UFO2 Submissions Update – May 17

May 17, 2013

ufo1

We read just over 350 submissions to date.  Everyone who submitted prior to 5/12 should have heard from us by now. If you haven’t, please query ASAP.

I accepted seven stories so far, totaling 35,000 words. There are three more invited headliners who haven’t turned in their stories yet (they aren’t late; they have two more weeks) so that’s up to 18,000 more words. That means the competition for the remaining space in the book is going to be very, very tough. We are holding on to nine more stories in the final round of consideration so far, and more are sure to be added to that list. Already had to turn down some truly excellent stories and there’s a long road to travel yet.

Any reasonably good anthology, magazine issue, or contest gets far more quality submissions than they can use. It’s the nature of our field — supply always greatly outpaces demand. So if you got a rejection from us, or from anyplace else, please don’t take it personally. The editors aren’t merely looking for a good story — they’re looking for stories they can fall in love with. And that’s a very tough act to pull off, especially since tastes are highly subjective. Just keep sending it out there, until the story finds the editor who will think it’s perfect.

 

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

It Came from the Slush Pile

May 6, 2013

It was only yesterday that I wrote a blog post about the UFO slush pile and had this to say:

This doesn’t mean that you can’t sell us a zombie reality TV story about a road trip in space. But it won’t be easy.

Challenge accepted! Less than 24 hours later, this story showed up in the UFO inbox.

Unfortunately I can’t include it in UFO2. A certain level of familiarity with the slush process is necessary to appreciate it. And reading the previous blog post is a must for an even better experience. But I thought it would make a perfect blog post, and also serve as a warning to all those who would submit real zombie/alien/reality TV stories to our slush pile, or any other. So I offered to buy the non-exclusive rights to post the story on this blog.

This is the author’s first story sale, and I’m thrilled to be a part of that.

Without further ado, presenting

alien

IT CAME FROM THE SLUSH PILE

By Rachel Winchester

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Dr. Rostrum.  It’s hard to find a psychiatrist who’s taking on new patie… — of course, I can call you Bob. No problem.

“But, this gets a little personal, and if I could call you Doc– right, yes, I guess you’re used to hearing personal stuff. OK. Bob it is.

“Right, 50 minutes. So…it all began when I was reading submissions for a short story anthology. Science fiction stuff, supposed to be funny. You wouldn’t think there would be that many people willing to put in that kind of work for a shot at $100 or so, but there were thousands of submissions.

“I drank coffee and read manuscripts and drank more coffee and read more manuscripts until my eyelids felt like thresher blades and my eyeballs throbbed with each of their harvesting passes. I divided the stories into piles: FUNNY and NOT FUNNY. Then, to my horror, I realized I had to add another pile.

“ZOMBIES.

“I mean, I like some zombie movies, but I don’t get why they’re a thing, you know? They’ve got to be a symbol for something. Maybe because no one owns zombies. I mean, Lucas, or I guess Disney, isn’t going to sue anyone over zombies.

“And the submissions kept coming. Story after unfunny story about zombies, Bob. ‘I Was Married to a Zombie’, ‘Road Trip with a Zombie’, ‘We Can Zombie It For You Wholesale’, and ‘Do Zombies Dream of Electric Brains.’ And the worst part, Bob?  The absolute. Worst. Part? The zombie stories with bonus-gratuitous-rape.

“It was a veritable Penthouse Forum for Zombies.

“But I’d promised the editor I’d read them all. I didn’t even consider stopping.

“Then I got one in Comic Sans.

“What? No, I’m okay, I’m good…it’s just that…thinking about that font…I can see it…and…

“I’m good, seriously. Right here. Right here on the couch, Bob. See? Breathing normally. But thank you for the water. I think I’m ready to continue.

“Yes, there’s more. I know, you’d think it couldn’t get any worse than Com…that font. But it did. It did.

“Something about seeing a manuscript sent in looking like second-grade teacher’s syllabus jerked me awake, that’s the only way I can explain it. It made me realize how completely irrational it was to be living on coffee and Luna bars, reading slush. It made me realize that I’d been a total bitch to my partner every time she came in to suggest I take a shower or change my clothes. It made me realize that in the background, I’d been vaguely aware she was talking to a camera crew in the other room. About me.

