Below is a letter/email we're sending out today. Mainly it's to let folks know we're pushing back our publication schedule starting with the current issue, but it's a one-time thing and after that it will be business as usual.
To All InterGalactic Medicine Show Fans,
Just to keep you up-to-date, IGMS is making a small change to its publication schedule. We will still produce four issues per year, one every three months, and nothing about the content of the magazine will change. We are simply adjusting the dates the issues will be available. Under the new schedule issues will be published on November 15th, February 15th, May 15th, and August 15th.
Our next issue (Issue #10, due out on Nov. 15th), will feature our cover story “Sweetly The Dragon Dreams” by Dave Farland, as well as “Pi” by Mette Ivie Hrrison, “Robot Sorcerer” by Eric James Stone, “The Fort In Vermont” by David Simons, “The Tile Setters” by Ami Chopine, “A Heretic by Degrees” by Marie Brennan, and part one of the novelette, “The Absence of Stars,” by Greg Siewert.
See you in six weeks.
Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008
Just got a sneak peek at the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, which will be out shortly. I had given five stories to Ellen Datlow and told her that although IGMS wasn't really a horror magazine, those were the five I thought might best fit what she was looking for. To my pleasant surprise she gave Honorable Mentions to four of the five.
They are: Peter Beagle's "We Never Talk About My Brother;" Mike Strahan's "In The Beginning, Nothing Lasts;" William John Watkins "The Polka Man;" and Magit Schmitt's "Under Janey's Garden."
This is from the Year's Best 2008, covering stories published in 2007. I've sent her more stores from 2008 (of course) and if she doesn't reprint James Maxey's "Silent As Dust" (issue 7, Jan. '08) I'll poke her with a pointy stick. Several others (including Alethea Kontis's 's "Blood & Water" (issue 9, July '08), which has already received a preliminary recommendation for a Stoker Award for Best Short story in 2008, should also get noticed. But that's next year's YB and I'm getting ahead of myself.
Congrats to all of this year's HM's.
They are: Peter Beagle's "We Never Talk About My Brother;" Mike Strahan's "In The Beginning, Nothing Lasts;" William John Watkins "The Polka Man;" and Magit Schmitt's "Under Janey's Garden."
This is from the Year's Best 2008, covering stories published in 2007. I've sent her more stores from 2008 (of course) and if she doesn't reprint James Maxey's "Silent As Dust" (issue 7, Jan. '08) I'll poke her with a pointy stick. Several others (including Alethea Kontis's 's "Blood & Water" (issue 9, July '08), which has already received a preliminary recommendation for a Stoker Award for Best Short story in 2008, should also get noticed. But that's next year's YB and I'm getting ahead of myself.
Congrats to all of this year's HM's.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Return of the Sunburnt Editor
Just went to Hawaii with my wife for our anniversary, which is why I've been silent for so long. Boy, but it's a long trip getting there from the east coast. On the other hand, all that time sitting in airports and on airplanes gives me time to read some novels, something I get to do too little of under normal circumstances.
Read John Varley's "Mammoth" on the way out. It was described as "H.G. Wells meets Jurassic Park" and despite the terrific reviews pasted all over the back cover of the book, I thought the vast majority of it was slow and predictable. I enjoyed his book "The Ophiuchi Hotline" (the only other of his books that I've read before), but I couldn't recommend "Mammoth" to anyone. I tired to get my wife to read it just to see if she had the same opinion I did, but I think she heard me complain about it too much to take the risk.
Also (finally) read John Scalzi's "Old Man's War." That I enjoyed very much. Good writing, impressive world-building. I didn't think it got particularly compelling until he introduced the character of Jane Sagan and the Ghost Brigade (which didn't happen until about 2/3 of the way through the book), but it was interesting enough before then that I was happy to go along for the ride. I've bought the sequel, which is entitled "Ghost Brigade," so I guess a few other people thought that was one of the more intruiging parts of "OMW," too. I'm looking forward to it, but now that I'm home again I'm not sure when I'll have time to tackle the thing. I have to admit, one of the things I liked about "Old Man's War" was that it was only about 300 pages long. I grew up a big fan of authors like Clifford Simak and Roger Zelazny, who also wrote at about that length and it's nice to see someone sell a novel that's not 125K to 150K words long.
In between those two books I also managed to do a little sight-seeing, a lot of snorkeling (something I love), and spent a lot of time with someone I love but all too often ta
ke for granted. It was a pleasure to be Ed and Terry for a 
while instead of mom and dad (and God bless grandma and grandpa who stayed with the kids while we were away. The picture here are from my first snorkeling outing, which included swimming with a large pod of dolphins, a giant sea turtle, and me holding an octopus in my hands. The pictures were taken by a professional photographer who happened to be along on the boat (Chuck Harvey: www.chuckharvey.com). The turtle is the actual one I swam with,
and though it's hard to tell, the picture of me next to the boat is the one where I'm holding the octopus. He's the little brown lump you can barely make out, but he was making himself small and trying to h
ide. It's amazing how much they can compress themselves. The other octopus picture is the same creature right after he was released.
