I went ahead and combined my old blog with my pen name blog, which naturally went completely smoothly without any problems of any kind.
Hopefully I'll be able to get all the bugs worked out...someday.
But for now, this is home, my one and only. I have some stories out making the rounds, working on some other things, and should have some news to post soon....
Monday, March 14, 2016
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Current Flash Markets
I like writing flash science fiction, and I like The Grinder, but one recurring headache I've had is identifying flash markets on the listing that actually specifically are looking for flash. A lot of "flash" markets are included in The Grinder's Advanced Search output simply because their guidelines don't specify a lower bound; e.g., "up to 10,000 words" would be listed as a flash market (and they very well might love flash, but to me it's much more of a gamble than a market that explicitly says they accept flash; maybe it's just me...).
So I decided to look at flash markets in more detail to try to pin down a list of markets that actually accept flash or can reasonably be assumed to do so. And here it is:
| Market Name | Flash Word Count | Acceptance Rate | Mean Response Time (Median) |
| SpeckLit | up to 100 | 0.6176 | 42 (43) |
| Timeless Tales | up to 2,000 | 0.2857 | 43 (55) |
| Nature: Futures | 850 to 950 | 0.2 | 62 (61) |
| Grievous Angel (Urban Fantasist) | up to 700 | 0.0984 | 13 (11) |
| Daily Science Fiction | 100 to 1,500 | 0.096 | 24 (21) |
| Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing Newsletter | up to 1,000 | 0.074 | 40 (29) |
| Lakeside Circus | up to 1,000 | 0.0704 | 68 (61) |
| Freeze Frame Fiction | up to 1,000 | 0.0672 | 22 (14) |
| Flash Fiction Online | 500 to 1,000 | 0.0513 | 14 (11) |
| Terraform | up to 2,000 | 0.0488 | 38 (54) |
| Mad Scientist Journal | 500 to 2,000 | 0.68 | 15 (13) |
| The Future Fire | up to 1,000 | 0.33 | 40 (40) |
| Perihelion Science Fiction | 400 to 1,600 | 0.3021 | 59 (59) |
| Odd Tree Press Quarterly | 500 to 1,500 | 0.2727 | 47 (153) |
| The Colored Lens | up to 2,000 | 0.25 | 20 (1) |
| Bete Noire | 100 to 2,000 | 0.1818 | 51 (57) |
| Unlikely Story | up to 2,000 | 0.1162 | 49 (33) |
| AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review | 500 to 2000 | 0.0804 | 79 (76) |
| Fantasy Scroll Mag | up to 1,500 | 0.0559 | 36 (30) |
| On Spec | up to 1,000 | 0.0526 | 202 (203) |
| Unsung Stories | up to 2,000 | 0.0508 | 29 (25) |
| T. Gene Davis's Speculative Blog | 250 to 2,000 | 0.0444 | 14 (12) |
| Drabblecast | 500 to 2,000 | 0.043 | 11 (5) |
| Plasma Frequency Magazine | up to 2,000 | 0.0375 | 15 (11) |
| Blue Monday Review | up to 2,000 | 0.0363 | 49 (60) |
| DarkFuse Magazine | 99 to 999 | 0.0339 | 119 (150) |
| Orthogonal | 5 to 1,000 | 0.0328 | 40 (42) |
| Spark: A Creative Anthology | up to 1,500 | 0.0323 | 103 (100) |
| Fantastic Stories of the Imagination | up to 2,000 | 0.0179 | 12 (5) |
| Strangelet | up to 2,000 | 0.0093 | 25 (23) |
| Devilfish Review | up to 500 | 0 | 82 (104) |
| Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine | up to 2,000 | 0 | 1 (1) |
| Pinball | up to 2,000 | 0 | 19 (20) |
| Three-Lobed Burning Eye | 500 to 1,000 | 0 | 35 (23) |
These were identified from searches during 1/23-1/27/2016 for currently open science fiction flash that were listed as semi-pro or better (at least $0.01/word) with at least 5 submissions in the past year. I defined flash liberally with stories up to 2,000 words (and capped at that point for markets accepting longer work), and I considered a market a flash market if their guidelines limited submissions to that range, specifically mentioned that they accepted guidelines with upper bounds within that range, specifically mentioned (favorably) accepting "flash," or had word count guidelines such that it could be expected that at least 50% of submissions would fall within that range. There are certainly other listed markets that accept flash, but since they don't explicitly say they do, I'd say submitter beware.
