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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in oldcharliebrown's LiveJournal:

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    Monday, July 14th, 2008
    10:31 pm
    Press Release: Fantasy Magazine, Shiny and New!
    July 17, 2008
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

    CONTACT: Tempest Bradford, fantastictempest@gmail.com
    Editors: Cat Rambo, Sean Wallace
    Fantasy Magazine
    (206) 484-4271; (301) 762-1305
    fantasysubmissions@gmail.com
    http://www.fantasy-magazine.com

    Fantasy Magazine Launches New Website

    On July 17, 2008 Prime Books announces the launch of the new Fantasy Magazine website at http://www.fantasy-magazine.com

    The site design is by Matthew Kressel of Senses Five Press, which publishes Sybil's Garage and Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy. (www.matthewkressel.net or www.sunraycomputer.com). The artwork is by New Zealand-based artist Sanjana Baijnath (http://www.sanjanasart.com).

    Fantasy Magazine    's authors have included some of the best new and established voices in the fantasy genre, including Stephanie Campisi, Paul Jessup, Richard Parks, Holly Phillips, Ursula Pflug, Ekaterina Sedia, Rachel Swirsky, Lavie Tidhar, Catherynne M. Valente, and Jeff VanderMeer. The magazine publishes a new story each Monday, with commentary, interviews, reviews, and essays appearing throughout the week along with Friday's Blog for a Beer! feature, which allows readers to unleash their creative talents. The new site will add audio and video content, previews of Prime and Juno books and new contests.

    "Fantasy Magazine     . . . [has] already shouldered their way into the ranks of the most prominent fiction e-zines on the internet"—The Year's Best Science Fiction

    "Fantasy Magazine is one of the most promising new fiction publications to launch in the field in years."—Locus

    "We hope to continue bringing innovative and enthralling fiction and features to fantasy lovers across the globe . . . and this is just the first step in many to come. Keep reading Fantasy Magazine!" —Cat Rambo and Sean Wallace

    The magazine's staff includes co-editors Cat Rambo (www.kittywumpus.net) and Sean Wallace (oldcharliebrown.livejournal.com), managing editor K. Tempest Bradford (tempest.fluidartist.com), and intern Nivair H. Gabriel.

    Upcoming content in 2008 includes works from authors such as Jim Hines, J. MDermott, Ursula Pflug, and Erzebet Yellowboy. This week's story is "Watermark" by Michael Greenhut, accompanied by an audio version read by Cat Rambo.
    2:50 pm
    Honorable Mentions and Shout-outs, from The Year's Best Science Fiction, ed. Gardner Dozois
    Fantasy Magazine
    Honorable Mentions
    Kail, Andrea, "Soft, like a Rabbit"
    Kemnitzer, Lucy, "The Boulder"
    McAllister, Bruce, "His Wife"
    Parks, Richard, "A Garden in Hell"
    Tidhar, Lavie, "Elsbeth Rose"
    Youmans, Marly, "The Comb"

    "Two brand-new e-zines, just transitioning in from their former incarnations as print magazine, Subterranean and Fantasy Magazine, have already shouldered their way into the ranks of the most prominent fiction e-zines on the internet . . . Fantasy Magazine, edited by Sean Wallace and Cat Rambo, which concentrates more on fantasy than horror, although there's an occasional scary piece, produced good work by Bruce McAllister, Andrea Kail, Lucy Kemnitzer, Richard Parks, and others."

    Clarkesworld Magazine
    Honorable Mentions
    Bear, Elizabeth, "Orm the Beautiful"
    De Vries, Jetse, "Qubit Conflicts"
    Ericson, MP, "Lost Soul"
    Kiernan, Caitlin R, "The Ape's Wife"
    Lake, Jay, "Chewing Up the Innocent"
    Malcolm-Clarke, Darja, "The Beacon"
    Mantchev, Lisa, "A Dance Across Embers"
    Ore, Rebecca, "Acid and Stoned Reindeer"
    Phillips, Holly, "The Oracle Spoke"
    Rambo, Cat, "I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said"
    Satifka, Erica, "Automatic"
    Scholes, Ken, "Summer in Paris, Light from the Sky"
    VanderMeer, Jeff, "The Third Bear"
    "Stylishly written and usually faintly perverse fantasy is also available at Clarkesworld, edited by Nick Mamatas [and Sean Wallace], which this year published strong stories by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Jeff VanderMeer, Ken Scholes, Jetse De Vries, Cat Rambo, and others."

