Saturday, August 20, 2011

Excitement Is Growing at Penumbra

It's kind of hard to blog right now. I want to act like a completely spoiled brat and bounce up and down on my chair yelling, "I know something you don't know! I know something you don't know! Neener neener neener!"



But I won't. I promise.



This weekend we'll be announcing the lineup of the inaugural issue of Penumbra. The first issue of any magazine is really important, especially to the people who decide which writers/stories to publish. You second guess your decisions. (Is this really the best story? What about...) You want to ignore things that you're paid NOT to ignore.



Like budgets. Or word counts.



And in the end, you just get all the stories together and fiddle with them, reading them over and over until you decide which arrangement is going to work the best. That pretty much encapsulates my night, and considering that I'm blogging at three in the morning should tell you how *not* easy this was.



But at last it's done. And not just THIS issue, but I have the next TWO done as well, which gets us through the end of the year. This afternoon we spent an hour going through cover art images and that got me stoked too. So tonight, then, I've been luxuriating in outstanding short fiction from writers all over the world. Experience levels run from debut authors who've never been published to established pros whose resumes make me very jealous.



Interested in joining them? Take a look at the special calls for themes Penumbra has set up.



Happy writing! And remember: keep an eye on this blog and the Penumbra website for the announcement of the writers in the first issue.


Penumbra launches on October 1, 2011.



PENUMBRA OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:


Sports and games:
Have a football story with an interesting twist? Invent a bizarre game on another world? Or, did you have a game on this world go horribly wrong? Well, if your story is around 3k or under, we want to see it!
CALL ENDS SEPTEMBER 15, 2011.




Shakespeare:
We have a deep and abiding passion for the Bard and his works. So if you've reworked one of his plays into your story, or have Shakespeare as a character, or even if you write the story PAST his playsas long as there's a speculative fiction twist, then it might find its way into this winter, 2012 issue.
CALL ENDS OCTOBER 31, 2011




Steampunk:
Create your best gizmos and gear up for the goggle-gouging fun that is steampunk. And yes, at Penumbra, gaslight fantasy counts. All steampunk, all the timewhich means anything goes for this issue as long as it's firmly rooted in the subgenre.
CALL ENDS NOVEMBER 15, 2011

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