September Recap

October 5, 2012

I keep telling myself (and all of you) about how I will be updating this blog more regularly. So far it has been a big fat lie. But then, what do you expect from someone who writes down lies for fun?
Seriously, it has been a crazy couple of months. Putting together an anthology is an infinite amount of work. It cut deep into my writing time, let alone blog time, reading time, and any other -time that doesn’t involve work or family. So here’s a brief recap of what’s been going on in my writerly life in September and early October:
* I’m pleased to announce that Unidentified Funny Objects has been copy-edited and is off to the interior designer. We should have galleys within a few days and an ARC to send out to authors and reviewers in a week or so.

* Monthly humor stories on ufopub.com have been  launched. First up was “The Ogre King and the Piemaker” by Tarl Kudrick. Do yourself a favor and check it out, it’s as funny as anything in the book!

* My flash fiction story “Manna From Heaven” opens the October issue of Bards and Sages Quarterly.  “Manna from Heaven” opens the issue, which is very neat.  You can pick up a copy on Amazon.

 

 

* I sold “The Miracle on Tau Prime” to Daily Science Fiction. It’s a story of the Vatican miracle investigators… in space! There’s no publication date, but I would expect it to appear either really late in 2012 or in early 2013.

* The FISH anthology from Dagan Books which includes my story “Life on the Lake’s Shore” among work from many other fine authors will be coming out this month.

* My story “The Tell-Tale Ear” will be coming out in the October 18 issue of Nature and will be available to read for free online.

* I’ve been invited to submit a story to the “Beyond the Sun” anthology. If accepted, it’d share the table of contents with such juggernauts as Silverberg, Resnick and Kress! Of course, this project needs to be funded first, and it could use all the help it can get. They’re currently on Kickstarter, so do me (and yourself) a favor and pre-order a copy over here.

* I will be attending PhilCon as a guest this year, participating on panels and possibly doing a reading. This convention will take place in Cherry Hill, NJ (15 minute drive from downtown Philadelphia) on the weekend of November 9 through 11. There will be lots of awesome people I know there, and I encourage anyone who can make the trip to attend.

 

 

* Saving the best for last: Tomorrow I’m heading to Viable Paradise. This highly prestigious writing workshop takes place annually on Martha’s Vineyard. It is now in its 16th year. 24 newer writers like myself will learn from instructors Elizabeth Bear, Debra Doyle, Steven Gould, James D. Macdonald, Patrick and Theresa Nielsen-Hayden, Steven Brust and Sherwood Smith. I’m super excited about this workshop and hope it will help me take my writing to the next level (preferably bypassing the tough boss monster at the end of the current level).

I apologize to my non-video game playing readers for that reference. (OK, I’m not really sorry. Deal with it.)

And when I get back, I will be updating the blog more regularly. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

 

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

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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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

New Sales & A Milestone Achieved

March 24, 2012

I have a couple of recent sales to report.

A new publication titled “Nine” picked up my post-singularity flash story “Putting It All Together” for their inaugural issue. “Nine” has an ambitious concept – they will buy 9 short stories per issue and pay each author a royalty of 9% of gross sales. There’s also an advance against royalties, so authors are paid something for their work regardless of the publication’s success.

Issue 1 lineup has been announced and features stories by such notables as Ken Liu and Peter Swanson, among others. It will be available for sale in April and I can’t wait to see how their business plan pans out.

Yesterday I also found out that Nature magazine will be publishing “Ravages of Time” in their Futures section. This is very exciting for a number of reasons.

First of all, Nature has, by far, the largest circulation of any publication that has published me so far, online or in print. It is a highly respectable print publication, that will not only print my story with awesome original artwork created just for it in their magazine, but will also post it online and likely podcast it as well. Finally, this marks my third SFWA-qualifying sale, which means I will be able to upgrade my SFWA membership from Associate to Active, definitely an item straight off of my bucket list.

And to make it even more exciting, the voting deadline for the Nebula awards is March 30 — so I may yet get to vote this year, depending on how quickly my membership upgrade is processed.

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

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