I left my favorite pair of cycling sunglasses on a beach on the west side of the island (I also left my favorite pair of cycling gloves in a small chapel on top of a
mountain in southern Italy last year, so I either need to stop taking my cycling gear on these trips or I need to accept the fact that some part of my subconscious enjoys leaving my favorite stuff in cool places around the world).
Coming home was a challenge; it was 63 degrees, windy, and rainy, and there was a mountain of work waiting for me. And snorkeling for 2 to 3 hours every day for three straight days left my back really sunburned (despite repeated applications of sunblock (spf 50) to my pasty white flesh), so sleeping is a bit of a challenge right now. But it was worth it. Oh, was it ever worth it...
Read John Varley's "Mammoth" on the way out. It was described as "H.G. Wells meets Jurassic Park" and despite the terrific reviews pasted all over the back cover of the book, I thought the vast majority of it was slow and predictable. I enjoyed his book "The Ophiuchi Hotline" (the only other of his books that I've read before), but I couldn't recommend "Mammoth" to anyone. I tired to get my wife to read it just to see if she had the same opinion I did, but I think she heard me complain about it too much to take the risk.
Also (finally) read John Scalzi's "Old Man's War." That I enjoyed very much. Good writing, impressive world-building. I didn't think it got particularly compelling until he introduced the character of Jane Sagan and the Ghost Brigade (which didn't happen until about 2/3 of the way through the book), but it was interesting enough before then that I was happy to go along for the ride. I've bought the sequel, which is entitled "Ghost Brigade," so I guess a few other people thought that was one of the more intruiging parts of "OMW," too. I'm looking forward to it, but now that I'm home again I'm not sure when I'll have time to tackle the thing. I have to admit, one of the things I liked about "Old Man's War" was that it was only about 300 pages long. I grew up a big fan of authors like Clifford Simak and Roger Zelazny, who also wrote at about that length and it's nice to see someone sell a novel that's not 125K to 150K words long.
In between those two books I also managed to do a little sight-seeing, a lot of snorkeling (something I love), and spent a lot of time with someone I love but all too often ta
ke for granted. It was a pleasure to be Ed and Terry for a 
while instead of mom and dad (and God bless grandma and grandpa who stayed with the kids while we were away. The picture here are from my first snorkeling outing, which included swimming with a large pod of dolphins, a giant sea turtle, and me holding an octopus in my hands. The pictures were taken by a professional photographer who happened to be along on the boat (Chuck Harvey: www.chuckharvey.com). The turtle is the actual one I swam with,
and though it's hard to tell, the picture of me next to the boat is the one where I'm holding the octopus. He's the little brown lump you can barely make out, but he was making himself small and trying to h
ide. It's amazing how much they can compress themselves. The other octopus picture is the same creature right after he was released.I left my favorite pair of cycling sunglasses on a beach on the west side of the island (I also left my favorite pair of cycling gloves in a small chapel on top of a
mountain in southern Italy last year, so I either need to stop taking my cycling gear on these trips or I need to accept the fact that some part of my subconscious enjoys leaving my favorite stuff in cool places around the world).Coming home was a challenge; it was 63 degrees, windy, and rainy, and there was a mountain of work waiting for me. And snorkeling for 2 to 3 hours every day for three straight days left my back really sunburned (despite repeated applications of sunblock (spf 50) to my pasty white flesh), so sleeping is a bit of a challenge right now. But it was worth it. Oh, was it ever worth it...
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Good grief, I get further and further behind every day with this blog (and so many other things)(funny how that works; don't do anything and fall behind... duh).
Had a great time at DragonCon over the Labor Day weekend and still to hope to write a more thorough report, but this will have to suffice in the meantime. Let's see... Hung out with Princess Alethea Kontis, Eric James Stone, and Gray Rinehart a lot; had dinner with them and Weird Tales editor and perpetually sharp-dressed man, Stephen Segal, on Sunday. Met Eugie Foster in person for the first time (we've traded a ton of emails, but never been in the same place at the same time before)(she's a sweatheart).
Briefly met John Scalzi, and had a couple of conversations with Kevin Anderson and his lovely bride, Rebecca Moesta. He gave me a couple of packs of the most clever marketing/pr thing I've seen in a long, long. You know how he writes those Dune novels with Brian Herbert? We'll he's got gummi worms made up with packaging so that they look like gummi sand worms, and the printing at the top is the cover of the book, Sandworms of Dune. I thought it was brilliant (as was John Scalzi's reading, BTW; funny man, he is).
