UFO7 Release Day!

September 26, 2018

Unidentified Funny Objects 7 is out in the world! Here’s where you can get your copies:

Direct from UFO Publishing – Print – $15.99
Direct from UFO Publishing – E-book – $5.99
Amazon
B&N
Kobo
Apple
Google

The ebook is officially released. Technically, the paperback will be out early next month and we won’t ship out paperback orders until then (for the simple reason that we’re still waiting on our copies ourselves) but if you want to get a copy sooner, you can already order it from Amazon (and they’ll send it to you fast, if you have Prime.) Otherwise, it’ll be available next week elsewhere, or just get your ebook copy now!

#SFWAPro

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Final Week of the UFO7 Kickstarter

August 25, 2018

 

There’s only 5 days left! If you enjoy Unidentified Funny Objects, please consider preordering the current volume on Kickstarter. It will help me keep the series going and get you a great book in time for the holidays!

Click here to visit the Kickstarter page.

#SFWAPro

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Health Update and a Collection of Links

August 17, 2018

This past Tuesday I had a thyroidectomy performed at Mt. Sinai hospital. They removed half my thyroid and a large goiter that grew from it into the chest under the sternum. This is an outpatient procedure and I was able to go home the same evening, but I’ve been pretty useless and staying off the internet for a few days as I recovered from the surgery The good news is that the procedure went well, and even better news is that the growth they removed was benign. I’m still going to take it easy for a few more days, but at least I feel capable of doing some work on the computer. Which is good timing as I have a number of cool links to share today:

 

1. Rick Liebling interviewed me at his Medium blog, The Adjacent Possible, about Future SF, translation, and international SF/F. There’s some great content there and I wholeheartedly recommend checking the blog out for more than just my interview. I especially enjoyed this Q&A with Nick Farmer, a linguist for The Expanse TV show.

2. On the Analog blog today there’s an interview with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and me where we delve a little deeper into our story “The People v Craig Morrison” — this is the second and different post from the one I shared about a month ago, and I truly appreciate Analog giving us so much bandwidth to talk about our writing as well as other stuff we really like!

3. Quick Sips by Charles Payseur has a wonderful and in-depth review of “Copy Cat.” If you haven’t read this quirky story co-written by K. A. Teryna and me, it’s free to read online at Strange Horizons.

4. The kickstarter campaign for Unidentified Funny Objects 7 is ongoing, but we’re falling a bit behind, and even more so due to my lack of promotion and activity this week. Please consider supporting this project and/or sharing it with other interested readers!

#SFWAPro

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

UFO7 Cover and TOC Reveal

July 24, 2018

Unidentified Funny Objects 7 cover by Tomasz Marosnki

 

Unidentified Funny Objects 7 will be published in October/November 2018 time frame and include 20 humorous short stories:

“The Dragon, the Drudge, and the Drone” by Esther Friesner
“Dethroning the Champeen” (a Lucifer Jones tale) by Mike Resnick
“The Vampire’s Apprentice” by Gini Koch
“Falling’s Free, Gravity Costs” by Seanan McGuire
“The Sit Down” by Laura Resnick
“Chad vs. the Rebel Alliance” by Shane Halbach
“Old School: An Oral History of Captain Dick Chase” by Val Nolan
“Quick Cash in the Old Kingdom” by Elin Korund
“The Fermi Loneliness Problem” by Beth Goder
“The Secret Destiny of Heroes” by Matthew Bailey
“Spear Carrier’s Union #109” by Jamie Kress
“The Day After Halloween” by Greg Sisco
“Key Fang and Klaw” by Fred Stesney
“The Assassination of 2063” by David Vaughan
“Bimple Bimple Bop Bop” by Richard Anderson
“The Ebony Egg” by David Vierling
“Take Meme to Your Leader” by Jennifer Lee Rossman
“Mission Log Nuptuals” by Langley Hyde
“Contractual Obligations” by C. Flynt
“Three Ways to Leave Hawaii” by Zach Shephard

It will also include nine original interior illustrations by Barry Munden.

Barry's illustration for Jennifer Lee Rossman's "Take Meme to Your Leader"

Barry’s illustration for Jennifer Lee Rossman’s “Take Meme to Your Leader”

I’ve launched the Kickstarter campaign for this book which will run through August 30. It features a number of unique rewards as well as the chance to order UFO7 and other UFO Publishing books. Although I normally launch the Kickstarter in March followed by the open submission window in April, I was unable to do so this year due to a variety of health-related issues and deadlines for both writing-related projects and my day job. So I’m doing this very late in the game, but hope everyone’s enthusiasm for the project will not have been lessened by this delay!

