fully funded. We broke $5000, then broke $5100 and on our way up, up, up.  I’m thrilled and thankful to nearly 200 people who believed in the project enough to support it at this early stage. I still can’t believe we managed to raise over $1000 in less than 36 hours.

I’m planning on spending some of the money to do Really Cool Things ™ that will benefit both our Kickstarter supporters and the SF/F community in general. These Really Cool Things ™ will most certainly include publishing some fiction on the UFO web site, for the whole world to read for free. What better way to give back to the community than that?

There are other Really Cool Things I can think of as well. It all depends on how much money we end up raising, in the end. Do expect me to aggressively look for ways to reward our Kickstarter supporters with all kinds of additional content beyond what was promised. So please, continue to spread the word and encourage anyone who is interested in humorous SF/F to explore this anthology and add their pledge on Kickstarter in the next few days.

And while on the subject of Kickstarter, I’d like to mention that Smoke & Mirrors podcast just launched their own campaign. Dennis Miller, the host of Smoke & Mirrors is also the voice actor in the UFO promo video. He needs and deserves support. I pledged to his campaign personally and hope you will check it out and consider doing the same.

 

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Kickstarter Update #3 – Unidentified Funny Objects

August 27, 2012

 

We’re down to the wire, with just over 4 days to go and still $1000 short of the funding goal.

I’m doing my best to raise awareness about this project. Recently I’ve had interviews about it posted on the blogs of Luc Reid and D.M. Bonanno. But I’ve also been incredibly busy tackling the ever-increasing volume of submissions as we get nearer to the deadline. Which leaves a lot less time for fundraising.  So if you were planning on pre-ordering the book via Kickstarter, please consider doing so today so we can generate some extra momentum going into the final stretch. Thank you!

 

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

My New Submission Cover Letter

August 25, 2012

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Anthology Submission Update – August 22

August 22, 2012

I’m woefully behind on posting the Anthology Updates and updating the blog in general. That’s because submissions have been pouring in now that we’re getting closer to the end of the sub period, and there are many many many other things that need doing that have been demanding my time.
So I must apologize that this update isn’t quite as detailed on the statistics as the previous ones have been. But I did want to let everyone (and especially authors in round 3) know where things stand at the moment. So here we go:
As of 11am EST on August 22 we read and responded to a total of 745 stories. Lately I sent out a larger percentage of form rejections (for the reasons stated above), but I still managed to get back to everyone within 48 hours (and most people far faster than that).
At the moment there are 18 accepted stories totaling approximately 55,600 words.  There are 19 stories in round 3 totaling 35,000 words.  So I’m already 10-15k over what I can buy, and that’s with over a week to go. I’m hoping to begin making final decisions as early as September 3-4, or whenever everything that’s submitted by August 31 is read.
I will post an update on or around September 1 and probably a more details one later on, with more detailed submission statistics.
The Kickstarter campaign is in full swing. It’s at 66% with just over 9 days to go.  I hope that it can reach its goal and indeed raise more than the $5000 I’m shooting for. Extra money will mean the ability to fit more stories into the book and possibly even buy a few extras to post for free on ufopub.com

So if you intend to purchase this book when it’s released, please consider pre-ordering it via Kickstarter instead. That would really help me out!

 

 

 

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Lying For Fun and Profit

August 14, 2012

I recently wrote a guest post on Anaea Lay’s blog. She had an ingenious idea to interview authors with the same, boring questions you get everywhere BUT expecting the authors to embellish, exaggerate and outright lie in their responses! I had a great time writing this up and then goofing off with the questions. Check it out and make sure you don’t miss the comments!

http://anaealay.com/2012/08/13/lies-for-fun-and-profit-unidentified-funny-objects/

 

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Kickstarter Update #2 – Unidentified Funny Objects

August 13, 2012

The response to the Kickstarter campaign has been tremendous. It raised over $1900 in the first 11 days, with over 70 people choosing to back this project so far.

Of course, it has to get to $5000 by the end of the month or we get nothing. I think we can get there and to help entice further pledges I added several new exciting rewards to the campaign:

1) Become a character is a SF/F story! Five of the authors agreed to “write in” whoever pledges funds to this project into one of their future stories. You can become immortalized by Ken Liu, Anatoly Belilovsky, Nathaniel Lee, James Beamon or Matt Mikalatos! This is a cool reward and it’s unique – we’re offering only one such opportunity per author.

2) Retailer reward. You can now pre-order 10 copies of the trade paperback at wholesale. This is perfect for independent stores and convention book vendors who might want to support the project.

Help spread the word please!

 

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Anthology Submissions Update – The Sixth Hundred

August 11, 2012

Space Chicken is satisfied with all the success the most recent batch of submission brings.

We read and voted on stories #501-600 over the course of 11 days (longer if you count the time it took to vote on them, which is why I’m only posting this update now).

16 stories made it past the first reading and onto being read anonymously by the board.  And of those sixteen I bought two and advanced three into the third round. A great crop for an 11 day span! There’s also one that has a requested rewrite but is promising as well.

