Apex Magazine and Apex Publications Editor Interview: Jason Sizemore
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Apex Magazine, Apex Publications, Jason Sizemore, Magazine Spotlight, Weightless Books
Weightless Books interviews Jason Sizemore, Editor of Apex Magazine and Managing Editor of Apex Publications.
Q: In June 2015, you announced that you quit your day job to work on Apex Magazine and Apex Publications full time. From all appearances, that seems to be going quite well, but tell the truth – is your household eating more Ramen noodles as a result?
Sizemore: In college, I once bought a crate of Ramen noodles at the local Costco. 144 little packets of delight.
After I ate the last one, I vowed NEVER AGAIN.
Your question has made me ill with memories!
Q: Apex Magazine and Apex Publications continue to win awards as do the stories, novels, and collections you publish. Most recently, “This is Horror” named Apex Magazine the fiction magazine of the year and Apex Publication’s Sing Me Your Scars by Damien Angelica Walters as the short story collection of the year. What other awards would you most like to win?
Sizemore: Although I covet and desire any and all awards, the two that I would most like to win are a Hugo rocket and a Stoker haunted house. Most visitors to my house know squat about literary awards, but when you have a big silver rocket or an awesome scary house on your mantle, those will draw notice.
I would love to see Sing Me Your Scars win an award. Damien Angelica Walters’ fiction is widely respected and liked, and I think she is deserving of the recognition.
Q: In August 2015, you published For Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small Press Publisher, your collection of semi-true and sometimes humorous essays about how you became the Apex Overlord. Six of the 13 chapters contain eyewitness rebuttals of your statements, and one chapter includes a separate fact-check. Are you a forgiving Overlord, or will those who disagree with you learn the errors of their ways?
Sizemore: Forgiving? Not at all. I remember every slight and askew glance cast my direction!
That said, I do recognize that my perception of events is open to interpretation. Those I wrote about the most—Maurice Broaddus, Sara M. Harvey, and Monica Valentinelli (to name a few)—I felt it only fair to give them an opportunity to have their side of the tale be told. Do I agree with their versions? Mostly, no.
Q: In February 2016, you kickstarted Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling Anthology. Congratulations on exceeding your funding goal! What can the backers and other readers expect to find in this collection?
Sizemore: Jaym Gates and Monica Valentinelli are dynamic and hardworking editors. They’re also perfectionists. I think you’ll find Upside Down reflects that attention to quality.
Here is a free word association I did for Upside Down in preparation for this question: fun, diverse, thoughtful, subversive, Galen Dara art.
Apex Magazine, a three-time Hugo Award finalist and World Fantasy Award-winning online magazine publishing the best horror and science fiction, is available DRM-free from Weightless in single issues and as a 12-month subscription.
Raised in the Appalachian hills of southeastern Kentucky, Jason Sizemore is a three-time Hugo Award-nominated editor, a writer, and operates the science fiction, fantasy, and horror press Apex Publications. He is the author of the collection of dark science fiction and horror shorts Irredeemable and the tell-all creative fiction For Exposure: The Life and Times of a Small Press Publisher. He currently lives in Lexington, KY.
LCRW Guest Editor Interview: Michael J. DeLuca
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Anthropocene, Environmental, Feminism, lady churchill’s rosebud wristlet, LCRW, Magazine Spotlight, Michael J. DeLuca, Solarpunk, Weightless Books
Andrea Pawley interviews Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet guest editor Michael J. DeLuca:
Q: The theme of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet Issue 33 is humanity’s relationship with the earth. When you became the issue’s guest editor, did you anticipate you’d get story submissions from the likes of Sofia Samatar and Carmen Maria Machado?
DeLuca: As a matter of fact, I asked them specifically! Along with a handful of others, though those are the only two I solicited whose work appears in the issue. Which is a bit of a cheat, I admit. One of the reasons I love LCRW is how it has been a showcase for new writers. But I felt an imperative to hedge my bets a little, given that it’s a theme issue, and I am not a known brilliant editor like Gavin and Kelly.
Q: LCRW 33 is filled with female perspectives and a strong undercurrent of feminism. What connections do you see between the two and the future in the age of the anthropocene?
DeLuca: Insofar as there is feminism in the issue — and there absolutely is, and I’m very happy that’s the case — I take no credit for it. I’m as feminist as I think any financially solvent white cis American male can reasonably be expected to be, which is to say not as much as I’d like to be or should be. Women’s voices have been and are institutionally tuned out and devalued as much by the literary establishment as everywhere else. But I really didn’t have to make much conscious effort in that direction for the issue to come out the way it did. I solicited work from some amazing women, and I tried to make clear in the submission call that I was interested in points of view other than my own. But for whatever reason, an overwhelming proportion of the submissions came from women. And I don’t really have an explanation for it. Do women have a stronger relationship with the earth than men? Creative women in particular? I could speculate fancifully about Gaea and the sacred feminine, but I fear I’d be wading in too deep.
I’m not a feminist scholar; I’m married to one, but I only manage to osmose so much. What I think I can say is that the future of the anthropocene has to involve a reevaluating and breaking down of traditional narratives of all stripes. And that absolutely must depend upon empowering women to reshape those narratives. The massive, deleterious effect humanity’s trajectory is having on the earth is the direct result of established, patriarchal modes of thought: the capitalist notion of progress, just to name one. And the people best situated to recognize and question those modes of thought are not the people currently situated to benefit from them, but rather the people they hurt: women, minorities, the disenfranchised, the poor.
Q: If you could make the majority of the world do one thing to benefit the future of the planet, what would it be?
I’m a little wary of wish-fulfillment: anything I say is going to be something that could never really happen in a million years. But okay, in the name of speculative fiction, I’ll speculate.
What if everybody, everywhere, tomorrow, stopped using fossil fuels? There’d be enormous fallout. Economic collapse. Just in terms of food distribution — everything’s globalized, my fruit comes from Chile, my walnuts from California. We’d be forced into an incredibly rapid, drastic period of readjustment. Communities would change overnight. A lot of people would starve. A lot of people would have to relearn how to grow their own food. But in the long run — and I don’t think it would be that long, really, a generation let’s say — I think we’d bounce back, and the world would be so much better for it. We’d have learned a lesson. And meanwhile, the whole rest of the world would have bounced back too: forests, watersheds, animal populations, even the ocean.
But can I actually wish for that, knowing the hardship it would cause? Only in fiction.
Q: What do you see as the future of Solarpunk?
I’m curious about that. It’s a very new idea, new enough I hesitate to even call it a movement. Applied broadly, I think it’s a great idea and I really hope it catches on. In other words, if it’s not really so heavily solar-focused, but is used more as a blanket term for all kinds of speculation, technological and otherwise, about where we could go, all taken in a spirit of optimism and play, that could really be amazing. If you think about it as an answer to cyberpunk rather than or not quite so much as steampunk: cyberpunk actually spawned a lot of real advances; it changed the world more rapidly than maybe any other movement in fiction ever has. But it was, for the most part, cynical. And with good reason. Those advances are all pretty amazing: cryptography, mobile technology, virtual currency, social networking. But they’ve led us to some dark places. If solarpunk starts and grows from a place of progressivism and hope — who knows.
Q: What/who are some of your environmental influences?
How about this? In chronological order by how I encountered them:
1. My family. Camping, hiking, hunting, biking, berry picking, swimming, canoeing, fishing, gardening. Predictable, but it’s how we all learn, or don’t learn, to value the natural world.
2. Thornton W. Burgess, a children’s writer of animal stories from Cape Cod. His animals are anthropomorphized to a great degree, but they also keep to their natural routines and in so doing taught me a lot.
3. Ms. Howland, my middle school English teacher. She introduced me to the greenhouse effect, global warming, extinction, pollution, habitat loss, suburban sprawl, all these concepts of modern conservationism. She also taught me how to edit a story.
4. Henry David Thoreau. “Thoreau” was one of my nicknames in high school. He’s blindly optimistic about some things, very narrow in his views about others — he’s a privileged, classically educated white guy from 19th-century New England, after all. But his prose never fails to blow me away, and his observations of the natural world and human nature and the relationship between them are incredibly perceptive and eye-opening even today.
5. . . . Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Muir, Carlos Castaneda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ray Bradbury, John Crowley, Robert Frost, Kurt Vonnegut, Jon Krakauer, Stephen Harrod Buhner, Paul Stamets, Benjamin Parzybok, Paolo Bacigalupi, Rachel Carson, Mircea Eliade, Werner Herzog, Willa Cather, Elizabeth Dodd, Karen Russell, Karen Joy Fowler. . . .
Note the absurd overbalance of white men. This is my fault, and not because men have or deserve any kind of monopoly on ecological writing or thought. And it’s something I’m trying to correct.
Q: You’re a writer, too. How did that influence what stories you selected for this issue?
Being a writer probably makes me harder to please. Purely idea-based SF doesn’t do it for me anymore, I’ve seen too much of it. Plot-driven fiction has gotten old for me. Likewise, writing that relies on prose fireworks to get away with lack of depth. Because it’s LCRW, there was a certain amount of stylistic consideration that went into my choices — it’s very easy for me at this point, having read many submissions for Gavin and Kelly over many years and also having been a big fan of the final product, to identify an LCRW story. But really, the biggest deciding factor wasn’t about whether it was weird enough or LCRW enough, but just whether it was a good story, whether I got caught up in it, cared about the people in it and felt like it all meant something at the end. To a certain degree, someone who knows how to write and understands the tools of storytelling will be affected in a different way by a story than someone who isn’t in it for the craft. But I think, I hope, a lot of it is universal: the tools for appreciating a good story are written in our bones, right next to the instructions for how to eat and sleep and die and procreate.
Michael J. DeLuca is a fernlike, woody perennial native to the Eastern US, found on hilltops and in woodland clearings from Massachusetts to Michigan. Leaves astringent; strongly tannic; used in teas, to flavor ales and as an aromatic smudge. Flowers late summer in cylindrical catkins. Recent fiction in Ideomancer, Phobos, Betwixt. Tweets @michaeljdeluca.
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is An Occasional Outburst, an arrow shot into the future, a harbinger. Edited since 1996 by Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link. LCRW contributors include many writers whose names you may know and many more whose name you may not — and that there finding and reading unfamiliar voices is one of the joys of existence. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet is available DRM-free in single issues or in a wide range of subscription options, which may or may not include chocolate.
The Dark Magazine is Luminous
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Brooke Wonders, Cassandra Khaw, Magazine Spotlight, Sandra McDonald, The Dark Magazine, Weightless Books
Fantastic stories lurk in The Dark Magazine. You won’t find gore, but you will find a treasure chest of creepiness and strange perspectives.
“Welcome to Argentia” by Sandra McDonald tells of a real place with a real history. The vengeful spirit of Argentia feels real, too. The land haunts and is haunted. It takes the lives it wants, whether shipwreck victims clinging to rocks or pilots in crashed transports. Individuals see glimpses of the land’s haunting before and after the U.S. Navy abandons its World War II base. A young man “looked out his window to see dark horses pulling wooden coffins down the road. There are no horses on the station, and certainly no need for coffins.” Mundane events are made terrible in “Welcome to Argentia.” This story reminds the reader how little control she has if she’s part of a larger narrative. The difference between life and death is less than she likes to think.
To the question of whether “Rumpelstiltskin” should be its own genre, “A Spoke in Fortune’s Wheels” keens yesssss. You remember the Rumplestiltskin story: years of modern retelling have mellowed the tale to something simply about a strange man spinning straw into gold and the price one woman pays for the favor. The story’s not so bad. Just a vehicle for a moral, right? Not the way Brooke Wonders tells it. Like so many other stories in The Dark Magazine, “A Spoke in Fortune’s Wheels” takes fairy tales back to their creepy roots. The girl in this story has a spinning wheel for a head. Nasty things happen to her after she meets the little man. This story disturbs, fascinates, and chills, which are all the right things to do in a horror story.
