cgmod

So very much to mention, I’m going to do bullet points and try to keep everything short!

• As I posted about last night, Issue 15 has been released! The Any Previous Genre issue came out brilliantly. It’s all free on the site, please enjoy!
• As I also posted about last night, today is also the release day for Crossed Genres Year One, our first anthology! Thus far response has been excellent. If you have a copy, please consider blogging about it, or leaving a review on Amazon – it would really help us out!
• Another very easy way to help out would be to please fill out our short survey about print subscriptions to Crossed Genres. A number of people have asked us about them and we’d like to gauge interest.
• We ended up with a decent number of submissions for the Steampunk issue, thanks to a large rush right near the end. For some reason this month saw more submissions with disqualifying errors than we’ve ever seen before – lots of subs that were too long, too short, not the right genre, or mediums we don’t publish. Kay and I will be doing some heavy reading the next few days.
• Also, for some reason people seem to think that long titles are required for Steampunk: we received 18 submissions with 4 or more words in the title, 12 with 5 or more, and 6 with 6 or more. The longest had 14 words. We don’t object to long titles, but this collection was rather startling.
• We are now accepting submissions for stories with AntiHeroes! Also, we’ve extended the number of Upcoming Genres we reveal through the next FIVE issues. Hopefully this will give some of you more time to plan and work on your submissions.
• February will be the last chance to read or purchase Issue 4: CRIME. Those of you who’ve discovered CG recently might not know it, but when we started out we couldn’t afford to compensate our contributors except with copies of the magazine. Issue 4 was the first month for which we began offering token payments (and coincidentally, saw us double the number of submissions we received). Crime was a really terrific issue with some great fiction. Please take a look while you still can.
• Finally: There are now more than 120 contributions to Post a Story For Haiti. It’s all free to read, but please consider donating to the relief efforts! The initial emergency may be faded, but Haiti is stil suffering, and will be for a very long time.

Post title from the poem “Blackbird, Fly” by E.J. Graff
carved into the brick ground in the subway station in Davis Square, Somerville, MA

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

Crossed Genres is immensely proud to announce the official release of our first yearly anthology, Crossed Genres Year One!

CGY1 is a collection of stories selected by the editors – one from each of the first twelve issues.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
01 (SciFi & Fantasy) – The Time of Tales by C.L. Rossman
02 (Dystopian) – Back To the Beginning by Marilou Goodwin
03 (Romance) – A Crazy Kind of Love by Jeremy Zimmerman
04 (Crime) – The Near-Sighted Sentinel by Adam King
05 (Humor) – Condiment Wars by Jill Afzelius
06 (Western) – Red Dust by Amanda Lord
07 (Urban) – Deacon Carter’s Last Dime by Nathan Crowder
08 (Anthropomorphism) – The Strangler Fig by Jennifer D. Munro
09 (Alternate History) – The Bat And the Blitz by Erika Tracy
10 (Child Fiction) – The Good Old-Fashioned Kind of Water by Camille Alexa
11 (Horror) – The Drain by M. Palmer
12 (LGBTQ) – Cold by Melissa S. Green

The beautiful cover art is titled “Broomstick Aviation” and was provided by Nicc Balce.

Crossed Genres Year One is available in print from Amazon and Createspace for $9.99. It’s also available for download directly from us as a PDF.

cgmod

Crossed Genres is proud to announce the release of our fifteenth issue! This issue combines science fiction and fantasy with several genres which were featured in previous issues!

ARTWORK

Cover: So Much For the Fourth Wall by Nicc Balce

FICTION
The Turk in the Basement by Jason S. Ridler
The Seder Guest by Barbara Krasnoff
Keeli’s Ordeal by Scott H Andrews
Caretaker by Marilou Goodwin
The Prince of Artemis V by Jennifer Brozek

ARTICLE
Writing Our Own (Alternate) Histories: Fanwork As Folklore by C.A. Young

We’re thrilled with how this wonderful and eclectic issue came out! Please go, read and view, and enjoy!

