Cat Rambo

This Monday's story is Clockatrice by Tanith Lee. It's very exciting for me as an editor to be publishing a piece by one of my all-time favorite writers, and one of the people whose work helped introduce me to what fantasy could be. I started reading Lee with her Flat Earth series. first encountering Azhrarn in the pages of Night's Master. I must confess, I have saved the paperclips from the two subs I've seen from her, and intend to someday use them for the heart of my own clockwork Tanith Lee.

mood:

busy

music: Japanpopshow - Fumanchu

(9 comments | Leave a comment)

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Looking For Slush Readers

We are looking for someone interested in dedicating 5-10 hours a months to reading Fantasy Magazine slush. We will be glad to train you in considerations of online publishing and editing. Position is unpaid but we would be glad to write letters of recommendation or whatever's needed for internship status and buy you drinks at conventions. We will be taking applications through the end of the month at rambo @ fantasy-magazine.com Send your name, e-mail address, a brief description of your experience with speculative fiction and publishing, why you'd like to work with Fantasy Magazine, your three favorite short story writers with a sentence or two describing why they're your favorite, and the magazines and websites you like to read. If you've got a blog or significant website, or are on any social networks such as Twitter or Facebook, please include that.

mood:

drained

music: Mike Doughty - 27 Jennifers

(Leave a comment)

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Currently On My Plate

What I'm focusing on this month:

The rewrite of Phat Fairy, because I'd like to send that out to an agent soon.
Continuing to draft/plan Queen of the Fireflies.
A short story intended for the Codex Writers' Halloween contest. Can't blog about it until the contest is over, heh, but wish me luck - last time I tied for second place, so I have high hopes for this time.
Catching up on the 1400 e-mails accumulated in my inbox and getting Fantasy Magazine sorted out finally.
Getting a backlog of stories out for consideration.
Getting my mother settled in Redmond.
Prepping to start teaching at the end of the month.
Picking up more freelancing work where I can.
Rock Band Beatles!!!!!!!

The Fantasy Magazine slush readers have been busy processing the slew of stories received when we opened. Here's the recent acquisitions:

"Stereogram of the Gray Fort, in the Days of Her Glory" by Paul Berger
"Abandonware" by An Owomoyela
"Lost Dogs and Fireplace Archeology" by Chris Howard
"The Slavesinger" by Louise Marley
"The Seal of Sulaymaan" by Tracy Canfield

mood:

busy

music: Baaba Maal - Miyaabele

(4 comments | Leave a comment)

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Cripes - Please read if you mailed Fantasy Magazine in August

Due to an unfortunate confusion, it looks as though I haven't been getting mail addressed to rambo@fantasy-magazine.com or fantasysubmissions@gmail.com since late July. I just found this out today and am catching up on this now I apologize to all the people I thought were being EXTREMELY rude in not replying. Heh. *bangs head against wall for a while*

mood:

exanimate

(2 comments | Leave a comment)

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Upcoming Focuses for Fantasy Magazine

If you have a piece that fits with one of the following upcoming focuses, please feel free to drop me a query about it. We don't pay for nonfiction, alas, but it is a publication credit and a decent clip to have in your portfolio when people ask for writing samples.

Urban fantasy - overviews of series, essays (including scholarly!), discussion of writing/trends/movies/reading lists, etc.
Classic fantasy women writers (Tanith Lee, C.J. Cherryh, C.L. Moore, Ursula K. LeGuin)
Superheroes
Fashion/design/costuming
Literary fantasy
Games (reviews, critique, columns, nostalgia, etc)

Humor and reprints are always welcome, including reprints from blogs.

(1 comment | Leave a comment)

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Status

I've got net access here now, and should be able to spend some time this morning working on the magazine schedule. We've worked out that I have the mornings for my own work and then go over and spend the rest of my day helping my mother. Because of the impeding move, there's a lot of sorting and taking things to places involved. Part of that morning time I need for writing, but I should be more on top of Fantasy Magazine going forward. The 27th-31st, I will pretty much be offline and elsewhere, depending on hospital visiting hours.

I don't know the status of the South Bend reading, but should within the next day or so, and will post details as I know them. If it works out, great; if not, perhaps another time.

mood:

awake

(1 comment | Leave a comment)

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Recently on Fantasy Magazine

Jason Heller talks about his hopes and fears for the Odyssey Writing Workshop, while Mishell Baker talks about embarking on Clarion. Tomorrow Rochita Loenen-Ruiz will discuss similar anticipations related to Clarion West.
I talked about the top ten differences between True Blood and Twilight.
We're now partnering with Powell's Books!
Rae Bryant interviews Jessica Lee, author of our recently featured story, Superhero Girl.

mood:

chipper

music: CCR - Bad Moon Rising

(Leave a comment)

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Some Recent Fantasy Magazine Stuff

mood:

quixotic

music: BRight Eyes - When The President Talks to God

(Leave a comment)

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Rescuing Superhero Girl

Today's fiction on Fantasy Magazine is Superhero Girl by Jessica Lee. I actually fished this from the to-be-rejected pile because the title intrigued me, read it, and decided we should publish it - which goes to prove the power of a good title.

Like Elena Gleason's Erased, another story that Fantasy Magazine readers loved, the story works at two levels. Superficially, Erased is about someone's boyfriend becoming invisible. At the heart of it, though, Erased is about what happens when one person vanishes from a relationship. I'll leave it to you to figure out the layers of Superhero Girl.

mood:

pleased

music: Las Victimas Del Doctor Cerebro - El Esqueleto

(1 comment | Leave a comment)

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Fantasy Magazines Volunteers

I am reworking the staff website to make it a bit easier to navigate and adding some intro docs and stuff. I know I haven't mailed everyone back yet who wrote in about doing something for the magazine, but there wasn't anyone who I didn't think highly qualified, so if you mailed me, expect a mail by Friday with more info and your log-in for the site. Very excited about all of this, so I'm making sure everything's nice and tidy so people can hit the ground running!

If you haven't read today's offerings, there's a game review, Observations and Critique on “Naruto: Rise of a Ninja" by Kimberly Unger as well as a terrific essay by Sherilyn Connelly, "The Marvelous Land of Oz: Tipping Point," which accompanies this week's classic fantasy reprint, an excerpt from L. Frank Baum's The Marvelous Land of Oz in which the boy Tip learns that he's the long lost princess of Oz, Ozma. Tomorrow's author spotlight features L. Frank Baum, about whom I learned all sorts of interesting facts. Did you know the suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage was his mother-in-law?

Now I'm going back to wrestling with the staff website.

music: Jonathan Coulton - Millionaire Girlfriend

(Leave a comment)

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Schtuff

Got some great offers for people to write or otherwise do stuff with Fantasy magazine, going to get those all answered today, along with catching up with a couple of important Armageddon e-mails, and a PW review that I should have turned in yesterday but got derailed by the holiday enough into thinking it was due today, yikes.

Plus Phat Fairy, and a bunch of ARC-related stuff. I tell you what - I have two extra, and I'll give them out here on LJ to the people who write the most entertaining comment about what they'll do with the ARC in order to publicize the book. If you'd rather just go pre-order a copy, you can do that here.

On Fantasy Magazine, you can read an L. Frank Baum reprint, Ozma Appears, Rae Bryant's account of her first convention experience at Balticon, or John Ottinger's review of Peter S. Beagle's We Never Talk About My Brother.

mood:

chipper

music: Buckshot LeFonque - Some Cow Fonque (More Tea Vicar?)

(11 comments | Leave a comment)

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Looking For Interns and Volunteers for Fantasy Magazine

We're looking to fill the following positions at Fantasy Magazine. They are, alas, unpaid, but do provide some experience and references that may be of use in job-hunting further on down the line.

Reviewer/Writer/Reporter
Necessary skills: A smooth and engaging writing style, and a sense of what media people will enjoy. An ability to deliver assignments on deadline, to do your own research, and to propose upcoming reviews.
Duties: Write reviews, articles, and other copy according to Fantasy Magazine standards. TIme estimate: 5-10 hours a week.
Benefits: Grow your resume with interesting professional-level writing samples. The satisfaction of seeing our numbers grow while working with a talented team dedicated to bringing the latest and best in fantasy to our readers.

Proofreader/Tagger
Necessary skills:An in-depth knowledge of grammar and spelling and meticulous attention to detail.
Duties: Proofread copy before it is published and make sure it is formatted. After it has been published, make sure it is tagged in social networks. Time estimate: 5-10 hours per week.
Benefits: Grow your resume with interesting professional-level experience. The satisfaction of seeing our numbers grow while working with a talented team dedicated to bringing the latest and best in fantasy to our readers.

Production Lead
Necessary skills:An in-depth knowledge of grammar and spelling and meticulous attention to detail. Organization and ability to oversee a small team of volunteers.
Duties: Oversee getting all magazine posts proofread, formatted, and tagged. Time estimate: 5-10 hours per week.
Benefits: Grow your resume with interesting professional-level writing experience. The satisfaction of seeing our numbers grow while working with a talented team dedicated to bringing the latest and best in fantasy to our readers.

Audio Engineer
Necessary skills: Audio production and editing experience. You know how to record a podcast and edit out extraneous noise, as well as how to add music or other audio tracks. as well as how to put it on a website. You listen to podcasts and know the difference between a well-done one and a badly-done one.
Duties: Work with podcast readers to make sure podcasts are up to standard and coach new ones. Post fiction or interview podcast on a weekly basis. Time estimate: 3-5 hours a week.
Benefits: Resume-worthy experience with online audio production. The satisfaction of seeing our numbers grow while working with a talented team dedicated to bringing the latest and best in fantasy to our readers.

Podcaster
Necessary skills: Basic audio production and editing experience. You know how to record a podcast as well as how to read well.
Duties: Read fiction and nonfiction for the magazine. Time estimate: 3-5 hours a week.
Benefits: Resume-worthy experience with online audio production. The satisfaction of seeing our numbers grow while working with a talented team dedicated to bringing the latest and best in fantasy to our readers.

Assistant Editors - Arts&Music/Audio/Columns/Comics/Community/Games/Movies&TV/

Necessary skills: Strong knowledge of their area, excellent organization and leadership experience. Good writing skills and attention to deal.

Duties: Coordinate production from writers. Check in with managing editor once per month to go over schedule, and participate in general brain-storming session once every two months. Deliver a minimum of two pieces per week for publication. Time estimate: 5-10 hours per week.
Benefits: Resume-worthy experience with online editing and production. The satisfaction of seeing our numbers grow while working with a talented team dedicated to bringing the latest and best in fantasy to our readers. Lots of networking possibilities.
Benefits: experience with online production. The satisfaction of seeing our numbers grow while working with a talented team dedicated to bringing the latest and best in fantasy to our readers. Lots of networking possibilities.

Assistant Editor - News
Necessary skills: You like cons and go to a lot of them. Your in depth knowledge of the speculative fiction field is combined with a chatty but informative writing style. You can turn around content quickly and don't mind spending some weekend time processing the reports.
Duties: Recruit reporters to cover conventions. Consolidate their reports into articles for the magazine. Gather links for weekly news round-up. Coordinate production of stories and accompanying art/photos from writers. Check in with managing editor once per month to go over schedule, and participate in general brain-storming session once every two months. Time estimate: 3-5 hours a week.
Benefits: Resume-worthy experience with online production. The satisfaction of seeing our numbers grow while working with a talented team dedicated to bringing the latest and best in fantasy to our readers. Lots of networking possibilities.

If interested, drop me a line at rambo@fantasy-magazine.com including the position(s) you're interested in, why you're qualified, and two writing samples. I'm very glad to work with you to make sure you get high school or college credit for work done with the magazine if needed.

mood:

chipper

music: The Cure - Friday I'm In Love

(7 comments | Leave a comment)

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Fantasy Magazine In the Month of May

I'm going to be doing more stuff with the overall direction and content of Fantasy Magazine, although I will continue selecting fiction and working with those writers. I wanted to catch FM fans up so you know what to look for in coming months.

This month, we're focusing on social networks, and trying to determine which ones are the most fantasy-friendly. Towards that end we've got different staffers who've each picked a particular one - I'm working with Twitter, while Rae Bryant is our Livejournal person, Mark Bukovec has opted for GoodReads, Jaym Gates for WordPress, Ren Ferril for LibraryThing, Shelfari, and delicious, and Nicole Leffel has chosen StumbleUpon. I'm going to hope they each post here to talk about what they're planning for their exploration of that network. Rae has a cool competition going on for micro-fiction, I know.

We're shuffling around a lot of stuff over the month of May, so I won't be running con reports or doing Fantasy Trivia the next couple of weekends. We're in the process of taking on new volunteers, and I'll be posting more detailed job descriptions this Friday, and letting the apps build a bit before I start looking them over.

If you are a writer, get stuff in this month -- we're closing to subs for the months of June, July and August! There is some AMAZING fiction coming up this summer, but we've got a piep that's stuffed pretty full right now, so we're closing for a few months. We will still be taking nonfiction pieces, however.

I'm also gone to the Armageddon staff vacation next week, so I'll be slow answering e-mails. We have lots of great stuff coming up in May: including fiction by Alison Campbell-Wise and Karen Heuler, a special Oz week, plenty of Star Trek reflection and lists, podcasts, columns, reviews, reflections, and more!

mood:

busy

music: Angelique Kidjo - Awan N'La

(1 comment | Leave a comment)

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

Social Networking and Fantasy Magazine

As people have probably noticed, Fantasy Magazine has been working on our presence on a couple of social networks, FaceBook and Twitter. We're experimenting with web strategies and trying to develop our set of best practices for the next generation of media publishing. As part of this experiment, we're introducing a promotion this month where staff members each adopt a social network and try to discover which has the most fantasy fans.

Social networking fascinates me. It is key to a business model designed for the Web. I'll call it the Networked Presence Model.

The Networked Presence Model is built on a tried and trued marketing strategy: word of mouth. Word of mouth works well in meat-space, but extraordinarily well on the web, where it becomes word of mouth on steroids.

How so? Here's how ordinary word of mouth works. You say to someone, "I'm interested in X." "Oh," she says, "my cousin does X. Here's his contact info." or "I was reading something about that last week." or "I bought an X and it worked really well."

Here's the same interaction on the web. I use the social networking site Twitter to Tweet, "Interested in X." That message reaches FM's 1105 followers. While the vast majority will not respond, if 1% of them do, that's 11 people who may direct me to someone, or provide useful info. They may reTweet the message to their followers in turn, each of whom becomes aware of the FM twitter stream and subscribe to it and in turn be driven to the website.

Plus, when I get a recommendation, I don't just get the name of the product - I can get information such as a URL to a lengthy review, or the company's website, or a place where there's a coupon for money off. That's a harder sell than "I read about Xes a while back."

Social networks have different set-ups and take a little investigation to find out how to use them effectively. For instance, Twitter has a secondary mechanism for passing along information, hash tags. They are called hashtags because one uses the hash mark symbol, #, to indicate one. Hash tags are words that people can use to search for a common interest group, such as #books, #cats, or #pabloneruda. They are sometimes used to create an event such as #followfriday, where users broadcast their recommendations for interesting users to follow. Anyone can look for the word and find lists of users interested in being followed and following in turn.

A Twitter stream making judicious use of hash tags can steadily increase its number of followers, allowing it to drive more and more users to a website.

At the same time, using social networks, websites organized around a common interest group can fulfill a need that local newspapers once met: community news and a chance to see one's name in print, the electronic equivalent of the clipping stuck on the fridge or sent to grandpa.