“I know, I know, it sounds like paranoid delusions. But trust me, it wasn’t. It was much worse. You see, I realized then that I was on a reality show.

“Something called True Lives of Starving Writers. They were inter-cutting shots of authors slaving over pirated copies of Scrivener on refurbed laptops, voiceovers about how one guy had to switch to generic beer because he couldn’t afford MGD anymore, not until some magazine accepts his zombie porn story. Then they’d show me just shredding the submissions, and, God, they would even show my relationship coming apart. As you probably know, Bob, my partner had been telling the viewing audience about how she was trapped in this totally loveless marriage.

“I was mortified. I would never…I mean, sometimes I get into my writing, but I never thought I’d cut into our time together, and certainly not for slush.

“Also, and I have to explain this, the inner workings of the slush pile are sacrosanct. I’m doing this to pay my dues too, and learn from the submissions to make me a better writer. I would never go on a reality show and talk about it. And Darla…Darla would never go on one either.

“That’s when I knew something was really wrong. I knew it like I knew the sensation in my a–… my posterior–wasn’t from too much coffee and Luna bars. And I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, but–

“Heh, yeah, I guess you would hear that a lot, Bob. But really, the pain in my…posterior, what I thought was the pain of reading a story with too many zombies and a vampire thrown in for good measure? That pain was actually a probe. An alien anal probe.

“Aliens had kidnapped me, beamed me up, and were making me believe I was on a reality TV show about science fiction writers, and they were doing it because they were on a road trip and they were bored.

“You got that, Bob? I was a goddamn travel game some alien teenagers had picked up during a road trip pit stop on Earth.

“As I realized my plight, a gizmo on the aliens’ space-van dashboard started to beep. It got louder and louder…the aliens started to run around the van, tentacles flailing over their heads.  But I knew that sound. I sat straight up in bed, my alarm clock beeping at top volume. I was in my own bed, and whole thing was a dream!

“But, Bob…waiting for me, on the desk in the corner, were all those unread submissions.  And there, on the floor next to the desk, were three piles of manuscripts:  FUNNY, UNFUNNY…and ZOMBIES.

 END

Rachel Winchester (@RaqWinchester) was born in Roswell, NM, and believes her love for science fiction was inevitable.  She has lived and worked around the world, including in Bucharest, Kuala Lumpur, Sana’a, Athens, Caracas, and Los Angeles. She now works as a government consultant.  This is her first story sale.

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

UFO2 Submissions Update

May 5, 2013

ufo1

First of all, thanks again to everyone who pledged and promoted our Kickstarter campaign. We are fully funded and are able to produce the book in the fashion we wanted to, without cutting corners!

We received around 150 submissions in the first four days of May. The associate editors and I have been reading furiously to try and make sure that we respond very quickly and don’t hold anyone’s story hostage unless we’re seriously considering it for inclusion. As of right now, everyone who submitted on or before May 2 should have heard from us, either with a rejection or a round 2 bump. If you did not receive a response to your story submitted prior to May 3, please query us.

Here is a brief list of things we’re seeing too much  of among the submissions:

– Stories with contact info and byline still intact. I have to manually remove them before sending them over to the readers for anonymous consideration. This makes me sad.

– Zombies

– Stories that aren’t funny in any way, shape or form. We’re not sure why they were sent to us instead of a venue that isn’t seeking humor.

– Zombies

– Cliche aliens, usually with some sort of probing thrown in

– Reality TV stories

– Zombies

– Vampires

– Road trips complete with every road trip cliche, except they’re space road trips in space. Usually with a pit stop on Earth.

– Zombies

This doesn’t mean that you can’t sell us a zombie reality TV story about a road trip in space. But it won’t be easy.  When I see the word ‘zombie’ in a submission my eye begins to twitch, I extend my arms and walk around the office for a while moaning “rejeeeeect” — so you have to overcome that. Good luck.

Things that I would like to see more of:

– Unusual settings and scenarios. There are only so many times I can read a story about mythological gods in modern setting or aliens landing in rural America. Surprise me!

– Stories from international authors. We are actually doing quite good with that, so far. We have received stories from all over the world, and want more! Keep in mind that, while we are not considering reprints, we’ll make an exception for stories that were published in another language, as long as they have not been previously published in English.