I considered including temporarily closed markets in this list as well, but The Grinder is always in flux anyway, so by the time those markets re-opened this analysis would be out of date and many new flash markets would likely be available. As of last week, these were the solid options. I'll update it when this list starts feeling stale....
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Why Heinlein's Rules Are Almost Impossible to Follow
It's been a while since I wrote anything on here, but I've been busy.... Hopefully I'll have something worth showing for it soon.
I've been reading Dean Wesley Smith's posts on Heinlein's Rules for writing, and I was wondering, since the rules really are pretty straightforward, just what is it about them that makes them so "amazingly hard" to follow? Anyone can write a story, finish it, and send it off to an editor. Not rewriting should be even easier: just don't do it. So as I've thought about it all (and by default), I think the hardness really comes down to Rule #5: "You must keep it on the market until sold."
Assume that a fledgling writer is determined to follow Heinlein's Rules to the letter. So continuously writing -- let's assume short stories for simplicity -- and these short stories are completed at a constant rate and immediately put on the market. Think of a simple compartmental model, with two compartments, Submissions and Publications, where the former is, as one might expect, the number of submissions the writer has out at a given time, and the latter is the total number of acceptances from those submissions. A new story moves into the submissions compartment at rate alpha (α), is accepted at rate sigma (σ), and is rejected and thus immediately resubmitted to another market at rate gamma (γ).
The impossibility occurs as a result of the generally low acceptance rates at most markets, even for established authors, which, if the writer is holding fast to Heinlein's other rules, leads to an ever increasing pool of stories to submit. Imagine a new writer, albeit a talented one, who writes and submits α = 1 new story each week and consistently achieves a 5% acceptance rate (σ = 0.05), leaving 95% with rejections to resubmit (γ = 0.95). This writer writes stories that are appropriate for any and all markets, and takes only 15 minute to make any formatting changes and compose a cover letter for each submission. Assume the writer splits his or her time 50/50 between writing and submitting, spending 10 hours on each per week, and that each market responds after an average of 10 weeks. At that rate, the writer would run out of time to submit new stories within 10 months (and only have one or two publications to show for it).
At this point, there are only three possibilities. One, the writer stops or slows writing new stories until enough previously written stories are sold to allow time for new stories. This violates Heinlein's Rule #1 and perhaps Rule #2. Two, the writer "retires" some stories that have received multiple rejections to make room for newer, better stories. This I believe to be the most common response in actuality, but, alas, it violates Rule #5. Three, and this is the only possible way to consistently keep up with the first four rules while also obeying the fifth, the writer must increase his or her acceptance rate. Seeing how it should be assumed the writer is already doing everything in his or her power to write the best story possible and submit it to the most appropriate market, this also appears to be by far the least likely option for a writer. Further considering that the acceptance rate would have to be 100% to keep the number of submissions from spiraling out of control, it is easy to see why Heinlein would consider this "amazingly hard."
Other choices of α, σ, and γ will lead to the same results. So while Heinlein's Rules are certainly worth aspiring to, and the longer writers can hold to them, the higher the number of publications they can expect, at some point the goal must by mathematical necessity collapse. Heinlein may have considered them hard, but to any writer with a lower than 100% acceptance rate, they are ultimately impossible.
So don't get too down on yourself when you're struggling to keep up your submissions: take a break, maybe consider putting that last rejected story in the trunk for a while, or just make sure your next story is unrejectable.
I've been reading Dean Wesley Smith's posts on Heinlein's Rules for writing, and I was wondering, since the rules really are pretty straightforward, just what is it about them that makes them so "amazingly hard" to follow? Anyone can write a story, finish it, and send it off to an editor. Not rewriting should be even easier: just don't do it. So as I've thought about it all (and by default), I think the hardness really comes down to Rule #5: "You must keep it on the market until sold."
Assume that a fledgling writer is determined to follow Heinlein's Rules to the letter. So continuously writing -- let's assume short stories for simplicity -- and these short stories are completed at a constant rate and immediately put on the market. Think of a simple compartmental model, with two compartments, Submissions and Publications, where the former is, as one might expect, the number of submissions the writer has out at a given time, and the latter is the total number of acceptances from those submissions. A new story moves into the submissions compartment at rate alpha (α), is accepted at rate sigma (σ), and is rejected and thus immediately resubmitted to another market at rate gamma (γ).
