It's official, Fantastic Stories is now live. Please visit the site and help us get the word out. Fiction in the first issue: "New Beaches" by Daniel Hatch, "Man or Mech" by Becky Kyle, "Invisible Friends" by Steven Sawicki, "Cancelled" by Edward J. McFadden III. Non-fiction: "The Fan" by Carole McDonnell, "The Remake Chronicles" by Adam-Troy Castro, "Area 51 and 1/2" by Steven Sawicki, and an editorial by Warren Lapine.

We are also now open to submissions. 15 cents per word for original fiction with a max of $500.00 and $25.00 for reprints. Guidelines are on the site.

www.fantasticstoriesoftheimagination.com

I just finished putting together the science fiction anthology; it’s titled Fantastic Stories Presents: Science Fiction Super Pack #1. It has 41 stories in it and is 726 pages long. I’ve now had a moment to go over the submissions numbers. I received about 200 stories of which I purchased 46. Men out number women during the submission process by about 20%. 27 of the stories I purchased were by women and 20 were by men. I don’t know if that means anything, but it’s interesting.

The reading process really surprised me, though, I guess it should not have. When reading original stories for a project I only managed to read a tiny fraction of the stories all the way through. Since I was only looking at reprints the overall quality of the slush was the highest I’ve ever experienced and I read more than half of the stories that came in all the way through. This tells me that when I open at the higher pay rate I will defiantly need first readers if I am to keep up with my other publishing duties.

So now it’s on to the Fantasy Super Pack. I need another dozen or so stories to fill that out. So please e-mail you reprint Fantasy stories to fantasticstoriessubmissions@gmail.com. Payment is a flat $10.00 plus a copy of the e-pub and two copies of the print anthology. As I said, I’m primarily looking for fantasy at the moment, but since I’ll be starting on a second science fiction super pack as soon as I’m done with the Fantasy super pack I will look at science fiction as well.

Shortly I'll be launching a new webzine Fantastic Stories. The New zine will be free to readers. We will fund the zine in part by selling e-pubs directly from the website. To that end, I'm putting together a couple of anthologies in advance so that there will be some product available when the first issue of the zine goes up. I'm looking to licensee reprint rights to stories for both a print and e-pub anthology. Each anthology will have about 800 pages of stories with a mix of classic fiction and newer fiction. Payment is a flat $10.00 plus a copy of the e-pub and two copies of the print anthology. There will also be a link leading back to the writer's website at the end of each story in the e-pub. I’m looking for stories that cover the entire science fiction and fantasy spectrum. I love hard SF (think Allan Steele and Ben Bova) I love magic realism (think Tim Powers and Neil Gaiman) and everything in between (think Roger Zelazny and Robert Silverberg). I want a story to surprise me and to take me to unexpected places. I love word play, and would like to see stories with a literary bent, though decidedly not a pretentious bent. I could spend some time telling you what I don’t want, but I’ve found that good stories can make me buy them regardless of how many of my rules they violate. Story length 1,000 to 10,000 words. Submissions should be e-mailed to fantasticstoriessubmissions@gmail.com

Today makes two days since I logged off of Twitter and Facebook. I haven't missed Twitter at all. All day yesterday I kept thinking I have to post about this on Facebook and then I'd remember I was off Facebook. There was a lot less of that today. By tomorrow I think I'll be past that part. I got my usual work out with my personal trainer in today and mowed about two acres of yard. I also designed and uploaded two books, so work happened. Tomorrow I hope to do two more. We'll also be spending some time with Dan Hatch, an SF Writer friend from Mass, and his wife so no work in the evening. But just two days in and it does seem to me that I am once again becoming more productive.

If someone would be so kind as to post a link to this on my Facebook wall I would very much appreciate it.

It's been quite some time since I did any real blogging. I've been spending most of my social media time on Facebook and to a much lesser extent on Twitter. In fact, I've recently decided I've been spending entirely too much time on social media, so on Monday I'm dropping Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Hopefully I can go back to at least Facebook once I've changed my habits. I have a contract that calls for me to deliver 400 books a year to my distributor, I really can't select, edit, layout and deliver 400 books a year if I spend more than an hour a day on social media. Blogging never took me away for that length of time, but on Facebook I have so many friends it would be easy to talk all day with various people and do absolutely nothing, which is what it seems like I'm doing. So, at least for the next two weeks, if You want to keep up with me, this is the place. I'm going to try to blog at least a couple times a week and let everyone know what I'm up to. Hopefully once I go back to Facebook I'll still hang out here.

Trent Zelazny and I are editing a Roger Zelazny tribute anthology. the Guidelines are below and please take a moment to check pout our Indiegogo campaign http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/282106. We'd like to open this up to everyone, but we'll need help to do that.

Shadows and Reflections: A tribute to Roger Zelazny
Edited by Trent Zelazny and Warren Lapine

Shadows and Reflections is a tribute to the fiction of Roger Zelazny. We are looking for stories set in any of the various universes that Zelazny created in his short stories and novels, with the exception of the Amber universe. As you probably know, Zelazny’s work covered a very wide range of genre fict
ion so we are open to most genres. The only limiting factor is that a story must either use one or more of Zelazny’s characters or be expressly set in one of his milieus. Zelazny was one of the most literate and inventive writers that genre fiction has ever known. Your Story submission should reflect that.
Length: up to 10,000 words.

Payment: 5 cents per word for unsolicited stories max $250.00 and 10 cents per word for solicited stories max $500.00 on acceptance. (Note unsolicited subs are contingent upon our hitting our primary Indiegogo goal and may increase to the same amount as the solicited stories if we hit our secondary Indiegogo goal.
Submissions: Stories should be e-mailed to shadowsandreflectionsanthology@yahoo.com

Fantastic Stories now has a small website that you can order the electronic and print editions of the book from. www.fantasticstoriesoftheimagination.com There are also two ways for you to get free copies of the e-book. One, if you were a subscriber to Realms of Fantasy or any of the DNA Publications magazine you may download the e-book for free. Two, if you will review or blog about Fantastic you can also download it for free.

The e-book is DRM free and we’ll let you decide what you think it’s worth. So take a look over the table of contents and then decide how much you want to pay us. If you like Fantastic more than you thought you would, you can always send more money after you’ve finished it. Please help us spread the word.

Here's yet another tweak. I'm still not sure if this is the final version, But I think I like this one better than the previous ones.

I got a lot of feedback from a number of different quarters. So I'm trying yet another iteration on this cover.

I had two people who I trust tell me I needed to put my name on the cover and add more design elements to the cover. I'm not sure if this is the direction I want to go in, but this is how the cover would look if I put my name on it and made the design a bit more complicated. I'd love some feedback.