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

The end of the month is fast approaching (Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!) and that means a lot of things:

February 1 will see the official release of Crossed Genres Year One, our anthology of collected work from the first year of the magazine! The anthology will be available through Amazon and Createspace, as well as for digital download from the CG website. In case you missed it before, here’s what the cover looks like:

Other stuff:

Post title from the poem “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

Crossed Genres is excited to announce that we will publish Kelly Jennings’ novel Broken Slate.

Raised in New Orleans, Kelly Jennings teaches writing and literature at the University of Fort Smith-Arkansas. She is partway through a five-book series about Martin Eduardo and the contract labor revolution on Julian. The first book, Martin’s War, is due out with Verb Noire press early in 2010. A short story set in the same universe, Lunch Money, was published in issue 13 of Crossed Genres.

A prequel to Martin’s War, Broken Slate explores a time before the revolution, when Martin was a contract – little better than a slave. In this tense and personal story, Martin is forced to confront the reality that he has greater responsibilities than to himself.

Broken Slate will be serialized for subscribers on the Crossed Genres website beginning in July 2010. After the serialization is complete, Crossed Genres will publish Broken Slate in its entirety.

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

People have started receiving their copies of Crossed Genres Year One! Thus far, everyone seems very pleased. Yay! We’d love to hear people’s thoughts.

Except for the online stuff, issue 15 is pretty much finished. I have a couple little things to finalize for the .prc (mobi pocket) edition, but the print and .pdf are set. And we’ve decided not to issue Kindle editions for the foreseeable future.

We’re still lagging with Steampunk submissions! You have 9 days left to get your stories to us!

A ton more writers have contributed stories to Post a Story For Haiti, bringing the total to 113 contributions! That’s all FREE stories, poetry and artwork! Please go enjoy some of the contributions, and thank the contributors by donating to the Haitian relief efforts. This disaster will take decades to recover from, and help is needed just as much now as it was when the first earthquake struck.

Other than the above, we’ve primarily been working on future planning, specifically something we’ll be announcing in mid-March. Kay’s also been communicating with artists and writers for future issues, and we’ve both been working on promotion. We’re also gearing up for February 1, which is a double release day: Issue 15 (Any Previous Genre) and our anthology, Crossed Genres Year One!

One last reminder: In 9 days, Issue 3 (Romance) will disappear forever! Go read it before it’s too late, and consider buying a copy (only $5!).

Post title from “Star Trekkin” by The Firm

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

A few days ago I mentioned in a post that Crossed Genres would no longer be offering new releases (of the magazine or otherwise) on Amazon’s Kindle. I’ve gotten a few queries as to why, so I’ll give a brief answer.

First, understand that Kindle has been kind of a pain in the ass for us. The actual creation process is generally fairly simple, but we’ve had some larger problems, including:

• A long time ago (maybe 9 or 10 months), I tried to contact Kindle about setting up customer subscriptions to the Crossed Genres Kindle edition. They never responded. So I tried again. Still nothing. I could only conclude that Kindle isn’t interested in making “small fry” subscriptions available.
• Back on January 2 I posted about Amazon’s absurd email regarding our right to publish CG content. Go read that post for details.

These things didn’t leave us with the best feelings regarding Kindle, but on their own weren’t quite enough to make us abandon the format altogether.

What really has been frustrating us, especially over the last few months, is Amazon’s insistence that they are licensing books to customers – not selling them. Cory Doctorow gives a good summation of the problem here. This, coupled with the fact that we are firmly anti-DRM, means that we can’t in good conscience continue to publish our content with them. We don’t want to support digital publishing methods we don’t believe in.

Crossed Genres will continue to be available on .pdf and .prc (mobi pocket) for download, as well as in print. We’re also going to explore possibly publishing through Fictionwise (if they start accepting new publishers again) or Smashwords. If Amazon ever pulls its collective head out of whatever dark crevasse it’s in, then we’ll reconsider this decision.

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

(NOTE: This post was supposed to go out on Tuesday the 19th. I have no idea why it was saved as a draft instead. Better late than never, I suppose.)

Just a few quick things tonight:

Post title from the poem “Casey At the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
First published in the San Francisco Examiner on June 3, 1888

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

When we got back from shopping this afternoon, Kay and I found two big boxes waiting for us. They contained this:

That’s 100 copies of the anthology! We’re so very excited to have them in hand. They look absolutely perfect. Here’s a close-up of the cover:

We’ll be packing them for shipment this weekend; Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and all post offices are closed, so we’ll be shipping them out first thing on Tuesday.

