ARTWORK:

“I’d like a word with you. In private.” by Lisa Grabenstetter

FICTION:
Yelloween by Sam Cash
Under a Wider Sky by Breanna R. Teintze
A Day in the Life by Ross Willard
Carefully Constructed by Shay Darrach
Immortal by Peter Friend
Knack by Sarah Goslee

Please read & enjoy! And make the contributors’ days by leaving a comment or two!

Other Last Chances of the Day:

• LAST CHANCE to vote on the Flash Fiction contest finalists! There are 10 stories totaling less than 4500 words (an average short story). And they’re good! Go read them and vote! (You have to register on the site to vote, but it’s quick and easy!)

• LAST CHANCE to submit a story to the inaugural issue of The Little Death of Crossed Genres! They’re looking for excellent erotic SFF. Check it out!

• LAST CHANCE to submit to the Crossed Genres Invasion issue! This issue (#21) will be released on August 1. We’re looking for anything SF/F that has an invasion of some type as a theme.

• LAST CHANCE to check out the Anthropomorphism issue! Issue #8 will be going away after midnight tonight. Go have a read/look, and if you like it, consider picking up a copy!

This Wednesday, June 30 is the final day to get your entries in to the Science in My Fiction contest!

Remember, there are $400 in cash prizes to be won, plus more! And the finalists will be read and voted on by an amazing panel of judges. Each of the top 3 stories will be published: the original cover art will be provided by Julie Dillon, and each of the 3 stories will be accompanied by original black-and-white artwork.

- 2,500-10,000 words
- 1 entry per person
- Only unpublished work
- Authors MUST cite the discovery/innovation which inspired their story, and provide relevant URL(s).

We’ve gotten some great entries already. Wow us with SCIENCE!

Submission guidelines
Judges
Entry form

The Social Media Coordinator will create accounts for Crossed Genres on various social media platforms (if they don’t exist already), keep all social media information up-to-date, and coordinate cross-media promotion.

The Promotion Coordinator will handle promotion for Crossed Genres and its various projects, in the form of press releases, reviews and flyers.

These are volunteer positions (None of us get paid, at the moment). However, there are perks: Freebies, access to pretty much everything that Crossed Genres produces, etc. Your name will be included in all staff listings, including the magazine itself.

For more information about both positions, or to apply, please visit this page. If you know someone who might be interested, please point them our way. Thanks!

* 100-500 words (FIRM)
* Anything Science Fiction and/or Fantasy
* Unpublished work only (including online)
* 1 entry per person

NOTE: Send your entries via the Flashfic contest entry form. DO NOT send entries via the Crossed Genres submission form!

The ten finalists will be posted on the website on June 23. Everyone will be able to read them and vote for their favorite. (People will have to register on the site to read the finalists and vote. Don’t worry, it’s free and easy!) Voting will close on June 30. The winner and Honorable Mentions will be announced on or before July 3.

The winner will receive $25 and a print copy of Crossed Genres Year One. 3 Honorable Mentions will each receive a print copy of Crossed Genres Year One.

The ten finalists will be posted on the website on or before June 23 for voting (they will only be visible to those who register on the site, therefore keeping their first printing rights). Get your entries in!

Also, there are only 17 days left to enter the Science in My Fiction contest! 2500-10000 words (FIRM), SF/F inspired by a recent scientific discovery or innovation (you must provide the URL for an article about the science). 1 entry per person, unpublished work only. $400 in prizes to the top 3 stories! Finalists will be voted on by an amazing panel of judges. Let’s see some SCIENCE!

This closure is due to our being overwhelmed with projects, and preparing to make some fairly significant changes to CG. We can’t say right now exactly when we’ll be open to these submissions again.

But fear not! The magazine will continue as usual; the Science in My Fiction contest and the Flash Fiction contest are moving along; and we have 2 novel projects already in the works – one already being serialized (read the first 3 chapters!), and one beginning soon! Plus some other things we haven’t announced yet. We’re not slowing down – only redirecting our focus.

The Flash Fiction contest is also approaching the cutoff date for entries: June 15 is the final day! Entries to the flashfic contest have been surprisingly robust – though perhaps not surprising when considering first place gets pro rates or better. 6 more days to go! Voting will begin on the 10 finalists on June 23.

Crossed Genres is currently accepting submissions to the Invasion issue. June 30 is the deadline.

Finally: June is the last month to read Crossed Genres Issue 8: ANTHROPOMORPHISM. This diverse and unusual issue will no longer be available! Please read it if you haven’t, and consider picking up a copy.

First: Crossed Genres issue 19: Gadgets & Artifacts is up!

A great issue with some incredibly strong fiction. Please read, enjoy! And comment – the writers & artists truly appreciate it!
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Next: We’ve opened the 2nd Annual Crossed Genres Flash Fiction contest! We did one last year in June and it was so much fun we decided to do it again! The guidelines are behind the link, but short version: 100-500 words; anything SF/F; one entry per person; 1st place gets Pro rates (at least). Open for entries until June 15 only. Not much time, so better get cracking!
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Thanks to some terrific generosity, the Kickstarter to fund a print edition of the Science in My Fiction contest winners was a rousing success! Not only did we reach our goal, we surpassed it by 60%! Thank you, everyone who’s supported the pledge drive! There’s still one month left to enter the contest – stories must be submitted by the end of June 30. Get your stories in!
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June is the FINAL month to read Issue 8: ANTHROPOMORPHISM! It will go away forever after June 30. Please give it a read, and if you like it consider picking up a copy while it’s still available.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Right now we’re reading submissions to the LIES issue, accepting submissions for INVASION, and managing the SiMF and Flashfic contests. Whew! Sometimes it’s hard to keep up, but somehow we manage!

Post title from “Today is gonna be a great day” from Phineas & Ferb

Both stories first appeared in Crossed Genres issue 12: LGBTQ.

The anthology will be out this summer, be sure to check it out. And congratulations to Megan and Tuulia!

1) LAST CHANCE to reserve a copy of the Science in My Fiction contest winners! A pledge of just $4 gets you a digital copy, or as low as $15 for a print copy (and then some). Copies will have original cover art by artist Julie Dillon (known to CG people for her incredible cover to our LGBTQ issue). Plus, if we reach $1000 in pledges (we’re very close!) we’re going to commission additional artwork to accompany each story! Pledges can also get you cheap discounted subscriptions to Crossed Genres, signed copies of the contest winners, and even a cartoon portrait of you (with SCIENCE!) included in the print edition!

2) LAST CHANCE to read Crossed Genres issue 7: URBAN! This is a terrific issue and goes away for good after the 31st! You can also pick up a print or digital copy.

3) LAST CHANCE to submit a story for the LIES issue! Submissions have been strong, and the cover will be done by Lisa Grabenstetter. It should be an excellent issue!

For those in the U.S., remember that May 29-31 is Memorial Day Weekend – which means it’ll be easy to forget that you meant to do one (or more) of the above until it’s too late! Don’t put it off until the last minute!

FICTION:
“Last Tango in Gamma Sector” by Michael R. Underwood
“Conflicts” by Timothy T. Murphy
“The Crate” by Daniel José Older
“Peace Signs” by Wendy N. Wagner
“Combat Stress Reaction” by Don Pizarro

ARTICLE:
“Science Fiction, Fantasy, Artifacts & Gadgets: Just the Basics” by Craig Allen

COVER ART:
“Artefacts” by Lisa Grabenstetter and Evan Jensen

Issue 19 comes out on June 1.
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We’re gearing up for a BUSY summer for CG. There’s SiMF and the contest, new issues, we’re prepping for our oversized “Characters of Color” issue (Submissions: September. Release: November 1). AND! We’re doing our FLASH FICTION CONTEST again! We had so much fun with it last year that we’re doing it again in June! So prep your stories – submissions will be open the first 2 weeks of June ONLY!

We are SO CLOSE on the Science in My Fiction contest Kickstarter drive!

Just $25 shy of our goal – so close we can taste it! Please consider making a pledge and pushing us over the top. Remember, the more pledges we get, the better the print edition will be!

We also announced that artist Julie Dillon, who created the applauded cover to our LGBTQ issue, will be providing the cover art for the SiMF contest print edition! Yay!

SiMF has gotten some nice attention lately. Author Jay Lake recently linked to one of Kay’s posts, saying “I am really digging this new-to-me site”. Author Steven Gould said SiMF “is turning into a must-read site for SF writers”. SiMF also has 4 new bloggers whose first posts will be appearing soon.

Remember! This is the LAST MONTH to check out Issue 7: URBAN! This was a terrific issue, and featured the widely acknowledged (and unintentionally controversial) cover art from Jamaican artist Paul Davey:

Speaking of issue 7: Congratulations to Nathan Crowder, whose story Deacon Carter’s Last Dime from issue 7 was featured on BestScienceFictionStories.com! Please read the issue for free, and consider picking up a copy before it goes away forever!

Duotrope, one of the best resources for short story markets, has introduced an Editor Interview feature that they’re beta-testing right now. And I did one! Go read my 12-question interview.

Back to the grind, so to speak. Working on finishing up issue 19, and prepping for all the above awesomeness. As soon as the SiMF contest hits its goal I’ll start on the print edition in earnest.

We’re getting down to the wire for submissions to the Gadgets & Artifacts issue. Tomorrow (Friday) is the deadline! We’ve got a fair number of submissions but we always want more!

Saturday is the release of issue 18, the Eastern issue. We’re extremely pleased with how this issue turned out. We did encounter a problem, though: We got the proof copy back and the cover was FAR too dark, to the point you could hardly see what was going on. We had to lighten it up and order a new proof. I shelled out the $ for extra-fast delivery, but it’s unlikely to arrive before release day. That means the print edition won’t be available until probably around May 3rd or so. I apologize for this: it was the result of illness, first our son’s, and then mine, that caused us to fall behind. I’ve been taking steps to keep it from happening again, even in the case of illness.

A big part of those steps I’ve been taking has been getting ahead – FAR ahead – in my CG work. I had some time this past week free, and I’ve been using it to get advance work done on every CG and SiMF project I can think of. The result is that I’ve advanced some projects so far, I’m literally months ahead of where I thought I’d be at the end of this month. I actually feel very discombobulated, because I keep thinking “ONO I FORGOT SOMETHING!”, but I really didn’t.

Part of this advance work was improving our preparation for future issues. I’ve reached the point where every issue through the end of our second year (issue 24) is as done as they can possibly be without having the actual content. This means that the actual building of each issue when we’ve chosen the content will be less time-consuming, which means a far lower chance of any delays.

I’ve also been working ahead on some other projects, including the eventual publication of RJ Astruc’s A Festival of Skeletons. We’re talking to an artist about the cover, and the layout/formatting is mostly done. The expected publication date is December 1, but we’ve got to have it finished well in advance so we can get it into the hands of reviewers. Kay’s done a wonderful job working with Astruc to edit the novel. I’m also working ahead on Crossed Genres Year Two, our second anthology. That one’s really jumping the gun though, since we won’t even know what’s going in the last issue (#24) until the beginning of October.

Speaking of issue 24: I just want to remind everyone, we’re doing another double-sized special to end our second year. This year’s theme will be Characters of Color, where the main character must be a CoC. We’re expecting high submissions for that issue but we’re also accepting twice as many for publication, so be sure to get yours in for that! Submissions for issue #24 will be accepted in September.

The Science in My Fiction blog has been chugging along. Exciting news – we were contacted by io9, the giant science/SF site. They asked if they could reprint an occasional SiMF post! We made arrangements, and the first reprint went up yesterday. We’re flattered that io9 thought so highly of SiMF’s work!

As you can see, we’re over 80% of the way to our Kickstarter goal for the Science in My Fiction contest! The contest only runs until the end of May – this is your ONLY chance to get a copy of the contest winners! Please help us get that last bit of the way – if for no other reason than so we can stop worrying about whether we’ll get there!

Finally, I want to mention that M-Brane SF #16 just came out. There’s a story by Kay in it! Go check it out!

Post title from “Hotel California” by the Eagles

Earth Day is special for Crossed Genres, not only because we’re environmentalists. It was on Earth Day last year that we had a little sale and got our first-ever online subscribers! It was important to us, in terms of feeling we had a real connection and commitment to the community we were building.

We wanted to do something again this year, but we’ve been swamped and haven’t had time… plus e-subscriptions are already discounted if you get them by pledging to our Kickstarter drive.

However, we’re not letting today go by with nothing, so here’s the deal: Pledge at least $9 to our Kickstarter drive by midnight tonight, and if the Kickstarter is successful you’ll get something special. Something that people who pledge later don’t get. We don’t know what it will be, exactly, but we’ll think of something cool. In acknowledgment of Earth Day, it’ll probably be something digital.

So please spread the word! A “Special Something” if you pledge by tonight! Plus all the other cool rewards you get from pledging!

The Kickstarter drive to fund the Science in My Fiction contest surged over 50% today! We only need $324 more in the next 41 days! We’re very confident that we’ll get there. Remember, if you EVER want a print copy, you have to preorder with a pledge to Kickstarter – the contest winners will never be printed again! Only one shot!

The contest itself is moving right along; submissions are still slow, understandably… entries will be accepted through the end of June, so we expect to get 60% or more of the total entries in the last month.

And Science in My Fiction has been fun recently too! Check out some of the latest fascinating posts, including my post from yesterday about divergent evolution.

The latest chapter of A Festival of Skeletons has been released! A Festival of Skeletons is a remarkable novel by New Zealand author RJ Astruc, being serialized on our website exclusively for subscribers! If you’re not a subscriber, now’s the time – get a subscription for 10% off by pledging to the SiMF Kickstarter drive! Only $0.75 per month, plus you get an e-book of the SiMF contest winners!

Reminder: This is the last month to read and/or purchase Issue 6, our WESTERN issue! Terrific issue, with great stories and some AWESOME art:

Next month, exactly one year after the Western issue was published, we’ll be publishing issue 18: our EASTERN issue. It’s got an absolutely breathtaking cover by Thai artist Narm; an article by Singapore writer Joyce Chng (whose story A Matter of Possession appeared in our Alternate History issue); and 5 excellent and diverse stories:
“I Will Come Home” by Chris Fletcher
“The Only Motion is Returning” by Del Dryden
“Goddess” by Lavanya Karthik
“The Last Rickshaw” by Stephanie Lai
“When the Earth and Sea Swapped Places” by Kaolin Fire

We’re currently accepting submissions to # 19, our Gadgets & Artifacts issue. Submissions have been pretty steady, to our relief – we didn’t want a repeat of last month when we had terribly low submission number until the final 5 days of the month.

Two nights ago Kay and I sat down and hashed out a tentative schedule for monthly themes in Year 3 of Crossed Genres. It’s always exciting looking ahead to what we’ll be doing next! Even after setting the schedule we have over 90 genres/themes left, so we’re well set for many years to come. We have some classic genres in the immediate future, as well as some interesting surprises!

Speaking of surprises – hoo boy is our schedule full! I have a project I really want to do, but I can’t see any time in my schedule until Fall 2011! Working on freeing things up a bit to hopefully get to it this year.

Post title from “Wondering Where the Lions Are” by Bruce Cockburn

Those who aren’t already subscribers – Get a subscription for 10% off right now! For a limited time, a pledge of $9 to our Kickstarter drive gets you a one-year subscription PLUS digital copies of the Science in My Fiction contest winners! Please watch the silly video, and then pledge to get your subscription (plus more) for only $0.75 per month! (Pledging can also get you print copies of the contest winners!)

I decided a compilation of some of the most common, and the most outlandish/surprising, errors would serve two purposes: First, it would be an entertaining, with plenty of laugh and cringe-inducing examples. And second, it could be very useful for aspiring writers – cautionary tales of what not to do.

(Of course every market, and for that matter every editor, is different, so there will be some difference of opinion. No matter what, always read the guidelines thoroughly before submitting.)

So if there are any editors out there from small-market magazines or small presses who would like to share a few of their “favorite” examples of submission mistakes, please email me! cg-at-crossedgenres-dot-com. Include the following:

• A short list (up to 10) of what you consider the most common mistakes you see in submissions. If you’d like you can include short “Why you shouldn’t do that” explanations.
• A short list (up to 10) of the most jaw-dropping, “I-can’t-believe-they-DID-that!” things you’ve seen. If you’d like you can include short “Why you shouldn’t do that” explanations.

Please include your name and email address, and let me know if you want to be anonymous, or if you would like to be listed as a contributor. (NOTE: I’m looking specifically for mistakes in submissions – not queries!)

This compilation will be free. I’m putting it together as a resource, and don’t intend to make money off it. I’ll make it into various digital formats and make them all free to distribute under a Creative Commons license.

Thanks!

First, as I posted late last night, Issue 17: ANTIHERO has been released! This issue is amazing; please read, view and enjoy!

Today we are also officially accepting entries to the Science in My Fiction contest! You can now submit your entry via the simple online form. Entries will be accepted until June 30.

Also! Please preorder your copy of the contest winners! If you aren’t a subscriber, this is the only way you’ll get to read them, and the only time you’ll have the chance to get them in print! After the contest is over we won’t be selling any more copies! Preorders will only be open until May 31!

Remember how, for most of March, I was imploring people to spread the word about the Eastern issue, since submissions were incredibly thin? Well thank you to everyone who did, because it WORKED. To our utter delight, we were absolutely slammed with submissions right at the end of the month! We received 60% of the month’s submissions in the last three days! The boost was so enormous that it got us all the way up to our average! Our valiant slush readers have been working their butts off, but there’s still some unread stories. Amazing. One of these days I’ll actually accept that early numbers don’t mean anything. At any rate, we’ll be reading manically over the next few days.

We also got a look at the almost-completed cover art for the Eastern issue. It is beautiful! An incredible contrast to the Antihero cover art. The artist is from Thailand and has done a wonderful job of capturing both the Eastern theme and the essence of CG and SFF. Lovely.

Now we’re on to accepting submissions for our next issue! The Gadgets & Artifacts issue wants stories in which some SF or F object is integral to the story. Beyond that, be as creative as you want! Submissions open until April 30.

This month is your last chance to read and/or buy the Western issue! With some terrific stories, a great article about the first ever science fiction western, and the first cover of ours done by Nicc Balce! Nicc’s done a couple more covers for us since, including the cover of the Year One anthology. Check out Issue 6, and consider picking up a copy before it’s too late!

Finally, one last item I want to draw attention to: We have the Upcoming Genres for the next 5 issues posted every month, and right now that takes us through the end of our 2nd year (!). As with the end of our first year, we’ve decided to do an oversized special edition to mark the end of the 2nd year. For a theme, we’ve chosen Characters of Color. For this issue, the main character(s) of every story and every piece of artwork must be a character of color. We’ve chosen this theme to encourage more broad inclusion of CoC’s, which are distinctly underrepresented in SFF.

Post title from Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman

ARTWORK (Fair Warning: This artwork is more graphic than our usual covers!)

“Our Hell” by Tânia Sousa Ribeiro

FICTION

High School 3000 by Timothy Miller
Monsters by Ross Willard
The Third Cosmic Crisis, As I Recall it by Collin Blair Grabarek
Three Little Pigs by Jo Thomas
Fame & Blowing Bubbles by K.S. Riggin

ARTICLE

We Are Mighty by Jaym Gates

This issue is simply mindblowing. Go. Read. See. Enjoy!

Wednesday is also the LAST day to read the Humor issue! Some great stories and a terrific article by Piers Anthony on writing Humor! Go read it and/or buy it while you still can!

Issue 17 is pretty much wrapped up. I meant to finish the PDF today, but realized I didn’t properly size the cover art. D’oh. So I’ll do that tonight and finish it tomorrow. The new issue (ANTIHERO) goes live on Thursday!

Thursday is also the day we begin accepting entries to the Science in My Fiction contest! All over we’re seeing boisterous posts by excited writers – almost every one of which mentions the research they’re doing or the story they’ve started writing. Going to be a kicking contest!

Speaking of kicking: If you want to read the contest winners and aren’t a subscriber, go pledge at least $4 to the contest Kickstarter drive. We’re raising funds to put the contest winners in print; we’re already over one-third of the way there! Only subscribers or people who pledge to the kickstarter drive will get to read the contest winners! There are great rewards for pledging, like cheap CG subscriptions, signed print copies of the contest winners, and even a cartoon drawing of YOU, drawn by my co-editor Kay, printed in the print edition of the contest winners! The rewards which enable you to read the contest winners start as low as $4. The pledge drive only lasts until May 31, so go watch our silly video about the contest, and pledge today!

There’s some talk about the Outer Alliance possibly having a dealer table and/or group reading at Dragoncon in September! If so, Kay and I will do our damnedest to be there!

Post title from The Sneetches by Theodore “Dr. Seuss” Geisel

“From lovers whose needs suck away others’ life forces to the foibles of superheroes past their prime, Crossed Genres makes a tasty break from ordinary speculative fiction. This twisted group of stories both inflames and amuses. At ten bucks a pop, it is hard not to recommend its purchase.”

- Reviewer: KJ Hannah Greenberg

The Science in My Fiction contest has been very well received. It looks like there will be plenty of entries! The winning entries will be published in the Subscribers Area of the website – if you’re not a subscriber, you can get a discounted subscription, as well as preorder print copies of the winning stories (get them signed by the writers!) over at our Kickstarter fundraising drive. pledging to the drive is the ONLY way to get copies, digital or otherwise, of the winners! (Subscribers will be able to read them temporarily but not download them, and we’re only doing one print run!) Please support our efforts to get the winners in print! If we don’t make our fundraising goal then no print edition will be made – fundraising is off to a good start but there’s still a ways to go!

Issue 18: EASTERN STILL NEEDS SUBMISSIONS! I’m frankly stunned at how few we’ve received. We want to do justice to the Eastern theme, so please get your submissions in; better than average odds this month, apparently!

The issue 17 (Antihero) proof has been approved. Wow, it turned out even better than I’d hoped! I was a little worried that too much would be cropped from the bottom, but not at all. I’m most of the way done with the online stuff for the issue too.

Today Kay nailed down the last cover art she was looking for; now, we have cover artists set all the way through issue 23! Woo, go Kay! As a result, we’ll be closed to cover art submissions for a while.

Post title from the poem “Disobedience” by A.A. Milne

And now’s the part where we ask for your help. Obviously, we want people to enter stories in the contest (beginning on April 1). And with the prizes being offered, we’re confident there’ll be a good number of entries.

Well, we also really want to put the winning entries in print! But after taking the costs of the contest directly out of our pockets (in addition to regular CG expenses), the additional costs of producing a quality print edition is a bit too much for us.

So we’ve started a Kickstarter drive to fund the print edition! It’s simple: Go visit the Kickstarter page. Watch the funny video Kay made, with us and our son Baz being silly, and some absurd animations we made.

Then, check out the various rewards you can get by pledging to the drive, including copies of the print edition of the contest winners. We’re only aiming to do a single print run, which means pledging to the drive is the only way to get a copy of the stories! The stories will be published in the Subscribers Area of the Crossed Genres site, so if you’re not a subscriber and want to read the stories, pledge something!

There are several different levels of rewards, but you can pledge any amount you want. You can get the stories (in digital formats) with a pledge as low as $4.

There are also some awesome other rewards: cheap online subscriptions to CG, SIGNED copies of the contest winning stories, and more. One of the pledge levels is the first and only time we have ever offered a LIFETIME online subscription to CG! For those who love Kay’s art: Get a cartoon version of you drawn by her and printed right in the print edition of the contest winners!

If we don’t reach the pledge goal, there won’t be a print edition of the winners… it’s that simple. But here’s the thing: you only pay your pledge IF we reach the goal! So if we get there, you get your awesome reward(s), and if not, you’ve lost nothing! It’s win-win!

Please check out the Kickstarter drive, watch the video, check out the rewards, and consider making a pledge. Get your copy of the print edition the only way possible!

We still need EASTERN SUBMISSIONS! We’ve gotten some submissions that match the genre now, but we’re still looking at the lowest submission rate we’ve had in almost a year. Please send in your submissions!

I’ve got most of the digital editions of Issue 17 finished. I still need to do the PDF – it’s a bit different so it has to be done separately. And I spent some time today working on the online stuff… it’s not finished but I made some good progress.

This weekend Kay and I will be attending Vericon! It’s our third Vericon and we expect to have a blast. If you come to the con and mention you read about the con here in our blog, we just might dig out a free copy of Crossed Genres Year One for you!

Also, this Sunday we’ll be making our super-awesome announcement that I’ve been hinting at for months now. Yay! It almost seems unreal that something we’ve been planning for so long is finally coming to fruition. I will give another (useless) hint: today, I spent some time in downtown Boston hunting for test tubes. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever had to hunt for, and was not made easy by the fact that I was in the legal district. However, I was successful.

Post title from “American Tune” by Paul Simon

So what do you think? Want the chance to ask me questions? (I suspect Kay will be willing to answer a few too).

I got the photos I’d been waiting on, and submitted issue 17 for approval. Just a few minutes ago ordered the proof copy. Woo! (I love how this issue looks. Love it!)

I also spent a good part of the weekend (and this morning) working on last-minute stuff before our big announcement this Sunday! So excited! Want to spill the beans now. Must… resist…!

Hey, this month is your last chance to enjoy our Humor issue! After March it goes away forever! Go have a read, or pick up a copy!

I got a very nice compliment about the design/layout work I did on the CG anthology! Not knowing I’d done the work myself, the person said it “looks very nice–seemingly economically printed but very nice cover production and good inside layout” and asked me of I could “recommend resources for putting out a paper book at that level?” It’s always nice to have the quality of your hard work validated. =)

Post title from “King of Spain” by Moxy Früvous

Now some happier news: Barbara Ann Wright’s short story Damaged On Every Level, which first appeared in Crossed Genres issue 11, was included in the Tangent Online 2009 Recommended Reading list! Congratulations to Barbara for the well-deserved recognition.

As I mentioned on Wednesday, Kay and I decided to turn over the operation of our erotic SFF zine The Little Death of Crossed Genres. With all the various projects we have, there just wasn’t any way we could give it the attention it needed and deserved. Fortunately, Jaym Gates and Chris Fletcher agreed to take over as co-editors! We’re very thrilled to have Jaym and Chris aboard, and we expect they’ll have Little Death chugging along in no time.

The print edition of Issue 17 is just about complete. I’m just waiting on a couple of print-ready photos that we’re including with the non-fiction article in the issue. After that I’ll be able to finalize it and submit it to the publisher immediately. The digital editions are in a similar place – I need the photos before I can get them any further along. Still, we’re in a good place with the issue.

And it’s a good thing, because the 2nd half of March is going to be mad – MAD I say! Why? Well I can’t tell you yet, but the big announcement is coming next Sunday the 21st. We’ll be at Vericon in Cambridge, MA that weekend – anyone who’s around should come, it’s a really fun convention! Any con that has Timothy Zahn and Randall Munroe as their two main speakers has gotta be good! (We’ve been the previous two years, so we know for a fact that it’s a fun con.) Find us at Vericon and mention that you saw this post, and we might just give you a free copy of the Crossed Genres anthology!

WE NEED SUBMISSIONS! The Eastern issue has received frighteningly few submissions… and for some reason a number of them have not been set in Eastern cultures like the guidelines say. Please send in your Eastern submissions, and spread the word that we’re in real need!

Meanwhile our latest endeavor, the Science in My Fiction blog, has been developing well. There are four posts up so far, which have spurred some great discussions – everything from dolphins-as-persons to quantum mechanics to the significance of water in spec-fic writing. Go take a read, and join the fun!

Post title is from “Leaving On A Jet Plane” by John Denver

The release of Issue 16: STEAMPUNK has been very well received. Go, read, enjoy!

But the new issue has been somewhat overshadowed by the very successful opening of Science in My Fiction! SiMF is our new blog intended to “get science fiction and fantasy writers and fans thinking ahead of science again. Playful bloggers will take a look at recent scientific developments and extrapolate potential futures from them.” The first couple posts are up and have already sparked some lively and fun speculation. Apparently SiMF has made a good impression, because it got a short write-up on io9! w00t! In fact, as of this writing it’s still on the front page of io9… awesome!

We’ve made our choices for acceptance to the Antihero issue! We’ll be sending out emails tonight. Also OMG the cover is incredible!

We’re now accepting submissions for our EASTERN issue. We’re looking for stories set in Eastern cultures. Submissions have been slow so far… please get your subs in! We really want this one to be impressive. (Anyone can submit, by the way – the setting and preferably the characters will be from Eastern cultures, but the writer doesn’t have to be.)

This month is your LAST CHANCE to read our Humor issue! Enjoy it before it’s gone! It includes an article about writing humor by Piers Anthony! And if you like, pick up a copy!

Most of the past couple of days have been spent troubleshooting some last details on the SiMF site, and prepping for another Surprise we have coming. Said surprise will be announced in just about two weeks! But it’s mostly ready. I also spent some time getting some of the early work done on Issue 17.

One last thing I want to mention: some very generous people have created 100 Stories For Haiti. It’s an anthology of 100 short stories, created to help raise funds for relief efforts in Haiti. All proceeds go to the Haiti Earthquake Appeal. It’s very similar to Post a Story For Haiti, except you get a wonderful printed book out of it! Please consider purchasing a copy to help with the ongoing Haiti relief.

Post title is from “American Pie” by Don McLean

Read issue 4: CRIME before it’s gone forever! It disappears tomorrow night! It was a damned good issue, too! (You can also buy it – only $5, free shipping from Amazon!)

Monday we’re releasing Issue 16: STEAMPUNK. I’m so very pleased with how this issue came out. It’s a very specific genre and some people find it limiting, but this is truly one of our most diverse issues yet.

Today I’ve mostly spent doing touch-up work to make sure everything is ready for the release, as well as for our super-seekrit announcement! Speaking of which, Kay posted an amusing piece of art which is half homage to our youths, half teaser for the upcoming announcement. Either way it’s damn funny.

I’m also doing some more research into the viability of a CG print subscription. We’ve considered it in the past but were never sure it it could be done without bankrupting us; that’s what I’m researching now. I’ll have more info soon. In the meantime, if you haven’t yet, please fill out our survey about print subscriptions to Crossed Genres. It’s only 5 questions, it’ll take barely any time.

I mentioned this on Twitter earlier today: We currently have a list of genres/themes for future issues that, even if never expanded, would take us halfway through our ninth year of existence. So worry not, we’ve got you covered!

Post title from “The Bells” by Edgar Allen Poe

1) Sunday is the LAST DAY to submit to the ANTIHERO issue! Thus far subs have been pretty solid – we’re well over last month’s totals – but we need more! We always need more!

2) Also, this is your LAST CHANCE to read Issue 4 – CRIME! It was a terrific issue, and after Sunday it’s gone for good! Go read it while you can, and consider buying it – only $5!

3) Have a Crossed Genres story you particularly like? Nominate it for the 2010 Million Writers Award! Nominations close on Sunday!

4) We’ve seen the almost-completed cover for the Antihero issue. Wow, it is amazing, and definitely the most risque-slash-disturbing cover we’ve had yet! I think it may be the best we’ve had at really telling a fascinating story all on its own.

5) Those of you with iPhones can take advantage of a new development to our site that our brilliant web guru Matt clued me into – the site is now optimized for viewing on the iPhone thanks to an amazing Wordpress plugin called WPTouch. Check out the site via iPhone, it’s incredible how sharp it looks and functions. Anyone who uses WP, I strongly recommend this plugin for your site!

6) We have so much fun stuff coming up soon, we’re itching to tell you now! We’ll be making one announcement on March 1 – brace yourselves!

Post title is from the theme music to the 1980’s animated tv show “Gummi Bears”

Over the last few days I’ve been communicating with several people who are testing out various new versions of the magazine. I’m working on making the magazine available in as many as seven digital formats, which will cover just about all of the various ebook readers and smartphones. (Formats I’m working on are EPUB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PDF & PRC.)

BUT, the many different formats will not be available for individual sale – starting with issue 16 on March 1, all seven different file types will be sold together as a digital bundle for no extra cost. That’s right, we will begin selling a zipped file that includes all the digital formats, for the same $1.59 we’ve been charging for PDFs and PRCs. All versions will be DRM-free.

Why are we doing this? Frankly, because we don’t think it’s fair that you’d have to buy the issue again if you wanted to switch to a new reader. This way, you get to keep the issue (or book; we’ll be doing this with our book releases too, although the prices may vary) even if you switch from PC to iPhone to Nook and back to PC.

And before any of our subscribers ask: YES, the bundles will be available for free download in the Subscribers Area as well.

Most likely we will not be going back and redoing previous issues in bundles, mainly because we don’t really have time. We may do the most recent few, though. If anyone would really like to have a particular issue offered this way, let us know and we’ll consider it.
_________________________________

I mentioned on Twitter last night that the % of submissions we receive from women has dropped rather sharply. During our first year (the first 12 issues), 47.94% of submissions were from women. So far in our second year (issues 13-16), that number is 39.34%. This month (Antihero) is even lower, at 28.57%. It does vary a bit from month to month, which could be small-sample-size random variation. But the overall trend is kind of surprising.

Although, this doesn’t have any effect on our acceptances. We do NOT accept stories based on the gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. of the writer (most of the time we don’t know these things anyway) – we accept the best stories we get each month, regardless of who wrote them. Interestingly, despite the trend in submissions, over issues 13-16 we’ve published 9 stories from men and 12 from women.
_________________________________

• Other than some adjustments I need to make to the digital editions for the bundle, Issue 16 is pretty much done. We’re still waiting on the proof copy to arrive, but it should get to us any time.
• We’re still accepting submissions for Issue 17: ANTIHERO! We’re only a couple submissions away from matching last month, so we should end up comfortably ahead in total submissions.
• Remember, this is the LAST MONTH that Issue 4: CRIME will be available! Go read it, and consider buying it as well – only $5!
• And lest we forget (Hah!), Issue 15: ANY PREVIOUS GENRE is brilliant. Please read, & if you like, buy it!

Post title from “I’m Gonna Be An Engineer” by Peggy Seeger; performed by Pete Seeger.

Yesterday I met Justine Graykin in person for the first time. Justine’s story Archimedes Nesselrode appeared in our Humor issue back in April. And today I met Scott Andrews, whose story Keeli’s Ordeal is in the current issue: Scott is Editor-In-Chief of the terrific ezine Beneath Ceaseless Skies. We also got to say hi again to Walter Hunt; Walter contributed to the Alternate History issue (and his daughter Aline had a review in issue 10).

There were some great panels, too: ib>Technology T/o/d/a/y Tomorrow, Global Events, Local Effects?: Climate Change, SF/F/H Sites to See (Before You Die): E Publishing and Online Media, and Believable Relationships stick out. (One big problem throughout Boskone was a lack of microphones, or mics that just didn’t work; we walked out of a couple panels because we couldn’t hear a word they were saying.)

The dealer area was pretty neat; the M.I.T. Science Fiction Society was selling old issues of Asimov’s, F&SF, Analog, Galaxy, etc., for 25 cents each! Kay and I each found issues from the month we were born. We happened to walk by the Bruce Coville table as Coville himself was there; Kay’s loved his books for a long time, and went a bit fangirl when he signed copies of Goblins in the Castle and My Teacher Is an Alien to our son Baz.

Also, the Con suite had a ton of delicious breads that had been donated, and they were begging people to take some home because there was no way they’d use it all. So we have a bunch of tasty bread to eat!

————
CG business:

A new chapter of A Festival of Skeletons is up! If you have a subscription you can go here to read it; if not, subscribe now! Only 83 cents a month!

The issue 16 proof has been shipped; we’ll hopefully get it by the end of next week. the other editions are pretty well in hand; I still need to have the .LIT, .LRF and .PDB versions tested! If you have an ereader that can read one of these formats and you want a free e-copy of issue 15, please email me!

We’ve had more submissions to the Antihero issue, coming in at a nice steady rate. We love it! Keep ‘em coming! And remember to look ahead to our Upcoming Genres – we now have the next FIVE upcoming genres listed!

There’s some awesome stuff coming up with CG soon, and I so wish I could share now, but…. eeeeegh, no. You’ll have to wait 2 more weeks for 1 announcement, and another few for the next one. [/tease]

Post title is a line from the film Alice In Wonderland, based on the book Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

However, we’ve been keeping up! In fact, we’re a little ahead: the print edition of Issue 16 (Steampunk) is submitted to the printer already! I’ve also made a ton of progress on the various other versions; we’re probably a good 10 days ahead of where we usually are. Awesome!

Speaking of “other versions”: anyone out there have an e-reader (or a smartphone they read on) that would like to test out Crossed Genres? I’m working on getting CG into some new formats: Currently I have test versions of issue 15 in .EPUB, .LIT, .LRF, .MOBI and .PDB formats. If you have a device that reads one of these and would be willing to test it out, please email me. Hey, free copy of the current issue!

We’re accepting submissions for our Antihero issue! Submissions have been pretty strong thus far: at least, we’re about 60% of the way to January’s total and it’s only the 12th. Keep ‘em coming! I can’t wait to see the completed cover of this one: the black-and-whites we’ve seen have been… impressive and disturbing.

We’re going to be at Boskone this weekend! If you’re going to be there and want to meet up, drop us a line! We’re meeting a few friends there too, including Mike Kabongo, an agent and all-around great guy. We’re also planning visits to Vericon and possibly PAX East, both in March.

A new chapter of A Festival of Skeletons will be out in the Subscribers Area on Sunday! If you’re not subscribed – do so now!

We have much in the works, as always, and we’ll be rolling out something new at the beginning of March. Because we just can’t stop thinking of awesome new projects to deliver to you!

Post title comes from a line in the recent film version of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

• 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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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”

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

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?

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

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

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

A few bullet points to summarize what’s been going on:

• The proof for Issue 14 has been shipped and is on the way. It’s looking pretty nice – I think the cover art is going to be very sharp. Interestingly, Issue 14 became (through necessity) our first ever issue with nothing but fiction: our planned article fell through. But that’s okay, because we received a TON of submissions and were able to pick out 6 very good stories to include. We were a little disappointed that we didn’t see a bit more in the way of Eastern Folklore represented, but otherwise we were very pleased.
• Speaking of submissions, this month is off the charts. The last few days have slowed down a bit, but even at our current pace we’ll eclipse even the LGBTQ month (which was an outlier) by 17%.
• The anthology hit a snag when the cover art we received simply wasn’t right for us. We considered it but ultimately had to turn it down; the artist is talented but the piece he created was just wrong for the anthology. Fortunately we had a contingency plan which seems to be working out (*KNOCK WOOD*) We should still be on target for our release date of Feb. 1, although we may end up shipping out the preorders a week or so later than we’d planned (still within January).
• The announcement of The Little Death of Crossed Genres has been small but positive. The “small” probably comes from us not promoting it after the first day, due to other responsibilities. But Little Death has no set time frame, so we’re in no hurry. We have started to receive submissions, which is awesome.
• Remember that this month is the FINAL MONTH to read and/or purchase Issue 2! as of January 1 it’ll be removed from the site and that’s the last it’ll ever be made available!

At this point you can pretty much always assume that we have stuff going on that we’re just not ready to announce yet. This may very well be our perpetual state of being; by the time we’re ready to announce something we’ve started another something that we have to wait to talk about, rinse lather repeat. I’ll do my best not to tease you too much (but I make no promises).

I’ll make time for a proper progress-meter post tomorrow night. For now, enjoy Issue 13 (Action/Adventure!), and take a last gander at Issue 2 (Dystopian) (last month!)

Also, we have a surprise announcement coming up on Thursday (my birthday, not coincidentally). I’ll tantalize you with obscure hints in tomorrow’s post. (BTW, if anyone in New Jersey wants to get me a present on my birthday, I want a yes vote on S1967, the “Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act”. And a pony.)

And someone take these damn Doritos away from me.

Post title from Tom Smith’s “Talk Like A Pirate Day“

• Switched from 100-copy limit to Print-On-Demand with no limit
• Switched from paying copy to token cash payments
• Began offering digital editions
• Had simultaneous heart attacks when Piers Anthony agreed to write an article
• Built a completely new website from the ground up (Thanks Matt!)
• Held our first Flash Fiction contest in June
• Had one of our covers BoingBoinged
• Had a bit of controversy
• Brought aboard slush readers to help us save time
• Released an oversized 12th issue
• Releasing our first Anthology (ongoing)
• Serializing our first novel online (coming in January)
• Passed 150,000 pageviews in our first year!!!

Whew! And that’s just the “major” points!

Another thing that is absolutely worth noting is that we reached our financial goal in November!

Now, that doesn’t mean we didn’t lose money – we did, and quite a lot of it. But we had hoped to raise enough money from sales of issue 12 and preorders of the anthology to cover our expenses above and beyond the magazine itself – in other words, we wanted to reach the point where we only had to pay for the magazine itself out-of-pocket, not our various other projects that are in the works. We just barely made it, but we did! Thank you so much, everyone who helped; whether it was with a purchase, a donation, or simply spreading the word, we needed every bit of help we got (really, we JUST made it), and we’re deeply grateful to everyone.

What this means is that all our current projects are ON, as well as the continuation of the magazine of course. And more projects… well, we won’t be starting any more until we have the funds to cover them ahead-of-time. It’s a shame because we have SO MUCH we’d like to do, so many ideas, but it is the smart and practical thing to do. This doesn’t mean we won’t be bringing you new stuff – it just means that the new stuff will happen depending on how much you all want it! We may do fundraising drives for specific projects in the future too. We’ll see how it goes. For the next few months we’ve got plenty on our plate anyway!

And because we have plenty on our plate already, We’ve finally surrendered to the reality that we need to defer more CG responsibilities to others. Letting go of our “baby” is tough, but we really need the time. The slush readers have definitely saved us time, so it makes sense to seek similar aid.

With this in mind, we’ve asked Kelly Jennings to come aboard and help with Fiction editing. Kelly is the author of Lunch Money, which appears in the just-released Action/Adventure issue. She’s Associate Professor (English) at University of Arkansas Fort Smith, and holds a PhD in English. She’s also written multiple novels, one of which will be published by Verb Noire in early 2010.

Kelly will be responsible for editing the fiction pieces we select for inclusion in the magazine; she’ll work with the writers to complete final drafts. She’s remarkably fast and efficient with revisions, and a pleasure to work with on top of that, so she’s very well-suited to what we need. Kelly will be added to the About page as soon as we have her bio; please welcome her aboard!

As you all no doubt know, Issue 13 just came out! We’re very pleased with this one: the writing is very strong from start to finish, and the cover art is so much FUN. Plus, it’s our first-ever dragon on any of our covers – about time!

Submissions to Issue 14 were amazing. We ended up getting more subs than any other issue except the LGBTQ issue. We feared that NaNoWriMo might cause a drop in submissions, but it was the opposite. Apparently Folklore really struck a chord with writers! And we may have set ourselves up for a similar December – we’ve already gotten a surprising number of submissions on day 1. Of course, having 14 genres to choose from could have something to do with it.

We’re reading furiously, and we’re almost through everything. We’ll be making our final selections and emailing authors in the next day or two.

Monday is also the LAST day that issue 1 will be available to read! After midnight it will have been available for a full year, and will be removed from the site. Take your last chance to read it today!

And completing this trifecta, tomorrow is the FINAL DAY to get your Folklore submissions in! We’ve reached pre-issue 12 submission numbers, which is very pleasing; not too likely we’ll get all the way up to issue 12 numbers, but who knows?

As I said, Monday is the final day of Crossed Genres’ first year of issues. It’s hard to believe that after this much time and all the effort we can still find running CG as exhilarating and rewarding as we do. It’s exhausting, time-swallowing work – but we love it, so we’ll keep doing it.

Since a number of people have asked: no, we haven’t quite gotten to where we want to be financially. We’re still looking at a bigger loss between now and February 1 than we’d planned for. We’ve gotten very close though, and we’re confident that the rest of what we need will come in over the next few months. If not – well, we’ll suck up and find the money somehow.

Unfortunately that means that a lot of our various plans to offer more will be put on hold until we can afford them. Not to worry, we have a long list that we will get to as time and funding permits.

Tuesday will see the release of issue 13: Action/Adventure! This issue is terrific, with some wonderful fiction, a great article and brilliant and playful cover art. I can’t wait for you all to see! We’ll also start putting together issue 14 on Tuesday (I say “start” but of course we already have the cover art and an article handled).

Sometime this week I’ll do a post with some total numbers from our first year. Amazingly, we’re going to get damned close to 150,000 pageviews, although we won’t quite make it. Still: WOW!

And on December 10 (my birthday, not coincidentally), we will have something of an announcement. There, that should keep you coming back!

For only $9 USD (plus shipping), you get:

• 10% off the first Crossed Genres anthology, containing a story selected from each of our first 12 issues
• Free 1-year online subscription to Crossed Genres! Includes free .pdf/.prc downloads of issues, exclusive content (beginning in January) , and more coming!
• By preordering, you are automatically entered for the chance to win a free copy of the anthology for the library of your choice!

Just 3 days left, including today, to take advantage of this deal! Preorder now!

“There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.”
- From the website

In recognition of this truth, Crossed Genres is participating in BND by shutting down our store for today. On Black Friday, have a fun day of anti-consumerism – instead of buying our wonderful products, read a few stories online!

Also, keep those Folklore submissions coming! Only 3 1/2 days left!

• Issue 13 is completely done, ready to go. Woo! Going to spend any time I have between now and the end of the month working on the anthology and reading.
• Lest anyone be misled by my last post, we have not quite reached that safety point in our finances yet. We need another dozen preorders, or a couple donations, or some individual issue sales… some combination of those anyway. One final push to make it before the end of the month!
• Also, be aware: the Crossed Genres store will be CLOSED on Black Friday, in recognition of International Buy Nothing Day! After which there will be only THREE days remaining to the preorder sale! The last chance is fast approaching. Tell your friends! If you already have, make some new friends and then tell them!
• Yesterday we passed 35,000 pageviews this month. WOW! The end of November will end a full calendar year since we released issue 1. A bit after, I’ll do a post with some Year 01 stats.
• Speaking of: This is your last chance to see (and buy) Issue One! After this month it will be removed from the site! Read it! Buy it! Love it!

You live a pretty normal life. You work a day job you’re at best indifferent about, as does your significant other. You’ve got some debt that (for the moment) is manageable. You’re raising a great kid. Generally your life is good – tiring, but good.

You have this other thing that you and your SO work on together; a small magazine. You started it a little over a year ago, maybe a bit more spontaneously than was wise. But it’s worked out well. The magazine is chugging along nicely, with a growing reputation for quality work and professionalism. Contributors to previous issues freely say things like:

“…they were fantastic. Had great editing suggestions, were a pleasure to work with and put out a high-quality publication.”

and

“…a stellar presence that puts together great fiction and superb art.”

and

“This growing market is a prize. They’re good people and a pleasure to work with.”

It would be impossible not to feel pretty elated knowing that you’d made such a strong positive impression on the people you’ve worked with. Being a writer yourself, one of your biggest hopes for the magazine was that it would help encourage writers (however few or many possible) to pursue their writing with fervor and optimism. The magazine is a ton of work, but it’s immensely satisfying; you can proudly say that writers are proud to be published in it.

Unfortunately, the magazine is also a money pit. You knew you’d lose money on it when you started – you just didn’t think it would be so much money. At the one-year mark of the magazine’s existence, after going over your finances, you conclude that, at its current pace, you won’t be able to afford to keep the magazine going another year.

So you put out a call asking for help. You hate doing this; you don’t like asking for money under any circumstances, and especially not from people who you just want to share this fun work with. Hell, you started the magazine intentionally offering content for free because you knew the economy was very bad and people could really use some free entertainment. But you have no choice – it’s this, or no more magazine – so you do it.

And help comes in. It’s not an onslaught, because let’s face it, the economy’s still lousy and money is scarce all around. But a lot of people help spread the word, and those who can help, do. People even get creative on how they help, which shouldn’t be surprising because a lot of them are writers and artists.

Most amazingly, not one but several writers offer their work to you for free; either tearing up old payment checks they hadn’t cashed (and in one case, framing it), or saying not to send payments for work you’ve already agreed to pay them for – even offering to sign new contracts to that effect. Think about that, just for a moment: Writers, people who want to be widely published and (presumably) would love to make their livings writing, giving away their writing.

Why would they do that? The answer is in the emails you receive from them:

“Hey … if you are having finance issues with CG, you can totally have [my story] for free.”

and

“…I bought a few copies of the magazine sans discount, but I want to do more, so let’s not worry about paying me for the sub, all right? You can give me a penny next time we see each other at a con, so it’s still a sale, but really I think you guys need the bucks more than I do … so it’s not a huge deal for me (whereas being in the issue was, and that’s done, so good job all round).”

and

“You remember that check you sent me, as payment for the story you published. Well, I’m never going to deposit it, so you can take that debt off your books. Consider it a donation or contribution or whatever you prefer. I framed it and it’s hanging on my wall. Sorta like the first dollar for a new business.

I don’t know if that helps the finances much, but it’s the least I can do.”

and

“The greatest reward writing stuff for you guys has just been the honor of being accepted into your publications. Having my first story I submitted get snatched up by you guys right off the bat has given me the confidence to work harder at this whole writing thing. It is something I will be eternally grateful for, and it’s about time I showed it.”

Most of the money’s still lost, and will likely never be recovered; but enough has come back, thanks to the generosity of people who appreciate and respect the work you’ve done, that you can almost see stability on the horizon; you’re not quite there, but you’re close enough to be confident you’ll get there.

And when you read these emails and blog posts, it’s almost impossible to care about the money anyway. You know you should, but you can’t.

This is what success looks like. This is where you find yourself, if you’ve put yourself in our shoes.

I haven’t done a status update in a while; I’ve been sick, and it’s really killed my energy. But there are a few things:

We got the proof copy of issue 13 on Thursday. It looks amazing! The covers always print darker than they appear on the screen, and for this particular art it added depth and vibrancy. It’s gorgeous. Can’t wait to share it with you!

I’ve just about got the online stuff all sorted. I do have a couple little details to handle, but it’s mostly done. I’m trying a new method of uploading the new issue this month; could make the actual night-of process much quicker. Here’s hoping, anyway.

I need to get cracking on the anthology next. It’s in process, but I need to spend the rest of this month really focusing on it. I want to submit for the first proof at the beginning of December (Of course we’re still waiting on the cover art). We’ve got all the contracts in hand too, so this week I’ll be sending out signed copies and communicating with the writers about any last edits they want to make to their stories.

I’m also still only halfway through the novel submission I’ve been reading. The only time I’ve had to read is during my commutes to and from the day job. But I think tomorrow I’m going to find some time to just sit and read for a while. It really is quite a good story.

Submissions for Issue 14 continue to come in pretty consistently. Our slush readers are doing a good job of keeping on top of it. I’m hoping for a nice big rush at the end of the month like usual.

I’m sure there’s more from the past few days, but it’s bedtime. One last thing: a few people has suggested
that I put song titles in these posts to identify where the post titles are from. While I feel that’s kind of cheating, maybe it can be a game; look at the title, try to come up with where it’s from, check the end of the post for the answer. Eh, whatever. It’s easy to do, so I will. This post comes from a quote rather than a song. I only heard today that Utah Phillips died last May, so it’s in honor of him:

“The state can’t give you freedom, and the state can’t take it away. Freedom is something you’re born with, and then one day someone tries to deny it. The extent to which you resist is the extent to which you are free.”
- Utah Phillips (1935-2008)

Since Kay made her post about our need, and I followed up with my post about our finances, an amazing number of people have responded. Dozens of people have posted about our situation in blogs and on their sites. The result has been that we’ve seen an impressive rise in anthology preorders, single-issue sales and straight subscriptions.

Moreover, people have gone even further. We’ve received a number of straight-up donations (at several people’s recommendation I added a Donation button more prominently on the site); several former contributors have made their own offers, like offering to sign copies for anyone near them who buys a copy, and even offering to enter names of people who support us in a drawing to win free hand-knitted gear. A couple of writers have even offered to let us publish their work for free – even when we’d already agreed to pay them for it.

All of this combined has made a huge dent in our losses. Hence the title of this post… our biggest thrill from CG is in seeing how people respond to the work we do. When words like “awesome”, “ambitious” and “fantastic” are used in reference to CG, while readers and contributors rise to the occasion with financial support, it’s a lot easier to swallow the $$ loss.

Below, I’m going to explain where we stand as of now. (I’ll try not to be long-winded, but I think it’s important to explain our rationale for how we’re proceeding.)

A lot of people have asked me or Kay “What do you still need to earn to break even?” We can’t answer this question without being misleading, because, to put it bluntly: we are not going to break even. We were over $1500 in debt on the year as of 2 days ago, and it would probably take a Neil Gaiman webfail (like Kay mentioned) to overcome that deficit. As I’ve said before, we knew when we started that we were going to lose money on Crossed Genres, at least for the first year and probably longer.

Rather than dwelling on past losses, we’ve think that we should focus on minimizing loss in the future. With that in mind, we decided to look at what’s coming between now and the end of February. We chose that span because we have some “extra” projects happening or beginning in that time: the anthology, for example, and beginning the serialization of A Festival of Skeletons for subscribers.

After February, our expenses even out. We will continue to pay for those normal expenses out of pocket, and any new projects we want to take on will have to be financed beforehand. This means we’ll still be funding the monthly CG ourselves, and how much it grows beyond that will depend on how much our readers want it.

I figured out how much money we have as of right now (or will have, once Amazon/Createspace send us what they owe), and what our expenses should be between now and the end of February. Then I added our regular monthly out-of-pocket contributions between now and Feb. 28. Based on all of that, we are currently about $125-150 shy of what we need.

That is not bad at ALL. A couple of days ago that number was… well I’m not exactly sure, to be honest, but it was almost certainly quadruple that or more. The help that we’ve received so far has made a HUGE difference.

But we do still need that $125-150! If we can get that last boost, it’ll get us through the next few extra-expensive months, and from there we can afford to stay afloat even with minimal revenue.

So whaddya say? Want to help us overcome this final hurdle?

However, one thing I haven’t talked about practically at all is the financial side of it. That’s been intentional, as we never wanted to be the sort of business that pesters and annoys our readers while begging for money. We hate it when it’s done to us, so we don’t want to do it to you.

But you can’t really know what it really is to do what we’re doing without hearing some of the rather scary numbers. Now that we’re a good year into CG, we’ve got plenty of numbers to talk about.

First, a bit of context, in the form of traffic numbers. Either today or tomorrow, we’re going to surpass 140,000 pageviews since the day we released issue 1. More than 51,000 unique visitors have checked out our website. That is absolutely astounding; when we started CG, we set what we considered a very optimistic goal of 80,000 pageviews in our first year. to surpass our ambitious goal by 75% is amazing. Even better, people who visit the site are viewing an average of over 2.7 pages per visit, which is again significantly better than we expected.

Sadly, the financial numbers are far less pleasant. Some examples:

• Despite all the attention and praise it’s gotten, Issue 12 hasn’t quite reached 50 copies sold, of all formats combined.
• Issue 12 overall has not even made back half of what we spent on it.
• Our anthology has only gotten 10% of the preorders necessary for us to break even.

And by far the worst one:

• For the calendar year 2009 (so far), we have a net loss of over $1,500 USD.

That is a lot of money to come directly out of the pockets of two working-class stiffs who are also raising a 3-year-old child. Especially when you consider that Kay and I together put in a minimum of 40 hours per week on Crossed Genres, and sometimes far more. (I feel I should point out that we knew going into this that we were going to lose money, at least for the first year. We didn’t think it would be that much, though.)

Kay and I haven’t gotten paid a cent from CG. We’ve lost over 150,000 cents, in fact (and that’s not counting the money we spent between September and December 2008). As Kay pointed out in her own post earlier today, we’ve made back about 1/3 of the money we’ve put in… and as our peer kaolin fire of GUD magazine commented, that’s probably a bit better than GUD has done.

Small science fiction/fantasy magazines do not make money. Heck, even the bigger ones have been losing subscriptions for years now. And for little mags like CG, GUD, M-Brane SF, etc. that don’t have anything near that level of resources, it’s a thousand times harder.

The summation of this post is, as Kay said: “Crossed Genres is in trouble. It’s not ‘end of the world’ trouble, but it’s building to that.” With the expenses of the anthology coming up, plus the expense involved in serializing a novel in the Subscribers Area (possible more than one), the financial future of CG looks bad. It’s safe to say that, with the same level of revenue, we probably won’t survive our second year.

In Kay’s post, she asks for people to play a version of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” to help spread word about CG. Please read her post, and then maybe write up a quick blog post or fire off a tweet.

And please, consider spending just 9 bucks (plus shipping)to preorder the anthology; get a copy of the book, a free 1-year digital subscription, digital copies of the magazine, and be entered to win a free copy of the anthology for your local library. All that for nine bucks. And then, see if you can convince someone else to get one too. Keep us around a while longer.

We love running Crossed Genres, and we want to do it for years to come. We don’t care about making money – we just want to produce a great magazine, and more, and not drive ourselves to the poorhouse while we’re doing it.

Yesterday I finalized the print, pdf, Kindle and prc editions of Issue 13. Who’s awesome? That’s right.

Actually we have to wait for the proof of the print edition to arrive before we can give final approval. But yesterday I did take the print ed. from submitted to approved to proof ordered to proof shipped in 7 hours and 23 minutes. This has happened for several issues in a row; I’m still wary of allowing myself to expect it, because as soon as I do it won’t happen. Still, it’s nice to see such a fast turnaround.

We got the final of the issue 14 cover in a couple days ago! It’s very cool, and very different from any of our previous covers. I’m really happy with it.

Slush reading is still chugging along. Folklore submissions are on pace to just about match our best month (not counting the LGBTQ issue). Interestingly, the submissions are really spaced out, too: over the first 16 days of the month, only 3 days did we not receive at least 1 submission (and for all 3 of those days, there was a submission after 10pm the night before…) Yay! Let’s keep that rolling!

We also passed a new milestone: Yesterday we hit 30,000 pageviews this month (yes, in 16 days). Wow!

We are still well behind the number of preorders necessary to publish our first anthology. Please help us reach our goal by preordering! It’s a great deal: a discounted copy, a free one-year online subscription, and be entered for the chance to win a free copy of the anthology for your local library! For $9! Offer is good through the end of November.

One final thing: Remember that Issue 1 is going away at the end of this month! Please take this final opportunity to read our inaugural issue, and maybe pick up one of the last remaining copies of the limited print edition.

I also got caught up on submissions to Issue 14 (Folklore). They’ve been coming at a surprisingly steady clip, and the slush pile had actually gotten backed up a bit. But I contacted our slush readers, who leapt into action (i.e. sat and read) and we’re just about caught up again (except we just got another submission as I’ve been typing this!). This is not in any way a complaint, you understand… the submissions were well down for Action/Adventure and we’re pleased to see them trending back up.

We’re also seriously considering another novel submission for serialization (I think I mentioned this before?). We requested a bit of a rewrite from the author, and have just gotten it back, so we need to reread the novel. If we do accept it, it wouldn’t be ready for some time, since it would need to be edited and we’re swamped.

I also got an invite to Google Wave today, courtesy of Natania Barron (thanks!) I haven’t had the chance to play around with it yet, but I have a ton of ideas for reworking the way it’s used. Some of those ways might make for some creative CG events. It’ll take some planning, but I’ll see about laying some of it out as I develop it.

First, because I keep forgetting: Crossed Genres passed a couple of pretty amazing milestones this month. We’ve now surpassed 50,000 unique visitors to the site, and 135,000 pageviews, since the day Issue 1 came out. We’ll probably end up between 140k and 145k for our first year. (anyone want to help push that to 150k?) Considering that we initially aimed high for 80,000 pageviews in our first year, we are simply stunned by this. THANK YOU, everyone who’s visited, read, submitted, purchased(!) and helped spread the word.

Speaking of Issue one: we have almost reached the point where issue 1 will no longer be available. Issues stay available for 1 year, and #1 will have been out for a year as of November 30. Now is your last chance to read or purchase Issue 1! After this month it’ll be gone for good!

This afternoon, I proved my mastery of Microsoft Word. The template I use for the print edition of the issues has had a recurring problem – it’s recurred in every single version. Without going into to much detail, it was a problem with section breaks, and it messed with the formatting, page numbers… argh, it was so frustrating. I wasted time on every single issue because of it, tweaking over and over to get it to look right. But today – I eliminated it! Completely! The thing looks absolutely perfect, without weird issues that go all wonky each time I make a tiny adjustment. I was so excited that I emailed the template to both Kay and myself, just so I could be sure it wouldn’t get corrupted or lost. I think it will save me many hours, literally, in the long run. w00t!

Obviously, I got a lot of work done on the print edition of issue 13. It’s coming along nicely – I may be able to wrap it up tomorrow, and if not then definitely by Friday. Then I’ll get to work on the digital editions.

Speaking of which, today I also submitted to publish on Fictionwise. Fictionwise is one of the biggest sellers of ebooks out there. They reach an enormous number of readers, so we’re hopeful they’ll accept us as a publisher so we can have CG (as well as the anthology and any other publications) available in many more mobile formats.

We have a couple new projects in the works – because we need more, right? But they’re proving to be quite fun actually, and we think you’ll like them. More when we have something definite.

Next I’ll be putting together the print edition. The cover is ready actually, so it’s the inside I have to do. We’re still waiting to hear back from a couple of the writers about the edits, but that shouldn’t take too long *knocks wood*. All I can say is, thanks ghod we don’t have as much to deal with as last month! Once a year will be plenty, thanks! (Was that a hint that we intend to do another oversized issue at the end of our second year? I do believe it was!)

Kay is still plugging away at editing A Festival of Skeletons. She’s also keeping up with the various artists and contributors we’re talking to about future issues.

In addition to putting together issue 13, I’ll be finding time (somewhere) in the next few weeks to check in with the contributors to the anthology, and work on finalizing the layout. We want to have the proof copy in hand before Christmas, so time’s dwindling away. Fortunately a lot of progress has already been made.

We’re 1/3 of the way through November and we’re FAR behind on our goal of 150 preorders for the anthology. If we don’t reach 150 preorders we’ll have to postpone the anthology! Please help us hit 150 preorders!

Folklore submissions are still coming in at a solid clip. Yay! Keep ‘em coming, we wouldn’t want the slush readers to think they can slack off!

Dear [AUTHOR'S NAME],

Thank you for submitting your story, “[TITLE]“, to Crossed Genres. At this time we’ve decided that it doesn’t fit our needs.

Please do not take this as a reflection on the quality of your work. We receive far more submissions than we can possibly use, and have to make tough decisions on which to accept. And because of the nature of the magazine’s changing monthly genre, we usually can’t hold submissions to be used in future issues. We would happily welcome submissions from you in the future.

We wish you good luck in placing your story elsewhere. Sincerely,

Bart Leib & K.T. Holt,
Editors, Crossed Genres

While we know it can be frustrating to receive rejection letters, and even more so if they don’t give you specifics as to why, it’s a pretty common practice. We hope that everyone at least takes us seriously when we say not to take it as a reflection of the quality of your work (For more about why it doesn’t, please read my old post about what rejections really mean.)

Today, in response to our recent round of rejections, we received two different responses from two different writers. These two people received exactly the same form letter, only names and titles being changed. They are an interesting study in contrasts. I’m not going to pick them apart bit by bit – I’m just going to post them both here in their entirety (minus names & titles), all spelling and punctuation as we received them, for you to compare:

RESPONSE # 1:

I have difficulty understanding the term “Meet Our Needs”

It’s as if I must guess what your needs are. I thought publishers were interested in the crearivity and imagination of writers, not, “Guess what story I have in my mind and I’ll publish it”.

What a way to kill creativity. I have sent a number of stories that I believe have a good deal of merit and all I get is, ” It doesen’t meet our needs.”, which is just another way of saying, “We don’t know what the hell we are doing.” I won’t be sending in any more stories because frankly, You Don’t meet My Needs.

Dissapointed in Your evalation practices,

[NAME WITHHELD]

RESPONSE # 2:

Thank you for the opportunity to submit.

If I might ask a boon, this is the 2nd story that I’ve submitted that fit exactly into your theme (the previous was westerns.) I’m not upset, but more curious where this story fell short, if you have the time to tell me. I know how busy putting a magazine is. If you could tell me how I could improve this story that I believe in, I’d like to find a home for it elsewhere.

Thank you for your consideration.

[NAME WITHHELD]

…see the difference there?

Editing is under way. Kay’s taken care of some of it, and I’ve done a bit too; tomorrow I’m busting my butt to finish it. Everyone who submitted to the A/A issue should have received an email by now; if you haven’t please send a query.

Submissions to the Folklore issue are coming in at a steady clip. It’s almost as though people were waiting for it… go figure, right? We’re thrilled to see that, of course, and hope it keeps up. At the current rate we’d get right back up to the numbers we were seeing for issues 10 & 11, which would be terrific. (More is even better!)

Last thing: Please help us reach our goal of 150 anthology preorders! I know we’ve been pushing it, but with good reason: If we don’t reach the 150 mark on preorders, we may be forced to postpone the anthology! It’s a very expensive process to release this collection, and it comes directly on the heels of the oversized Issue 12. We’re still paying for CG mostly out of our pockets, but the anthology pushes beyond our financial limits. The preorder only costs ($9 plus shipping), and gets you a print copy of the anthology (shipped in January) and a free online subscription to CG, where you can download digital editions of issues and, starting in January, will have exclusive content just for subscribers.

Here’s some extra incentive to preorder the anthology: If we reach our goal of 150 preorders, we will randomly select 3 people who purchased a preorder, and will donate 1 copy of the anthology to the library of each of those people’s choice! Plus, for every 25 preorders beyond that, we’ll select another person at random for the same thing! (NOTE: The library giveaway is for ALL preorders, including those already purchased. If you’ve placed your order already, your name will be in the drawing!)

So get a copy for yourself, and maybe win a free copy for your local library! And please, help spread the word! Thanks!

M-Brane SF is a very cool SF magazine. They recently released Things We Are Not, a collection of queer speculative fiction. I have it, and can attest to its quality – it’s a very good collection. They’re doing a special right now: a print copy of TWAN and a subscription to the magazine (pdf) for $17. Not sure how long the deal will last! Please consider helping them out and picking up a copy.

When we announced that we’d be accepting submissions to Any Previous Genre next month, someone commented on Livejournal that they wondered if anyone could incorporate all 14 genres. Well, someone did; please read the (very rough and tongue-in-cheek) 14-genre short.

I don’t usually throw out random links, but any SF fan should read and fall in love with the webcomic Dresden Codak. It’s a challenging comic in so many ways: story, layout, complexity of content. really messes with your mind sometimes, too. I say in all honesty that it’s as rich as almost any novel I’ve ever read. (Read from the beginning, though, or a lot of it won’t make sense.) Also, I wish they had their I will do science to it t-shirt in child sizes, because I would immediately get one for my son.

And lastly, remember to send us your Folklore stories, and please PLEASE help us reach the necessary 150 preorders we need to publish our first anthology!

But we are clawing our way back to production. We got back the story rewrite we were waiting for, and the results are excellent, so we’ve decided on our selections for Issue 13. I drew up contracts for all the issue 13 content (except for the cover art, which we sorted out a couple of weeks ago), and have sent a few emails. Still more to send.

Last night I did a bit of work on formatting the cover art; I cropped it down a bit to fit the print edition, and added the title info. Looks brilliant! Still need to drop it into the template and convert it to PDF, and then I’ll have to go back to the original art and do it again for the PDF edition, and then format the image for online too.

We also did some editing today: specifically, the article that’s going in the issue. And when I say “we”, I mean that Kay went through it, sent it back to the writer, he sent it back to her, she forwarded it to me, I went through it and made some additional changes/suggestions and returned it to Kay, who sent it back to the writer. Whew! But it should be about done now.

We also have spent a good deal of time talking yesterday and today talking about various sales we want to offer. We’ve got a few in the works, but there’s one that’ll be available within a day or so, as soon as I sort out the items in the store: Any 5 issues (in PDF or PRC format) for $5. That’s more than 35% off the cost of buying them separately! Get anywhere from 112,000 to 160,000 words of fiction (depending on which issues you select), plus all the articles, interviews and artwork, for only $5! Not bad, right? I’ll do an announcement post as soon as I have it set up. (This offer will exclude issues 1-4, as our contracts don’t allow for digital editions of those issues.)

While figuring out the wordcount numbers in the previous paragraph, I discovered that we published 311,000 words of fiction, and 355,000 words overall, in or first year of issues. That’s a LOT of writing… my editing brain hurts just thinking of it. Hey, over three hundred fifty thousand words we’ve provided for all of you for free, with more to come! If you appreciate it, how about showing your support by preordering our anthology or buying the current issue?

Tomorrow we’ll send out the rest of the emails for Issue 13 submissions, and start editing the fiction. In the meantime, please enjoy the LGBTQ issue, and send us your SFF/Folklore submissions!

The party was a lot of fun, and the release went amazingly well. We actually surpassed our previous best for monthly traffic on the 3rd! A lot of that can be attributed to David Willis, who linked to his comic contribution to the issue and sent a good percentage of his tens of thousands of readers to our site. But even without that, the traffic and response to the issue has been extremely strong.

The only problem we’ve encountered thus far is that, while people seem to be reading and enjoying the issue, very few are actually buying it. We’re still not anywhere near breaking even on the issue, which we need to do in order to keep Crossed Genres going! Please support CG by purchasing a copy!

Or you could help us out by preordering the first CG anthology! It’s discounted and comes with a FREE online subscription! We need 150 preorders to make it happen!
_____________________________________________________________________________

Because of sickness slowing us down, we haven’t contacted anyone about their Issue 13 submissions yet. We have read them all and narrowed it down significantly, but we’ve requested a rewrite on one story and the results of that will determine our final choices of what to accept. If you’re waiting to hear back from us about a submission, expect an email within the next day or two. Sorry about the delay.

Speaking of submissions, just yesterday we announced a change in the genre for December submissions: Instead of “Parents”, as we’d previously listed, in December we’ll be accepting submissions to Any Previous Genre! Read more details here.

We’re currently accepting submissions to FOLKLORE. They’re coming in at a decent clip already, which is nice: submissions to Action/Adventure were fine, but the fewest we’ve had in 4 months. (We kind of expected that might happen, coming off the flood from the LGBTQ issue.)

So much going on! In addition to promoting issue 12, putting together issue 13 and taking in subs for issue 14, we’re working on the anthology ahead of its February 1 release. Kay is working with RJ Astruc on editing Festival of Skeletons, which will begin its serialization for subscribers in January. There’s more projects that we’re only talking about now, since we don’t have time for them. Yeesh!

Tonight I’ll do a proper “What I did today” post, to hopefully get back into the daily-posting routine.

The LGBTQ issue has been released! The early response has been wonderful!

To our utter delight, today has been the best single day of traffic to our site… EVER. Not by a small margin either, and there’s still a couple of hours to go. And people are staying and reading, too! Woo! (Now if only a few of them would buy the issue… just sayin’!)

Our other big news today is that we’re releasing our first anthology! Remember those hints I’d dropped here and there about a project that we’d announce on the 1st? Well this is it! We’ve selected one story from each of the first 12 issues and collected them into an anthology, which will be released on February 1, 2010. We’re offering a special preorder deal only in the month of November which includes a free online subscription! $20 of value for $9! More details here!

While I’ve generally avoided asking for money in the past, Crossed Genres has reached a point where it needs to be self-supporting in order to keep going. We knew that the magazine would lose money in its first year and were prepared for that. But with twelve entire issues produced and released, with an anthology and a serial novel on the way and plans (dreams?) of more… we really need your support now. Please help us keep Crossed Genres going another year:

- Purchase the anthology preorder bundle: a print copy plus a FREE online subscription for $9!
- Buy a copy of the LGBTQ issue: Twice as much content as previous issues for the same price!
- Buy a back issue! Print copies of issues 1-4 have been dropped to just $5!

Over the next couple of days we’ll be reading like mad and making decisions about Issue 13 (Action/Adventure); cover art and article are in hand and excellent. We’ve also started accepting submissions to issue 14 (FOLKLORE) – getting submissions already in fact! We love that! Bring them on!

He doesn’t like to enter his bedroom alone. The Other Bastian will ‘get’ him.

The real problem is the mirror. It doesn’t hang flat against the wall and so it reflects a very slightly slanted view of the room. Bastian knows it’s just a mirror. He ignores it most of the time, but every now and then he talks about The Other Bastian as though his reflection is a real boy, and a spooky one. Yet he doesn’t want me to remove the mirror. He likes it, even though it scares him a little.

And thus a superstition is born.

But this is a post about biases, not superstitions. Right? Yes and no. In and out. Heads. Tails.

Superstition is any blindly accepted belief or notion

Bias is a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice

Bias and superstition both come from the same human drive: Fear. They both cause the same result, too: Distance from reality.

When we’re honest, we admit that much of living is putting up with shit we don’t like and that doesn’t like us. It’s a tale as old as time, but back before our creation myths were set in stone, it was simply a matter of survival. Fear is foundational stuff, and ‘fight or flight’ is going nowhere, even if we’ve outlived its usefulness on the grand scale.

‘If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.’

Ideally, my son should feel safest in his room. So why does The Other Bastian emerge there and bother him nowhere else? Because that’s where he feels safest. With no outside threat to perceive, he invents one to satisfy that deep-brain part of himself. That’s also why he won’t let me take away his mirror; the next fright he gives himself may not be as easy to appease as The Other Bastian (who disappears in the presence of laughter).

So… We need our fear? Indeed. Fear is called a ‘drive’ for good reason. It’s a damned effective motivator. And where we aren’t faced by clear and present danger in our everyday lives, we will invent threats to our identities in order to produce the reward our instincts demand: Self-preservation.

There, I said it. It’s all made up. We allow ourselves to be driven by fear of The Other. It is a completely selfish instinct we inherited from the ancient geniuses who also gave us the secret of fire.

You already knew that. At some point in your childhood you figured out that there’s a difference between reality and make-believe. After which you promptly ignored that inconvenient data and went on pretending about Santa Claus or [insert your favorite myth-of-choice here]. You did it for your younger sibling’s sake. You did it to manipulate your parents. You did it because it takes effort to be reasonable, and everyone else was doing it, anyway.

Here’s the news: Superstition isn’t bad and bias isn’t evil. They’re just dumb.

If you’re already arguing with me, I understand. I prefer to demonize the irrational, too. However, if I examine the matter closely enough, I must acknowledge that no survival impulse is a terrible thing in its own right. It’s just that we have few appropriate applications for them in present context. Nowadays, we shouldn’t be surprised if our superstitions get us laughed at. And we shouldn’t be shocked if someone jumps all over our shit any time we reveal our biases. That’s exactly what should happen, in fact, and we should pay close attention while we are getting schooled. How else will we learn?

What’s the difference? What makes superstitions laughable and biases actionable? Direction. Superstitions are rubber and biases are glue; we may do silly or stupid things under the influence of our superstitions, but our biases firmly locate responsibility for our identities outside ourselves. We may cling to superstitions in the face of reality, but it takes a lot of effort to make them stick when we apply them to other people. On the other hand, biases are all about sticking it to someone else.

Because it’s one thing to have a favorite food or to believe in a god. It’s another monster entirely when we start insisting that other people align themselves according the stories in our heads.

Ready to walk out of the abstract? I brought concrete.

I’m a good girl at last; I married a man. We even procreated together. What the fuck, but some days it seems like the whole world wants to give us a prize for the kind of sex we had four years ago while we were trying to conceive. It’s scary to crash a party like that. Who knows how the bigots will react when you drop the bisexual bomb? Will it end with the raising of eyebrows? After someone leers at me and calls my husband a ‘lucky guy’? Will it stop when someone crosses the ‘faggot’ line? Or will it quietly snowball until someday I’m brave enough to attend another family reunion and I once again find myself looking down the wrong end of a gun barrel?

Not concrete enough?

Go even further. Take the belief that color has inherent meaning. White good; black bad. It’s nonsense, of course, and if that was where it stopped, everyone who prefers fact over fantasy could safely ignore it and it would leave them alone. But no. Bias thrusts past the bounds of impolite superstition and into the rules of play. I can do no wrong because I’m white, and anyone black is bound to be a blemish on the otherwise flawless ass of civilization. I get validation where they get scorn. Furthermore, if they want to change the rules, they must remember this: the rules were created this way so that I could get away with murder.

People are that stupid and cruel on purpose. And, you know, just out of habit. We use biases to elevate and protect our identities. We do this even when we are at no disadvantage. Hell, if we’re facing no actual threat, we’ll invent a superstition and let that fear drive us. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not inherently evil. But it proves terminally counter-productive in the long run.

Meanwhile, everybody does it. You should see me react the first time I learn that a friend is a pot smoker. The cringe is noticeable and it ain’t pretty. I’m certainly not proud of the hypocrisy; my smoking days are a distant, hazy memory, but the truth is what it is. And yet my automatic internal response to finding out I’m friends with a toker is still, ‘Gross! I can’t believe they haven’t grown out of their idiot phase yet.’ That’s right. I think I’m better than all y’all mellow fools. Sorry, that’s just my bias showing.

No, no! Dig up, stupid!

We are all creatures full of myth, but we’re not all haters all the time. We can be reasonable. And this could be the point in the blog where I pretend I’ve got something to teach you about how to be a better person. Because I’m so enlightened, right? Instead, let’s just do like my son does when it’s time to give The Other Bastian a rest.

Laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Because in the end, we’re all children watching a crooked mirror in the dark.

Sorry about the lack of posts. We’re working hard, really!

Yesterday there was a lot of reading. We’ve reached the point where submissions increase at the end of the month, so I sent out a few more to slush readers. We’re still pretty far behind the August totals, and barring a surge like we got at the end of September, we’re unlikely to reach the August numbers. But we should still have a pretty decent pool. We’ve already found a couple we’re pretty pleased with. Don’t forget: Tomorrow is the last day to get your Issue 13 (Action/Adventure) submissions in!

Also dealt with a couple of annoying issues with subscriptions – not the subscribers themselves, but the online system. It can be kind of quirky, which leads to some problems. The creators of the program are working on a new release of it, and are supposed to have a beta out next week (hopefully).

If you ever try to buy an online subscription to CG, you must be logged into an account first! The system automatically assigns the subscription access to the logged in account. Go create an account (it’s free), make sure that you’re logged in, and THEN go to the store to purchase the subscription!

The other thing I did yesterday was talk at length with Matt, our friend and webhost. He’s been working lately on some features of Wordpress and suggested something we can do to improve our site. That led into a lot more discussion, the conclusion of which was that there are several awesome improvements we can make! One of them is already implemented (you’ll see it when Issue 12 comes out), and will affect how we display things like A Festival of Skeletons in the Subscribers Area. The rest of the changes will be gradual: not all of them you’ll see – some of it’s in the back-end. But you’ll hear about it, because I’ll probably end up raving about how much time it’s saving me. Really, I think I may be in for some serious time relief, just in how the website is set up and updated. Matt is a genius. Yesterday I had like 3 or 4 separate moments of epiphany when I realized how something he was explaining/describing would help the updating process.

Tomorrow we’re having our Year One Wrap/Halloween party! Going to be a blast. Tonight we’re shopping for it, and tomorrow: cleaning! Heh, we’ve been cleaning all week really.

And then after the party: RELEASE! Okay, not immediately following, but late late tomorrow night.

In the meantime, please go and read Issue 11! The HORROR issue is terrific, and very appropriate for Halloween! (Pretty convenient it was released in October then, huh? I’m just sayin’!)

We actually have more to do to prepare for the party then we do for the Release! I’ve been doing some little tweaks to the website here and there, but we’re really ready.

We’ve been working mostly on other projects the past couple of days. Kay’s editing the novel we’re going to be serializing, A Festival of Skeletons; she’s also dealing with cover art for various things. And reading Issue 13 stories along with me.

I dealt with contracts and payments today… and let me tell you, it was no small thing coordinating checks, Paypal and lots and lots of paperwork for 17 people. (That’s right, Issue 12 has 17 different contributors.) Plus it hurts the bank account. I’ve mentioned it before, but we ended up spending just over three times what we’d spend on one of our regular issues. We’ve… got a lot riding on this issue, put it that way.

Tomorrow I’ve actually cleared my schedule of everything except the interview questions I’ve had waiting for weeks, since they keep on getting shunted aside for things with higher priorities. Fortunately I’ve still got a week left, but I want to have them finished before Release Day. Then the rest of the month will pretty much be cleaning the house (we have a 3-year-old, remember), reading issue 13 submissions, and nervously twitching while we wait for Saturday.

In all seriousness, will you do me a favor? Go read Issue 11, and leave a comment or two for the authors/artists. You have no idea how appreciative they’ll be, really.

And don’t forget: Only FOUR days left to submit to the Action/Adventure issue!

One final thing: I was updating a spreadsheet I keep of traffic to our site today – I hadn’t done so in about a month. And I discovered that about 2 1/2 weeks ago, the CG website surpassed 100,000 pageviews since the day Issue 1 was released (in about 10 1/2 months). When we first started CG, we looked at some available numbers for small-ish SFF magazines (admittedly scarce), and decided that if we could reach 80,000 pageviews in our first year, we’d consider ourselves pretty lucky. So you can imagine how lucky we feel now.

Even better, as time has gone on, visitors to the site have been staying for longer and viewing a larger number of pages per visit. Hopefully this is an indication of the quality of content we’ve been publishing. All the hard work we’ve put in over the past year-plus seems to be pleasing you folks out there, and hey, that’s the point.

That’s pretty much all I’ve been doing for days: testing out code and layout for the site, and putting it all into hidden pages and templates; sizing/formatting art and getting it uploaded; creating new ads to use to advertise the upcoming issue.

Actually I’ve been handling a couple other pretty major things, but I can’t talk about them. One for legal reasons, and the other because we’ll be announcing it on November 1.

Kay has been looking far into the future and working hard to get our cover art sorted a few issues in advance. She’s doing pretty well at it so far: we already have the finished issue 13 cover in hand, contracted and paid for; issue 14 is sorted and we’ve seen preliminaries; and she’s got contacts out to some people for the four issues following that. Kay’s also been working on edits to our upcoming serial novel publication A Festival of Skeletons.

Tomorrow I’ll be sending out a TON of contracts and payments, and might actually find time to answer those interview questions I’ve had for a couple weeks… Good thing the interview’s not coming out until a few days into November!

Less than a week left to get us your Action/Adventure submissions!

We’ve been working our butts off on getting stuff ready for release day, and just about everything for issue 12 is wrapped up. There are a few tiny details that I can’t do for the website until the final day, and a few pieces of preparation that aren’t to do with issue 12 that aren’t quite complete. But we’re fairly well on top of things *knock wood*. I’ll be more detailed sometime tomorrow, when I’m not utterly exhausted.

Submissions. We want them. Action/Adventure, only 1 week left!

I know I said so before, but thank you to Pablo, Richard and tor.com. The ad doesn’t have to gain CG anything: the fact that the offer was made is what’s notable, and is very much appreciated.

Speaking of ads: a lot of people have asked if we have ads about the issue’s release that they can host on their website, much the same way people did in response to the whole to-do back in September. Since the ad is already on Tor.com, we decided there’s no point in not making it available. You can download it here. And please let us know if you post it!

And speaking of speaking of: speaking of Issue 12, I’ve spent a good 8-10 hours (i lost count) since yesterday working on website stuff. I created ALL the pages for the issue 12 content, reformatted all the text (adding in HTML tags, for example), uploaded all the content and biographies, and then tested them to make sure there weren’t problems. Then today I spent at least 3 hours wrestling with the code for the front page of the site (not actually on the site, just my template) before I finally got the layout whipped into shape.

I said before that the layout for this issue would keep me up nights, since there’s sooo much content. And I was right. Because I still have to convert what I’ve done onto 2 more pages, slightly altering them depending on circumstances. And once that’s done, then I get to go through ALL of it again looking for any little issues to correct – and then I get to do that again in a different browser. Then there are a few more things to get done for the issue ahead of time – setting up the items in the store, for example. And when ALL that’s done… well, then I can start in on the other stuff we want to have ready to go up on the website on November 1.

I would be a bit panicky about having all that to do, except for 2 things: 1, I think that a few days of concerted effort will take care of it, and 2, just about everything else to do with issue 12 is done. I do have to mail out some contracts/payments, but that’s pretty much it. Having the print, kindle, prd and pdf editions complete is a huge relief.

Just before getting to this post, I spent the previous 2 hours getting all the various art sized and formatted for online. It took longer than usual – again, just because of the amount of it. If you’ve read our back issues, you know that we post little 100×100 “teaser” images of our inside art: well, the ones I’ve just created are pretty neat. Sometimes it’s hard to find one area of an image that gives a good feel for the piece without giving the entire thing away, but all of these came out great.

Anyway, much more to work on tomorrow. In the meantime, keep those Action/Adventure submissions coming in!

The print edition of Issue 12 is done! The 2nd proof arrived yesterday, and Kay and I both went through it with a fine-toothed comb for any little errors. Then I fixed up what we found, and today I converted the file to PDF, uploaded it and submitted for the third time.

Because we’ve now gone through it so many times so carefully, there’s just not going to be anything left to fix besides maybe a tiny formatting error somewhere. It looks spotless as far as we can tell. So as soon as I was able I ordered the new proof, and as soon as I got notification that it had shipped, I went and approved it for publication. No waiting for the last proof to arrive this time – we want the issue to be ready and available to readers on Release Day, and we couldn’t wait to approve much longer and still have enough lead time. Also, we’re having a little get-together on Oct. 31 – a combination Halloween/Release party, and we wanted to have a few copies here for that. So I also ordered some copies for us to have on hand.

So the print, pdf, prc and Kindle editions of issue 12 are finished. Now we get to dig into the rather massive amount of work that is prepping for the online release. Yeesh. Fortunately we have a good amount of time.

I spent some time today explaining parts of our contract to a couple of contributors. I’m not exactly a legalese expert, but I have worked with our contract for a year now and I know it pretty well. We totally get not wanting to sign a contract unless you understand exactly what you’re signing up for, so we’re always willing to answer questions about it (in fact, when I send people contracts I always insist that they read it carefully and ask questions if they have any).

We got some responses from slush readers about some particular stories, and we sent out a few more submissions to be read. We’re doing… okay on submissions. If we have a nice rush at the end as usual, we should be left with a reasonable pool. Send us your Action/Adventure stories!

I also did a bit of work on our super-seekrit project. Not a huge secret, but won’t be announced until 11/1. I’m only mentioning it so you didn’t think I was slacking today by only doing the other things I mentioned.

Anyway, I took the opportunity to tweak the cover a bit, and re-uploaded it. And I’ve fixed everything in the document that we’ve noticed. At this point we’re waiting for the 2nd proof to arrive, so we can go through it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure we don’t miss anything. This, of course, is why we worked so hard to get ahead: so that we would have time to do this if we had to.

The Kindle and PRC editions are complete now, and the PDF just needs its pieces merged into 1 document. The Kindle document was 37 MB before uploading: whoof.

I sent out some more stories to our slush readers. We’re still running behind in # of submissions – not that we’re expecting to match last month, but we’d like to be around where the previous few months were. (And for some reason we’ve gotten a whopping 81% of submissions so far from male authors.) Remember, this month it’s Action/Adventure.

So much left to do this month. Oye.

Our official announcement, RE: serializing our first novel, will follow this post!

I almost finished the Kindle edition of issue 12 today… another hour or so tomorrow should do it. I encountered something I’d never had to do before: I had to break apart the comics we’re running into their individual panels. They were too big for a Kindle screen on their own, and would have been unreadable. It was pretty odd, cutting something up into 11 separate pieces like I did with one of them. It should work just fine, but it was still weird. (Just had to double-check that the panels went into the document in the right order!) that, coupled with the double-sized issue, meant that it took a lot more time than expected. Not a big deal though.

I was also in communication with a lot of writers, dealing with contracts primarily. And Kay and I talked more about scheduling for the future. So busy. busy busy busy.

We got to see our Issue 13 cover art, almost complete. It’s gorgeous; the artist is really exceptional with warm tones. It’s another that’s going to look amazing on the slightly glossy print cover.

Tomorrow: announcement, finishing the Kindle and doing the .prc too. Then, assuming there’s still time, I’m going to tackle the online stuff as much as possible. Oh, and I have some interview questions to answer.

___________________________________

I wanted to call attention to a couple of neat magazines I’ve become aware of recently:

M-Brane SF is a terrific science fiction magazine. They’ve just published Things We Are Not, tales of the new queer. I’m only a couple of stories into my copy and so far am very impressed. Support them by picking up a copy, or subscribe to the magazine (only $12 for a year of PDFs!), even if they are our competition!

Lacuna: a journal of historical fiction released their first issue on October 1; it’s fascinating, and free to read on the site. They’re also queer-friendly! Please check it out, and consider donating a couple dollars to a newly-begun zine.

The biggest thing I did today was get the PDF of issue 12 formatted. It took longer than I’d expected – partly because there was so much more material, but also because there’s a lot more images than our regular issues, all of which needed resizing. A couple pages had to have the layout restructured or they’ have just looked silly, crammed into about 80% of the page.

I also spent a good 2 hours working on nothing but scheduling. We have a VERY busy 3 to 4 months ahead of us (some of which is the stuff I can’t yet talk about), and we’re really going to have to be on top of our todos in order to keep up.

I said yesterday that I would have an official announcement today. I do, but I’m going to post and send out the official announcement here and to the mailing list tomorrow. For now I’ll just say it’s official: We are purchasing a novel to serialize. The contracts have been OKed, and the editing process has begun. We have a target of very early 2010 for the first part to go up in the Subscribers Area, and the serialization will be complete before the end of 2010, after which the novel will be available for purchase in print and various digital formats. We’re very, very excited about the novel, which is clever and sharp and very unique. Tomorrow’s official announcement will have some more details.

Issue 12 (and subsequent issues), the novel serialization, and the other thing I mentioned yesterday which will be announced on November 1, will all combine to make us VERY busy. I get dizzy just thinking about it, but it’s all so exciting I don’t have time to be worried.

Tomorrow: Kindle & .prc editions of Issue 12, contract stuff, scheduling, and the official announcement mentioned above.

Don’t forget: we’re still looking for Action/Adventure submissions!

First and foremost: the print edition of Issue 12 has been finalized! Today was another example of speediness by the printer: Submitted at 11:58 am, proof ordered at 3:26 pm, proof shipped at 4:46 pm. Less than 5 hours total. Brilliant. I gotta say: DAMN I am so pleased with everything about the issue. It’s just gorgeous.

By the way, the entire list of contributors for the issue is now on the front page, in the “tabbed” area, 2nd tab (“Next Issue”)!

Tomorrow begins work on the other versions. I say “begins”, but it’s really picking up where we left off; we did a ton of prep work ahead of October 1, so it’s a matter of filling in what we couldn’t when the content of the issue wasn’t finalized. Most of the editions shouldn’t be too terribly time-consuming *knocks wood* … getting everything ready for online is going to be the real challenge. Just making everything fit, oye.

Okay, maybe not as much to tell as I thought. Or rather, not as much as I’m free to tell right now. I worked a lot today on stuff we’re not quite ready to divulge. Tomorrow I should have an official announcement, and there’ll be another announcement on November 1, same time as the release of Issue 12. (Also, look for a sale on November 1!)

In the meantime, keep sending in those Action/Adventure submissions!

And go read the new issue, HORROR! It’s wicked, I tell you!

The rest of today was communication, with future/potential artists and article contributors.

Kay and I also spent some time talking about the magazine’s future – specifically, now that we’ve been doing this for almost a year, are their any changes to our format, content and process that we want to make to improve the quality of what we produce and how efficiently we deliver it to our readers? We have identified a few small but significant changes we’ll be implementing over the next couple of months – nothing that will dramatically alter things from your perspective. I’ll probably lay them out in the blog once we’ve finalized them.

We’re still working on getting the contracts sorted for the novel we want to serialize. Announcement asap.

Submissions to Issue 13: Action/Adventure are coming in slowly but steadily. The slush process has so far worked smoothly *knocks wood again*

In the meantime, go and read Issue 11! Horror-tastic!

Let’s see. All editing for the LGBTQ issue is done! It took a bit longer than we’d hoped for, so we most likely will have to wait until tomorrow to get the updated proof submitted (we’d wanted to do it today). But that will still have us well on schedule. The cover art is finalized and looks AMAZING.

Also, we got final confirmation on another piece to go in the issue – we’ve known about it for a while but I wanted to hold off until it as official. David Willis, the mad genius behind the webcomics Shortpacked! and Joyce and Walky! (And its precursors Roomies! and It’s Walky!) has drawn an original Shortpacked! comic to go in the issue! It features a couple of the webcomic’s main characters and is hilarious – definitely his unique style of humor. Tons of thanks to David for his generosity in contributing to the issue!

Although (I think) I mentioned it before, Kay nailed down cover art for Issue 13 – way later than we like, but done, so whew! The artist is very talented and professional, and fast! We already have sketches and the first color mockup. Looks awesome. Oddly enough, it’ll be our first cover with a dragon on it… we’ve had a couple pieces of inside art with dragons, but never a cover. An entire year of an SFF magazine with no dragons on the cover? WTF?

Also, big news: we decided to accept a novel for serialization! It’s really a terrific story, with a sharp, unique voice. Excellent work, and we’re thrilled to have it. We’re still working out the contract details with the author, but when it’s sorted we’ll make an official announcement. Of course it still needs editing, but we will definitely have some exclusive content in the Subscribers Area soon! Yay!

NOTE: We are still accepting novel, novella and webcomic submissions! Our accepting this novel doesn’t mean anything about any submissions we’ve already received, either – in fact, Kay spent a good part of today reading novel and novella submissions. If we find another gem we’d like to publish, we’ll be perfectly happy to publish two serials overlapping. If you sent us a submission and haven’t yet heard back, assume nothing!

That’s it for now, as I’ll probably do another post tonight about today. I’m sure more happened in the past couple of days that I’ve forgotten, but I’m multitasking too many things to call them to memory at the moment.

The LGBTQ issue is still on track though! I’ll give details tomorrow. Plus an announcement coming soon, probably Tuesday.

In the meantime, go and read Issue 11! It’s a great one!

Today was Mad Communication Day. I must have sent a good 20-25 emails covering various subjects for the magazine. Mostly about Issue 12, although there were a few things about past and future issues as well. Kay also sent quite a few emails as she handled the artwork for various issues.

We’ve received final hi-res versions of almost all the Issue 12 art. I tell you: the document that will eventually become the interior of the issue just keeps getting bigger. We’ve never had this much internal art before (not even close), so… yeah. At the moment it’s over 15 MB, and I’m pretty sure the final result will be over 20 MB. (I know that’s not a lot compared to some, but remember that most of our issues have been 100% text inside.)

I’ve said it before here, but I want to repeat: We are no longer accepting submissions to the LGBTQ issue! We’re still receiving the occasional submission. If you have our ad calling for submissions to the LGBTQ issue on your website or blog, please take it down! I hate having to disappoint people by telling them we can’t consider their story since submissions are closed.

But remember, we will happily accept submissions that have LGBTQ elements for any issue, so long as they match the current genre as well. We’re always receptive to LGBTQ characters and stories, not just when that’s our monthly theme.

So far, the slush process has gone pretty smoothly. We haven’t got a ton of Action/Adventure submissions yet (it’s always slower in the first half of the month), but we’ve sent some out to each slush reader. Everyone’s still getting used to the process, but no major glitches yet. *KNOCK WOOD*

I’m anxiously awaiting the first proof, but at the same time I’m in no hurry since we’re not anywhere near ready to submit for the second proof. I’m pretty confident that with some concerted effort over the next several days, we can be ready to submit for the second proof by Monday the 12th.

Did I mention before that fitting links to ALL the content for Issue 12 on the front page of the site is going to be a bitch and keep me up nights? Because it is. Seriously. Right now we’re looking at 10 stories, 2 articles, an interview, the cover art and seven pieces of internal art. Hell, fitting it on the print edition’s Table of Contents was hard enough!

Now that we’ve closed submissions on our first year of issues, I went and counted up our Fiction submission totals. I found some very interesting things about our Male/Female submission ratios.

These numbers disregard submissions that weren’t ever under consideration – i.e. submissions that were too long/too short, or were withdrawn by the writer before we got to them. Also disregarded are submissions for which the author’s gender wasn’t given (there were only 13 of these all year).

Amazingly, of the remaining viable submissions, 50.23% of them came from men, and 49.77% from women. Less than one-half of 1% separating the two.

And yet… of the 66 stories we’ve published (or will have) in our first 12 issues, 62.12% of those published stories were written by women (37.88% by men).

At no point do we make decisions of what to publish based on the gender of the writer. We take what we feel are the strongest, most interesting stories that match the month’s genre. Sometimes that means the numbers get skewed one way or the other. For example, our 4th issue had 5 stories by men and 1 by a woman, while the LGBTQ issue will have 1 written by a man and 9 by women. In the case of the LGBTQ issue, this was helped along by the fact that over 70% of the submissions we received were from women. But on the other hand, the 11th issue had 73% of submissions from men, but the breakdown was 3/2, Men/Women.

Basically the gist of it is: I don’t think it means anything. There’s plenty of variation from month to month, and the overall percentage for accepted submissions compared to percentage received isn’t much different considering it’s such a small scale. (I’m still amazed at how close the M/F submissions ratio was.)

********************************

Phew. So much going on!

I lost track of how many rejection emails I sent tonight. I didn’t even finish – I had other things I had to get done. Damn, we got a lot of submissions this month!

A nice guy in Australia ordered a copy of our first issue (only about 50 copies left!), but for some reason our website charged him the cost of the copy, the shipping fee… and an extra $7 “handling” cost. The handling cost was not supposed to be there. I think I’ve figured it out now so it won’t happen again. At any rate, I refunded him the excess, and mailed the copy. If anyone out there has experienced something similar: Handling charge = bullshit, if you got charged for one please let me know!

Early this morning I uploaded the last pieces of the issue 12 Print test, and submitted it. As has been the case lately, the printer turned it around remarkably fast: Submitted at 9:26, approved for proof ordering at 11:03. Proof ordered at 11:22 am, and shipped at 6:52 pm. If only everything in life was so efficient. Now we just have to hope that it looks good.

Editing is happening… slowly. Of course, since we’re waiting for the first proof we’re not particularly rushed, but we still need to get it done and back to the writers asap. That’s one of two things I’ll be focusing on tomorrow. The other: I’m reading a novel submission. We requested the whole novel based on the initial 10-page submission, and Kay loved it. I’ve only just started, but so far I’m pretty impressed.

We’ve also gotten a few submissions for Issue 13 – not too many yet, but enough that I sent off the first batch to our slush readers. It’s the first time we’ve sent stories out like that, so we’ll have to see how it goes.

Kay had one of those ideas that’s so clever we both wondered why we didn’t think of it sooner. Rather than waiting until we had all the stories edited and formatted, we’re going to order our first proof now, after I inserted the unedited content. We already knew that we would end up ordering 2 proofs of issue 12 anyway, and this way we can be working on getting the stories edited and inserted while the first proof is being processed and delivered. By the time it gets here, all we’ll have to do is check what needs to be fixed and fix it, insert the already edited and formatted content, and order the second proof. It’ll probably mean the second proof gets here several days to a week sooner, which is a big deal in our tight schedule. We wouldn’t do this every month since we usually prefer to only pay for 1 proof, but we had already assumed we’d do 2 for this oversized issue. Did I mention how clever Kay is?

Unfortunately, while I have the cover converted to PDF and ready to go – already uploaded, in fact – I can’t do the conversion of the inside. The only converters I have access to don’t know how to recognize the different fonts we use, and they also seem to screw up the page spacing pretty bad. It just means I have to wait until Monday, which is the next time I’ll have the chance to properly convert the thing. We’ll still save time, but not as much. Damned annoying. But Acrobat costs $300, so that’s not happening anytime soon.

Still, it’s all ready to go – literally, once the conversion to PDF is done, all I have to do is upload it and then submit the issue to order the proof. So I can spend tomorrow working on editing.

I did email a lot of people about their Issue 12 submissions today, but not everyone. We got a lot more stories than usual this month, I didn’t have time. I’ll see if I can find time to finish tomorrow. I also had to make up contracts to send to people whose work we want, and that took a while. The Issue 12 contracts folder on my computer is twice as full as other like folders! Yeesh.

Go read Issue 11! The Horror issue came out brilliantly. Please enjoy it!

We’ve read everything, and discussed each option thoroughly, and we’ve made our final decisions about which stories and artwork we want to accept. It was NOT easy, either. Usually we initially narrow down to 12-14 submissions, and then narrow again to a shortlist of 7-8, from which we pick 5-6 for the issue. This month our initial narrowing left us with 29, and from there we went to a shortlist of 17. Kay and I also argued a bit more than usual on our final selections – there were really just too many good stories, and we each had favorites. But I think that disagreeing in this case is good, because it forces us to really deeply consider every aspect of a story. We’re beyond thrilled at the final ToC for the issue.

We have not contacted people about their submissions yet! If you haven’t heard from us, it doesn’t mean anything – we only resolved the last choices a few hours ago, and there just wasn’t time to get emails out. We’ll be taking care of that tomorrow, barring any unforeseen problems.

Tomorrow also begins a mad rush of editing – we have twice as many stories as usual to get through! Fortunately all the working ahead we did puts us in a good place, as does having the articles and interview edited already. The next few days will be nothing but editing, really, and communicating with the contributors and arranging contracts.

We’re now accepting Action/Adventure submissions for issue 13! Send us those exciting fights or chase scenes you’ve been working on!

And if you haven’t, Go and read issue 11! Our HORROR issue turned out great – and please let the contributors know what you think of their work in the comments!

First, congratulations to SirDayWalker for winning the Submission Guesstimate Contest! He guessed 22 submissions, which was almost spot on – we had 21 Fiction and 2 Art submissions in the time period, making him just 1 off either way. Well done! He’s already gotten an email with instructions for his free subscription.

Yes, you read that right – 21 fiction submissions in almost exactly 24 hours. They totalled about 100,000 words. *DIEZ* We’re feverishly reading our way through them now, but um… it might take a while. And then we’ll have to make our shortlist, go through them together and whittle it down. So don’t expect to hear anything immediately… sorry about that, no real choice.

To repeat from last night: if you have our ad calling for LGBTQ submissions on your site, please take it down! We’re very grateful for all the people who posted it, but since we’re no longer accepting submissions to that issue it’s not appropriate to keep it up there. If you want an ad minus the call for submissions, I’ll be happy to provide one!

One of the problems that I encountered last night was that Amazon was dragging its feet. As of 1am when I went to bed, neither the print nor Kindle editions of Issue 11 were up on Amazon. As of right now the Kindle is up, but still no print edition. They are really dragging their feet this month. But now I can create the Kindle item in the store, at least.

As of today, submissions to the magazine (starting with Issue 13, Action/Adventure) will go through our new slush reading process. We have 5 wonderful volunteer slush readers who will help us streamline the process. This MAY (I make no promises) mean faster response times in the future. No guarantees on that, but it’s possible. Please read our slush readers’ bios to learn more about them, and welcome them to CG!

Late last night we got an almost-finalized version of the cover art. It is STUNNING. There’s a couple tiny little things to address about it, but OMG is it ever incredible. Julie Dillon really put out all the stops on it. Er… I’ll stop teasing now.

The next day or so will be pretty much nothing but reading – we can’t proceed much further with Issue 12 until we’ve decided exactly what we’re going to publish after all! Good thing we got far ahead on prep work for the issue.

Take a guess at how many submissions we’ll receive between now and when we stop accepting submissions to the LGBTQ issue. You are guessing on the number of submissions we receive between the release of this post and midnight tomorrow. Send us an email with your guess (put “Submission Estimate Contest” in the Subject line).

The latest you can send a guess to us is midnight tomorrow. I won’t say anything more about how many we’re getting until that point. Then I’ll count the submissions, and whoever’s closest will get a free 1-year subscription to the Subscriber’s Area of the site. (If there’s a tie, each person will get a subscription.)

Why are we doing this? I have no idea. I feel like giving away a subscription. Tell your friends to send a guestimate too! It costs nothing and you might get something for free!

*****

As I said above, we received a good number of submissions today, and we’re now within striking distance of our previous best month’s total – at this point I’d be pretty surprised if we didn’t make it. That’s always encouraging! At this point we’re pretty happy with some submissions, but we’re probably not going to get up to 8-10 accepted like we’d originally hoped for. But on the other hand, we’ve just gotten some submissions that we haven’t read yet, and there’ll be more tomorrow, so we may still be blown away.

Today was a very busy regular work day, so CG work was primarily communication and reading.We’re caught up other than the ones we’ve just received in the past couple of hours, and those will be top priority tomorrow.

There’s actually very little at this point that we could still do to prep issue 12; I can plug in some of the non-fiction content to some of the other versions besides the Print, but I’m not going to kill myself to get to it. Tomorrow will be reading, communication, reading, mailing a couple signed contracts, possibly adding Issue 12 nonfiction content to the other versions, and then if I have time, more reading. And of course, late-late tomorrow night will be the midnight release of Issue 11!

Oh, and hey, I keep forgetting to mention: This is Banned Books Week (9/26-10/3)! Celebrate by reading and sharing your favorite banned book! Here’s a great list of Banned Books Week lists, resources and news.

And lest we forget to state it plainly: Tomorrow is the LAST DAY to submit to the LGBTQ issue!

The 2nd proof of Issue 11 arrived, and it’s a big improvement. It’s still a bit too purple for my tastes, but it’s clear and clean and looks pretty awesome. Plus, our title can actually be seen, which is a plus. So I went ahead and approved it.

A few days ago I got the store on our website sorted out, with the help of one of the WordPress plugin’s coders. Today, I discovered that it actually fixes another problem the store had been having. It’s supposed to enable me to list things in the store, like a print edition on Amazon, and the “Buy Now” button would just send you to Amazon to buy it. But instead, the button had been adding the item to our cart. Which wouldn’t help, because we don’t sell issues direct from our hands (well, except for Issue 1). But since uploading the new fix, the Buy Now buttons are doing what they’re supposed to! So I spent some time today adding items to the store, and now every version of every issue can be found in our store.

I did some more prepping of the website; created a new page for bios of the slush readers who start their work on Issue 13 (on Thursday). There are four of them, and I only have 2 bios. Yeesh. I also sent an email reminding them that I need the bios.

I’m also very pleased to say that a continuous problem I’d been having with the new layout from the beginning has been fixed. I’m not 100% sure how, but it’s fixed. The layout now has *KNOCKS WOOD* no flaws that I know about. Looks pretty bitchin’, too. I’m a little scared to touch it for fear of it “breaking”. But I did add the rest of the nonfiction content.

Submissions… yeah. We’re probably not going to match last month. We do have some excellent subs, and we’ll have a very good issue. A spectacular issue, even! But still, send in your subs! TWO DAYS LEFT to submit to the LGBTQ issue!

