There’s a giveaway on GoodReads that’s beginning tomorrow. Click to enter!
Giveaway ends January 23, 2013.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
And if you don’t want to wait for a chance at a freebie, you can buy a copy on Amazon, B&N, Kobo or directly from UFO Publishing.
Comments Off on Win a copy of Unidentified Funny Objects! | 
Publishing | Tagged: fantasy, free books, giveaway, humor, science fiction, Unidentified Funny Objects | 
Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
Arc Manor is launching a new pro zine called “Galaxy’s Edge” in March of 2013, edited by Mike Resnick. I’m thrilled to announce that the premier issue will include “Requiem for a Druid.” My story will get to rub shoulders with works from Lou Berger, Robert J. Sawyer, Jack McDevitt, Kij Johnson, James Patrick Kelly, and Barry Malzberg!
“Requiem for a Druid” has quite a history. This is a second story in the urban fantasy series about Conrad Brent. I love writing Brent stories, which combine urban fantasy, noir, and humor with the Brooklyn setting which is so familiar to me. And I title them with horrible puns of iconic books and movies set in Brooklyn, too. The first story in the series, A Shard Glows in Brooklyn, was published by Buzzy Magazine earlier this year.
“Requiem” was a story that got me into the Viable Paradise workshop. It was read and critiqued by brilliant writers and editors such as Patric Nielsen-Hayden, Sherwood Smith, Elizabeth Bear, Steven Brust, and Jim McDonald. Also, many of the students at the workshop. I sent it there because it was my favorite story, and one of my strongest.
And now it’s been accepted by Mike Resnick, a writer and editor whom I admire greatly and have been a fan of for many years.
I plan to write one or two more Brent stories next year. I also hope to complete the first draft of a Brent novel in 2013. But for now, I leave you with the opening line of “Requiem”:
My job that morning was to banish a demon, but I was determined to finish my cup of coffee first.
Be sure to check out Galaxy’s Edge and read the rest of it in a few months!
1 Comment | Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: arc manor, conrad brent, fantasy, galaxy's edge, Mike Resnick, urban fantasy | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
“You Bet” is a fantasy/humor Poker story I wrote to explain what the heck is going on in the cover image of Unidentified Funny Objects (seen above). I promised the Kickstarter backers that I’d write and post this story if the campaign became fully funded, which it did.
Comments Off on Publication: “You Bet” at UFO Publishing | Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: fantasy, humor, Unidentified Funny Objects | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
Another flash fiction piece out September 1 from Kazka Press. This flash has what I think is the coolest magic system I came up with. What’s also cool is that folks at Kazka created an original illustration piece for the story which looks pretty awesome!
Remember “Nuclear Family” which I bemoaned for not getting enough attention when it was originally published? Not only has it gotten a lot more reads and some wonderful comments, but Kazka Press picked up it as a reprint for their upcoming holiday-themed anthology of SF/F. Yay for traction!
1 Comment | Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: fantasy, flash fiction, kasma sf, Kazka Press, science fiction | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
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!
Comments Off on Kickstarter Update #2 – Unidentified Funny Objects | Publishing | Tagged: fantasy, humor, kickstarter, science fiction, tuckerization, UFO, Unidentified Funny Objects | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
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.
Comments Off on Anthology Submissions Update – The Sixth Hundred | Publishing | Tagged: fantasy, humor, kickstarter, rejections, science fiction, Submissions, UFO, Unidentified Funny Objects | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
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.
Comments Off on I’m Still a Writer | Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: daily science fiction, Drabblecast, Fantastic Frontiers, fantasy, flash, Kazka Press, nature, science fiction, Shock Totem | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
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.
Comments Off on Kickstarter Update: Unidentified Funny Objects | Publishing | Tagged: crowdfunding, fantasy, fiction, humor, kickstarter, science fiction, UFO, Unidentified Funny Objects | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
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!
Comments Off on Free Story and UFO Launches Kickstarter | Publishing | Tagged: dennis miller, Dixon Leavitt, fantasy, free fiction, humor, jake jerr, justin swapp, kickstarter, sf, UFO, Unidentified Funny Objects | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
In the coming months I’ll be editing an anthology of humorous SF/F stories.
I’m not going to go into a lot of detail yet. I’ll write a much longer post on the subject when I’m ready to make an official announcement. For now, suffice is to say that it will pay professional rates ($0.05 per word) and will be released as both an e-book and a physical book. And if it’s very successful, it might become an annual thing.
What I need right now is the name. I want something really catchy and easy to identify as speculative humor. And, of course, it can’t be a title that was used by somebody else previously. If you have any good ideas, please post them in the comments (or e-mail me directly through the contact form). If I end up using your title there’s a signed physical copy of the anthology in it for you 🙂
I will also be looking for all sorts of other help, down the line. Slush readers, illustrators, someone to create a promotional YouTube video, etc. Feel free to reach out if you want to get involved. And, of course, if you write light/humorous speculative fiction, you may want to start getting those submissions ready!
10 Comments | Publishing | Tagged: anthology, fantasy, humor, science fiction, writing | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction 