Jeff VanderMeer and Women Writers

I'm hoping that Jeff enjoys the new issue* when it arrives, since he just posted about some of the writing he enjoyed most while reading for the Best American Fantasy 2 was done by female writers.

This list is a fantastic round-up of writers that I hope get wider exposure and bigger audiences in the years to come. On top of that, three people that I've published made his list: Beth Adele Long ("The Rose Thief in Electric Velocipede #4), Michelle Richmond ("Logorrhea" in Logorrhea), and Rachel Swirsky ("How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth" in Electric Velocipede #13).

Other authors that Jeff lists that I really enjoy reading include Aimee Bender and Shelley Jackson. There are many more that I need to become familiar with.
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*In case you forgot, the new issue was all female contributors in honor of Wiscon, the world's largest feminist science fiction convention.

When Will I Get Issue 14?

My plan is to send out copies of issue 14 this weekend, June 7. I will be sending contributor copies about a week or so after that. I have a few freelance projects that didn't wrap up as quickly as I expected.

The delay for contributors is so that I can send copies and payment together. However, I am willing to send copies in advance of payment if someone really wants to see the issue.

I hope to have some news (don't worry, good news) about future issues in the next week or so.

Special Deals

I ran a few specials during Wiscon that I didn't push perhaps as hard as I could have. So, I've decided to offer those specials on the website. If you go to the sales page on the newly designed website, you'll see a few specials I'm running right now.

The first special is the new issue plus any back issue or chapbook that's in print for $10 ($12.50 in Canada and $15 everywhere else). That's a savings of $2.

The second special is the new issue plus any four back issues or chapbooks that's in print for $20 ($25 in Canada and $30 everywhere else). That's a savings of $7; that's like getting the new issue for free!

When you place the order, just write in the comments box which issue/chapbook(s) you're interested in.

Back from Wiscon and the New Issue

Back from Wiscon and at the day job. Suffering from the typical post-con funk and hoping it's not the stirrings of the actual funk that went around the convention over the weekend. It's always tough getting into the regular world after the fantasy world that is a convention. Today isn't helped by the curdled cream that ruined my morning cup of coffee*.

Some people work in genre/publishing for a living and get to take the events of the convention on high and drive it into their work the next week. Even these people do not live the lifestyle that represents the activities of a convention. I do not think most of us could survive the convention lifestyle 24/7/365. And even these people have a funk. Often conventions are the only place during the year to see people. Sometimes you leave a convention knowing you won't see someone for another whole year.

Other people work a full-time job that is radically different from the convention life. Any high coming off the convention is tempered through a radical shift in though process. You might be stuck going a whole week before you can really sink your teeth into your new thoughts/insights/inspirations/whatevs that came up during the convention.

You might even be someone who essentially has a full-time publishing job and a full-time non-publishing job** and now you have to decide which gets your attention first post-convention. And on top of that you get to have all the highs and lows of both types of people previously outlined.

It was a real up and down convention for me. There were times when I was having a great time, having intelligent/funny conversations with people, and then there were times when I just wished I hadn't come and I had stayed home. I think, unfortunately, it was more down than up. I had one great panel performance and one poor panel performance***. Sales at the table weren't quite what I hoped they would be. I did get to see a TON of people that I rarely get a chance to see and have some great meals. Friday night I experienced a flight of Scribe Agency home-brewed beers and ciders and then on Saturday we had a flight of Absinthe****.

For the most part, I need to focus on my full-time job this week. I've got some things I need to do by the weekend***** that have little to do with the new issue that just came out. This weekend I have family plans. I want/need to get the website redesign done this week.

What does that mean for you?

The big one is that I won't be getting copies of the new issue in the mail until Saturday June 7. And even that's going to be tough as I may need to work that day. I'm also not going to be the most reachable person for the next few weeks (months?) while I work on things. I also notice that I need to be working on the next issue already...and that's a frightening time and money concept right now.
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* when your coffee looks like egg drop soup, it's probably not something you should drink....

** yes, I'm rather transparently talking about me here. Don't forget there's also a family that I'm supporting.

*** unfortunately for me they were back to back, and I felt the first one went really well and then I just didn't do as well for the second one. It was probably fine, but compared...

**** I mistakenly told everyone that Lucid is North American brewed when it is clearly from France.

***** That is, there are things that have May 30 and June 1 deadlines that I need to get done beyond other pressing needs.

Wiscon, Wiscon! A Heck of a Town....

You can see from the photo, that I have received copies of EV #14 in the mail today (technically via UPS, but who's counting?). There's also a smattering of post cards I had made in the photo, too.

On top of that, I've been working on some other stuff. You can click here to see some of it.

Why All Female Contributors?

Following up on a previous post, I wanted to explain why I decided to make EV #14 all female contributors. I hope this isn't seen as just a marketing trick or ploy.

Going back to the beginning of Electric Velocipede, my contributor list has been predominantly male. I've been gently chided about this in the past by different people. For the most part, I hadn't thought much about male/female ratio in the magazine. I accepted stories and essentially published them in the order I accepted them. Most of my submissions came from men, so I was publishing a lot of male contributors.

I wanted to increase the number of female writers I was getting submissions from, so I started courting them. For a while, I didn't do any more than court here and there and felt that was enough. Then I realized that the issues that had a more 50/50 blend of men/women sold better. I was still creating the table of contents based on a "first accepted, first published" basis. But maybe that wasn't good enough any more.

I was accepting enough subs that I was building a backlog of sorts. I no longer needed to follow "first accepted, first published." I could spend some time with submissions and actively select what went together. I could strive for a more consistently 50/50 blend of men/women contributors.

Just to explain a little more, it's not that I select stories just because they're written by a woman. The stories still have to meet my standards for selection. I also don't actively reject pieces because they're written by men. I still see the majority of my submissions from male writers, but I have certainly seen the percentage of female authors go up.

Even as I was thinking of actively planning to have a 50/50 blend, I still had issues from the old system. I might be thinking along one set of lines, but what was coming out in the issues didn't necessarily reflect that. This really hit home for me last year at Wiscon 31 where I had 12 pieces out of 14 (13 out of 15 if you include the cover) contributed by men. I was very cognizant of the fact that I was at a predominantly female convention that had cut its teeth by tackling women's issue in genre, and my current issue was pushing the old standard of all men all the time.

I wanted to do something about this. I've gotten a lot of support over the years from women, and I always say that I want to publish more women writers, so I figured it was time to put my metaphoric money where my mouth is and publish an issue of all women contributors. As a relatively new and relatively unknown publication, I felt it behooved my needs to not only say that I wanted more female contributors and solicit stories, but to actually make the effort to publish more female contributors. And what better place to bring this issue than to Wiscon?

Some will see it as a publicity stunt*. Some will say "Where's the all-men issue?" (see #5**, #10, and #12**) But I prefer to see it as a celebration of the talent of female writers that I'm seeing. I would be more worried about this if the issue wasn't fantastic.
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* I see every issue as a publicity stunt: choosing which authors to put in it, trying to get more established writers, getting a great cover, running ads, running subscription specials, etc.

** Issues #5 and #12 each had one female contributor. #5 was a double-sized (at the time) issue that had more than 20 contributors.

Sneak Preview

So what do you think of that? Cover from the phenomenal Lisa Snellings-Clark. Debuts at Wiscon 32, May 22 - 26, 2008. You can pre-order it here.

What's Happening April 2008

It may be a surprise that I don't edit/publish Electric Velocipede full time. It's true! I have a full-time job outside of publishing. To that end, it will be fairly quiet here the rest of the month. I wanted to post this so that the two of you who read the blog didn't fear that I had come to some untimely demise when there was no posting/updating for a few weeks.

If I was smart (or organized), I would have set up a guest blogger(s) to post something while I was away. But I didn't.

Sybil's Many Personalities and Where She Kept Them

That's right, a new issue of Sybil's Garage is upon the world. Sybil's is one of my favorite newish speculative zines out there. It's always a great mix of writing, and the design is top notch. In fact, the covers always make me a little jealous. :) Here's what you'll find inside:

Poetry:
Elizabeth Barrette - "With Every Fine and Subtle Sense Perceive"
Amal El-Mohtar - "Orpheus"
Miranda Gaw - "Last Supper"
Aaron Leis - "Glass"
Pam McNew - "No Word for Goodbye"
Adrienne J. Odasso - "River Girl"
David M. Rheingold - "Macduff’s Lament"
Eilyahoo Talgam - "Look Away"

Fiction:
Samantha Henderson - "The Ballad of Delphinium Blue"
Vylar Kaftan - "The Girl Next Door"
Barbara Krasnoff - "All His Worldly Goods"
Caspian Gray - "Waiting for Spring"
Jason Erik Lundberg - "Wombat Fishbone"
Alex Dally MacFarlane - "Tattoos of the Sky, Tattoos of the Days"
Gary Moshimer - "Salesman"
Hazel Marcus Ong - "Roses"
Daniel A. Rabuzzi - "Last and First"
Veronica Schanoes - "Lost in the Supermarket"

Non-Fiction:
Dinner with Lauren McLaughlin, an Interview by Devin Poore
The Best-Dressed Man on the Court, a memoir by Mercurio D. Rivera

If you enjoy exceptional speculative fiction, poetry, and art, Sybil's Garage is the magazine for you. Order your copy today!

Unshelved Webcomic

Unshelved is one of my favorite web comics. It's about the staff of the Mallville library and the daily shenanigans that they got into with their patrons. For the uninitiated, I would call it Dilbert for libraries, but it's so much more than that.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Unshelved artist Bill Barnes at the American Library Association Midwinter meeting this last January. I contacted him later via e-mail about Logorrhea, since the strip does a Sunday strip that is a book review. Bill said that Logorrhea sounded interesting and that he would love to see a copy. I sent off a copy of the book and a few issues of the zine.

I'm at my parent's house for Easter right now, and I thought I would check my e-mail since it'd been a few days. There were a bunch of sales in there and my web stats were soaring higher and higher. When I invesigated a litte, I found this quote on the Unshelved website about issue 13 of Electric Velocipede:

So it's to my great surprise that I tell you that I enjoyed every single story, of which there were many, and even one or two of the poems. This is high quality writing indeed. I know my standards haven't gone down, just the opposite, so editor John Klima must just be that good. In any case, if you like sci-fi, or "speculative fiction" in their parlance, it's well worth your time and money.

Hot damn. I have to say, to get such a great, genuine review from Unshelved makes me happy beyond words.

Thanks Bill!

Thanks Unshelved readers!

I'm out of town through tomorrow, but I'll get stuff out in the mail in the next day or two.

Revised Issue 14

I've moved two poems into the issue, rather than re-posting the whole huge list of contents, here are the two additions:

Erin Hoffman - Hyldegarde Speaks to Jacqueline
Sonya Taaffe - Evighed

The issue is still story heavy. It weighs in at 100 pages! Whew! Recent issues have been about 60 pages, so this is nearly twice as long.

Issue 14

Here are the current table of contents for issue 14, due out at Wiscon:

Cover
Lisa Snellings-Clark

Fiction

Novelette
Leslie Claire Walker - Your Blood

Short Stories
Elissa Malcohn - Hermit Crabs
Lisa Mantchev - Perfect Tense
Tracie McBride - The Last Tiger
Sandra McDonald - Recipe for Survival
Melissa Mead - Stepsister
Jennifer Pelland - Sashenka Redux
Sara Saab - No Bubblewrap for Little Guys
Michelle Scott - Them
D. E. Wasden - The Artificial Sunlight of Memory
Leslie What - #1
Sharon E. Woods - Bull
Erzebet YellowBoy - Waiting at the Window

Poetry
Lida Broadhurst - Asylum

Having looked at the Table of Contents and done a rough layout of the issue, I've decided I need to add more poetry to this issue. So, I'm going over what's currently slated for the next few issues, and when I get some poetry added in, I'll post a revised table of contents.