I think I’ve said so here before, but I’m going to repeat my response to the query: We don’t object outright to the use of profanity, and we’ve already published a couple stories with some strong swears. Generally, our rule of thumb is: Is the profanity both appropriate and necessary? Gratuitous or excessive swearing will turn us off, but we also know that there are times when a “Gosh darn it!” just wouldn’t cut it. If the character is one that would swear under the right circumstances, and those circumstances occur, then it’s okay with us.

We wouldn’t even object to the use of derogatory terms, IF they were appropriate for the character and the situation. Having said that, we’re not interested in stories which promote hate, so if use of derogatory terms and the beliefs behind them are portrayed in positive ways, expect the submission to be rejected.

Today we got the last of the nonfiction edited; tomorrow I’ll be adding it to the template. I also did some more tweaking to the new layout – just simplifying it in a couple of key ways that will save me some time down the road. And I did some more web page prepping.

There’s still a reasonable bit more that we can get done for Issue 12 ahead of time, so we’ll see how much we can work in over the next few days. of course, if we do get the rush of submissions we’re hoping for, we may be too busy reading!

Submissions did pick up a bit today, and we’re currently on track to be right around last month’s total. We have gotten some pretty strong subs, but we’re always open to someone outdoing them! THREE days left to submit to the LGBTQ issue!

Submissions: still very slow. A few more today, but we’re now a good bit behind even where we were last month. Kind of disappointing. Of course there’s still the chance we’ll get flooded between now and Wednesday (which would make us happy, even though it means we’d lose a lot of sleep trying to catch up with reading). FOUR more days to submit to the LGBTQ issue!

The proof copy of Issue 11 didn’t come today. That means I get another two days (at least) to worry about it, since now the earliest it could come is Monday. Argh.

One way or another, Issue 11 is set for Release Day on Thursday. Problems with the Print edition aside, we’re very pleased with this issue, which has some magnificent content. Of course I say that every month, but every month it’s true!

We just got an email from Julie Dillon, the cover artist for Issue 12. She sent us an updated preview, which is in the home stretch now. We’re just… oh wow. Slfksj. Heck, I’d publish it in its current form, happily, and it’s not even done! Incredible. I cannot WAIT to see this on that semi-glossy cover.

Speaking of covers, we still haven’t gotten the 2nd Issue 11 proof. I hope it arrives tomorrow – I’ll feel a lot happier if we have it and know it looks okay.

Kay finished reading a novel submission (the entire thing) today, and insists that it’s excellent and we should buy it for serializing. I’ll be reading it over the next few days to see if I agree. I suspect I will – Kay has good taste in books. If so, Kay will work with the writer on the editing and we’ll try to have it up as soon as possible.

Submissions for Issue 12 have been slow the past two days. What’s up with that? Has everyone forgotten after that burst of interest? 5 days left to submit to the LGBTQ issue!

Other things accomplished today: emailed some contributors/possible contributors, sent edited content back to the writers for consideration. Still one piece left to edit – that will be first priority tomorrow.

Editing happened! We got a couple pieces of issue 12 edited and they’re off to their writers for consideration. Only one more left to do, I think. As soon as we hear back, I’m going to get them inserted into the various editions to minimize how many pieces I have to do that with post-October 1.

We’ve done a bunch more reading, too. We’ve now got a pretty solid group of stories we’re considering for the issue. We need more, though! Only 5 more days to submit to the LGBTQ issue! Still looking for everything: Fiction, articles, artwork!

After LGBTQ we’ll be taking submissions for Issue 13, which is Action/Adventure. Woo, I think that one’s going to be fun! There are so many ways to do A/A, and with SF and F elements it actually expands enormously as a genre. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what people come up with.

The other big thing yesterday was that the technical problem we’d been having with the Subscribers Area got handled. I’d been communicating with the creators/admins of the plugin module that was having a problem. Yesterday evening they emailed me a updated version of the module that was problematic, and it solved the conflict. My impression is that it’s kind of a rough-and-tumble solution – they’re working on a full revamp of the module. But it works, and that’s what matters. So the Subscribers Area is back online.

Every month we get at least a couple of submissions that don’t match our genre in any way – that’s been extra-true this month. We got another yesterday, but shortly afterwards the author emailed to point out the mistake and apologize. We appreciate that, as it saves us time, and also keeps us from wondering whether it was an honest mistake or whether the author just assumes the rules don’t apply to them because their story is so awesome. (We have gotten a couple submissions where the writer actually stated “It’s not got anything to do with your current genre, but I know you’ll like it anyway.”)

The rest of today will include editing whatever we haven’t yet gotten to,, doing some online prep (not much I can do yet, but there is some) and more reading.

Oh, and btw: We also want LGBTQ-related links! During November while Issue 12 is out, The Spotlight and Headlines sections on our front page will focus on LGBTQ people, issues and organizations. If you know of something or someone that deserves to be highlighted, email us a link and tell us about it!

The submissions stand at a little over 65% from women this month, almost a complete reversal from last month. I don’t think it really means anything, but it’s very interesting. I’m really looking forward to tallying the first year’s totals to see what the demographics look like. (Of course there’s a lot of info we can’t know, because we don’t ask people to tell us those things. But I’m sure what we can glean will be interesting.)

We’re also reading some novel and novella submissions while we have a bit of time. There have been a couple of partials we received that we liked enough to ask for the entire story – Kay’s been reading a particular one today and has been thoroughly engrossed. I’ve read the partial and it’s interesting, so I’ll have to get started on reading it through. Maybe we’ll have something for the Subscribers Area soon! (Of course even if we do choose to accept something it’ll have to go through the editing process before we start releasing it online.)

Speaking of the subscribers area, it’s still down. The plugin is currently being revamped by the creators; I have no idea how long it’s going to take. Sorry about that. If you’re a subscriber who wanted to download the current issue, email us and we’ll send it to you (be sure to tell us if you want the PDF, the PRC, or both). I’m crossing my fingers that the problem will be fixed before the 1st.

Today was also a communication day. I emailed a number of people, including current contributors, slush readers, and a couple of people who’ve submitted to the LGBTQ issue (every month we get at least a few people who forget to include their story with their submission). I also mailed out a couple of contracts – I had to go to the post office because some of the contracts were going overseas. I also bought some $0.17 stamps. Why? Because our contract, along with a payment check, is just too heavy for a standard first-class stamp.

Tomorrow we’re buckling down and getting some editing done, in the hopes of having it finished before the end of the month… one less thing to worry about while frantically editing twice as many stories as usual.

Today was a fairly slow day for CG. We’re in the weird area where most of Issue 11 is done, but there’s only so much we can actually do on Issue 12. We are poking at it gradually, but we’re also taking the available time to look forward to future issues. Kay emailed a couple of artists about future covers, and we talked about content for some approaching issues. We also firmly set a few more genres out – obviously we post the next few Upcoming Genres every month, but we have it set some ways beyond that, too – that way we can focus on more immediate concerns.

Sorry for the short and uninspiring post. Hopefully tomorrow will yield more interesting topics. Or at least more consciousness on my part.

EIGHT days remaining to submit to the LGBTQ issue!

Today was one of those days where I got a lot done, but the todo list didn’t seem to get any shorter. I hate those days… no matter how much you accomplish you feel like a lazy bum.

The most important thing I did was take the lightened image of the Issue 11 cover (Kay did the lightening – she’s the artist around here), converted it to PDF and resubmitted the issue. As soon as I get the go-ahead I’ll be ordering a 2nd proof, probably with a rush on the delivery.

I created an image for next month’s Current Genre (It’s Action/Adventure), to go on the website when Issue 11 is released.

For prepping Issue 12, I spent some time updating my MS Word templates of various pages on the website. This one’s going to be tricky in some ways, since we’ve never had to fit so much content on individual pages. I spent almost an hour trying to arrange various links and thumbnail images on the Archives page – it was harder because we still don’t know exactly how much of certain content there’s going to be. Usually by this point our articles & interviews are set, but the LGBTQ issue is the exception: we’re still getting article submissions, which we’re thrilled by, but which makes planning a bit harder. And of course, we always accept black-and-white art submissions for the entire month too, so those are still coming in occasionally.

We’ve been reading more, too. Got all caught up on Issue 12 submissions. Now we’re really hoping to see an end-of-month surge in subs, as we’re actually just slightly off last month’s pace. But last month we received about 40% of our submissions within the final six days – not unusual for us, and we’re hoping to see at least the same percentage still to come! Remember, only 9 days left to submit to the LGBTQ issue!

We did get the proof copy of issue 11 back. Unfortunately, the fear I alluded to in an earlier post proved prophetic – the image was far too dark. For some reason the printer always produces the cover art significantly darker than it ever appears on any digital screen. Kay spent some time today tweaking the light and contrast levels, and I’m going to resubmit tomorrow. Damn it.

The main thing I did over the weekend was upgrade the website’s software. It was old-ish, which made it a bit vulnerable, but it’s fully updated now. Unfortunately, one of the plugins isn’t working properly now. It says it is, but it isn’t. You may notice that the Subscribers Area shows up in the Navigation bar at the top of the screen? It should only be there for paid subscribers who are logged in. Yeah, that’s what’s not working. I’ve put in a request for assistance, but the Subscribers Area is temporarily closed until I can get it fixed. Sorry!

I spent some time today communicating with our slush readers, who will be reading for us starting in October. I laid out some specific guidelines for how we’d like them to work. There’ll be some info about each of them on the website (in the About section) starting on October 1.

We received more submissions and read most of them – have a few we didn’t get to, but we’ll read them tomorrow. We want need more! (duh!) We’re just barely on pace to match last month’s submission numbers.

Also to do tomorrow: finish redoing the issue 11 cover and submit it, more issue 12 prep, mailing contracts/payments, reading… and then if I have any time left, a dozen other things.

To end on a happy note (about something I keep forgetting to mention): both the Issue 7 cover and the back half of the Issue 3 cover (front and back were posted separately) were selected as Daily Deviations on Deviantart! Basically it means that they were nominated by viewers, and chosen by the high muckymucks of DA to be one of several featured that day. Congrats to the artists, Paul Davey and Megan Rose Gedris, for being picked!

I’m a bit depressed today. I just found out that Mary Travers passed away yesterday after a long fight with leukemia. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know “Leaving On A Jet Plane”, “I’m In Love With A Big Blue Frog”, and of course “Puff, the Magic Dragon”.

Today I tweaked the new layout some more. It’s looking pretty solid now. And we kept up with reading submissions. I had intended to do a lot more for CG, like mailing contracts, but my son was sick at school and I had to go get him and take him home. Whereupon he was fine and kept me moving all day.

At any rate, there’s always plenty to do, so I’ll get back to work tomorrow. Keep those submissions coming!

The majority of my CG time today was spent working on a new design for the inside of the print and PDF editions. I’ve always been unhappy with how rigid and slightly boring they are (and I’ve never really liked the borders on every page). Earlier in the day I surfed around looking at some other mags (in various fields), and found some that had aspects that I liked, so I bookmarked them. Then this evening, I spent a few intensive hours building a new document that merged some of my favorite aspects of the examples I found. It’s not OMG In Your Face – that wouldn’t really be appropriate for CG anyway – but it is more interesting, still simple but (I think) easier on the eyes, and just makes more sense. Kay likes it, so I think we’ll probably tweak it a bit more and then roll it out for the first time in the big Issue 12. (Another thing about the new layout is, while there are a couple things that will be a bit more time-consuming, there are other things that have been drastically simplified. Overall, it shouldn’t take longer to put together than the previous layout, and might even be a bit faster.)

We read some more issue 12 submissions today and are still caught up. I also got to read through some of the nonfiction content we’ve already received – I loved it, it was entertaining and even a bit raucous, yet at the same time insightful. Probably one of my favorite things we’ve published yet (or are about to), purely for the fun of it.

Today I also faxed out the paperwork that I was supposed to include with the CG copies to be auctioned, and sent several emails and messages regarding advertising, interviews (of us, not in the magazine) and slush reading.

Speaking of… I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but beginning with Issue 13, Crossed Genres will be bringing aboard slush readers to help us get through our submissions. We’ve made arrangements with a few people we’ve known for some time and trust, and who we know are sharp, observant and have good judgment. (There’ll be some info about them on the site soon, under the “About” section.)

It was a hard choice to make, bringing on slush readers, mostly because reading stories is probably our favorite part of running CG. But the magazine has grown so much so quickly, we need more time for other aspects of it – slush reading is one of the few areas we can actually have someone else do. Kay and I will still be the final decision-makers. The slush readers are only going to be helping us narrow everything down. (And we still reserve the right to read anything and everything! If we see something that looks interesting to us we’re going to read it instead of passing it on.)

I realized today that I’m actually pretty anxious for the proof of Issue 11 to get here. The cover is particularly dark, both stylistically and in subject matter (logical, given the Horror genre) and I can’t wait to see it on the cover. I converted it to greyscale to go in the Kindle edition, and I have to say it translated to greyscale better than any previous cover we’ve had, hands down. I know that the covers of the print editions always end up just a bit darker than they appear on my computer screen, so I think the issue 11 cover is going to be really stunning.

Tomorrow: more work on the new layout, a couple of fiddly things for Issue 11, and dealing with contracts/payments.

Issue 11? That’s done. Except for a couple fiddly things, most of which can’t be done until the last couple days of the month anyway.

Today I:

- merged the pieces of the PDF into one, completing it
- formatted, combined, proofed and uploaded the Kindle edition, & entered all info. Just need to hit “Publish” at the right time.
- completed formatting of the PRC, then constructed and finalized it
- created webpages for all of issue 11, added the content, and finished all other web formatting
- mailed 2 packages containing 12 copies of various issues

If I’d had a ship’s bridge with a computer handy? Yeah, it’d be cussing like a sailor now.

(Of course I realized afterward that I’d forgotten to include a piece of paperwork with one of the packages of issues. *HEADDESK* So I’ll be faxing or mailing that out tomorrow.)

Amazingly, I got all of that done before 9pm tonight, so this evening I’ve taken the time for some well-earned goofing off. (Recorded episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, a sandwich and mango juice. Don’t judge me. We’re out of Doritos.)

Tomorrow begins our in-earnest prep for Issue 12. Of course, there’s only so much we can do ahead of time, but we do have some of the content in hand, so we’ll get to work editing that, and there’s prep for the various editions that we can do. Plus, I’m working on another layout for the issue – I’ve always been just a bit annoyed at the slightly sterile look of the inside of our print editions, and I want to – not jazz it up, just make it a little more fun. Less rigid. Anyway, I may not have time, but we’ll see.

Submissions are still coming in, but we’re keeping up with them – actually I think right now there’s only one story in our “Unread” folder. Numbers-wise we’re doing all right, but we’re still hoping for a big onslaught of submissions so we have our largest pool yet to choose from. Still two entire weeks left to submit though, and I’m pretty sure that a lot of people are writing/polishing at this point.

NOTE: We’d love more art and/or nonfiction submissions too! We always get a good number of Fiction submissions, which is great of course, but we’re constantly short on artwork and articles. As we’ve said, for this issue especially we really want to offer as many voices as possible.

ETA: For some reason I keep forgetting to mention this: September 14 (this past Monday) marked exactly 1 year since Crossedgenres.com went live! I’ll be more pleased when we reach a full 12 issues released (November 1) or a full calendar year with issues out (November 30). But still, this is kind of a neat milestone.