In “An Ocean of Eyes,” Sigrid (not her real name) tries to convince a brash stranger to leave town. He’s drawn to Ulthar because of a legend he doesn’t believe, and he’s a fool. A town with stories about cats devouring people alive should be avoided. Also, Lovecraft made this place. Cats and their toxoplasmosis victims are wily. Like whatever’s pulling victims into Newfoundland waters, hiding in a favor or lurking in a cat’s meow, the stories in The Dark Magazine sneak up on you. This is a great e-zine.
The Dark Magazine is available DRM-free from Weightless Books in single issues or as a 12-month subscription. “A Spoke in Fortune’s Wheels” by Brooke Wonders and “Welcome to Argentia” by Sandra McDonald are in Issue 7. Cassandra Khaw’s “An Ocean of Eyes” can be found in Issue 8.
Luna Station Quarterly Editor Interview: Jennifer Lyn Parsons
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Jennifer Parsons, Luna Station Quarterly, Magazine Spotlight, Weightless Books, Women’s Fiction
Weightless Books interviews Jennifer Lyn Parsons, editor-in-chief of Luna Station Quarterly, a speculative fiction magazine featuring stories by emerging women authors.
Q: What inspired you to start Luna Station Quarterly five years ago?
Parsons: There was a magical mix of circumstances that gave birth to LSQ. I had been writing fanfic for a while and began branching out into original fiction. I was also unemployed and in a career transition.
While working to find new job (smack in the midst of the Great Recession), I had time on my hands and decided to do something good with it. I started off writing a short story a week for a year. It was a haul, but I had a pile of stories at the end.
As I searched for places to submit, I found a lot of chatter about the lack of safe spaces for new writers, particularly women. This was before the ‘geek girl’ movement started, and it really did feel like women were in some kind of weird minority. Not that there were no women authors anywhere, but the balance always seemed out of whack considering how many wonderful writers I knew when I was writing fanfic, where women outnumber men by a vast majority. There was a disconnect between my experiences, and I sought out a way to reconcile them.
I had done a fair bit of beta reading for people and was a lifelong reader, so I felt I knew a good story when I saw it. I also had a background in graphic design and web development. Armed with that knowledge, I set about building a place where emerging women writers like myself could find a home for their stories.
Q: From the way Luna Station Quarterly authors are promoted to the long list of editorial, social media, blog, and special projects staff, the magazine has a very collaborative feel. What was your journey like from a one-woman show five years ago to an army of supporters and collaborators?
Parsons: I am very lucky, for starters. In the beginning it was just me, sorting out everything. Within the first couple of issues, things started to be a bit much to handle on my own. A wonderful problem to have, right? I reached out to Evan Mariah Petit, my first assistant editor, because she had been so supportive from the first issue. As things kept growing, I kept asking for help and got it.
Last year really kicked things up a notch when I was finally able to fulfill a big dream for the site: starting a regular blog filled with columns, reviews, etc. by LSQ authors as well as a group of wonderful women from outside the community.
I also added special projects staff to accommodate our upcoming print projects in celebration of our 5th anniversary. Seeing LSQ in print for the first time is so amazingly exciting.
The journey, has always been organic, with growth coming steadily with every issue. And I’ve been lucky enough to be able to put a hand out for help and have it answered when I feel like it’s time to take on the next big step.
Q: How do you know when you get a submission that’s a good fit for Luna Station Quarterly?
Parsons: To me the hallmark of a stellar story is when I can answer “yes” to a few simple questions: “Would I read this again?” and “Does it stick in my mind in a good way?” This is an important question because I will indeed have to read it at least a few more times throughout the production process. The story needs to stand up to multiple readings by the staff. And if we can see ourselves enjoying it, or being challenged by it, over and over, we know our readers will, too.
Other than that, it’s an open field. We paint a wide swathe across the speculative fiction label. Weird urban stories, straight up fairy tales, hard sci-fi, and honestly a lot of things I don’t think you’d see elsewhere.
I love seeing women authors take on writing male characters with integrity, but I also have no problem publishing a work where a woman’s sexual agency is integral to the story.
Q: You’ve been an avid comic book reader since you were a young teenager. Has your taste in comics changed over the years?
Parsons: It’s funny, it has changed vastly, but then lately it’s come full circle. I started out reading comics in the early ’90s, when Sandman was THE title and read a lot of Vertigo or indie comics, along with a bit of X-Men.
A decade later, I was deep into DC and my childhood love of Batman, as well as great characters like Barbra Gordon who, as Oracle, became a hero with her geek cred and awesome glasses.
When DC rebooted everything a few years ago, I found myself floating back to my indie roots. Now I’m digging Keiron Gillen’s stuff, loving Becky Cloonan’s art like mad, and trying to get everyone to read Lumberjanes. There are some exciting things going on right now.
The great thing about comics is there’s always something new, and the stories are never constrained to any particular genre. Like any other great medium, you can tell any kind of story you want.
Q: What are you reading now besides submissions for Luna Station Quarterly?
Parsons: As of the moment, I’m between books! I’ve been bouncing between non-fiction and fiction this year. Consider the Fork is next on my, ahem, plate and I’m looking for a new fantasy to get my attention. The Norse myths are a perennial, and I’m dipping into some poetry by Mary Oliver.
Q: What else do you do when you’re not editing Luna Station Quarterly?
Parsons: How long do we have? By day I’m a web developer, making the internet less broken than it was yesterday.
By night, I help run Luna Station Press, which publishes various fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Our next book is LSQ’s best of the first five years anthology.
I also do needle felting, knitting, crochet, basically anything I can do to keep wool under my fingers. I play some video games, of course, and make time for friends and family.
