Darin Bradley's Noise and Sybil's Garage offers free parking!

(Design by Dave Stephenson)

My good friedn Darin Bradley had his first novel, Noise, come out this week. Darin's a talented writer and this book is at the top of "want to read it now" list. Right now, he's running a promotion until Friday September 3 to give away a signed copy. Darin's been published in Electric Velocipede in the past, and will have a new story in issue #21 called “∞°” (pronounced infinite mo; it's a typographical term, well, it's a take on a typographical term...you'll just have to read it). In the meantime, here's a great promotional site to get you into Darin's book.

Back in July, I talked about the new issue of Matt Kressel's Sybil's Garage. Sybil's Garage was a zine fashioned out of the same aesthetic as Electric Velocipede and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. Great writing, excellent design, and something that definitely has a sense of itself. What I mean by that is that when you read Sybil's Garage, you'll never mistake for any other publication.

Due to a variety of reasons, Matt is officially transforming the former zine into an annual anthology. I think that's a cool idea. It's format sort of reminds me of Conjunctions. You can get the new issue at Amazon, among other places.

But wait, why should I take your word on it? Well, because I'm kind of a big deal, right? Not good enough for you? OK, Matt's thought of that. He's offering Sybil's Garage #4 as a free PDF download. Issue #4 has work from Richard Bowes, Ekaterina Sedia, Cat Rambo, Rachel Swirsky, Steve Rasnic Tem, Barbara Krasnoff and more. It's an excellent issue. You should go download it now.

Really.

You'll like it.

Closed to Submissions

(image from Flickr user Caro Wallis)

After a flurry of activity (thanks everyone!) we are now closed to submissions. I do not have a sense for when we will re-open (I just closed at 2:00a for goodness sake!) so watch this space for updates. We got to 250 and 275 in the past two days; that's awesome!

I'll be contacting the winners and discussing their prizes (the people who are submission #250 and #275) and I'll announce them later this week.

This was a pretty hectic three months for submissions. We have 278 outstanding subs right now, and we received a total of 790 submissions in the three months we've been open. That's pretty impressive for a very small magazine.

Thanks again to everyone who submitted a story and to everyone who helped spread the word.

You Guys Are Awesome

(image (C) Thom Davidsohn; enlarged slightly so it's out of focus)

Wow, did you ever answer the call. Anne put out the word asking for submissions so that we could get to at least 250 and you did it! As to who it was, well, I'll get that announced later. There's still more chances. Let's do it every 25, ok? So if we can get to 275 then 300 then 325 and so on, we'll give away some prizes, ok?

In the meantime, that image above is a teaser from the cover for issue #21. What could that be?

See what's after the jump!

A Few Quick Updates Before September Eats Us All

(image from Flickr user vieux bandit)

John tells me that our submission count is at 233, so he doesn't think we'll reach 300 (much less 350 and so on) before the end of tomorrow.

He says that we'll shoot for 250 and beyond. That's only 17 submissions to some prizes! Come on people! I know you can do it!

Some other changes here at EV:

I got a promotion -- whoo-hoo! -- to managing editor.

We have an official webmaster now. Adam Israel is our Creative Director and will handle the website among other things. Young Patrick Ward is also helping us out with some promotional stuff, so you might hear from him, too.

Basically anyone with an @electricvelocipede.com email is one of us.

Expect other changes to come.

I'm trying to avoid looking at the photo John picked for my post since it's kind of what my house looks like.

Hey You Guys!

(thanks to Ted Fenger for this cool graphic)

To our kindly contributors, if you have changed your email -- please, write myself and John to give us your new contact information. If you happen to know one of the poets or authors listed in EV before Issue 15/16 (see Electric Velocipede wiki here for complete table of contents), send 'em our way. Please.

We're updating our records, and there's... holes. Electronic holes that involve bouncey messages.

Many thanks!

Anne*---

John can be contacted at editor@electricvelocipede.com, I can be contacted at anne@electricvelocipede.com.

Please note: This is for past contributors only. Thank you!

Five Days to Get in Your Submission!