Post a Story For Haiti has 59 listings now! Even better, we’ve gotten a number of confirmations for some donations made to charities helping Haiti. Huge, HUGE thanks to everyone who contributed in any way, and to those who helped the Haitian people through other means. Help will still be needed as time goes on, so let’s do our part to keep donations from lagging.

We still need STEAMPUNK submissions! We are FAR behind on submissions this month! Please get your stories in, and if you know people or writing groups who may have something to submit, please tell them about us!

One final thing: We have decided that, beginning immediately, Crossed Genres magazine will no longer be published on Kindle. We have various reasons for this, which I’ll go into in greater detail in a future post when it’s not 1 in the morning.

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

We’ve been talking about what, if anything, we could do to help with the crisis in Haiti (beyond donating ourselves).

Because we’re a magazine, the first idea we had was to involve writers and artists. So we’ve started Post a Story For Haiti. We’ve asked anyone who wants to help to post fiction and art to their blogs, sites, etc. for free, with big DONATE buttons at the top and/or bottom that links to Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross and Rainbow Fund, or any of the organizations participating in the relief efforts. That way even writers/artists who struggle financially as we do can lend a hand.

We’ve created a page on the CG website, http://crossedgenres.com/haiti/, where we’re keeping a growing list of participants with links to their stories and art. There’s already a number of great stories there. Please go read and enjoy them. And afterwards, if you’d like to show appreciation and help a huge humanitarian effort at the same time, donate to one of the charities or organizations.

If you’d like to participate by adding a story or artwork, please check out the page and join in. Any questions, please email us at haiti@crossedgenres.com. We hope that this will become a large group effort which offers a way to help the Haitian relief efforts for many people who wanted to, but didn’t think they could.

Thanks,
Bart & Kay

P.S. – this is voluntary on everyone’s part, including our own. The authors, Crossed Genres, and the two of us, won’t touch a single cent from this. We just want to help.

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

Crossed Genres is very proud to announce that our first accepted novel, A Festival of Skeletons, has begun its serial run on the website.

Ebeneezer Sink knows when people will die. It’s a useful talent for a mortician, but when someone starts raising the dead, Sink must hoist his fishnets, find a serial killer, and save the city from a crazed necromancer (really, is there any other kind?).

If only it were that simple…

RJ Astruc’s darkly comic novel will be serialized exclusively for subscribers on the Crossed Genres website. At the end of its serialization, A Festival of Skeletons will be published in its entirety by Crossed Genres.

Subscribers can follow this link to begin reading A Festival of Skeletons. If you wish to subscribe to gain access, please go here.

For more information please contact Crossed Genres (questions@crossedgenres.com).

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

I’m going to make a concerted effort now to get back to making at least a small post each day.

Today the print edition of Issue 15 was finalized submitted and approved, the proof was ordered and shipped. Yup, all in one day. Awesome. I’m very excited to see this one. It’s really a magnificent issue; we had such an amazing pool of work to choose from, and the cover is just vibrant and killer.

Still haven’t gotten the copies of the anthology. But it’s only been 6 days, and we ordered 100. Patience! (That was a reminder for me, not you.)

Submissions to STEAMPUNK have been slow! Let’s pick it up! Make it hot! More strange euphemisms!

A Festival of Skeletons begins its serialization on Friday! I just this morning made the final website changes pre-release. I may do an overhaul for it before February’s chapter release, but it’s pretty nice as is. Remember, only subscribers get to read Festival – so this sounds like a great time to subscribe, doesn’t it? only $0.83 per month!

Speaking of subscribers, we’re shortly going to do a test run of another benefit we may be offering regularly, depending on how well the test is received. I’d meant to have it about ready now, but I got hit with a migraine last night and it killed my productivity. I’ll try to get it sorted in the next few days. Subscribers, make note: there will be prizes!

