Sorry for the prolonged radio silence. It’s been a hella busy and very intense couple of weeks. Much hard work and not much sleep. But I’m thrilled to announce that The Fix is now live!
Featuring over twenty new reviews of print ‘zines, e-zines, anthologies, and collections; the inaugural samplings of new columns: Jennifer Mercer’s Distillations: Speculative Poetry Review, John Dodd’s Podcasts in Review, and Matthew M. Foster’s Flickers on the Wall: Reflections on Short Film, as well as the continuation of James Van Pelt’s column on the writing life, The Day Job; and an exclusive interview, our virtual pages are chock full of wonderful content. Please spread the news!
I’m so proud of the dedication and hard work The Fix‘s team of contributors put in to make this launch a success. And I’m honored to be working with them on this exciting, new venture.
I’ve also been teaching an online workshop this month, “Worldbuilding for Writers,” in addition to gearing up for The Fix‘s relaunch. Then there’s that short story I’d like to finish, and I haven’t even started on my November Writing for Young Readers column (although I may end up cannibalizing some of my class write-ups for my it), and there’s still outstanding “to do” things for The Fix.
I think my hamsters have morphed into fluffy wolverines.
Writing Stuff
Had a reading on the 4th at Outwrite Books with mroctober and catherineldf. And, urg. It . . . did not go well. Steve and Catherine were great. Me, not so much. In addition to having a head cold to beat all head colds (courtesy my folks who picked up something in their travels) making me nasal and hoarse, the setup totally flummoxed me.
I’ve only ever had a table and/or podium to read from, so it didn’t occur to me that things might be different. My reading copy is loose leaf. That allows me to just move a page over when I’m nearing the bottom so I can continue onto the next page without having to pause to shuffle pages. But the reading setup at Outwrite is bar stools in front of a microphone–and I’m not so good with microphones in any case. No table. No podium. Tall bar stool so my feet couldn’t touch the ground. Also, I’ve never had to worry about time before, and we each only had 15 minutes to read. I didn’t have a watch, and all the clocks on the wall displayed different (wrong) times.
So yeah, much franticness as I nearly drop my pages repeatedly. I ran overtime. Massive stress and public speaking terror. End result, my reading verily sucked. I wanted to crawl into a hole afterward.
Sigh. Well, I’d been on a good roll, starting to get my confidence up and all. The cosmos decided I was overdue for a humbling fiasco. Duly noted. Public speaking bad. I get it.
Received:
– Got a note out of the blue by new, German podcast outfit, Podgeschichten. The editor heard the Escape Pod production of “The Life and Times of Penguin” and wants to translate it into German and produce it for his publication. And they’re a paying market! Of course I said “yes.” Received the contract . . . which was in German, albeit with an English translation, and after having terracinque confirm the translation, we’re all good.
I haven’t been translated into German before. That’ll make it my fifth foreign language. I LOVE having editors solicit work from me.
– Also received word from mroctober that Magic in the Mirrorstone contrib. copies are going out. A pleasant surprise, that. The anthology is slated for a February ’08 release, so I assumed I wouldn’t be seeing it until next year. Sweet.
Published:
– In all the hubbub, I didn’t realize that Hub had published “The Music Company” in issue #26 until I got their PayPal payment. Hee!
They email each issue to me, but I’d been too busy to do anything but forward them on to reviewers. So I totally missed it! Hmm, wonder what else I’ve missed in the chaotic frenzy of the last few weeks . . . probably best not to dwell on that.
Aw, I’m sorry you had a public speaking fiasco. But I bet everyone who does that much has a story like yours! It doesn’t mean you’re bad at it.
Very cool about The Fix.
How do you confirm that the translation is true to what you wrote?
Well, in the case of the Greek and French translations, I had writer friends who are fluent in those languages look them over. Likewise with German, I’ve got friends who can speak/read it. With the Polish and Hungarian ones, I was stuck with blind faith and hope.
Really, when it comes to foreign language translations, I don’t get proofs to edit or look over or anything, so in the end, it comes down to crossing my fingers and praying to the god of Babel.
And you get paid and credit either way.
Sorry the reading sucked. I hate readings. I’ve given a whole one in my life and am in no hurry to do another.