(image from Flickr user pheezy)

Holy cow. Can I say you're amazing? I can? OK, you people are amazing. We've been getting all sorts of great submissions. The problem is, we've now built a backlog and I can't in good faith keep accepting stories that I know won't be out until 2012.

So here's the deal, you have until the end of August to get your submission in. Then we're closing up the system for a bit so we can read everything. At the same time, we're got two issues we're trying to get out this year, and then four next year, so all of us on the Electric Velocipede farm are going to be busy!

Let's make this fun. Right now we have 190 submissions sitting in our queue (hey, we never said we were Clarkesworld Magazine where response time is concerned*). Starting with submission #250, I'll give a prize to each submitter at the 50 mark (i.e., 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, etc.). Prizes will include back issues of Electric Velocipede, Spilt Milk Press chapbooks, ARCs that I've received from publishers, copies of Logorrhea, and so on.

I'll get stuff into a spreadsheet tonight so that I can track who's what number submission. What do you think? Like it? Tell all your friends! Let's have a submission party! How many submissions can you guys and gals rack up?**

---

* While we use the same submission system that Clarkesworld Magazine uses, we are not as fast in our response time. I wish we were. But, and this is the part you should pay attention to, when I was reading submissions on my own without a system, it regularly took almost a year for me to respond. We're at about a month right now. Much better, don't you think?

** Bring it!

World Fantasy Award Nominations

(image from Flickr user gumboeditor, hey, that's me!)

By now many of you have already heard, but in case you haven't, the 2009 World Fantasy Awards Nominees were officially announced this morning. These are the awards that will be given this year at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, OH.

There are a lot of worthwhile people on the list. I'm particularly excited to see Jeff VanderMeer's novel Finch get some recognition. I think it's his strongest work to date. I also think it's awesome to see work from X6 (from Australian publisher Coeur de Lion) and Nemonymous Nine: Cern Zoo make the list. They are not traditional markets for fiction, nor are they necessarily well-known to American audiences so I hope they get some good exposure from being a part of the awards.

The Short Fiction category has a great mix of large market and small market, print and online. I'll be interested in seeing who the judges selected. There are a few new names (to me at least) on the artist list, and I think that's great. From what I can see Sam Weber and Jason Zerrilo are well deserving of their nominations. Also very excited to see Jonathan Strahan on the list for the Professional award.

As for me? Well, you can see that I'm part of a strong Non-Professional group:

Special Award – Non-Professional
John Berlyne for Powers: Secret Histories
Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan, & Sean Wallace for Clarkesworld
Susan Marie Groppi for Strange Horizons
John Klima for Electric Velocipede
Bob Colby, B. Diane Martin, David Shaw and Eric M. Van for Readercon
Ray Russell & Rosalie Parker for Tartarus Press

That makes four years in a row for me being nominated. I'm particularly intrigued by the Readercon nomination. It's a great convention, and I know that people who organize conventions do a pretty thankless task. My feeling is they are the winners on the ballot. Regardless, all my fellow nominees do excellent work and I'll be thrilled for whomever I lose to in the end.

Best American Fantasy Series Discontinued

Jeff VanderMeer announced on his blog yesterday that the annual Best American Fantasy series that he founded (along with Ann VanderMeer and Matthew Cheney) is coming to an end. Three volumes have been published in the series and a fourth was in the works, but it will not be published. While I'm sad to see it go, as Jeff points out, a year's best that was finding stuff that slipped between definitions was going to be a hard sell from the outset.

Over at the OF Blog of the Fallen, series editor Larry Nolen lists the recommendations he had made to Minister Faust who was going to be the guest editor of vol. 4. Of note to readers of this blog is the story "A Mouse Ran Up the Clock" by A. C. Wise from Electric Velocipede 19, which made Nolen's recommended list.

When I started in the field there was Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction and Ellen Datlow & Terry Windling's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. As a fan and reader (and later an editor) these were great places to find what had come out that I might have missed. I also loved poring through the recommended reading lists in the back to see what else was out there. Fans with longer memories than me know that other year's bests have existed throughout the years. There's also been a number of publications like the Nebula Awards showcases (and Hugo Awards ones, too) that aren't quite year's best, but offer a similar reading experience.