Alethea and Eric also did readings (they shared a time slot) and drew a nice crowd. Lotta fun, that was. I'd post some pics but I still haven't figured out how to download the pics from my new camera (the kids dropped the old one into a stream on a camping trip and for some reason it doesn't work anymore).
Got strep throat shortly after getting home (another present from the kidlings) (which is partly why I've been so bad about posting here) -- that and the fact that I'm trying to get a million and one things done before I go away. The wife and I are off to Hawaii for our aniversary (our 18th) and I've got to get all of the articles for Diversity Woman production edited and off to the proof reader so she can do her thing while I'm away. Otherwise we'll never make our production deadlines.
All of the stories for the next issue of IGMS are off to the illustrators, so that's all on track, and my own novel, Dreaming Creek, is (finally, mercifully) 100% done and out of my hands. The editor sent me a pre-press pdf of the book last week (Thurs.? Fri.?) and said that it was my last opportunity to look for typos and such. Unfortunately that was when I got strep throat and I didn't do anything but lay around feeling miserable for a couple of days (I despise strep, yet I seem to keep getting it). Fortunately they also sent the pdf of to a copy editor who the main editor described as having 'freakishly sharp eyes,' so I'll have to hope he got the job done right (cuz I didn't touch it).
The main editor then sent the final files off a few days later to the the publisher for formatting and my understanding is that some time in the middle of September the e-version of the book will be ready. I think I'm supposed to get a half dozen printed review copies by the end of the month, and the official release date is Oct. 28th. The publisher has started putting the book up on their website for pre-orders, but it isn't a fully active link yet. You can take a peek if you like at www.lbfbooks.com Just scroll about half way down and you'll the book cover. As I said, some of the books you can click on to pre-order, but not mine. Not yet, anyway...
That's about all for now. Hopefully that's enough.
Had a great time at DragonCon over the Labor Day weekend and still to hope to write a more thorough report, but this will have to suffice in the meantime. Let's see... Hung out with Princess Alethea Kontis, Eric James Stone, and Gray Rinehart a lot; had dinner with them and Weird Tales editor and perpetually sharp-dressed man, Stephen Segal, on Sunday. Met Eugie Foster in person for the first time (we've traded a ton of emails, but never been in the same place at the same time before)(she's a sweatheart).
Briefly met John Scalzi, and had a couple of conversations with Kevin Anderson and his lovely bride, Rebecca Moesta. He gave me a couple of packs of the most clever marketing/pr thing I've seen in a long, long. You know how he writes those Dune novels with Brian Herbert? We'll he's got gummi worms made up with packaging so that they look like gummi sand worms, and the printing at the top is the cover of the book, Sandworms of Dune. I thought it was brilliant (as was John Scalzi's reading, BTW; funny man, he is).
Alethea and Eric also did readings (they shared a time slot) and drew a nice crowd. Lotta fun, that was. I'd post some pics but I still haven't figured out how to download the pics from my new camera (the kids dropped the old one into a stream on a camping trip and for some reason it doesn't work anymore).
Got strep throat shortly after getting home (another present from the kidlings) (which is partly why I've been so bad about posting here) -- that and the fact that I'm trying to get a million and one things done before I go away. The wife and I are off to Hawaii for our aniversary (our 18th) and I've got to get all of the articles for Diversity Woman production edited and off to the proof reader so she can do her thing while I'm away. Otherwise we'll never make our production deadlines.
All of the stories for the next issue of IGMS are off to the illustrators, so that's all on track, and my own novel, Dreaming Creek, is (finally, mercifully) 100% done and out of my hands. The editor sent me a pre-press pdf of the book last week (Thurs.? Fri.?) and said that it was my last opportunity to look for typos and such. Unfortunately that was when I got strep throat and I didn't do anything but lay around feeling miserable for a couple of days (I despise strep, yet I seem to keep getting it). Fortunately they also sent the pdf of to a copy editor who the main editor described as having 'freakishly sharp eyes,' so I'll have to hope he got the job done right (cuz I didn't touch it).
The main editor then sent the final files off a few days later to the the publisher for formatting and my understanding is that some time in the middle of September the e-version of the book will be ready. I think I'm supposed to get a half dozen printed review copies by the end of the month, and the official release date is Oct. 28th. The publisher has started putting the book up on their website for pre-orders, but it isn't a fully active link yet. You can take a peek if you like at www.lbfbooks.com Just scroll about half way down and you'll the book cover. As I said, some of the books you can click on to pre-order, but not mine. Not yet, anyway...
That's about all for now. Hopefully that's enough.