At last count I have two novels actively in progress, and I put my hands on a bunch of other stories as the mood and inspiration strikes.
I’m tired now just talking about it. But in the best way. I’ve got a great life.
Luna Station Quarterly is a speculative fiction magazine featuring stories by emerging women authors.Luna Station Quarterly is available DRM-free in single issues or as a 12-month subscription.
Plasma Frequency Editor Interview: Richard Flores IV
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Magazine Spotlight, Plasma Frequency, Richard Flores, Weightless Books
Andrea Pawley interviews Richard Flores IV, editor-in-chief of Plasma Frequency, a bimonthly magazine of speculative fiction which just started their third year of publication:
Q: Plasma Frequency publishes a wide range of speculative fiction stories including science fiction, fantasy and horror. How do you know when you get a submission that’s perfect for Plasma Frequency?
Flores: Deciding what stories go into an issue of Plasma Frequency is a lot harder than I ever imagined. First, a story has to go through two other editors before it comes to me for a final decision. Either of those other two editors can reject the story for a variety of reasons. So once a story gets to me for the final decision, they are usually all very good stories. At this point, I am looking for something different, something that takes me by surprise. It could be a twist that captivates me. It could be a new spin on an old idea. It could be something I’ve never seen before. All these things lead me to select those stories. They have to stand out from the rest of the really good stories. It usually isn’t easy to pick.
Q: What inspired you to start Plasma Frequency?
Flores: There is no shortage of very good fiction out here.And a lot of it gets rejected simply because there isn’t enough space for every story. So I wanted to offer one more home to stories. And it was important to me that authors were paid for their work. So that inspired me. But researching how the magazine market worked fascinated me, and that was what finally pushed me over the edge to actually start the magazine.
Q: As a child, who was your favorite science fiction or fantasy author?
Flores: I actually wasn’t a fan until much later in life. In high school, I hated to read. I was tired of being forced to read these books that didn’t interest me. But I was forced to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Since that time, I have always held a spot for his work as one of my favorite artists, because it was his work that introduced me to the joy of reading science fiction.
Q: What’s the most unexpected thing you’ve encountered as editor of Plasma Frequency?
Flores: Rude authors. Hands down I never saw that coming. When we started Plasma Frequency, we were a personal rejection only market. We didn’t use any form letters. And we got some very nasty replies back from authors. Some were even very threatening. It wasn’t that our rejection letters were rude, we only offered them the reason for rejection. I had one reader quit because of it. And now, even though we have switched to using a lot of form rejections, we will still get one or two rude replies every now and again. It surprises me that authors will act like that.
Q: You make good use of an army of dedicated volunteers. What makes for a good volunteer?
Flores: They have to be committed. It can be very tough to ask someone to set aside some of their time to work hard for a magazine that they don’t get any money from. So they have to be very loyal to seeing good fiction get published. The volunteers I have really do want to see Plasma Frequency succeed, and it shows in the amount of work they put in. They are also very understanding that Plasma Frequency doesn’t make any money at this point. Sales and subscriptions don’t yet pay for the issues, let alone the other business costs. And the volunteers we have are like-minded to me, they aren’t in this to make money, they just want to see good stories find a home.
Q: Your third year of publication starts this month with the September/October issue. What changes will Year Three of Plasma Frequency hold?
Flores: We do have something new coming down the pipeline. I am not sure when we will start this up, but it will be more behind the scenes helping the authors. We are working out a program where selected stories that have great potential but need more work can join a one-on-one critique session with our proofreading editor. He will then be able to work with the author to make changes. That is the idea anyway. We are currently ironing out all the details. It won’t be released until further down in Year Three, hopefully early 2015.
Plasma Frequency is a magazine of speculative fiction that offers short stories in science fiction, fantasy, horror and all other aspects of the genre. Plasma Frequency is available DRM-free in single issues or as a 12-month subscription.
Flash Fiction Online April 2014
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Brynn MacNab, David Barber, Flash Fiction Online, Gary B. Phillips, Magazine Spotlight, Weightless Books
In less time than it takes to make a peanut butter and melted Peeps sandwich, you can read one of the excellent stories in Flash Fiction Online.
April’s issue encourages readers to contemplate what the solar system would be like as a carnival, whether it’s worth losing bad memories if the good ones disappear, too, and how a poor woman differs from the noble she imagines herself to be. This last piece, “I Imagine Myself as Rath Ducha” by Brynn MacNab, is particularly compelling for such a personal view of the sameness in disparate situations. Flash Fiction Online tends toward speculative fiction, but the editors promise they’ll publish well-written stories regardless of genre.
“Mrs. Darwin Has Visitors” by David Barber, was my favorite piece in March’s issue. In that story, Barber inadvertently makes the case that a 19th-century woman who wants to protect her family would do best to master the defensive arts, and not just the verbal ones. In February’s issue, “Love in the Time of Cthulhu,” Cassandra wants her speed dating session to land her the great Yog-Sothoth. Like any speed dater, she must overcome some disappointment, like when “the elder gods sent a proxy. How hard was it to show up for themselves?”
Flash Fiction Online’s drawings are worth contemplating before you dive into each story. Could March’s man-wolf possibly know someone named Red? What’s February’s fairy whispering to the fellow with the bushy mustache? There’s one way to find out. Flash Fiction Online is available DRM-free in single issues or as a 12-month subscription.
News From Luna Station: All Is Strange and Mostly Dangerous
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Deborah Bailey, Jan Stinchcomb, l.a. james, Luna Station Quarterly, Magazine Spotlight, Weightless Books
If you read Luna Station Quarterly Issue 17, try not to let your courage falter the next time you see a supermodel. They can smell fear. In “The Woodsman,” my favorite piece in Issue 17, author Jan Stinchcomb layers on the homicides and reveals what it takes to be a dark-souled “beauty.” Suffice it to say you should steer clear of the forest.
