More congratulations are in order. Stephen Graham Jones, whose story "Pistil, Stamen, Bloom" appears in the third issue of Kaleidotrope, has sold a new short story collection, The Ones That Almost Got Away to Prime Books!

David McGillveray, whose story "The Sirens of Tinwa" appeared in the first issue of Kaleidotrope, writes to say:

[M]y first collection, "Celeraine", has just been published by Sam's Dot Publishing in trade paperback. It consists of three brand new long short stories and features dead civilisations, planetary minds, jailbreaks, out-of-control vegetation, generation ships and mind altering alien hallucinogens!

Check it out!

Meanwhile, Daniel Ausema has added his two "Living Stump" stories ("First Peeling" and "Stump Courtship," from the second and third issues, respectively) to Anthology Builder, where you can create your own personalized story collections and help support some great writers!

Any Kaleidotrope readers or contributors attending this year's Readercon?

There's a mixed but overall positive featured review of Kaleidotrope's third issue at SF Site. Rich Horton notes that there is "plenty of nice stuff -- I think the groundwork has been laid for more significant future work."

Can someone explain this? The nomination deadline for the annual Pushcart Prize is December 1. However, if Amazon.com is to be believed, the book with this year's selections will be available on December 10. That seems like an awfully unlikely turn-around time to me, suggesting that the final table of contents was set long before the nomination deadline. In fact, Amazon is already listing the book as in stock. I don't see how a nomination that reached Pushcart on December 1 has any shot at making the final cut, quite frankly.

Which is something I wish I'd known when I made my own six nominations last month.

Any Kaleidotrope contributors/readers attending the World Fantasy Convention next year?

Attending any other conventions in 2008 or '09?

So the current issue of Lady Churchill's is hot of the press, and it looks really neat. My copy arrived just today -- well, actually, it may have arrived earlier this week, but I almost never get down to the old PO box except on the weekends -- and I'm eager to dive into it. What's more, I'm pleased to see that Aunt Gwenda answered my question (which was actually just a riff on "Jon"'s question before it) in her advice column. If you want to see what I asked, and what other pearls of wisdom she has to share, you'll have to pick up a copy yourself.

James Van Pelt has some really interesting thoughts on what it means to be a professional writer:

The one part of a writer's career that she can't control is the very part that opens the door into the "professional" ranks, which is selling the work. The writer writes the best she can, finds the most appropriate markets, then sends the work out. What happens after that is beyond her control. But she can control everything else. Being professional is about a lot more than making money.

"I'm not the kind of man who tends to socialize
I seem to lean on old familiar ways..." - Paul Simon

I've been toying with the idea of attending next year's World Fantasy Convention in Calgary (just as I toyed with the idea of attending last year's in Austin and this year's in Saratoga). A lot of what I've read online makes it sound like great fun. Of course, it also makes it sound a lot more like a reunion, something better suited to past attendees and World Fantasy Award nominees. It's not as if there's a sign on the door that reads, "Newbies not welcome," but still, I've been thinking it might be better to start with something different, and smaller -- like maybe Readercon in July, for instance.

(I'm also slowly trying to put together a trip to Los Angeles with friends for next fall, so that could eat into my already limited vacation time and disposable income.)

And then I read something like this, and I think: he's never attended before, and he had fun... So I don't know.

How many months does it take to get a passport?

Well now...



Clearly, the smartest people out there read Kaleidotrope!

Quiz via Electric Velocipede

Between now and November 30, Apex Digest is holding a subscription drive, with the goal of increasing subscribers and, therefore, increasing the amount they can pay contributors. More power to them. Apex publishes some really interesting dark science fiction and horror a few times a year, and it's great to see them trying to spread more of the love around to the authors.

Kaleidotrope offers only a token payment at the moment, so I can definitely understand the desire to break into being a professional, or even semi-professional, market. If I could afford to pay my contributors more, believe me, I would. (It's questionable whether I can actually afford that token payment in the long run.)

So check it out. Anyone who buys or renews a subcription between now and the end of the month will be entered into a drawing to win Apex for life and a new mug.

I used to be part of a collaborative writing blog. I'm thinking about possibly reviving it. This would be completely independent of Kaleidotrope, but I'd be curious if anyone reading this would be interested.

I was in Maryland this past weekend, visiting my sister, while meanwhile, back in New York, the World Fantasy Awards were being held. I'm happy to learn that M. Rickert's Map of Dreams and Jeffrey Ford's "Botch Town" both won, for best collection and novella respectively. I finished reading both this weekend, as it happens. Ford's novella is reminiscent in some ways of the best of Bradbury -- I'm thinking Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes here -- while Rickert's stories definitely have the feel of dreams to them. Reading the novella from which her collection takes its name, I was a little reminded of Kevin Brockmeier's excellent novel, The Truth About Celia, and I think it would make an excellent companion piece to that.