    Weird Tales
    Honorable Mentions
    Amundsen, Erik, "Bufo Rex"
    Creasey, Ian, "Strawberry Thief"
    Lake, Jay, "Tom Edison and His Telegraphic Harpoon"
    Parks, Richard, "The Man Who Carved Skulls"

    "The venerable Weird Tales, coming up on its 85th anniversary, managed to survive the Great Extinction over at DNA Publications, being bought in 2006 by Wildside Press. This year, the magazine underwent a sweeping reorganisation, with Ann VanderMeer coming in as the new fiction editor. The slogan of the new Weird Tales is not "This is not your father's Weird Tales," but maybe it should be, as the aim of the magazine seems to become noticeably hippier, cooler, and more au courant than its somewhat stodgy previous incarnation. Whether this will go over with the audience or not remains to be seen, but there was good stuff in the magazine this year by Ian Creasey, Richard Parks, Jay Lake, and others."
    Monday, June 30th, 2008
    10:18 am
    Starred Review: The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina Sedia


    "Sedia's evocative third novel, a steampunk fable about the price of industrial development, follows Mattie, an emancipated automaton, as her home city is rent by conflict between alchemists and the mechanics whose clanking, steaming inventions are changing society. Though created by a leader of the mechanics, Mattie chose to join the alchemists, but her creator still holds the key that winds her up. When a terrorist bombing and an assassination touch off all-out war between the two factions, she discovers the ugly secrets and exploitation that keep the city supplied with food and coal. Sedia's exquisitely bleak vision deliberately skewers familiar ideas from know-it-all computers to talking statues desperate for souls, leaving readers to reach their own conclusions about the proper balance of tradition and progress and what it means to be alive."—Publishers Weekly
    Friday, June 27th, 2008
    10:03 pm
    Cover Design: Seeds of Change, ed. John Joseph Adams
    8:42 pm
    Review: "His One True Bride" by Darja Malcolm-Clarke
    "When Margetta, a vestal dedicant, is visited by the Harper’s holy light before the Harper’s Bride dies her second death, she is slated to become His next Bride. And as His Voice lets her know, he is most eager to receive her. But something’s terribly amiss with the Harper.

    Darja Malcolm-Clarke writes some great, disturbing religious imagery. The mystery of the Harper’s religion and what’s going wrong remains intriguing throughout this excellent story. The Harper’s treatment of his Brides is seriously creepy, as is by extension the general treatment of women in the story’s world. It’s not hard to read it as a critique of blind faith or the objectification of women in our society but it’s not laid on too thick."—shortbits
    Thursday, June 26th, 2008
    11:16 pm
    There Is Some Kind of Wrong Out There . . . But This Takes the Cake . . . :p
    Friday, June 20th, 2008
    7:38 pm
    Gender Breakdown, for May 2008
    For submissions, we had a total of 185.
    Here's the gender breakdown:

    Female: 81 (44%)
    Male: 104  (56%)
    Total: 185

    Acceptances:
    Female: 6 (66%)
    Male: 3 (34%)
    Total: 9

    It feels like the outreach is starting to take effect. We've never seen such numbers for the submissions breakdown, and I remain encouraged that it's not impossible to achieve parity for the submissions, on the average. We'll see if this can be maintained for the next few months, before proclaiming anything, but I'm very pleased with it all. It's too early to make analysis of this, though. But rock on :)
    2:18 pm
    Check Your Biases at the Door, Please . . .

    Cat Rambo says it much better than I ever could, here

    10:51 am
    Let's Play a Game . . .

    I'm currently at my wife's elementary school and helping her weed out her library, when I came across this, and I have to say that I was impressed, as this appeals to both men and women, as a cover:



    Twelve stories . . . two point five men . . . I could have done with more guys in this, perhaps, but this cover rocks. If people want to post covers that they like, with male/female appeal go for it . . .

    Thursday, June 19th, 2008
    3:26 pm
    Acceptance: Fantasy Magazine
    17 June: "A Trail of Demure Virgins" by Sara Saab, 3400 words
    27 May: "The Summoning of Spirits Too Far From Home" by Deb Taber, 2000 words
    9:19 am
    Gender Balance and Anthology Editors
    There's been a lot of discussion around the internet about gender balance, and here's my quick take on this: as an anthology editor, when I tackle putting one together, I'm always aware of the balance, because I don't want to sell to just one group. I want a broad interest in my projects, and that reflects in both packaging and content. I'd prefer a cover that appeals to both sexes, just as I prefer covers to attract mainstream and genre audiences. This may be a reflection of my personal tastes, certainly, but it seems in these uncertain economic times, that it's even more important to reach across the aisle . . . here are the breakdowns, of female contributions of my most recent anthologies:

    Bandersnatch (54%)
    Fantasy (91%)
    Idylls of the Fall (50%)
    Japanese Dreams (61%)
    Phantom (29%)

    Obviously looking at this, I've partially succeeded, though not so much with Phantom. I'm willing to say that it's our fault, and indicate that I'll strive better in the future. I'll admit that horror anthologies are particularly difficult to fill with female contributors, but it's not impossible, and when we do another, we'll work harder. The growth of one's editing is not static, it's always changing, evolving, and learning, and you do the best you can do, and if it isn't good enough, then you try harder.