Nowadays we are less engaged with our local communities and more engaged with communities of interest that are geographically widespread. Some of us may go so far as to have wide-flung families of affinity: I use Facebook to talk to my cousin, e-mail and IMs for my two best friends, bulletin boards and other networks for the many dear friends acquired through working with Armageddon MUD or Fantasy Magazine or conventions or tabletop gaming or other shared experiences.

I am interested in news of them. So if they mention a website where their name or picture or news appears, I usually click through the link or do a search, allowing a website that publishes them to expose potential new readers to the website.

So where's the money coming from in the Networked Presence model, obviously? A tried and true means -- advertising, primarily. But social networks can also be used to push related products: electronic issues of the site, print collections, and other merchandise. Through this amplified word of mouth, promotions can be targeted at groups of users that have expressed an interest in a specific category. For us, it's fantasy - someone who follows @fantasymagazine is generally someone who is interested in fantasy and many things geek.

Using social networks, I can expand the magazine's presence in certain areas. For example, in August, we'll have a special gaming focus. I can look on social networks for communities that are interested in games and post a brief mention or pointer that many will follow to the website. I can even track these efforts to see where we're most successful through tools like Google Analytics.

As part of this effort, I'll be posting about social networking and how Fantasy Magazine is using it. The different strategies, what works and what doesn't, the lessons learned and the strategies that emerge., as well as some of the social implications of marketing and information exchange on the web. High falutin' stuff! :p Anyhow, I'd love to hear thoughts or questions on any of this. Tomorrow I'll be talking about LJ plans.

mood:

quixotic

music: Orchestra Baobab - Bikowa

(7 comments | Leave a comment)

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Clash of the Titanic CGI Effects!

I've got a piece up at the Denver Decider talking about the Harryhausen classic, Clash of the Titans.

Other stuff for this weekend: I'm launching two new Fantasy Magazine efforts this weekend, and thinking I should have just done one at a time. But this weekend we are a) playing games on the @fantasytrivia Twitter stream (stop by at 1:00 PST for the next round and b) doing our first convention reports.

With the convention reports, we've got crack correspondents Eugie Foster and Joseph McDermott at OutlantaCon and Alethea Kontis and (I think) Mary Robinette Kowal at PenguiCon, which will also feature sporadic reports from a special reporter in the dealer's room. They're dedicated to giving you the hot con gossip, sightings of Wil Wheaton, and reports on who needs to shower and who's been doing splits in the con suite. You can follow it at @fantasycon on Twitter, or you can read the longer reports on the magazine as they appear.

But wait, there's more! Expect to see a feature Monday that's going to put the staff to the test as we work towards Total Global Domination in the field of fantasy. More on that to come...

mood:

chipper

music: Enya - Only Time

(6 comments | Leave a comment)

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Testing to See If This Works

This is the tag cloud for Fantasy Magazine's Twitter stream. Why? Because I like seeing data represented in unexpected ways and I'm having fun with the Twitter stream on there.

I'm working on a three part series about online publishing and social networks. If you've got strong opinions about that, pro or con or sideways, drop them in the comments here.

location: butt in chair

mood:

chipper

music: Miranda! - Amanece Junto A Mi

(Leave a comment)

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Fantasy Magazine Authors

I've been putting this page together, since people have requested a way to see a list of all of our fiction on a single page. I still need to get it added into the sidebar, but I thought the LJ followers might like a preview.

Today is busy: need to revise a story before going to a 1:00 writing group, and I'd also like to get 1,000 words into Phat Fairy so I don't lose momentum, since the end of the first draft is in sight. Then to the grocery store to pick up pizza makings for tonight's TV & Rock band revelry before returning to clean a bit in preparation for that as well.

Plus I'm halfway through Agatha Christie's The Clocks. Talk about a mystery hitting the ground running...

More later.

mood:

busy

music: Colors of a New Dawn - Hearts in Celestial Union

(4 comments | Leave a comment)

Previous 20