– Art. We still need a cover artist/designer and possibly interior artists. While I am talking to a couple of people, we haven’t settled on anyone yet — send me a link to your portfolio soon if you wish to be considered!

 

 

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UFO2 Kickstarter Campaign Ending Soon

May 2, 2013

Just over four hours remaining in the UFO2 Kickstarter campaign. We raised nearly $6500 so far, with $1500 to go! Over 200 people backed this project already, and if you haven’t yet, please do, and help us reach our goal.

I added my short story ebooks as an extra reward for everyone who pledges $25 or more. So, on top of the signed copy of UFO2 (or whatever else you select), you will get $5+ worth of eBooks (everything I release in 2013). This is the preview of the cover for the ebook version of “A Shard Glows in Brooklyn,” which I will release as an e-book along with “Requiem for a Druid” in early June:

shard

I should also add that we received around 100 submissions in the last 36 hours! Associate editors and I are reading furiously and will begin sending out responses in another day or two.

So please pledge to the UFO2 campaign and spread the word of it to others!

 

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UFO2 Submissions Open Tonight

April 30, 2013

ufo2

The submissions are opening tonight for the UFO2 anthology and will remain open throughout the month of May. Please read the guidelines here and feel free to submit when ready (yes, a few hours early is OK.)

I would also like to remind everyone that the UFO2 Kickstarter campaign has entered its final 48-hour stretch. At this point we still need to raise nearly $3,000 in order to be funded. The anthology will be published regardless, but our level of success on Kickstarter will determine the overall volume of fiction I can buy for this book, whether I can afford to buy additional content for the web site, whether I can afford to pay for the highest-quality copy-editing and book design services…  In short, I need the extra funds to make UFO the best possible book I can produce.

Please consider pre-ordering your copy via Kickstarter as well as spreading the word about it to anyone who might possibly be interested in the next two days. Thank you!

Click here to view the UFO2 Kickstarter page.

 

 

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Five Practical Tips on Writing Humor

April 29, 2013

I wrote a very long, very detailed post on how to incorporate humor into your writing.

You can’t teach someone to be funny. However, most people are already funny; funnier than they believe themselves to be. Some of that can be harnessed and translated onto the page.  Check out this essay, which is posted as a guest-blog post at Dark Cargo.

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Two Funny Stories Published in April

April 26, 2013
Artwork by Andres Mossa

Artwork by Andres Mossa

 

I’ve been so busy with UFO2 Kickstarter and submissions that I’ve neglected to announce several of my recent publications (which I will gleefully catch up on in this post!)

Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show

This is easily the funniest story I’ve had published to date. One day I was loitering on Twitter and saw friend and fellow writer Sylvia Spruck Wrigley complain about the difficulty she was having explaining Cthulhu to grandma.

“That would make a great story title,” I told her. She agreed, and said that she would try to come up with something that fit.

A few weeks passed and the title stuck with me, so I followed up with Sylvia to see if she had made any progress. She said that she hadn’t and I asked if I could use the title myself. She said yes, and I wrote the story within a couple of days — which is super fast, for me. I named the protagonist Sylvia and named her character’s grandmother and gran-grandmother after Sylvia’s own mom and grandma.

This story is about a magic pawn shop. Somebody trades in Cthulhu on pawn (it’s stored in a handy pocket dimension which looks like a snow globe) and all sorts of wackiness ensues. I have since written a sequel where a Pandora’s box finds its way into the magic pawn shop, and plan on writing more stories in this setting.

IGMS is a great home for this story. They published it today in issue #33, and while you have to subscribe to read the entire story, you can read an excerpt and see the awesome original artwork by Andres Mossa in full size by clicking this link.

The Epistolary History at The Journal of Nature

theepistolaryhistory

This is a flash fiction story about a hapless time traveler I wrote in February. In honor of the letter-writing month it’s told entirely through letters. Since this one is available online for free, I will direct you to read it rather than telling you too much more about it.

Amusingly I received e-mail acceptances for these two stories within a *minute* of each other, making that pretty much the best minute of my writing career, ever. It’s fitting that they were published within 24 hours of each other, too.

The Field Trip at Cast of Wonders

The Field Trip is now my most cosmopolitan story yet. It was originally printed in the In Situ anthology from Dagan Books. It has been translated into Polish and was accepted to be translated and published in Romanian. And now it’s been podcast by a UK audio magazine. You can listen to it here. This is the first time this story is available online for free.