The talents of female speculative fiction writers are on display throughout this issue of Luna Station Quarterly, which includes science fiction, fantasy, horror, humor and fairy tales with evil at their core. Although the journal only accepts work by female authors, stories are told from perspectives as varied as those of men, women, children and a sheepdog.
“Mission Critical” by Deborah Bailey is my favorite science fiction piece. A long-duration spaceflight crew must decide who’ll be the next to die in order to feed the thing in the ship’s hold. The fate of humanity is at stake. The premise is great. The execution, so to speak, is perfectly done.
Many of this issue’s stories hold a touch of horror, but “The Good Mother” by l.a. james is the creepiest. A woman at a funeral accidentally leaves with a ghost child who presses against her leg. Whose child is this? Why does it latch onto the woman? How does she rid herself of it? Does she want to? I grew up around ghost stories. This one gives me the willies.
Luna Station Quarterly characters seem especially fond of being reborn. A soul pulled from the animasphere brings the body of a previously-comatose person to life. A human-legged mermaid dies and gets her tail back. A phoenix in the flock exists in a form undetectable even to herself.
I liked every one of the fourteen stories in this issue. Some of these creations I’ll remember for a long time.
Luna Station Quarterly is available DRM-free from Weightless Books in single issues or as a 12-month subscription.
The View is Different From Here: Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Elka Ray Nguyen, Issue 1, Lontar, Magazine Spotlight, Paolo Bacigalupi, Paolo Chikiamco, Southeast Asian, Speculative Fiction, Weightless Books
I hadn’t expected to find a horror story in the first issue of Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, but there it was. In “The Yellow River” by Elka Ray Nguyen, a young Vietnamese serviceman travels to a haunted part of the jungle. More than anything, this Lontar story sticks with me, perhaps because the rather innocent characters in it are compelled to complete military service in a setting very different from their normal lives. I didn’t know military service is compulsory in Vietnam. Maybe the bit about the ghost is true, too.
Learning real things about a region of the world relatively unknown to me is an unexpected bonus of the great stories in Lontar. With each tale, I was allowed a view through the eyes of someone whose experiences and orientation are so far separated from my own and yet so similar that the journey is wondrous.
In “Philippine Magic: A Course Catalogue,” Paolo Chikiamco offers a proposed line of academic study that includes FLK 401, a semester about Barang Barang, “a type of magic where the sorcerer sends insects or animals to appear inside the body of the victim.” In RLC 103, the mythology and iconography of anting-anting will be discussed, including “the letters ‘AEIOU’ to represent the secret names of Atardar, the whale-like dragon that is a symbol of evil.” The thrust of Philippine magic had been unknown to me, but I thought I was familiar with the name “Becca.” I was wrong. In RLC 403, the prospective student can learn about “symbols associated with Becca (Lucifer) and other evils.”
“The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi was my favorite story in Lontar’s first issue. Nominated in 2009 for both a Nebula and a Hugo Award, “The Gambler” tells of a Laotian refugee, Ong, in the near future. Ong’s having trouble adjusting to life in the U.S.A. He’s landed a good job as a journalist for an online paper similar to others that grew up in “the smoking remains of the New York Times Company,” but Ong’s compelled to write stories about the failures of government. No one wants to read his stories. “I am drawn to them, as though poking at the tiger of the American government will somehow make up for not being able to poke at the little cub of New Divine Monarch Khamsing.” To me, “The Gambler” was about communication. For the Laotian protagonist, “Real news was too valuable to risk in public.” Ong struggles with this particular conviction, especially when his career as a journalist is given a public chance for success in the company of a world-famous starlet.
Lontar’s first issue is filled with interesting and thought-provoking stories. It’s worth a read, and it’s available DRM-free from Weightless Books.
Apex Magazine Interview: Sigrid Ellis and Jason Sizemore
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Apex Magazine, Jason Sizemore, Magazine Spotlight, Sigrid Ellis
Weightless Books interviews Apex Magazine’s publisher Jason Sizemore and new editor-in-chief Sigrid Ellis.
1. How do you know when you have the right balance of science fiction, fantasy and horror for an issue of Apex Magazine?
Sigrid Ellis: Hah! Well, I’m new at this. The proof is yet to come. As your readers are probably aware, I am taking over Apex Magazine from Lynne Thomas and Michael Thomas. Whether or not I know the right balance remains to be seen!
At the moment my managing editor, Cameron Salisbury, and I have selected and organized fiction for our first four issues of Apex. Our conversations have focused on questions of tone, length, and how the works relate to each other. Is one lighter than the other? Too light? Are they thematically linked? Too linked? Do they have things to say to each other? What about point of view? First person, third? Tight narration or omniscient? Is one more descriptive than the other? Does that work?
I could go on.
Whether a piece is science fiction, fantasy, or horror has not so far been my chief concern. That may change, of course, in the future! I look forward to the feedback from our first issues, and what that may teach us.
2. What’s changed in short fiction since Apex Magazine started in 2005, and how have you responded to it?
Sigrid Ellis: It is my observation that genre short fiction has been served notice, a notice declaring that diversity is no longer sufficient. What we as readers, fans, and decent human beings call for now is representation. Cat Valente, Lynne Thomas, and Michael Thomas made Apex Magazine a force for representation. I hope to continue that work.
Jason Sizemore: We joined the fracas right as the tide of electronic books hit the genre. It has been an interesting ride!
The most obvious change is the general presentation and distribution of the work. Podcasts, eBook issues, and online content have all expanded while the print industry has shrunk.
In terms of aesthetics, I think the biggest shift in short fiction is toward darker and bleaker work. We’ve always published dark work (the original name of Apex Magazine is Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, after all), but over the years we’ve grown more experimental in what is published.
3. Name a recent favorite Apex Magazine story and one from more than a year ago.
Sigrid Ellis: My favorite recent story is Rachel Swirsky’s “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” from issue 46.
