Posts tagged weird fiction
CTHULHUSATTVA Update and Some Clarifications
010 years ago
A good Sunday evening to all! Scott Jones here, editor of the upcoming Martian Migraine Press anthology, Cthulhusattva: Tales of the Black Gnosis. It’s been some time since any updates were posted here (what with Christmas, and day jobs, and so on… you know the drill) and for that I apologize. Work has been progressing on the annual anthology for 2016, and the following is a brief post to bring Migraineers up to speed on that progress. Thank you all (readers, authors, artists, family and friends and sundry other supporters) for your patience, understanding, and good will.
The submissions window for the anthology closed on 15 December 2015. We received close to 200 submissions between August and December. Nearly every one of these stories has been read; I have five left to go over. Most of the rejections have been sent out already, and there are a few more coming. I’d like to thank each and every writer who took a chance on sending something in; I know the feeling of taking a risk and also the discomfort of rejection, but this is the business (as it is, and more on that below) and not everyone can be in the book. But… a shortlist (of 32 tales) has been made, and from these I hope and plan to have the final ToC put together by the end of this month.
I will readily confess here that the reading process for this anthology has been rougher than previous projects. Fitting stories to the theme has proven to be slippery, a fact which I find personally embarrassing, as I’m the guy who wrote the book on #KeepingItRlyeh. (I should take that as a good lesson in R’lyehian Spirituality: just when you think you’ve got the angles right, the thing — a book of stories, an idea about the world, a life, etc. — shifts and mutates and shows another boggling facet of its multifarious self.) The act of balancing horror, mysticism, and a kind of “awed lightness” with these shortlisted stories has been a tricky one, and I’ve gone back and forth and back again on many of them several times. The next two weeks I expect to be especially harrowing. I know, I know: no sympathy. I do this to myself. But I love it, after a fashion, so there.
I am very excited about this book. I have already purchased a long novella that perfectly exemplifies the theme, and on the other end of the ruler, a short poem that is a perfect jewel of #KeepingItRlyeh thought. Also, the cover art has been bought and paid for, a wonderful piece by Seattle artist Alix Branwyn. She has been a real pleasure to work with.
Note that I’ve mentioned purchases and items being bought and paid for. If you follow the triumphs and travails of the horror-and-weird-fiction small press at all, you have likely heard of the recent implosion of a small press in the UK. I have not followed this item too closely, but from what I have picked up, it appears that the outfit in question fell from the sky due to a combination of bad business practices, debt, health issues, and social media outrage (much of the latter entirely justified). Authors were not paid, or waited an unreasonably long time to be paid what they were owed; readers did not receive their books; snark and dishonesty and general weirdness appeared to be the norm.
This has made me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, not least of which is the pain of seeing a small operation showing its belly and issuing forth a death rattle. If you’ve been a Migraineer for any length of time, you’ve likely sussed that this is a one-entity operation, with all the stresses and doubts that incurs. I can hardly even call myself a micropress, let alone a small press. It’s been suggested by wiser heads that MMP is something of a “boutique” operation, and I’m OK with that. Certainly the one or two releases a year qualifies the press for that descriptor. I try to carefully curate a small selection of niche titles, and the annual anthology — Conqueror Womb in 2014, RESONATOR last year, and of course the upcoming Cthulhusattva — are the highlight of the MMP publishing schedule. Would I like to work with more authors, “build the line-up”, and put out more titles? Yes. Can I? No. I know this. To over-extend myself like that would be unfair, to authors, to readers, to myself.
I’d like to stress, though, in the wake of the unfortunate news out of the UK, that MMP authors do get paid. Due to the niche nature of MMP titles, royalties are not a reasonable option (at this time, anyway). For Conqueror Womb (back when MMP was starting out and only doing ebook releases) the payment rate was a flat fee plus a copy of the ebook and three other MMP titles of the authors choice, paid within a month of publication, if not long before at the time of contract. For RESONATOR (which was released as a trade paperback and an ebook) the pay rate was .01 a word plus two contributor copies (and in the case of one author, six copies for their friends and family), also paid out within a month after the book dropped. This year, authors with stories in Cthulhusattva will be paid semi-pro rates (.03 a word) and with some of the shortlisted stories coming in at around 7k words, that’s no small chunk of change (and I should mention that not one dollar is kickstarted or indiego-go’d or what have you) … but by now I’m sure you can see the progression I’m attempting. MMP is evolving, learning from our betters, and becoming more of what I believe it can be,
I don’t say all this to toot my own horn. I’m Canadian, and they freeze that trait out of us up here. I say it to confirm my commitment to doing the best I can with what I’ve got, despite the tiny size of my endeavour here, and to honour the relationship between myself as editor and the hard-working writers who take a chance on the Martian Migraine experience. There are no “gentlemen’s agreements” here: there are contracts and deadlines, payouts and commitments. With this years anthology, I will also be promoting the book better and wider, to indie bookstores across North America and the UK, and getting it into the hands of more reviewers. I’m genuinely excited about Cthulhusattva, and I hope that excitement and pleasure will be reflected once the thing is born and out in the world.
Which, as mentioned, will be happening soon! Stay tuned for official release dates, pre-order information, and other promotional goodies. And again, thank you, Migraineers, for your patience, good will, and of course for reading MMP books and #KeepingItRlyeh.
Vive le Boutique!