–CDM.
Congratulations! The new site looks great!
*claps to your success* 😀
Yeah! Happy birthday to the new magazine!
Readings are never easy. Don’t fret about it. No one afterwards made any ill remarks and your story is a terrific one.
Of course, I’m not thrilled with the So Fey review at The Fix. I disagree with several things that were mentioned, of course. I find that the review was also very “business” like with no lead-in and a weak summation at the end. I think it’s odd to review a themed anthology with so little attention paid to the theme that it’s an after thought.
Not sure if I would recommend to Mirrorstone to have their book reviewed on The Fix.
Re: Mirrorstone – couldn’t anyone just pick up any published anthology or magazine and review it, though? I think that once you publish something, you’re basically putting yourself out there to be reviewed by any reviewer, whether they like it or not – or whether you agree or disagree with the review.
Not sending review copies is a different thing altogether, and I guess that’s what you mean.
Of course anyone can review a book. That’s one of the boons and woes of the Internet. But, I don’t have to send them a free copy or have the publisher does so.
Yes, but what are ypu going to do to keep you busy?
The LJ feed for the Fix is here: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/the_fix_feed/profile
Thanks! Setting up an LJ syndication from the RSS feed was on my list of things to do, but it kept getting shoved further down. And now I don’t have to anymore. Yay!
Congrats on the relaunch of The Fix, and good luck!
Once more into the breach. 🙂
These German fiction podcasts are popping up all over the place lately. And paying markets, too. The government must be sudsidizing them. Uber cool.
I like all the ground The Fix is covering. I do have to agree with pumpkinhead up there about some of the writers’ styles, though. I don’t have any personal feelings about the positivity or negativity of the reviews, but the structure of some of them felt a little brusk and disjointed. And having read a lot of the stuff in question, like HebrewPunk, I didn’t think they set up the premise of the anthos clearly enough. But hey, I know this shit takes a lot of time and it’s not like they’re getting paid the big bucks. I appreciate the effort.
As for reading, I’m sure they were all too stunned by your luminous aura to hear what you actually said. I know I was. I think you used some verbs, but I wouldn’t commit fully to that position.
Re: the reading
Hey there, Glad you’re feeling better finally.:-)
Please don’t sweat the reading though; I’ve done 7 other readings so far this year and do a minimum of 4 readings a year on average. Add to that a ridiculous number of panels at cons plus presentations at my day job and I get a huge amount of practice talking to/reading to groups of people. I was pretty nervous when I first started out too. 🙂
Congratulations on getting The Fix up and running so quickly. It’s looking really good, and the reviews so far are excellent.
Sleek mag. Congrats! It looks really good and I find it very usable.
Are you going to review Helix SF in the future? I wanted to read a crit on Vylar Kaftan’s latest story there. I also have other selfish reasons…
At the Fix
Hebrew Punk is sitting in my “To read” box along with Interzone (one more issue before I resubscribe).
. . . there’s no mention of big young Murky Depths 🙁
We’ve started accepting stories for Issue #4 . . . if you’re interested 😉
Re: At the Fix
So many of the reviewers came with me from Tangent to The Fix that I figured that it made more sense to continue forward with review assignments rather than re-review publications I’d already had done for Tangent. So Murky Depths 1 isn’t slated for review in The Fix, but I’m certainly keen to review subsequent issues.
Re: At the Fix
I’ll be sending you Issue #2 within the month.
Hi there! I met at Capclave last weekend and got a copy of Writers for Relief. Just wanted to let you know I enjoyed your story. 🙂
I’m always delighted to hear from folks who’ve read and like my work! Thank you for swinging by and dropping me a comment!
Anytime. 🙂 Davey spoke highly of you when he mentioned you. I’d be interested to know what else you’ve got out there that I could/should take a look at.
Davey rawketh. Yep!
“I’d be interested to know what else you’ve got out there that I could/should take a look at.“
My full published bibliography is listed on my website: eugiefoster.com. For free reads, I’ve had quite a few stories published online by various e-zines . . .
We had a lot of fun at capclave. He’s almost convinced me to go to RavenCon in April. 🙂
Thanks for the links, I’ll check them out!
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