This is an all-female contributor list for Wiscon. I'm hoping to have a little something from a Wiscon GoH, but these people are very busy, so I don't want to put something 'in print' and then find out their schedule won't allow. I'll post an update with that, too.

So what do people think about the line-up?

Jay Caselberg = SEXY!

It didn't make the shortlist (shortsightedness? ignorance? who knows?) but Jay Caselberg's story from issue #12, "The Garden of Earthly Delights," was at least nominated for the BSFA (British Science Fiction Award, dontcha know) this year.

Regardless, this just proves to me that Caselberg is as sexy as he acts. Jay's been quiet this past year online, so maybe this will pull him out of the woodwork. The man was a fixture at every convention I went to for a number of years, and now his schedule is too busy to find time to come to the States for conventions.

I, for one, am hoping that will change with 2008.

Some New Content

I've decided that I'm going to post recent story acquisitions here on the blog. In the past, I've put up table of contents of issues as they are nearing publication, but I'll be posting those as I know them. (hopefully I don't change what I've told an author, or post them before I've told an author)

I know the contents of the next three or so issues. I won't be posting them all in the same day. I'll post issue #14 soon, and then every other week or so I'll post the other ones. I also might start posting some about the editorial process. Unlike how Jay Lake blogs about his writing, I think I'll need to get permission of the author before I talk about how I'm editing a story. Or I'll just have to be vague.

So keep watching here to know what's going to be coming out in Electric Velocipede down the road a ways and to get a little inside view on the zine.

Locus Magazine Issue 564 - Vol 60 - No. 1

It's nice to be recognized. Even if it's in small ways. For example, little do they know, but the current issue of Locus, January 2008, is all about me. Oh, it may have Brian Aldiss on the cover, and there's a little article about Arthur C. Clarke turning 90, but I'm there. You might have to squint, and do some feats of Johnlogic to figure it out for reals, but the issue is about ME.

It takes some courage for the editors to get to me (and that's no surprise, noting how important I am in the field), but once they do... But I'll let the evidence speak for itself:

p. 33 I am mentioned twice in the 2007 World Fantasy Convention report. In a section regaling the parties that abounded in Saratoga, I quote, "...the Electric Velocipede High Tea, John Klima's Johncon..."

p. 34 the photo of Allison Baker and Walter Jon Williams was taken by, you guessed it, moi.

p. 44 in the Magazines Received column, Electric Velocipede's cover for issue #13 gets prominent placement between the covers for Black Static and Interzone.

OK, to peel back the cheese and to speak plainly, I was surprised to see so much mention of me in the magazine. I had gone to my PO Box and found my subscription copy there as well as a second copy mailed in an envelope.

In an attempt to unravel this mystery, I took a finer comb to it than normal. I first looked for my photo of Allison and Jon, as I knew that was going to be used in an upcoming issue. I found it fairly quickly. Glad that my photos were actually useful as I am a fairly awful photographer.

Then I decided to read read read the convention write-up. I admit, this was an act of hubris. I wanted to see if I was mentioned at all, since there were no photos of me (apparently I was not in the right places at the right times). I laughed out loud to see my high tea and Johncon get mention. The high tea was an official event, so that wasn't a surprise, but Johncon, well that's a very personal, egoistic event. I mean, c'mon, it's a room party to celebrate me. But it was apparently rocking enough to get mention.

Then when I got to magazines received, my eye was trying to tell my mind that the cover of issue #13 was up there on the top of the page, but I couldn't resolve them together. Finally I stopped and spent time going from cover to cover instead of sweeping across the top of the page. It's not like they don't faithfully report Electric Velocipede when they get issues; I'm just still not used to seeing the cover in places outside of my control.

Now what can I do to get even more coverage next issue?