61 of the stories received personal rejections, leaving only a third as form Rs. However, a form rejection doesn’t mean we especially hated the story. There are a lot of factors that go into it — sometimes the first reader just didn’t have a particularly useful comment to pass along, sometimes I’m crazy busy and trying to handle the slush pile, and *need* that extra minute or two per story (whereas the same story would get a comment if I read it at a less-hectic moment).

Duotrope is showing 186 submissions out of 633 actually received to date. If you’re not using Duotrope to track and report your submissions, you should really consider it. It helps you and it helps other writers keep tabs on submission statistics from markets, especially markets that don’t post detailed reports on their submissions 🙂

There are presently 16 stories purchased for the book totaling 51,500 words.  16 stories in round 3 total 30,000 words. We’re now officially in the territory where round 3 cuts will become necessary, and we aren’t nearly done yet, with over 2 weeks of submissions to go.

Our Kickstarter campaign has been chugging along and, as of this writing, stands at about $1850. Still a very long way to go, and we have to hit $5000 to get anything at all. So if you plan on buying the book when it comes out, please consider pre-ordering it via Kickstarter so we can reach our goal.

 

 

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I’m Still a Writer

August 10, 2012

 

It has been a busy couple of months. In addition to my already hectic schedule balancing work and family obligations I foolishly decided to go and create an anthology. If you read my blog, you’ll notice that that all the recent posts have been about that. Which is no surprise because I spend, on average, 6 hours a day working on UFO.

However,  I’m still a writer first and an editor/publisher second (even if it doesn’t feel that way right now.) I’ve been producing some new stories — not nearly as many as I would have with more free time, but my output hadn’t dropped off completely. I’ve also been making sales. Sales that, in the past, I would have rushed to breathlessly announce on the blog. But lately I’ve been so slammed that I couldn’t even take the time out for a proper victory lap. So let me catch up by turning this post into a marathon of braggage.

The following stories have been accepted for publication in the last month:
The Tell-Tale Ear – Nature Magazine’s Futures Feature

This is a humorous take on Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous tale, adjusted for the twenty first century. The story is told entirely through e-mails. It will be my second story to appear on the pages of Nature this year.

Spidersong – The Drabblecast

This story originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction and can be read here. The Drabblecast will produce a podcast of it.

Hell is Other People – Fantastic Frontiers, issue 2

This is a tongue-in-cheek story about “Mood Ring” houses that shapeshift according to the inhabitants’ mood. Nothing could possibly go wrong, eh?

The Last Incantation – Kazka Press

This story features a really cool system of magic which, more than one beta reader suggested, should probably be used in a longer story or even a novel at some point. But this story works really well for me at flash length, and you’ll be able to decide for yourself as it will be published on September 1, as part of Kazka’s “The Last Hurrah” prompt.

 

I should also mention that three of these four tales were originally written for the Shock Totem flash fiction bi-monthly contest. I love participating in this contest alongside the likes of Ken Liu, Damien Grintalis and many other excellent writers.  I never do particularly well in the contest (they like horror over there, and I don’t tend to write dark) but I don’t care — I’m happy to let the contest help me come up with many of my better flash stories.

So there. Victory lap accomplished. And now back to working on the anthology.

 

 

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Kickstarter Update: Unidentified Funny Objects

August 7, 2012

 

It has been five days since I launched the Kickstarter campaign for Unidentified Funny Objects. The response has been great. Nearly fifty people pledged money to this project helping me raise over $1250, or 25% of the goal. Of course, there is a long way to go.  Kickstarter is an all or nothing proposition — either the project gets to its funding goal, or it gets no money at all and all that promotion and unkind spamming of friends’ Facebook and Twitter feeds will have been for naught.

I think this project has what it takes to get there. That’s because I believe in how awesome UFO is going to be, and in the need for such an anthology in the marketplace. In short, I believe in what I preach :). But it can use a signal boost. Please let people who you think would be interested in this book know about UFO.  And, of course, don’t hesitate to order your copy via Kickstarter if you plan on buying UFO when it comes out anyway.

 

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Free Story and UFO Launches Kickstarter

August 2, 2012

Kickstarter campaign for Unidentified Funny Objects is now live! You can pre-order the book and support it in various other ways by clicking below. As this is my first Kickstarter, I would also appreciate any feedback on the reward levels, text, video, and anything else.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/776571295/unidentified-funny-objects-anthology-of-humor-sf-a

We worked very hard to put together a great presentation and I would like to especially thank Dennis Miller of the Smoke & Mirrors Podcast who is the announcer voice in the video, and Justin Swapp who put together an awesome video using previous few unique images and art we had to work with. And, of course, Dixon Leavitt for the amazing cover art.

I’m also thrilled to present in its entirely Jake Kerr’s hilarious story “THE ALIEN INVASION AS SEEN IN THE TWITTER STREAM OF @DWEEBLESS”

Click on the link above to read it. Enjoy!

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