Is anyone going to be at Boskone (2/12-2/14) or PAX East (3/26-3/28)? We’ll definitely be at Boskone, and we’re at least meeting up with a friend at PAX. Natania Barron, one of our lovely slush readers, will be in town for PAX with her family; she and her husband will be there, and will(ETA: hopefully) be doing a couple panels. Go see them!

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

Amazing how things can just come together and make us giddy with their beauty and awesomeness.

Last night we approved the final version of the anthology, and ordered 100 (!) copies. Yikes! Early next week I’m going to prep the labels and mailers so we can send out the preorders and contributor copies as soon as we get them. The anthology is brilliant, let me tell you; tonight I may post a first look at the cover. Remember, the release date is February 1.

And speaking of covers, we’ve got the final version of the issue 15 cover art in hand. It’s by the talented Nicc Balce, whose work also graces the anthology cover, and is titled “So Much for the 4th Wall”. I can tell you that the title is quite appropriate. Also, this cover makes me VERY glad that we do wraparound covers, maybe moreso than any previous cover. Although the front is stunning and exciting on its own, this piece really couldn’t be fully captured without the landscape layout.

Issue 15 is chugging along. Everyone who submitted something to us should have received an email by now. If you haven’t, please send a query! Kelly has been doing fabulous work with the editing again. We also got a terrific article for the issue from C.A. Young, whose story Finished was in our LGBTQ issue.

Submissions to the Steampunk issue have been a bit slow. Help us get the word out: we want steampunk!

Aleta Johansen’s In the Image And Likeness, which appears in our anthropomorphism issue, was chosen as a Featured Story on Lit Drift! Congrats, Aleta!

The website is just about ready for the beginning of our serialization of RJ Astruc’s A Festival of Skeletons. Only one more week!

Post title from “Shadow Stalker” by Heather Alexander, based on Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

Speaking of “negotiating”: Who wants to nominate Crossed Genres for a Hugo award? We’re eligible! Although we know we wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, being nominated would be a dream come true, literally. If you’re eligible to nominate for the Hugos, please consider Crossed Genres!

Things are coming along nicely. We have so many things going on it’s hard to track them all, but that’s what lists are for. Lists, and schedules, and long planning discussions.

We have made our final choices for issue 15. Most people have been emailed, but not all… there were SO MANY submissions that it’s taking us a while to respond to everyone. Hopefully everyone will have heard from us by tomorrow night.

The proof copy of the anthology came yesterday, and it is beautiful! Unsurprisingly, there were a few tweaks to be made (though only to the cover – we couldn’t find a single thing wrong with the inside! Awesome!), so we made the corrections and resubmitted it. Another proof was shipped this morning at 4:09 am, so hopefully we’ll get a perfect proof in hand by Friday or Saturday… and if so, we’ll place an order for all the copies we’ll need to fill all preorders and contributor copies! Woo! We haven’t had that many copies in hand since issue 1; I can’t wait!

Submissions for the Steampunk issue are coming in; not at the same rate as last month, but that would have been astounding. We want more! Steampunk yay!

I have a couple additions to Things Not To Do When Submitting:

Only 10 days until we begin serializing RJ Astruc’s novel A Festival of Skeletons in the Subscriber’s Area! We’re really excited!

Post title is from Ani DiFranco’s “Overlap”

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

We have almost dug ourselves out from the veritable mountain of submissions to the Any Previous Genre issue. Wow, people – we are just flabbergasted. We surpassed our previous highest submission total by forty-three percent. 43. Point-nine, to be exact. Unbelievable.

After passing through our slush reading process, a little less than half of the stories were passed to me and Kay, and we just now (at about 1 am) finished reading them all. We narrowed it down to about 20, and from there narrowed it down again, all the way to 12… from which we will select 5. Tomorrow will involve a vicious, no-hold-barred battle between Kay and I for those 5 spots.

Meanwhile:

The Folklore issue has come out;
we’re now accepting submissions to the Steampunk issue;
still haven’t gotten the proof of the anthology, but I’m expecting it on Monday;
Earlier I blogged about standing up to the Man (Amazon);
I’m going to bed.

Post title from “Dig A Hole In the Ground” by Fred Small

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

Kind of. Amazon tried to give us some trouble with the Kindle edition of issue 14.

On December 27, I created the new Kindle release in the online “Shelf”, as they call it. I entered all the information and uploaded the file and cover.

At the time, I noted that Amazon had added an additional step that hadn’t been there when I’d created the issue 13 Kindle. The new step, titled “Confirm Content Rights”, has 2 steps:

A. Enter the territories for which you have all rights necessary to make the content available for marketing, distribution and sale [2 choices: 'Worldwide rights - all territories' and 'Individual territories - select territories']

B. I confirm that I have all rights necessary to make the content available for marketing, distribution and sale: [has a tick-box which says "I confirm that I have the right to upload this content"]

I noted this new step but didn’t have a problem with it: after all, we DO have all necessary rights to distribute the content of Crossed Genres issues, so I had no compunctions about indicating that. I completed the upload and selected “Publish”. A note appeared in My Shelf saying the title would be reviewed and I should check back in 48-72 hours. This review period is also a relatively new addition to the process – items used to go through immediately. But even so, I’d seen the review period the past couple of issues, and since each issue had eventually been published without problems, I didn’t think much of it.

On December 28, I received the following email from Amazon, reproduced exactly except for email addresses and Title information (and I bolded the section that caused the most consternation):

Alert from Amazon DTP

From: Amazon.com Customer Service ([EMAIL REMOVED])
Sent: Mon 12/28/09 1:27 PM
To: [EMAIL REMOVED] ([EMAIL REMOVED])
Cc: [EMAIL REMOVED] ([EMAIL REMOVED])

Dear Publisher,

We are contacting you regarding the following title(s) you have uploaded for sale through the Kindle store:

Crossed Genres Issue 14 by [TITLE INFORMATION REMOVED

We are interested in making your title(s) available for customers to purchase in the Kindle Store, but we would like to first confirm that you are certain you are authorized to sell the title(s), and if you are certain that you are, receive documentation from you confirming your authorization. Please reply to [EMAIL REMOVED] within 10 days, with your confirmation and with appropriate documentation of your e-book rights for your title(s).

Specifically if you are not the author of the title, please confirm that you have all rights necessary to distribute the title in eBook format, and provide any written documentation you have from the author or other copyright owner of the title (such as a contract or other written authorization) which gives you all rights necessary to distribute the title in eBook format, or any other documentation or evidence you have of your copyright ownership (such as a copyright registration number).

If you are the author of the title(s) and you have retained the eBook rights to the title(s), please confirm that you are the author of the title and that you have retained the eBook rights to the title, and provide any documentation or other evidence you may have of your ownership (such as a copyright registration number).

If the title is also published in physical format, and you are affiliated with or otherwise have a relationship with the publisher of the physical book, please explain your relationship with the publisher of the physical book and provide any documentation you may have of your relationship.

We look forward to making the title available to Kindle customers as quickly as possible.

Thank you,
Amazon.com

I had two initial reactions to this: One, why would they have added the “Confirm Content Rights” section to the creation process if they were going to do this? and Two: They expect us to send them copies of our private, signed contracts?

I have no idea if other companies do this, or try to. But the second I read this, I knew there was no way we would ever send them the copies. Those contracts are private legal documents between us and our contributors, and frankly none of their damned business. Showing Amazon those documents would do absolutely nothing to further indemnify them from responsibility if we did publish something without legal right. I talked with Kay about this and we agreed on all points.

On Tuesday the 29th, I sent back this reply (Again, exactly as sent except without contact information):

RE: Alert from Amazon DTP

From: Bart Leib ([EMAIL REMOVED])
Sent: Tue 12/29/09 1:09 PM
To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Cc: Kay Holt ([EMAIL REMOVED])

Hello,

My name is Bart Leib. I am co-owner of Crossed Genres magazine (http://crossedgenres.com). The title your email mentioned is issue # 14 of our monthly magazine.

Crossed Genres is a registered Sole Proprietorship in Massachusetts. We license the rights for all the writing and art we publish from the authors/artists, just as any magazine would.

I must confess I’m somewhat bemused by this email. You actually want us to send you copies of our licensing contracts? Up to this point you’ve published Issues 5 through 13 of our magazine on the Kindle, without needing this, and I’d like to know if something has changed to cause you to make such a request now. Has there been a complaint about us? To our knowledge we have never broken a law or copyright with our publications and know of no reason why anyone would think we had.