Click here to view the Kickstarter campaign.

#SFWAPro

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

UFO7 Submissions Update – 3 days to go!

April 27, 2018

* We have received approximately 600 submissions this month.

* The first 20 stories currently in the queue are being held for further consideration. There are 38 stories total in the queue at the moment.

* If your story is in that first 20, you likely won’t hear from us until sometime in May, depending on how quickly we conquer the slush pile after submissions close.

* Submissions will close late night on April 30 (no earlier than midnight PST and probably on early morning May 1.) Late subs will not be considered after that.

* We’ve responded to most submissions in under 48 hours, and many under 24. Send more stories!

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Two weeks in, a UFO7 submissions update

April 13, 2018

UFO7 submissions opened two weeks ago and my team and I have been reading non-stop.

We have reviewed and rejected approximately 325 stories to date. There are fifteen stories held in the second-look pile. Those stories are in all sorts of stages; some have made it into our final consideration stack while others have been read by one or two of the associate editors and are awaiting further evaluation.

There’s another small handful that haven’t been read yet. At this point we’re responding to most submissions in under 24 hours; the unread stories all came in today.

There’s plenty of room in the book yet, so please do send in your fiction. Don’t wait til the last possible moment; at this time highter-tier rejections include an invitation to submit a second story. We will not be doing that toward the very end of the submissions window because there’s always a big surge at the end (I expect 100+ submissions in the last 24 hours) and we know we’ll be busy. So submitting early might earn you a second shot.

#SFWAPro

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

UFO7 Submissions Open

April 1, 2018

Submissions are now open for UFO7. A brief reminder of the common problems in the slush pile:

* We’re looking for humorous stories. If you send us a Hugo-worthy horror/drama/whatever story that isn’t humor you’re wasting your time and ours, because even if we love it a lot, we can’t use/buy it.

* One submission per author, unless you’ve been explicitly and directly invited to send another.

* The word count range we’re looking for is 500 to 5000 words. Not 250. Not 5500. If you’re off by more than a handful of words, we won’t appreciate that.

* Don’t go for the low-hanging fruit. In any given year there will be a dozen deal-with-the-devil stories, another dozen fairy tale retellings, and a brainless amount of zombie stories. Not that we will never buy those themes — we’ve published a little bit of each — but you’ll improve your odds a lot by sending us something original and surprising.

* We’re not the right market for stories written mostly to showcase how much you hate Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, or anyone in-between. You’re welcome to take pot shots at either, but if those pot shots are the main point of your story, we aren’t interested.

* We’re especially interested in translations as well as submissions from authors for whom English isn’t their native language. We love seeing stories from previously unpublished authors. We welcome submissions from writers of all genders and backgrounds. Ultimately though, no matter who you are, all we really care about is how good and funny the story you sent us is.

With all that in mind, send your stories here:

https://alexshvartsman.com/ufo-unidentified-funny-objects/

#SFWAPro

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Where is the UFO7 Kickstarter?

March 5, 2018

 

Several folks have reached out to me this week to ask why this year’s UFO Kickstarter campaign has not been launched. In the past several years I ran the campaign in March and followed it with an open submission window in April. First of all, thank you for the concern! Please do not worry, UFO7 will be published on schedule and we’ll open to submissions on April 1 as promised. However, I’ve decided to run the campaign after the submissions close, probably starting around mid-May this year. There are several reasons for this:

 

  • Late last year I ran a (much smaller) campaign to fund my second collection, The Golem of Deneb Seven and Other Stories. While I doubt many people would mind, I still feel somewhat uncomfortable asking friends and fans for more money before I deliver that book. Golem should be ready in about a month, but not in time for an early March campaign.
  • Running a crowdfunding campaign is really hard work, and I hope that some additional signal boosting from 20+ authors will make reaching our goal a bit easier. To be clear, no one is expected to help promote the campaign. This will be purely voluntary.
  • Due to various other projects and business obligations, this March is an especially tough month for me to run the campaign in.

 

This is a bit of a risk for me. I will accept stories and pay ten cents per word, just like last years, assuming the campaign will fund. If it does not, I will pay everyone out of my own pocket. I may look for ways to lower the upfront costs a bit (such as printing the anthology via Print on Demand instead of an offset run) but none of those measures will jeopardize the quality of the stories, the layout, and all the other things you might care about as a reader. At the end of the day, I feel reasonably confident that there are enough people out there who want to read the books and for the series to continue and that the campaign will fund.

In any case, you have a month or so to get those stories ready. My team and I can’t wait to get reading!

#SFWAPro

 

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman