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All Redstone, All the Time

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

My school year is coming to an end. I led successful reviews for the AP US History Exam and did what I could for my AP Macroeconomics students (I’m still not an expert on the material yet). I’m finishing up my history classes with the Civil War and Reconstruction. I’m also finishing up my last football commitment by doing spring football for the upcoming freshmen. It is a very good group, but it reminds me that coaching is not worth the time commitment for me anymore. I got to take part in my school’s spring band concert, reading a narration and (ironically) the National Hymn. The band is an outstanding organization, and I was very excited to take part, and things went quite well.

Paul’s (my friend and RSF publisher) house in Nashville was flooded and he’s been handling it well, but it is a huge task to set things right. I spent a couple of days there, but he’s been nonstop for two weeks. We were nearly finished with Redstone submissions when the disaster struck, and were able to finish up.

I read over 200 story submissions for Redstone Science Fiction. We accepted ten and a reprint. It seems that I have managed things pretty well. We have a twitter presence, a facebook presence, and have regular traffic to the site.

We’ve done a couple of interviews, and one I did ended up being referenced by John Scalzi on Whatever, which was infinitely cool.

The website layout has received several compliments and I’ve got most of the pages for the June issue done. We’ve got the non-fiction to finish up, but that will happen in the next few days. We very excited because our good friend Sarah Einstein, who is writing an essay for us, won a Pushcart Prize for 2011 for her creative non-fiction.

We may have peaked a little early, but I think we will get a lot of traffic, come the first. I still need to complete the writeup of a couple of interviews and my own essay on ‘writing’ books.

I’ve submitted and been rejected up and down the line since my acceptances this spring. I’m putting everything back out, two submitted today. I think I can write better after my first Redstone experience. I’ll have plenty of time when school is done in a week and a half. We’ll see.

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Redstone

Friday, April 9th, 2010

We opened for submissions at Redstone Science Fiction at 3/15. It has been amazing. We got just over 200 submissions in three weeks, when we closed for submissions on 4/4, so we wouldn’t be overwhelmed. I learned a great deal in submitting stories and have incorporated that into the magazine plan.

The magazine experience has been enlightening when it comes to considering my own writing. If I can write up to the level to which we are trying find in the stories we want to publish, I’ll be much more successful. It’s odd being on the other side. I have more empathy for the editors and I can so easily see the weaknesses in these stories, can I avoid them in my own, or will it freeze me up?

The time consumption has been even more than we expected, but we will be able to stay under our ‘query’ deadline. We’ve got some good stories and at least one great one, so far.

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What I’ve been up to:

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Redstone Science Fiction Building an online science fiction magazine
- I’ve been submitting my science fiction stories for quite a while now, and I’ve become familiar with process.
- During the controversy among scifi people a couple of months ago over low-paying mags/sites (free/$5 a story) vs. pro-paying mags/sites (5 cents/word) I realized that there are less than two dozen professional-paying science fiction short story magazines/sites recognized by the Science Fiction (and Fantasy) Writers of America (there are more and more one-time anthologies, however).
- Some of the sites/mags only publish one story a month and some publish flash fiction.
- In addition to submitting a lot, I listen to a lot of sf stories while I workout and have started acquiring a lot of anthologies and have tried to become familiar with the short science fiction field.
- I decided, at my gal’s encouragement, to set up a website magazine that would pay a professional rate and publish every other month.
- I bought http://www.redstonesciencefiction.com for $10/year & $5/month.
- I setup a twitter feed: http://twitter.com/RedstoneSF and a facebook page.
- When I told my friend P.C. about it he said he’d join in and we’d publish a story every month & split expenses.
- We decided on a 4000-word story at 5 cents/word.
- I set up WordPress, which I’ve done a couple of times, and went through hundreds of layouts & arrived at a simple, clean one.
- I set up a gmail mail server and we can have 50 different gmail accounts at our domain like submissions@redstonesciencefiction.com and mikeray@redstonesciencefiction.com
- I sent out an invite on facebook to my vast geek network to submit stories.
- I’ve gotten the site listed at the top online submission tracker: Duotrope’s Digest
- P.C. has established us as a business, established accounts & is setting up a paypal, and we’ll soon be an LLC – Redstone Publishing. (We even have an ‘in-house’ accountant).
- We have a contract template and I have posted guidelines – http://redstonesciencefiction.com/guidelines/
- We are also going to interview scientists, both biological & space (we know NASA people & medical experts), and scifi people.
- Tobermory has cranked out graphics and is doing more.
- We’ll do reviews on fringe movies and older scifi
- We’vw set up a CafePress store: http://www.cafepress.com/redstonesf
- We’ll probably publish some much older public domain stuff as well.
- We are considering reprints and flash fiction as well.
- We will probably do some reviews or discussions of scifi stuff we like.
- Also, I plan on doing an audio version of the stories we publish as well.
- We’ve talked to a well-known internet artist about doing some covers.
- We’ve had contact with a couple of professional writers as well.
- We start taking submissions a week from Monday and plan to put up the first story June 1.
- We may actually be building a little momentum.

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Brainstorm

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

I have gathered so many ideas and factors to include in my story that it may be too much. Should I stick to a story? Should I make this a longer piece? Am I actually going to make it happen?

I get so distracted at my computer, I’m beginning to think I would do better to write by hand. I broke my glasses a couple of weeks ago & finally got in to optometrist this week. While stuck in exam rooms, I lifted pen and paper and was able to crank out several ideas. It may be that home is simply too distracting. We’ve got rooms filled with storage that I think I’m going to have to clean out to try and create a separate space.

Nearly all my stories are submitted. I may actually have a chance with a couple.

Things are moving along with Redstone Science Fiction. I’m going to try out using WordPress first. I’ve downloaded several templates and I’m going to set it up at first with some pre-1923 public domain stories so I can go ahead and set up links and pages.

School is going fine, I may be a little behind, but that’s normal and AP Economics is much improved this time through. Exercise is going great, I feel much better, but the constant alternation of rain & bitter cold can end at any time..

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Plugging away

Friday, January 29th, 2010

I have resubmitted all my stories, except ‘Detention’. I’ve considered rewriting it, but I may just stick with it as is. I think the website/podcast will be interesting to do. I’m researching the best way to get quality submissions. I’m hoping the higher payrate will help, but you have to get teh word out there somehow. I have the general course of my next story and the basic protagonist. I need to work out the specific conflicts.

I have been exercising regularly and strenuously after school. I’ve also made sure to eat better and take my vitamins. I’m getting better about sleep. the problem is setting aside the time to write. I think the time to write has got to be carved out between 7pm and 9pm. After the dog walk & supper and before I run out of steam. I have to work it around time I spend with my wife watching TV and time I spend on the internet. Systematizing my daily activities & chores around the morning & evening dog walks has gone quite well. I just need to extend that a little farther to include writing time.

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