Moreover, when I entered the appropriate information for this title on the Kindle site on My Shelf, under section 2 (”Confirm Content Rights”), I was required to indicate and confirm officially that “I have all rights necessary to make the content available for marketing, distribution and sale”. I fail to see how that could be insufficient enough for your company that you would then make this further request: if that indication wasn’t enough, why have it at all?

Crossed Genres will be happy to provide a written statement declaring that we have the legal right to publish any work we upload for publication on Kindle. But we do not intend to provide copies of our signed, private, proprietary business contracts; no one could expect Amazon to disclose its own contracts, so neither should Amazon expect anyone to share documentation of that sort. Crossed Genres has done nothing to warrant any suspicion and we feel the request for our private contracts is inappropriate. If this means Amazon is unwilling to publish our magazine on the Kindle any longer, we will rely on our other avenues of digital publication.

Sincerely,

Bart R. Leib
Co-Owner, Crossed Genres
http:/crossedgenres.com

We were absolutely serious about our willingness to abandon Kindle, by the way. Just in case anyone was wondering. We honestly had no idea how Amazon would respond; on the one hand, we’re small potatoes and they might not care enough to give us more trouble, but on the other hand this could have been some new policy that they were going to be hard-assed about.

We were pleased (and a bit relieved) to have Amazon choose the former. On Thursday the 31st, after not hearing anything, I checked and discovered that, according to My Shelf, the issue had been published. A quick check of Amazon.com found the Kindle edition available to purchase. When I checked my email, I found this waiting:

Alert from Amazon DTP

From: Amazon.com Customer Service ([EMAIL REMOVED])
Sent: Thu 12/31/09 9:17 AM
To: [EMAIL REMOVED] ([EMAIL REMOVED])
Cc: [EMAIL REMOVED] ([EMAIL REMOVED])

Dear Publisher,

We’ve published your Kindle book labeled:

Crossed Genres Issue 14

It’ll be available for sale on our website within 24-48 hours.

Thank you,
Amazon.com

We didn’t want to deal with an argument with Amazon, so we’re happy to have it essentially go away. But I have to wonder: why did they ask in the first place? How did the people who read my email react? Did they drop it because we’re small potatoes, or because it was a fight they didn’t want to to be part of (or some of both)? I have lots of theories and no answers. I’d certainly be curious to hear speculation if you’ve got some.

And now I get to wonder: next month when I submit issue 15, am I going to hear about this again?

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

Crossed Genres issue 14: FOLKLORE has been released!

ART:
Cover: A Magical Oak by Nicolas Gouny:

FICTION:
Man-Driven Steel by Ryan Kinkor
The Vanishing Sea by Caleb Jordan Schulz
Gaasyendietha by Marie Robertson
The Flute-Maker’s Daughter by Jessica J. Lee
The Tree by C.W. Johnson
Sealskin by Ann Chatham

A beautiful cover and some sharp, strong writing this month! Please read, enjoy, and leave the writers and artist a comment or two!

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

The biggest news now: the anthology has been finalized! Everything’s approved and I’ve ordered the proof copy (with extra-speedy shipping). The hope is that we’ll have it by this Saturday; if not, probably Monday. And if it looks half as amazing in print as it did in the final design then I will be very pleased.

Submissions to Issue 15 are still pouring in – we’re around 20% over our previous highest total. In hindsight I probably should have expected it considering this is the only time we’ve ever offered 14 monthly themes all at once

I’m also happy to see that we’ve received a fair number of international submissions, from 8 countries outside the US spanning 4 continents. I’m not sure what sort of percentages are usual for other markets – we just like seeing international subs.

The online prep for Issue 14 is coming along. I’ll be dedicating tomorrow exclusively to it, and hopefully get it all done. I don’t usually leave it this late in the month; I hate feeling rushed. I’ll be more on top of it next month.

Today I ordered some padded mailers for shipping the anthology preorders (and contributor copies). Going to have a heck of a post office run in a few weeks!