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

Sam Tomaino of SF Revu offers a quick overview of Kaleidotrope #3, as well as some nice words:

The October 2007 issue of Kaleidotrope has stories by old pros Bruce Holland Rogers and Step[h]en Graham Jones as well as talented newcomers like Daniel Ausema and Sarah Frost Mellor.

The October 2007 issue of Kaleidotrope is another nice one with a fine mix of stories and poems. I liked all the stories in the issue....

Kaleidotrope is a small press magazine that deserves your support.

Be sure to check out the rest of SF Revu while you're there!

In the spirit of the holiday, the Science Fiction Poetry Association is hosting its second annual Halloween Poetry Reading online. It features audio readings from several poets, including C.A. Gardner, whose poem "Sleep" appeared in Kaleidotrope #2. They're worth a listen!

Today marks the release of the US edition of Joe Hill's debut short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts. If you haven't read the collection yet -- it had a small-press release a couple of years ago from PS Publishing -- do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Ghosts is easily one of the best books I've read this year, and while I'm still not completely sold on Hill's follow-up novel (Heart Shaped Box, which I'm reading now), there really isn't a false note in his short stories. Highly recommended.

At the urging of reader Victor Colonna, I've started a Kaleidotrope Facebook group. How similar this will be to the zine's MySpace page, which I very infrequently update, I don't know. But everyone is welcome to join and offer feedback on the new issue, now out and available.

Kaleidotrope #3 is hot off the presses and now available for purchase. Copies will be going out to contributors, subscribers, and some reviewers over the next couple of days.

I have noticed two small misprints I thought I had corrected in the final draft. One is a very minor added piece of punctuation that you may never even notice, but the other is a missing credit for one of the illustrations. Artist Remi Treuer provided many of the wonderful drawings that appear throughout the issue -- as well as that nifty cover art you're seeing above -- and that includes the drawing on page 46. Just so you know.

I think the issue looks terrific overall, though, and I'm very pleased to be able to share it with everyone. The issue features some terrific work from genre veterans, like Bruce Holland Rogers, Stephen Graham Jones and Mark Rich -- as well as many up-and-coming writers-to-watch, like Rachel Swirsky, Kristine Ong Muslim and Daniel Ausema. Over fifty pages of scary, silly, strange and just plain fun stuff.

I hope you'll check it out!

So here, more or less, is the contents of the October 2007 issue of Kaleidotrope:

Fiction

"Click" by LaShawn M. Wanak
"Best Friends Forever" by L.M. Harmon
"Guy, Sky High" by Edd Vick
"Stump Courtship" by Daniel Ausema
"Pistil, Stamen, Bloom" by Stephen Graham Jones
"The Locked Door" by Tara Kolden
"Eyes" (a comic) by Marc Schuster
The Tailings of Men by Eric Stever
Two Stories by Bruce Holland Rogers
"The Loneliest Person in the World" by Beth Langford
"Terraformers" by Natalie J.E. Potts
"Gingered" by Sarah Frost-Mellor

Poetry

Two Poems by Kristine Ong Muslim
"The Moth Explains" by Rachel Swirsky
Two Poems by Mark Rich
Two Poems by Sheri Fresonke Harper
"Dreams of Sinaloa" by Alveraz Ricardez
"Chalk and Violet (Advice to a Werwolf)" by Alyce Wilson
"As If We Could Change Anything" by G.O. Clark
"Death is Dance" by Cathy Buburuz
"And the Black Snake Smiled for Mary" by Jason Huskey
"Metal With Me" by L. Christopher DelGuercio
"The grandmother I thought I knew" by Terrie Leigh Relf
"Zombie Haiku" by Dana Koster
"A Question to Those Who Have Been Successfully Transported" by Louisa Howerow

Nonfiction

"Why I Love Doctor Who by Betty Ragan

Plus original artwork from Marcia A. Borell, Remi Treuer, Peter Schwartz, G.W. Thomas, and Sharon Kindig -- as well as other sundry bits. Pre-order a copy today!

To mark the tenth anniversary of his website, Kaleidotrope contributor Nigel "Beedo" Willis (#1, "Probed"), has announced a contest:

Star Wars Humour Site? What A Concept!

Amazing! Astounding! Adjective! Beedo Sookcool's Cool Sci-Fi Page is celebrating its tenth birthday this September! To mark this special anniversary, Beedo himself is giving away free stuff! For full details on rules and prizes, click on over to Beedo Sookcool's Cool Sci-Fi Page!

Be sure to check it out!