Review of Electric Velocipede #10

SF Site has a new review of issue #10 online:

I can offer no great introduction to Electric Velocipede; this issue was my first time. Initial impressions: it looks pretty unassuming, though the cover is no less attractive and striking for that; using the back cover as a space for the subscriber's address is a nice touch, too. The stories fit broadly into a region that I'm not sure even has a name... "Literary weird"? Don't know if that's a real term, but I trust you get the gist of what I mean.

The reviewer likes about half the issue, but would be willing to read more issues of the zine, which is all I'm striving for.

Rich Horton's Summary

Once again, Rich Horton gives us a summary of Electric Velocipede from this year. Rich finds more time for reading than I could ever hope to, but I'm glad for it.

Rich started officially blogging not too long ago (he used to post mostly on sff.net which not everyone could get to) and has posted his annual summaries of short fiction magazines there. Rich says:

"[Electric Velocipede] remains one of the stronger small press 'zines."

I'd quote more, but these summaries are typically quite short, and I don't want to just take the whole thing and reproduce here when people can quickly go to the link I posted above and see the entire write up.

I do want to make one small point of clarification on the numbers/percentages that Rich puts at the end of his summary. Rich does not look at poetry, which makes my male-to-female ratio skew unfavorably. For the purposes of my numbers, if someone has more than one piece in the issue, I'm counting it as one.

• Issue #12: 11 contributors, 10 male, 1 female, 9% female
• Issue #13: 12 contributors, 7 male, 5 female, 41% female
• All of 2007: 23 contributors, 17 male, 6 female, 26% female

So, only slightly higher than the 17% that he reports, but I think it's an important distinction. Considering that each issue had five poems (I had multiple poems from single authors: 3 contributors for issue #12, and 4 contributors for issue #13), there's a decent amount of work that's missed. Of course, if you don't write poetry, that doesn't help you much. It was a predominantly male writer year at Electric Velocipede. And as Rich points out:

"[N]ext year the proportion should be higher still, as #14 will be an all-women issue."

A quick preview of next year:

• Issue #14: 15 contributors, 15 female, 100% female
• Issue #15: 15 contributors, 9 female, 60% female
• Issue #16: 14 contributors, 7 female, 50% female
• All of 2008: 44 contributors, 31 female, 70% female

Of course, the one issue skews that wildly in favor of female authors so next year won't necessarily be representative of a typical year. And yes, I do hope to publish three issues next year.

Magazine Readership

I've ignored saying anything so far about the many posts on declining magazine readership, particularly in the case of the big three digests. The reason for this is that I'm not truly concerned with what other people are doing.

That's bit disingenuous, as noted with this post it's clear that I support short fiction and its publishers, and I try to read as much short fiction as I can, whether it's published in a magazine, an anthology, or online. A lot of that is to familiarize myself with authors. In some cases (say Realms of Fantasy) I also read them to get design ideas (which I obviously don't use since my interior design hasn't changed in six years...). And in some cases I subscribe to support friends and acquaintances.

But I'm not concerned with what they're doing. I want to spend my time figuring out what they're not doing. I don't see the magazines, any of them--big, small, indifferent--going into the social software world. For my dayjob, social software is a BIG THING. Libraries are just about foundering themselves on the idea of bringing social software into the library. So, to learn more about it, I use the zine as a reason to use social software like:

MySpace
Facebook
Facebook Groups
Twitter
Ning
PBWiki
Blogger
Squidoo

That's why this post from Erin Hoffman (who has a poem in an upcoming issue of Electric Velocipede) really resonated with me when I read it. In particular this section:

Modern smaller magazines today are not focusing enough on this community growth. They aren't growing their online forums, they aren't giving their subscribers the opportunity to express themselves and connect with each other, they aren't holding location-based annual events specifically designed to get subscribers connecting and generating their own communities. They aren't providing social tools or branching into the explosively growing social networking movement. They aren't organizing their subscribers in online communities to raise money for themed charities. They aren't running enough contests.