Looking further back, Genevieve Valentine’s “Armless Maidens of the American West” in issue 39 is a favorite.
What stands out for me in both of these stories is how adroitly the authors pull off an exceptionally difficult task, that of writing in the second person. Second person narrative is not to be toyed with lightly!
However, let me note, very clearly, that what I find impressive is the use to which they each put that narration. Both of these stories are intensely emotional. They are grounded in character and detail. They each raise somewhat painful questions, about wildly different topics. Valentine’s piece looks at complicity in exploitation, and the right or ability of a person to own and alter that complicity. It’s a story about the tangle of autonomy. Swirsky’s story is a parable of the pain of love. It’s a fable describing the joy and rage and helpless fearful grief that are all, inextricably, part of loving another human being. And it is a revenge fantasy against the damage caused by blind injustice.
Jason Sizemore: A recent favorite would be “The Performance Artist” by Lettie Prell (issue 44). Lettie’s story might be the best deconstruction of society’s fascination with reality television and self-spectacle that I’ve encountered. And the end of the story is a gut punch.
A favorite from the archives would be “The Green Book” by Amal El-Mohtar (issue 18). This was our first Nebula nominated work. Amal did an incredible job creating a short story that is a bit House of Leaves and a bit Twilight Zone.
4. Your author interviews are packed with information. Have you ever been surprised by something uncovered in one of them?
Sigrid Ellis: All author interviews are a bit of a surprise! While I know the work of many of Apex’s authors, I don’t particularly know them personally. I find myself clicking on the interviews with excitement, looking forward to meeting the human being behind the story just as much as our readers.
5. Apex Magazine started podcasting recently. Is that because you decided to stop sleeping and needed something more to do?
Sigrid Ellis: Hah, well, I already don’t sleep. But, no, podcasting is simply a part of the new models of fiction consumption. Readers – myself included! – are becoming accustomed to having fiction available across platforms and media formats. I can buy a novel from Amazon, start to read it on my laptop, go listen to the audio version in my car while I drive home, then pick up my tablet and continue reading after dinner. The more formats we provide, the more people will find the format that works for them. And that leads to more people enjoying the work.
Jason Sizemore: There’s an old school PSA commercial where one kid pressures another kid to do drugs…the bad kid says something like “Come on, everybody’s doing it.” It was kind of like that situation. All the top short fiction zines had a podcast, so Apex Magazine needed one!
Of course, I love the podcast format and am happy that we’ve ventured into it. In 2014, I hope to expand our podcast to include all our original fiction ran per issue.
6. Are you on any upcoming science fiction and fantasy or horror convention panels?
Sigrid Ellis: My next convention is Wiscon, in Madison, Wisconsin, over Memorial Day weekend. I pretty much always end up on a handful of panels at that convention and I expect this year will be no different. Look for me there! I’ll probably have things to say about Apex Magazine and about my other editorial project this winter, the comic series Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios.
Jason Sizemore: I’ll be doing Confusion in Detroit (Jan 17-19). Then I’m at Millennicon in Cincinnati (Mar 14-16).
7. What are you reading now besides submissions for Apex Magazine?
Sigrid Ellis: The Great Mortality, by John Kelly. It’s a history of the Black Death. Also I am perpetually re-reading my way through the Phryne Fisher mystery series, by Kerry Greenwood. I’m on my, hrm, my fourth re-read of all nineteen books.
Jason Sizemore: Sitting on my nightstand is Skinner by Charlie Huston. The audiobook in my car is Shift by Hugh Howey.
Apex Magazine is an online prose and poetry magazine of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mash-ups of all three. Apex Magazine, which is available for DRM-free purchase from Weightless Books, received a Best Semiprozine Hugo nomination in 2012. A new issue of Apex Magazine is available the first Tuesday of every month.
Galaxy’s Edge: A Little Bit of Everything and Done Well
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Galaxy’s Edge, Gregory Benford, Janis Ian, Kij Johnson, Magazine Spotlight, Michael F. Flynn, Mike Resnick, Nick T. Chan, Weightless Books
Carol Resnick no longer goes to science fiction movies with her husband, Mike. She can’t take his ranting. Mike Resnick is the editor of a new bi-monthly magazine, Galaxy’s Edge, but he has a long history with science fiction editing and publishing. Each issue of Galaxy’s Edge opens with an essay by Resnick, who doesn’t mince words. In the most recent issue, he asks, “How can big-budget science fiction films be so ambitious and so dumb at the same time, so filled with errors that no editor I’ve ever encountered (and that’s a lot of editors, including some incredibly lax ones) would let me get away with?”
Resnick’s essays are just one entertaining aspect of Galaxy’s Edge. The magazine is filled with classic works by well-known authors, captivating science fiction and fantasy published for the first time, guest essays, book reviews and serialized novels. On the surface, this mix of works in a science fiction and fantasy magazine is nothing new. But the surface is an illusion. Resnick has been around science fiction and fantasy for a long time. He knows where all the good older stories are hidden, and he seems to have access to amazing new authors who haven’t yet made a name for themselves. Reading an issue of Galaxy’s Edge is a three-hour adventure filled with unexpected wonders.
Nick T. Chan’s “Sisters” is a great example of a story that sticks with you. Resnick had judged “Sisters” for Writers of the Future. He tracked down Chan in Australia to secure the story’s first publication. “Sisters” is luminous fantasy with a touch of science fiction atop a solid tale of siblings who aren’t quite Siamese twins. One of the twins is a mage, and the other twin supplies the mage’s energy to do her magic. Trust me, it’s awesome.
Some of my favorite older works of fiction in Galaxy’s Edge include a reprint of Kij Johnson’s “Schrödinger’s Cathouse,” which is just what it sounds like and a classic. Michael F. Flynn’s “Buried Hopes” surprised me with the unglamorous account of an alien crew that accidentally crash-landed on Earth long ago. For a work of science fiction that manages to tie together wormhole communications, dentistry jokes and the eternal battles between certain types of editors and certain of the edited, I highly recommend Janis Ian’s “Correspondence With a Breeder.”