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Scott R Jones is the author of the short story collections Soft from All the Blood and The Ecdysiasts, as well as the non-fiction When the Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality. His poetry and prose have appeared in Innsmouth Magazine, Cthulhu Haiku II, Broken City Mag, Flesh Like Smoke, Cthulhu Fhtagn!, Broken Worlds, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and upcoming in The Children of Gla’aki.
RIP Innsmouth Magazine
012 years ago
Dismayed. That’s just about the only word I can use to label my feelings regarding the recent news of the demise of Innsmouth Magazine. Dismayed, depressed, and yeah, even a little distraught. (I know it’s nothing to do with anything, but I suffer a little from the superstitious fear that it was the inclusion of my own story, Turbulence, in their recent “wings” themed issue that jinx’d the publication. I know it’s not me; it’s stupid to think it was. I know. But still. Dismayed.) Because folks? Folks, this was one of the good ones. One of the rare cool ones. Of the few weird fiction magazines out there, Innsmouth should have had a better readership, better sales, a bigger following.
A bit of an aside, here: How much does the time and ability to promote – via social media and otherwise – a publication factor into the life and death of that publication? Who can say with any certainty? The fact is, the editors of Innsmouth Mag, like every one of us, have lives, families, and only 24 hours in the day in which to prioritize all their many obligations. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand how a magazine can quickly find itself at the bottom of a pile of Important Things That Need Doing. I contemplate putting the brakes to this little charade-train of mine on the daily, and I don’t do a fraction of the kind of work Silvia and Paula and the IFP gang do. Did.
So, could Innsmouth have had a larger on-line presence? Better promotion? Probably. But then, no one actually needs another non-stop-Lovecraftian-video-chat-&-ice-cream-social-media-circle-jerk, do they? No one needs it, and a publication – certainly a publication of this level of excellence – shouldn’t have to lower itself to that level, devote that kind of time to, say, posting every tentacled thing that comes down the intertubes for the hyuk-harvest they’ll get from their followers. Innsmouth didn’t hold your hand and tell you you were special for liking them. The mag stood on its own merits, and should have survived based on those merits, but there it is. It was the better magazine, but these are not the times for better magazines, maybe.
I mean, OK, just on the surface level, Innsmouth was great (I am already using the past tense here and it pains me) … look at the small sampling of cover designs here!
This is some refined, understated, elegant design, which carried over into the interiors as well. The illustrators chosen were top-notch, and the text, font, and logo decisions were obviously laboured over. The best part? The way these covers don’t scream I’M A WEIRD MAG ABOUT LOVECRAFT n TENTACLES BUY ME! Even though it often was. That’s class.
And speaking of the magazine’s interior, the stories… they were diverse. Original. Beautiful. And actually interesting. The first issue I got a hold of was #5 (October 2010) and bang! first shot out of the box it’s a story by Paul Jessup, The Night We Burned Our Hearts Out, and it was apocalyptic and poetic and chock fulla weird mystery with no easy answers offered and I loved the hell out of it. First story. Bought all the back issues when I was done with #5. And with the very rarest of exceptions, that has been my reading experience with Innsmouth Magazine: quality stories and poetry from all over, from all manner of writers that I would not have been exposed to otherwise. Innsmouth’s editors made consistently cool choices in the weird fiction they published. (In my own small experience submitting my fiction to them, I found Silvia and Paula to be professional, timely, and just generally excellent in their interactions with me. Never once did I walk away from a rejection with a bad taste in my mouth. That’s something.) Hell, I first read Daniel Jose Older in Innsmouth. Anyway. Which is all to say that Innsmouth Magazine was not a fanzine or, worse, a fan-service zine. It didn’t pander or take the easy way out with pastiche. It was literary, goddamnit, in all the good ways (ways I imagine Lovecraft would have approved of, bless his elitist old heart). And it should have lived, should have made some decent coin, at least enough to stay afloat. I’m very sorry to see it go.
All’s not lost, though. I am happy, at least, that Innsmouth Free Press itself will continue to provide online content (reviews and regular columns) and release their excellent anthologies into the future. I’ve only just learned that they will be collecting the Lovecraftian stories of Nick Mamatas in an upcoming antho, The Nickronomicon. Ladies, I’d pre-order that thing now if you had the link ready.
Which is all to say… which is all to say… aww hell. Y’know what? Support the stuff you like, readers. That’s the take-away here. Or… wait. Unless you only like garbage. Then you should probably keep your mouth shut. Just saying. And isn’t that the nub of the problem here? I liked Innsmouth Magazine. I loved it. Loved reading it, loved submitting to it, loved getting printed (finally!) in it, but did I tell enough people? Clearly not. Honestly, I’ve never had a publication I like die, hence this mournful post. Probably because I haven’t liked anything enough before. I liked Innsmouth Magazine and should have said so more often, to more people. NEVER AGAIN.
Support the stuff that you like, that you love. Tell people about it, get them to buy it, buy it for them if they’re resistant for whatever reason. There’s not enough of the good stuff out there, and the stuff that is out there, like Innsmouth Magazine, is getting lost in the wilderness of crap. There’s one more issue of it coming, #15, in the spring. Buy that one, at least.
R.I.P. Innsmouth Magazine. Thanks for doing such a great job and for existing as long as you did, and good luck and good readership in the future to all involved.
