Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction

Far as the writing goes, yesterday was a very good day for me.

In the morning I heard back from Daily Science Fiction – they are buying a flash SF story  "Spidersong" which I wrote for a Shock Totem contest and submitted to them just under a month ago. A sale in itself is always a very exciting thing – but this sale even more so. First of all, this is my first professional market sale (as opposed to semi-pro and paying markets I’ve been able to get into in the past). But, more importantly, DSF is really special to me.

They launched on September 1, 2010 and I’ve been reading the stories they publish almost every day since then.  There is no other science fiction publication that I read with the same consistency. They also began accepting submissions at about the same time when I started sending them out – June of last year. It’s always been a goal of mine to be published with them, and in most cases they are the first market I try with my stories. Over the course of a year I submitted nine different times. A few times they held the story longer then average, or even let me know that it made it past the first round of reading – but this is the first time they bought one and I couldn’t be more proud.

Later that same day I heard back from Nanoism – a magazine that publishes Twitter-length fiction; complete stories told in 140 characters or less. I don’t quite understand the genre and the best solution to that is to try and write something in it. I did, and submitted my first ever 140-character story to Nanoism, which is the top market for such things. It’s been over four months since and I pretty much gave up on it, thinking they either lost the submission somehow or hated it so much that it didn’t deserve a rejection slip. Imagine my surprise when I heard back from the editor letting me know that he liked the story – and would be publishing it later that same day. It is up at Nanoism now and can be read over here.

I still don’t really know much about Twitter fiction, having written a grand total of 2 140-character stories (second one didn’t win or place in the contest it was written for) – but now I can at least pretend.

The July issue of Golden Visions Magazine is now live and it includes "Pel’s Crusade" – a very short humorous flash fiction piece of mine. You can read it by clicking over here.

In other news, The Drabbler will be publishing my 100-word super-short "Chill" in their change-themed issue due out in August.

The July issue of BSQ is out. It contains my flash fantasy story "Superior Firepower." This is the first published story of mine that can’t be read for free on the web – you have to actually buy the issue, which you can do over here on Amazon.com, or get a much less expensive eBook version over here at Smashwords. And while I’m sure you will gladly fork over a few bucks to read "Superior Firepower" there are plenty of other cool stories to make this issue worth buying, including fiction by my fellow W1S1 writers James Milo Fowler and Samuel "Izz" Mae.

Speaking of Sam Mae, he recently launched his own speculative fiction magazine called Comets and Criminals. The first issue isn’t due out till January 2012, but Sam is now reading submissions and I encourage fellow spec fic authors to send him your work.

In a few days another short story of mine called "Pel’s Crusade" will be published in the July issue of Golden Visions magazine. I’ll post a link when that happens.

Dagan Books unveiled the cover for its "In Situ" anthology today, and it looks amazing:

Visit daganbooks.com to check out a hi-res image. This anthology should be released in the next month or two.

Dagan Books has been posting bios and interviews with all the authors included in the forthcoming "In Situ" anthology. This week it’s my turn. You can read the interview (and a very short excerpt from The Field Trip) here.

Also, Every Day Fiction announced their table of contents for April, and "On The Last Afternoon" is slated for an April 13 release. Mark your calendars!

Huzzah – Every Day Fiction picked up another one of my stories. They will be publishing "On The Last Afternoon" sometime in the coming months (date to be determined).

I’ve also been playing around with a shiny new toy that is Google Sites. I used it to create a comprehensive list of all of my published (and soon to be published) fiction. Everything that’s out so far is available to read for free, though you will have to shell out some cash if you want to read The Field Trip (buy the anthology) or Superior Firepower (buy the magazine issue). Totally worth it, of course.

Two bits of news today. Pel’s Crusade, a fantasy flash story was picked up by Golden Visions magazine and will appear in their summer issue. GVM publishes both online and in-print, with different content appearing in both. This story will be available online (which is my preference
anyway, so that more people get to read it).

Also, Part II of “The Candidate” was posted at ascensiongame.com today. Read it here.

“Good Advice,” originally published by Every Day Fiction, caught the eye of folks at the NJ Board of Education. They contacted EDF (and through them, me) in order to ask for reprint rights to include this story in the ASK (Assessment of Skills & Knowledge) reading comprehension test next year.

I am a little concerned for the schoolchildren who might be involuntarily subjected to my ramblings (the words Cruel, Unusual and Punishment come to mind), but otherwise find the idea to be very, very cool.

You can read Good Advice here, if you haven’t already.