    In essence: picking the best stories, regardless of gender and only on the basis of quality, doesn't really take into consideration so many other factors that an editor might be (or should be) looking at. It doesn't work that way. We don't work in a perfect world where it all aligns perfectly. We have to work at it, like anything else.
    Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
    2:35 pm
    Eclipse Redux, Part 2
    The Table of Contents in Eclipse 2, with Joe Sherry going to the mat, with Strahan
    Joe Sherry's Adventures in Reading, with a post clarifying his issues with Eclipse 2.
    Micole Sundberg's post on "Publishing, Profit, Agendas, and Ideals: The Eclipse 1 Cover Debate", a panel at Wiscon
    Monday, June 16th, 2008
    10:29 am
    Review: Seeds of Change, John Joseph Adams


    "This thought-provoking anthology of nine original stories posits near-future paradigm shifts in everything from race relations (in Ted Kosmatka's vivid and moving "N-Words," where cloned Neanderthals encounter violent hatred from Homo sapiens) to the morality of uploaded consciousness (in Blake Charlton's clumsy but charming "Endosymbiont"), with varying success. The hero of Jay Lake's "The Future by Degrees" invents an energy-saving thermal superconductor only to be pursued by corporations protecting their business, with predictable results. Pepper, the mercenary hero of Tobias S. Buckell's Crystal Rain, refuses to assassinate a dictator in the morally contrived "Resistance." Considerably more powerful is Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's "Spider the Artist," which combines African folk tales and advanced robotics in a chilling story about a rising social conscience in the Nigerian oil fields. Despite weak spots, this anthology accurately reflects many of today's most pressing political and social issues, and will give readers plenty to think about and argue over."—Publishers Weekly.
    Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
    2:14 pm
    World Fantasy Ballot: Personal Choices
    Novel
    One for Sorrow, Christopher Barzak (Bantam Spectra)
    Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc)
    The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
    Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press)
    Acacia, David Anthony Durham (Doubleday)

    Novella
    "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
    "The Constable of Abal" by Kelly Link (The Coyote Road)
    "A Diorama of the Infernal Regions" by Andy Duncan (Wizards)
    "The Master Miller's Tale" by Ian R. MacLeod (F&SF, May 07)

    Short Fiction
    "Always" by Karen Joy Fowler (Asimov's 4-5/07)
    "Three Days of Rain" by Holly Phillips (Asimov's 6/07)
    "Public Safety" by Matthew Johnson (Asimov's, 3/07)
    "Bufo Rex" by Erik Amundsen (Weird Tales 347)

    Anthology
    Wizards, Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Berkley)
    Inferno, edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor)
    The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Viking)
    Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, (Small Beer Press)

    Collection
    Portable Childhoods, Ellen Klages (Tachyon Publications)
    The Fate of Mice, Susan Palwick (Tachyon Publications)
    Things Will Never be the Same, Howard Waldrop (Old Earth Books)
    Hart & Boot, Tim Pratt (Night Shade Books)
    The Imago Sequence, Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)

    Special Award - Professional
    Jacob Weisman, for Tachyon Publications
    Kelly Link/Gavin Grant or Small Beer Press
    Terri Windling and Midori Snyder, for Endicott Studio
    Cathy Fenner & Arnie Fenner, for working on Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art

    Special Award - Non-Professional
    John Klima, for editing Electric Velocipede
    Mike Ashley, for Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines, 1970-1980 (Liverpool University Press)
    Joanna Russ, for The Country You Have Never Seen (Liverpool University Press)
    Thursday, May 29th, 2008
    2:40 pm
    Review: The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina Sedia
    "The Alchemy of Stone may be ostensibly more rooted in genre fiction and indeed be quite appealing to the genre fiction audience . . .  But such is the alchemy of literary invention that it's quite clear The Alchemy of Stone explores our world within the confines of a world created with language alone."—The Agony Column
    Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
    9:12 am
    Acquisition: Northwest Passages, Barbara Roden
    Barbara Roden has sold to Sean Wallace at Prime Books her first major new short story collection, Northwest Passages, scheduled for a October 2009 release. To be published in both a trade hardcover and a limited edition, Northwest Passages will feature an introduction by Michael Dirda, and include the award-winning title story, along with several new stories, written specifically for this collection.

    Barbara Roden was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and is one-half of Ash-Tree Press, which has, to date, published more than a hundred books in the field of classic supernatural fiction, and which was the recipient of a World Fantasy Award in 1997. In 2004 she co-edited Acquainted With the Night, which was nominated for a Stoker Award and which won the International Horror Guild and World Fantasy Awards for Best Anthology. She co-edits All Hallows, the journal of the Ghost Story Society, and edits Canadian Holmes, the journal of the Bootmakers of Toronto. In 2005 her short story 'Northwest Passage' was nominated for a Stoker, an IHG, and a World Fantasy Award.
    Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
    8:21 am
    Cover Design: Amberlight, Sylvia Kelso (Hardcover)
    8:16 am
    Acquistions: Fantasy Magazine
    21 May: "Scatter and Return, The Eyes of the Princess," by Willow Fagan, 5200 words
    21 May: "Sweetwater" by Lilah Wild, 5000 words
    21 May: "Lake Tahoe's Lover" by Nadia Bulkin, 4800 words
    Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
    9:19 am
    Wiscon: Who is Attending?
    Yet another year without a clue with regards to whom is attending: anyone coming along?
    Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
    11:52 am
    Cover Design: Twists of the Tale, edited by Ellen Datlow


    Design by Stephen H. Segal
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