Finally finished editing Issue 10 today and sent everything back to the writers. Only about 10 or 11 days until we get to start on Issue 11! *DIES*

We’ve heard back from a few of them already, so I spent a good part of today getting those stories/articles formatted and into the Print edition template. I also sized and inserted the images, entered all the author bios, filled out and formatted the Table of Contents and updated all the various other little bits of information. The cover has already been formatted, so the Print Edition is just waiting on a couple emails from writers so I can finalize the stories, format them and insert them in the appropriate spots.

I also created pages (hidden) on the website and got them as ready as I could. I haven’t added HTML to the various stories yet – I’ll do that all at once when I’ve got them all finalized.

Tomorrow I’ll be working on setting up the other editions (Kindle, PDF, PRC) and getting the finalized content placed into them. Unless I hear back from any of the writers I’m waiting on, in which case I’ll finalize their stories and set them into the Print edition.

Something odd I noticed while updating my spreadsheets this afternoon: Last month, when we were accepting submissions to Child Fiction, we ended up receiving about 58.5% of our submissions from women. This is reasonably close to an even split and could be a simple statistical variance, so it seemed about right. The month before, for Alternate History, was even closer, at 51.7% of submissions from women.

But this month we’re accepting submissions with a Horror theme – and suddenly, submissions from women have plummeted. As of right now, just under 23% of submissions this month are from women. That’s less than one in four, and less than half of what we’d been getting. Is it because of the Horror theme? And if so – why? Clearly we need some more women SF/F-Horror writers to pipe up here!

One last note. A new group has been formed called The Outer Alliance: “a group of SF/F writers who have come together as allies for the advocacy of LGBT issues in literature. Made up of individuals of all walks of life, our goal is to educate, support, and celebrate LGBT contributions in the science-fiction and fantasy genres.” Kay and I strongly support advocacy of LGBT issues (partially evidenced by our upcoming LGBT-themed issue), and we think this is a great idea! Anyone who supports the group’s tenets and would like to participate in the discussion about LGBT issues in SFF can join, so go check it out!