One last thing: Thursday is the LAST DAY that our Dystopian issue will be available! On the new year it goes away forever! Go take your last chance to read and/or buy it!

Post title from “Life In A Nutshell” by Barenaked Ladies

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

What an exhausting weekend. Fortunately it was a good one this year for us. Not terribly stressful. Worked off a lot of tension and energy playing the new Wii (our 3-year-old son’s pretty good at it. Who knew?).

We saw that all of you seem to have been busy over the weekend too. I thought we’d see a lull in activity, but we received about a dozen submissions over the weekend! We’re currently sitting at about 10% over our previous highest total. (We love it, keep ‘em coming!) Thankfully our wonderful slush readers have kept right on top of it; however, Kay and I have a ton to read.

Speaking of submissions, we still get numerous submissions that are well under 1000 words. When we say “1000-8000 words FIRM”, we really mean FIRM. Along these lines, I have a couple more Things Not To Do When Submitting:

I’d expected to have very little time to work on CG this weekend, and I was right. But I made the most of the time I had, and got a LOT done. The Kindle, PDF and PRC editions of issue 14 are done. Didn’t take as long as I’d feared… hooray for having a system! I’ve got some work left to do for the online version but other than that, the Folklore issue is complete.

The Anthology is just about ready to put to bed – I think I can wrap it up tonight *KNOCKS WOOD* This is thanks to having received the mind-blowing cover art on the 24th – WOW just doesn’t do it justice.

Only a couple more weeks until we begin the serialization of A Festival of Skeletons in the Subscriber’s Area! We’re very excited!

As always we have a ton in the works; we’re not quite ready to reveal any of it yet, but we’re looking to start something new around the beginning of March, and we’re laying the groundwork for a contest starting in May. More on those once we’ve firmed up our plans.

Post title from “The Hannukah Song” by Adam Sandler

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.

cgmod

(I can’t listen to christmas music unless it’s been originally subversive, or subverted from the classic stuff. Dr. Demento saves me during this time of year.)

A quick note to start: This is the last month to read or purchase our Dystopian issue! Issue 2, originally published on January 1, 2009, is going away forever after December 31! Please go read it before it’s gone, and if you like it, consider picking up a copy before it’s too late (only $5!).

Progress is progressing. We’re in the final stretch with the anthology; barring some horrible disaster *KNOCKS WOOD* we should still be on target time-wise. It’s come together very nicely.

Issue 14 is also shaping up well. The proof arrived an amazing 2 days after we ordered it. Even better, it needs no changes. The cover art turned out to look even better when darkened! Brilliant! I’m still working on the various other editions but they’re coming along.

Submissions to Issue 15 are reaching absurd levels. We are literally 4 submissions shy of matching our highest total ever (during the LGBTQ issue). on the 22nd! I’m sure there’ll be a lull starting anytime now and continuing through the 26th or so, but I expect we’ll get a mini-rush in the last few days. Crazy. The slush readers have done a pretty good job of staying on top of it, but considering the sheer volume of submissions and basic percentages, Kay and I have a LOT of reading to do.

To people submitting to issue 15, the Any Previous Genre issue: Science Fiction is not a previous genre, nor is Fantasy! We’ve received a large number of submissions from people who seem to think that “Any Previous” means “Anything with SF or F in it.” Our first issue had a theme of Science Fiction AND Fantasy – that is, BOTH had to be present in the submissions. We have never accepted submissions for only one or the other (unless they were combined with that month’s genre). Submissions with only SF or F, that don’t also match one of the other previous genres, will be automatically rejected.

We’ve got plenty more in the works, as always – we’re very excited that in just about 3 more weeks, we begin serializing RJ Astruc’s novel A Festival of Skeletons! It’s a wonderful story and we can’t wait to share it! Remember, it’s only in the Subscribers Area, so if you haven’t, now’s a good time to subscribe so you’ll be able to read it!

The next few days will probably see very little in the way of updates as we’ll be preoccupied with other things. Have safe and happy holidays everyone!

Title quote from “Nuttin’ For Christmas” by S. Tepper, R. Bennett (c) 1955, performed by Stan Freberg

Originally published at Crossed Genres. You can comment here or there.