A few years ago I felt there was a glut of year's best books, and many of them have fallen to the wayside. Still surviving are the perennial Year's Best Science Fiction from Gardner Dozois, David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer's Year's Best SF and Year's Best Fantasy, Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Horror, Jonathan Strahan's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and Rich Horton's The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Which, in my opinion, is still a lot of books. As a reader and an editor, it's hard to keep up. I'll miss Best American Fantasy as it stretched beyond the genre and got into areas that I don't read very thoroughly.

Some Updates on Electric Velocipede (now in its 20s!)

(image from Flickr user ario_)

That's right, Electric Velocipede has hit 20 issues and is showing no signs of stopping! Issue #20 is at the Night Shade Books warehouse, and it should be shipping out soon to subscribers, contributors, et al. Issue #20 is our first official issue of 2010, although many people did not get issue #19 until early this year as opposed to its 2009 cover date.

We're still planning on getting out two more issues this year, but there's only a few months left so we might fail. But hey, I'd rather go for it and fail than always be wondering if we could have gotten it done. If we get out two more issues this year, that sets us up nicely to do four issues next year. It also sets us up to have issue #25 come out right on top of our 10th anniversary. Pretty cool, eh?

So what's the status? Electric Velocipede #21 has been sent to authors for edits, and I've already gotten a bunch of thos back. We have a sweet cover from Thom Davidsohn, and everything is falling in place. My intention is to have copies at MadCon 2010 at the end of September.

Today, I started editing Electric Velocipede #22. I know, I know. You haven't even seen #20! That's the way it works. I also have a reprint anthology to put together for next month. It's a bit of a mad rush, but if I can remain focused and motivated (and it's Thom's covers that have done it for me; it gives the issues a reality that doesn't exist when they're just digital files) there'll be no issue.

Of course, when I post this there's only 80 days left until World Fantasy; less than three months! If you haven't noticed, there's a countdown to World Fantasy in the upper right-hand corner on the blog. Mr. Teppo and I have some "stuff" in the works for WFC, so hold on to your hats. Next month we'll do some teasers with the new cover and give the table of contents again.

So, that's what I'm doing...what are you all up to as the Summer winds down?

Upcoming Conventions: ConText and MadCon

(image from Flickr user pockybum522)

UPDATED SLIGHTLY

Anne says, "ConText (Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Massie, Paul Stevens, et al) is at the end of the month. I've never been. In fact, the last Ohio con I went to was Marcon, when I was a teenager.

"But mostly I never make ConText because it often conflicts somewhat with Michigan's ConClave.

"Anyway, WFC was the next Ohio con on my schedule; I'd expected it to be my second ever in Columbus. And then I suddenly realized -- was it only last week? -- that I had a golden opportunity for attending ConText 2010!

"For one thing, I live considerably closer to Columbus than I used to. :D

"I probably don't sound anywhere as delighted as I really am. Because trust me, I am delighted.

"If you've been to ConText before, care to pipe up?

"I just hope Toby Buckell doesn't think I'm stalking him. ;] (I'm not, really I'm not! Not deliberately.) I have a strong feeling he'll be in half the panels I attend for some odd reason -- just like Penguicon."

John says, "I'll have a table in the dealer's room at MadCon 2010 (Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Peter David, Patrick Rothfuss, Lisa Snellings-Clark, Allen Steele, et al) next month in September. This is supposedly Harlan's last ever convention appearance, so if you've never met him before, this may be your last chance!

"Honestly, though, this convention has a great line-up. I'm really looking forward to it. This will be the third Madison convention I've been to this year. It's been nice to hit a bunch of conventions in the same year and get the chance to meet a bunch of new people.

"This is my last stop before WFC (that's World Fantasy) in Columbus in October. And yes, Anne will be at WFC, too. We'll actually get to meet for the first time! (what?! you've never met!?) Both ConText and MadCon are great conventions that people should consider going to the next month or two.

"Hope we can see you at one or the other!"

To be completely clear, Anne will be at ConText and John will be at MadCon, but not vice versa.