Putting it All Together at Toasted Cake

This story is the only one of the four that isn’t humorous. Instead, it’s very lyrical — which is well outside of my normal writing comfort zone. And Tina Connolly was the perfect performer to read it! The story was originally published at Nine Magazine, which is sadly defunct. It’s not currently available anywhere online in print form,  but you can listen and enjoy the podcast.

And that’s my recap for April. Next month I have stories coming out in Daily Science Fiction, One Sentence Stories anthology, and Buzzy Magazine. Stay tuned!

 

 

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How to Get a Free Copy of UFO

April 23, 2013

Heads up! There is less than 48 hours remaining in the Goodreads giveaway for a signed trade paperback copy of Unidentified Funny Objects. All you have to do is follow this link and click on the giveaway. It’s 100% free. They won’t try to sell you a condo or sign your dog up for a credit card. Honest.

The only downside to the Goodreads giveaway is that you are competing with hundreds of readers who want the book as much as you do. Last time I ran a giveaway, over 1500 people signed up. Right now there are already over 800 people signed up. Still, it’s free.

Want better odds than that? UFO Associate Editor and contributor Nathaniel Lee is running his own UFO giveaway on his blog. Just post  a joke in the comments to enter, and if you’re one of the super-nice people who backed UFO2 on Kickstarter, you get an extra entree! And, I bet, if you are really nice to Nat, he might even sign the book for you.

As for UFO2 — it is possible to get a free copy of that as well. It’s called a contributor copy. All you have to do is sell us a story! Remember — submissions will open on May 1, and there are convenient guidelines posted here.

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UFO Can Haz Funny Cartoon

April 19, 2013

I’ve been cheating on this blog with all the other blogs.

While I’ve been egregiously ignoring my blogging duties here, my interviews have popped up at the W1S1 site and Emma Larkin’s blog this week.  I even cavorted with several podcasts, appearing on The Gamer’s Dome (which, incidentally, is what actually lies beyond Thunderdome) and having an awesome disagreement about the merits of Babylon 5 on an episode of the DJ Grandpa podcast which is scheduled to air this coming Monday.

All of this, of course, is in the effort to raise awareness of the ongoing UFO2 Kickstarter campaign. I’m willing to dispense my cheap jokes elsewhere, dance in front of SF conventions wearing a zombear suit, and even allow my my voice to be heard on podcasts, in order to raise awareness of this book. Because it is scientifically proven (aka I read the list of referring links on the Kickstarter page) that doing such things helps bring new backers to the project.

You and I know that the readers of this blog are the smartest, wittiest, and most interesting SF fans anywhere. FDA won’t let me claim this outright as a fact, so I’m insinuating it instead. And now, you have an opportunity to prove it. Click on this link and pledge to the UFO2 Kickstarter campaign.  Not only will you get an awesome collection of humorous short stories, but you will also help prove beyond doubt how awesome you all are. Because I will be able to click on the Dashboard of the Kickstarter account and see how much support is coming from *this site*. And then I will be inclined — nay, morally obligated — to blog a lot more often.

Think about that.

And while you think, I shall leave you with this awesome cartoon, courtesy of writer and illustrator Douglas Sterling:

alien

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UFO2 Kickstarter is live

April 2, 2013

Unidentified Funny Objects 2 is coming to the bookshelf near you this September!

I already have stories from Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick and Ken Liu. In addition, Esther Friesner, Jody Lynn Nye, and Tim Pratt agreed to contribute stories to this volume. And we hope to announce several more headliners this month.

Meanwhile, I can really use everyone’s help. Funding a quality anthology is *expensive*. It cost about $15,000 to create and print the original UFO book. I think I can keep these costs down to under $12,000 this time around, but it’s still a lot of money. So I went back to Kickstarter in order to help cover some of these costs. If you enjoyed the first book, or simply think the idea of an annual humor SF/F anthology is a good one and it’s something that should exist in the world, please consider supporting this project on Kickstarter.

Also, please help spread the word. The more money I can raise this month, the more cool stuff I’ll be able to do for this book and for the UFO web site.  I will blog lots more about this project, but for now the text of the Kickstarter campaign should cover most of the basics. Check it out!

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