In the realm of Galaxy’s Edge non-fiction, my two favorite items were by Gregory Benford. “A Frozen Future: Cryonics as a Gamble” is a point-by-point essay about the realities and fictions that cryonics holds for current and future human populations. In “Leaping the Abyss: Stephen Hawking on Black Holes, Unified Field Theory, and Marilyn Monroe,” Benford writes about time spent with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University. Their conversation ranges over a great deal of territory including life, cosmology and science fiction. Benford’s observations are personal and poignant.
The next bi-monthly issue of Galaxy’s Edge will be available on November 1. You still have time to catch up on an old issue or two. Above, I chose my favorite pieces without regard to issue, but I ended up liking something about every issue. If you have to chose, I recommend Issue 4. If you don’t have to choose, then try a subscription. You’ll enjoy it.
Galaxy’s Edge is a bi-monthly (every two months) magazine published by Phoenix Pick, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Arc Manor, an award winning independent press based in Maryland. Each issue of the magazine has a mix of new and old (reprint) stories.
Twisted Myths and Sleeplessness in Nightmare Magazine Issue 11
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Jennifer Giesbrecht, Joe Hill, Magazine Spotlight, Nightmare Magazine, Robert McCammon, Weightless Books
I’m a sucker for well-written short stories. Nightmare Magazine Issue 11 is packed with them. Some of my favorites are highlighted below.
I especially enjoyed Jennifer Giesbrecht’s “All My Princes Are Gone,” about Adam’s first wife (the one who came before Eve). From the launching point of the Lilith legend, Giesbrecht introduces the woman’s daughters, who are Mesopotamian goddesses. The author does a great job of tying disparate stories together and making them creepy and well-written enough to qualify for Nightmare. “All My Princes Are Gone” is Giesbrecht’s first published short story. I’m looking forward to reading more from her.
“Nightcrawlers” by Robert McCammon features a few really likeable characters, so the reader knows things are going to get ugly. The weather on the night of the story is foul. Everyone in the diner just heard about a massacre a few states away. A war veteran with what looks like post-traumatic stress disorder shows up in the middle of a storm. He’s strung out and not interested in sleeping it off because of what happens when he does. First published in 1984, “Nightcrawlers” is timeless fear.
Nightmare also pulls authors out of their bylines and helps make them into real people through Q&As. The reader learns that Giesbrecht’s story was in part the result of a Wikipedia spiral. McCammon talks about how “Nightcrawlers” was adapted into an episode of The New Twilight Zone and why he quit writing for awhile. The interviews contain oodles of interesting writerly and readerly tidbits.
Issue 11 also includes the second half of an interview with horror novelist Joe Hill, who was once the guest of dishonor at the World Horror Convention in Austin. Among other things, Hill discusses his writing that will never be published, the state of horror, how to craft compelling stories and his favorite authors.
Nightmare is a an online horror and dark fantasy magazine. Nightmare also includes nonfiction, fiction podcasts, and author Q&As that go behind the scenes of their stories. A current DRM-free subscription (including Issue 11) can be purchased on Weightless Books.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies Editor Interview: Scott H. Andrews
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Magazine Spotlight, Scott H. Andrews, Weightless Books
Weightless Books interviews Scott H. Andrews, publisher and editor-in-chief of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, a literary adventure fantasy zine.
Q: What are you hoping the reader takes away from Beneath Ceaseless Skies?
A: I hope that the reader, once they finish a BCS story, realizes that at some point during or after that read of what was hopefully an entertaining or awe-inspiring fantasy story, they were also made to think about what it means to be human. The human condition; to think on that universal question of what it means to be who we are.
Some stories I think do that while you’re reading them. By the nature of their characters or theme, you can’t help but ponder such questions in the moment. Other stories I think feel more purely entertainment while you’re reading, but later you realize that there actually was an undercurrent of something more personal and profound woven in beneath the entertainment.
Q: As an editor, how do you know when you have a story that’s right for Beneath Ceaseless Skies?
A: A big part of it for me is the richness of the fantasy setting. Lush and awe-inspiring worlds are a personal favorite of mine and a hallmark of the magazine. In short fiction, of course, it’s harder to develop and display such a world than in a longer work. But an interesting world, and a writer who has made skillful choices about what of the world to show in the limited space of a short story, always engage me.
Yet alongside that I also need to feel a character who resonates with me. Maybe it’s their personality or attitude. Maybe it’s what they’re striving for or trying to avoid, or trying to solve or come to terms with or understand. Maybe it’s a tone or quirk in the voice that the author has crafted for that character’s narrative. The world is important to me, but without a person whose story is taking place in that world, then for me it doesn’t feel alive.
Q: Can you offer a new favorite and an old one from Beneath Ceaseless Skies?
A: A recent favorite would be “Boat in Shadows, Crossing” by Tori Truslow, from this past January. It’s a lush and interesting setting, a rich and droll voice, and I think it speaks very well to many aspects of what it means to be human.
It’s hard to single out just a couple from over two hundred stories, but a few past favorites include “Thieves of Silence” by Holly Phillips, a story of seduction by belonging, and “The Isthmus Variation” by Kris Millering, which features personal dynamics among a company of players performing a fascinating live-action tableau that has a hidden purpose.
Q: Do you have any advice for someone thinking about starting an zine?
A: Starting a zine, and then keeping it going, is a colossal time commitment. The last decade of F/SF short fiction is littered with zines that lasted only a couple issues because the editors didn’t realize what they were getting into; for example, didn’t understand that they would be deluged with hundreds of submissions a month.
For any aspiring editors out there who aren’t dissuaded by that :) , my main piece of advice would be to treat everything thoroughly professionally. Be prompt in replying to people and unfailingly polite. Be organized, so things won’t slip through the cracks. Plan well for how you’re going to handle things (like that deluge of hundreds of submissions a month) both now and in the future.