The impossibility occurs as a result of the generally low acceptance rates at most markets, even for established authors, which, if the writer is holding fast to Heinlein's other rules, leads to an ever increasing pool of stories to submit. Imagine a new writer, albeit a talented one, who writes and submits α = 1 new story each week and consistently achieves a 5% acceptance rate (σ = 0.05), leaving 95% with rejections to resubmit (γ = 0.95). This writer writes stories that are appropriate for any and all markets, and takes only 15 minute to make any formatting changes and compose a cover letter for each submission. Assume the writer splits his or her time 50/50 between writing and submitting, spending 10 hours on each per week, and that each market responds after an average of 10 weeks. At that rate, the writer would run out of time to submit new stories within 10 months (and only have one or two publications to show for it).
At this point, there are only three possibilities. One, the writer stops or slows writing new stories until enough previously written stories are sold to allow time for new stories. This violates Heinlein's Rule #1 and perhaps Rule #2. Two, the writer "retires" some stories that have received multiple rejections to make room for newer, better stories. This I believe to be the most common response in actuality, but, alas, it violates Rule #5. Three, and this is the only possible way to consistently keep up with the first four rules while also obeying the fifth, the writer must increase his or her acceptance rate. Seeing how it should be assumed the writer is already doing everything in his or her power to write the best story possible and submit it to the most appropriate market, this also appears to be by far the least likely option for a writer. Further considering that the acceptance rate would have to be 100% to keep the number of submissions from spiraling out of control, it is easy to see why Heinlein would consider this "amazingly hard."
Other choices of α, σ, and γ will lead to the same results. So while Heinlein's Rules are certainly worth aspiring to, and the longer writers can hold to them, the higher the number of publications they can expect, at some point the goal must by mathematical necessity collapse. Heinlein may have considered them hard, but to any writer with a lower than 100% acceptance rate, they are ultimately impossible.
So don't get too down on yourself when you're struggling to keep up your submissions: take a break, maybe consider putting that last rejected story in the trunk for a while, or just make sure your next story is unrejectable.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Pro Markets Acceptance Rates
I like to look at TheGrinder periodically to see which science fiction short story markets have the highest acceptance rates, so here they are as of the beginning of October for your convenience.
SFWA Markets
|
Accept
|
| Nature | 0.1728 |
| Daily Science Fiction | 0.1088 |
| Unlikely Story | 0.0877 |
| AE | 0.0825 |
| Interfiction Online | 0.0789 |
| Escape Pod | 0.0645 |
| Flash Fiction Online | 0.0534 |
| Beneath Ceaseless Skies | 0.0524 |
| Cricket | 0.0434 |
| Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show | 0.0333 |
| Writers of the Future Anthology | 0.0304 |
| Lightspeed Magazine | 0.0278 |
| Analog Science Fiction and Fact | 0.0267 |
| Fantastic Stories of the Imagination | 0.0213 |
| Strange Horizons | 0.0156 |
| Tor.com | 0.0153 |
| Crossed Genres | 0.0145 |
| Apex (starting with June 2008 issue) | 0.013 |
| Clarkesworld Magazine | 0.0079 |
| Asimov’s Science Fiction | 0.0075 |
| Buzzy Mag | 0.007 |
| The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction | 0.0054 |
| Cicada | 0.0049 |
| Nightmare Magazine | 0.0048 |
| Cemetery Dance | 0 |
| Cosmos | 0 |
| Grantville Gazette (starting with May 2007 issue) | 0 |
| Highlights | 0 |
| Odyssey | 0 |
| Galaxy’s Edge Magazine | NA |
| Star Citizen Jump Point Magazine | NA |
Monday, September 21, 2015
Timely Lilies, Lilacs, and Death Is Live!
I published my first short story today. It's a little darker than my novels have been, but very Tin Baxter. I entered it in Amazon Select to see how things are different, and I'll try to report back anything noteworthy. But for now -- STORY!
Monday, September 14, 2015
Character for Veracity Now Live on Smashwords!
Up there now: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/555665. Guess this means I'd better get back to work and start another one.... I'm thinking gothic horror this time, with some light detective dissolution thrown in. I should have a formal announcement on what's coming up next month, so watch out!
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