These are all things I want to do, but this thing is run by just me. I've added four slush readers, and I think my turnaround time for reading submissions has gotten better. And is getting better. There's more I'd like to do. I'd like to spend more time on my Facebook group, on the Ning network, creating a MySpace group, etc. I'd like to have an actual online community that is something additional to the content of the zine. I'd love to do an online fiction writing contest.

But it's just me. I work full-time as a librarian. I also work part-time as a reference librarian at my local public library. I do some freelance editorial/layout work. I have a family that likes to spend time with me. I select, edit, layout, proofread, publish the zine and corresponding chapbooks. I edited a book this year and I'd like to do more. I write for three different blogs. I'm working on library-oriented publications so I can further the career that pays the bills.

Where do I have time for this social software stuff? The honest answer is that I don't. I think I've done an admirable job keeping things going as well as I have considering all that I am doing. But there needs to be more.

I'd like some help maintaining and growing my online community. I'd like a small group of people who can dedicated to this task. I don't know exactly what this will entail. It will most likely be centered around a Google/Yahoo group to brainstorm ideas, and then people will go off and run their tasks. I'd like for the Facebook Electric Velocipede Group to have something posted to it every day if possible. I'd like to have a MySpace Group that did the same thing. I'd love to have a dedicated discussion board (or perhaps someone to keep the Night Shade board going with more regularity).

I'm still hashing out the details in my head what this would entail. I don't know if this is something that one person can do, or if I need several people. There are other tasks relating to the zine that I'd love to have someone else keep track of, and if this effort works in building an audience for the zine, there may be the chance of this becoming something more serious. I'll be upfront, I don't make any money on the zine. In fact, I'm not even breaking even although I'm close. There isn't a lot of money, if any, to put towards this effort.

If you think all this sounds like an opportunity, and not just a lot of busywork, please contact me at editor [at] electricvelocipede [dot] com.

Grrrr

So it looks like the rest of issue #13 would be ready from the printer until next week. You know, during Thanksgiving week. You know, that week? Yeah, the one when family is descending upon to feed on a giant bird and all the fixin's? Yeah, that week! The one where I won't have time to put together issues to mail, and I don't think I should strong arm my family into helping me stuff envelopes (although it is tempting). You know, the week when everything goes nutso with people buying holiday gifts and long lines at the post office? That sounds like a fun way to spend the Saturday after Thanksgiving, standing in line with hundreds of things to mail out....

So what does that mean to you? If you're a contributor, your copies are going out. If you bought a patronage, your copies will go out (as well as anything else I promised to send you). Everyone else? It'll be another week. I apologize for this. I can only be so mad, since I never gave them a deadline post WFC when I would need them.

If they didn't do such a great job and go beyond the call of duty to work with me, I'd be more frustrated.

The Fix Reviews Electric Velocipede

The Fix, an excellent review magazine from the UK, has gone online. They've recently reviewed the past two issues of Electric Velocipede. From the review of issue #12:

Electric Velocipede (No. 12, Spring 2007) is a very well put together little magazine. It is straightforwardly but comfortably designed, there’s nothing in the way of internal art, but the presentation and sensible typography mean that the plain pages of text are easily navigated and contribute to a pleasurable physical experience. The quality of the writing helps, too. There’s a scattering of names that will be familiar to those who read short fiction magazines, like Boston, Caselberg, and Tidhar, and as that list suggests, Electric Velocipede tends towards the softer edges of sf, the slipstreamish, and the literary. There are sfnal and fantasy tropes used here, but there’s the confidence to twist them and test them to their breaking point and beyond.

And from the review of issue #13:

Electric Velocipede is an eccentric zine edited by John Klima with work ranging from literary fantasy to slipstream science fiction to the quirky and comical. A host of mostly unknown authors find a home in its pages in issue #13, but several pieces of fiction read as if crafted by pros thirty years past their prime. That’s a good thing.

Nice to see a review of the new issue so quickly. I haven't even gotten subscriber copies in the mail yet! (this weekend!)