Q: You’re a writer, too. How has that fact influenced your interactions with people who submit stories to Beneath Ceaseless Skies?
A: My experiences as a short fiction writer are a huge influence on my interactions with writers who submit to BCS and who I buy from.
The most prominent example is that every rejection we send is personalized with comments. I know of no other magazine that does that. It takes a lot of extra time, but I know that many up-and-coming short fiction writers are eager for a few thoughtful comments on why their story didn’t work for one particular magazine. We often hear from writers that they used the comments from our personalized rejection when they revised the story and it later sold to Realms of Fantasy or F&SF or another equally top-level magazine.
I also think my experience as a writer makes me better able to interface with BCS writers on revisions or rewrites. I know what that process is like from the writer’s side of things, and that I think helps me to work within their vision for the story while tweaking it in the ways that I think it needs in order to fit with BCS.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, a 2012 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Semiprozine, is available for DRM-free purchase from Weightless Books. Scott H. Andrews is shown at right in a dog-faced bascinet.
Zombie-lovers and Life-sucking Lampreys in Apex Magazine Issue 48
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Apex Magazine, Douglas Warrick, Joe Lansdale, Magazine Spotlight, Weightless Books
The stories in Issue 48 of Apex Magazine don’t always look like horror when they begin. They might even start on the bright side of a field on the outskirts of Topeka, Kansas. But somewhere in the middle of the story, chances are the heroine is going to be at least metaphorically hanging over a gaping chasm in the earth with a ghost nibbling at her toes and a maddened ostrich-tamer threatening to flay her fingers from above.
“Come to My Arms, My Beamish Boy” by Douglas F. Warrick was my favorite new story in Apex Magazine this month. The narrator, Cotton, is dying. He isn’t too happy about his impending demise. “Every organism on earth had this crazy seizure of energy and emotion for a short period, had the chance to change everything, and then fizzled out and died.” He’s also worried about how his diminished faculties leave him unable to communicate with anyone but Professor Eisley, the only other person who can see the lampreys closing in on Cotton. “He could see the shiny wet head of one of the shadowy things, the lamprey-children, the sucker-babies, just cresting over the metal guardrail of the bed.” This is a disturbing little story.
Apex Magazine also offers a Joe R. Lansdale double-feature—a classic story and an interview. Lansdale’s “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” tells of a man who feels guilty about his role in a nuclear holocaust. The first worst part of the tale is that the narrator’s wife is helping him pay for his sins. “Never once did I complain. She’d send the needles home as hard and deep as she could, and though I might moan or cry out, I never asked her to stop.” I wanted to stop reading this story just the way I want to stop reading every great horror story I encounter, but instead, I just hoped whatever image the story left me with was one I wouldn’t see in the bathroom mirror in the middle of the night. The thing with the needles is creepy and weird. Then the second worst thing happened in the story. Hint: it begins with a “z” and rhymes with “nombies.”
Maggie Slater interviews Lansdale about “Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” and about writing in general in Issue 48. Lansdale is an eight-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. His writing is a gift to the reader. His Apex interview is a gift to the writer. If you like to write, read this interview for advice that comes from long experience.
Nominated for a Hugo this year for Best Semiprozine, Apex Magazine is published on the first Tuesday of every month. DRM-free subscriptions (including Issue 48 with stories by Lansdale and Warrick) or individual issues can be purchased on Weightless Books.
Spiders and Sparring in Clarkesworld Issue 79
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Clarkesworld, Emily C. Skaftun, Kali Wallace, Kij Johnson, Magazine Spotlight, Neil Clarke
Arachnophobes beware: this month’s Clarkesworld, Issue 79, has spiders. Not the big scary Moche-type that demand human sacrifices in order to be appeased. Well, not exactly. In Kali Wallace’s “No Portraits on the Sky,” Rela’s spider colony does her bidding even when she tells them to heal a man who has fallen through the treetops into her world. “No Portraits on the Sky” is a sublime work of original fiction that almost makes me want my own spider companions to nip and click at the back of my neck (without killing me!)
Post-apocalyptic garden gnomes also lurk in this month’s Clarkesworld. Emily C. Skaftun’s “Melt With You” is dominated by the vicious critters. The apocalypse has happened. Any inanimate object with a face now contains the soul of someone who used to be human. Our hero in the story is a pink plastic lawn flamingo. As to the garden gnomes, “They were united by their psychotic belief in the true Christian apocalypse, the crusade they’d undertaken to kill everyone on Earth to bring it about.” A bloodless battle ensues, killing many. Garden gnomes are terrifying. They deserve their own sub-genre. That’s the only way to appease them.
Kij Johnson’s “Spar (Making Bacon Version)” is another standout. The original version (“Spar”) was a 2009 Nebula Award Winner. Johnson wrote an alternate version for Baconthology: The Sweet and Savory Science Fiction Anthology. Clarkesworld reproduces the bacon version in the new issue. I recommend reading the original first, if you haven’t done so already, before taking in the awesomeness that is the bacon version.
The World Science Fiction Association nominated Clarkesworld five times for the 2013 Hugo Awards. In Issue 79, editor Neil Clarke answers the question “How Did This Happen” a non-fiction piece that explains his interest since childhood in science fiction and the role Readercon (coming up this year July 11-14) played in his life. Published monthly since October 1, 2006, Clarkesworld is available for purchase here on Weightless.
New feature
Tags: Magazine SpotlightTomorrow we’re debuting a new monthly magazine spotlight by Andrea Pawley. Andrea will be writing up one or two magazines a month, sometimes one of the monthlies, but also including the quarterlies and occasionals.
Ok, I’m not sure that anything besides LCRW is an occasional, but I’m saying that to cover all the other publication schedules. This month she looks at the new issue of Clarkesworld. Your thoughts, always welcome!