Editing for Issue 13 is done. Whew. Tough one this month – not because of the stories, which were actually quite clean, but because we got sick and fell out of the swing of things. And we had a few other things going on.

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!

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

I guess one of my life's main lessons is to learn to not get so attached to people or outcomes.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

In the past couple of days, we sent out a lot of rejections, mainly to Issue 13 submissions. We use a form letter: we simply don’t have time to respond personally to all the submissions we get. However, rather than use a plan rejection (”Thanks for submitting, we’ve decided not to use it, best wishes”), we use something which we hope makes clear to people that the rejection may be for any number of factors, and they shouldn’t take it as an insult to the quality of their work. Here’s a typical rejection letter from us:

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?

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

Modern technology is pretty amazing in that it can distract you from itself. You get on the computer to perform 1 task; 15 tasks later you’ve forgotten what the first one was, you only know you haven’t done it…

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!

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

Just a quick post because it’s midnight. I’ll fill in details of what we’re doing tomorrow. For now I just want to share a couple of links:

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</a> 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!

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

City of SJ is fining me $200 because they think I adopted Val's siblings from the shelter and never licensed them.

I've called multiple times, I thought it got dropped BUT it got sent to a collection agency.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

As promised in an earlier blog post, we’re now offering any 5 issues of crossed genres (in .pdf or .prc format) for only $5!

- 112,000 to 160,000 words of fiction (depending on which issues you pick)
- Plus, all the articles, interviews, reviews and artwork
- 37% off the cost of buying them separately
- One zip file to download (a link will be emailed to you)

When you make your purchase, be sure to specify which 5 issues you want in the comments section on the purchase page. We’ll make a zip file of those 5 issues, upload it to a secure place and email you a link. We have to do it this way – there are 6,720 different combinations of 5 issues to be made from the 8 available (and that number will increase significantly when each subsequent issue comes out)!

(NOTE: Issues 1, 2, 3 & 4 were never available in digital formats because of the agreements we have with the contributors. Because of this, those four issues aren’t available for this offer.)

Go here to get your issues!

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

It’s very hard to struggle back into a rhythm of work after being flung out of it for so long. To anyone who says 5 days isn’t a long time, I say: clearly you have never truly been in this kind of rhythm.

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!

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