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.
Webdesign
...now browsing by tag
“Detention” editing
Monday, April 20th, 2009I got some good feedback on “Detention” and I spent yesterday afternoon cleaning it up. (The rain kept me from planting my tomatoes.) There are at least a couple of good lines, and I think I’m going to reduce the the length of the opening, maybe even cut it back to flash length. Then I’ll find a place to send it off. I also wrote up one of my anecdotes from the Army about “smart privates” and will send it off a creative non-fiction site. Also redid this site for spring, even though we can’t seem to truly warm up around here.
Link-blogging isn’t writing, but it feels like it.
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009I have long been a tech geek, if a bit of a dilettante. I had every issue for the first 10 years of Wired. We were on the internet from it’s publicly available beginnings. Dialed-up with a local internet provider in Tuscaloosa.
While in grad school I ran one of the first websites about coaching football: I reviewed coaching books and cataloged the growing online resources. I even got a short write up in one of the top coaching magazines. But when I moved & changed jobs and providers the site got away from me. It felt like I was writing something productive, but it’s long gone.
About then I decided it was time to start writing fiction (much as I have now?) and to facilitate this I would start a blog on Bloggerthat would encourage me to write. In April 2002 I started what eventually devolved into a link blog for
my friends. It is still up and I still post occasionally, mostly through my twitter and delicious feeds in the sidebar.
This has given me the illusion that I was producing something, but in general I have linked to things that other people have written. I spent my time tinkering with HTML and eventually learning CSS and continually revamping the blog, which maybe a dozen people frequented. More than once I rewrote it from scratch. In recent years I’ve gotten some of my partners in
crime to start a group blog and we post and rant to each other with relish. And of course there is Facebook, where there was once myspace.
A few hundred people are kept up to date and old friends are reconnected. But…
None of this has really had anything to do with actually writing fantasy/science fiction. I have posted a few flash fiction stories to a group on a social networking site – the only direct connection between my net-life and fiction writing, thus far. So the great majority of it has been fun and informative, but seven years of blogging has not brought me any closer to publication. Instead it has provided an easy distraction.
“So genius, you’re starting a new blog to help you write. In light of the preceding does this make any sense at all?” Reasonable doubt.
My goals here are a) to take the few things I have written and polish them up a bit and keep a record of my efforts to get them published, b) keep a record of any actual writing I happen to do, c) consolidate and record the things I’ve learned about writing and my efforts to put them to use, and d) make writing the focus of my computer time, rather than surfing and
communicating.
I’d like to rise to this self-imposed challenge and, in a slightly less imperfect world, have my loyal readers discover these seminal posts years from now and be entertained and encouraged by my humble artistic origins. We’ll see.
Fancy new header
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009I altered the header picture, probably not in the normal way, but it’s
done. Took the picture here in North Alabama after snowfall the morning of Sunday March 1st (our woods are on the left
edge). I’m pleased.