Okay, it's official: Kaleidotrope is now open to submissions year-round.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No, It Came From Airport Security:

BRISTOL, VA - Announcing the publication of It Came From Airport Security - an anthology of short fiction concerning what happens when confiscated liquids are dumped into trash bins. One year ago the news was flooded with images of airport security. Twenty-four people were arrested in east London, each one suspected of conspiracy to blow up airliners by mixing chemicals on board the planes. The immediate response was to confiscate all bottles of liquids and gels from passengers and to dump the contents of those bottles into large trash bins.

Featuring eight new stories, plus an introduction from yours truly! As mentioned on Boing Boing! And, as co-editor Glen Williams points out, "it’s the perfect book to be seen reading on the airplane!"

I'm thinking about maybe doing away with my reading periods (March to June; September to December), and officially accepting submissions year-round. This is what I do unofficially right now, and I think a lot of people either ignore or never notice the reading periods altogether. I'm not sure what value it's adding for me, since I'm not so hopelessly overwhelmed with submissions, and it's possible they're just acting as a deterrent for those who do notice them.

Any thoughts? Is anyone out there reading this?

Ralan's SpecFic & Humor Webstravaganza needs your support:

If you use Ralan.com, you have probably benefited by it. Maybe you made a sale, or won a contest you would not have known about without visiting, or found a useful writing-related link or two. Or maybe you haven't yet had your break, but Ralan.com is helping you towards it in a way that no other web site does -- with the most up-to-date information on speculative and humorous fiction available anywhere -- information you can get nowhere else. Or perhaps your publication is enjoying a sharp rise in the number and quality of submissions and new visitors are swelling your stats.

Whatever. I urge all of you -- loyal supporters and those who want to be -- to make a donation this month, if you haven't already done so this year.

I suspect I owe a great many of my submissions to Kaleidotrope's listing on Ralan's site (as well as to the one on Duotrope), and he's always been really prompt at making updates. So if you found Kaleidotrope, or any other publication, through Ralan's site, I urge you to help him out a little during his August fundraising.

There's a brief listing for Kaleidotrope in the most recent issue of Zine World:

A literary journal featuring fiction, nonfiction and poetry, not to be confused with Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope. The writing here is mostly speculative, so if you dig Martians, robots and people with melting heads, this might be worth your time.

I don't think I've published many melting-head stories, but y'know, maybe that's a challenge for the next issue...

John Klima recently posted the first in what promises to be an interesting series on starting your own zine:

One of your concerns might be that you might think that there are too many magazines out there, that there's no room for another publication. This is where you're wrong. Every single person who sees this post can (and should) make a zine. And they can be fiction zines. There's a lot of good fiction out there.

It's well worth your time, if you have any interest at all in publishing a zine. Or even just some insight into how a quality one like Electric Velocipede gets produced.

And here's Part 2.

Someone recently asked me if Kaleidotrope had won any awards, or if any of the stories that I've printed have gone on to be anthologized elsewhere. To the best of my knowledge, this hasn't happened just yet. The first issue received a couple of genuinely nice reviews, and I've received some great feedback from contributors and subscribers alike on both issues, but awards and greater glories thus far elude me.

Then again, Kaleidotrope is only a little more than a year (and two issues) old. It existed nowhere but in my own head before April of 2006, when I sent out my first call for submissions. And the quality of those submissions -- not just from award winners like Bruce Boston and Bruce Holland Rogers (whose presence¹ alone is enough to surprise me sometimes), but from everyone -- continues to amaze me. It's why I keep doing this. Sure, I'd love to see the stories and poems I've printed go on to win awards and earn the sort of recognition I think they deserve, but the reason I print them is simple: I think they're really cool and I want to share them with others. And, if any greater glories do await Kaleidotrope as a whole, better they be for that than for anything else, right?

Still, there are things I'd like to see happen and other things I'm considering:

• I'd like to see my subscriber base grow, and see Kaleidotrope made available in more locations. Right now, the distribution is limited, with the zine available only through the main website and, in the real world, at Quimby's in Chicago². A subscription discount might help. Only a fool goes into zine publishing hoping to turn a tidy profit, but a few extra dollars wouldn't hurt. And a few more readers would be phenomenal.
• I'd like to expand the focus of Kaleidotrope somewhat, seeing a wider range of stories and genres, while at the same time emphasizing the things that I think make this zine unique.
• I'd like to take a more pro-active approach to marketing Kaleidotrope and getting the word of its existence out there. To that end, I sometimes feel like maybe I should start thinking about attending some conferences -- even if it's not in anything like an "official" capacity, with a table in the dealers room and a stack of copies ready to sell. I toyed very briefly with the idea of attending last year's World Fantasy convention in Austin. (A work-related conference I ultimately did not attend would have had me in town the week before.) This year's convention is closer to home, in New York, but I don't think that's going to happen either. Maybe next year in Calgary? Honestly, I'm a complete neophyte when it comes to conventions (and probably not the most outgoing of sorts), so I really don't know where to begin.
• I'd like to reach out to past contributors and receive more feedback on past issues -- what's worked, what hasn't.
• I'd like to sell at least one t-shirt. C'mon, they're really neat!

But the chief thing, I think, is to continue publishing quality writing and artwork, and working to continually make Kaleidotrope a better zine.

¹ In the October 2006 and October 2007 issues, respectively.

² Issue #2 is available through their website, at any rate.

Congratulations to Kaleidotrope contributor Edd Vick, whose short story, "Moon Does Run" (from the always terrific Electric Velocipede), has been selected to be reprinted in The Year's Best SF 12.

Another fun story from Edd, "Guy, Sky High," will appear in the upcoming October issue of Kaleidotrope.

Congratulations again to him and to Electric Velocipede editor John Klima!

I updated the subscription information on the Kaleidtrope website -- and let slip a few quick details about the upcoming third issue. I'm still putting together the final table of contents, but the October issue will feature stories and poems from a terrific lineup of artists, including Bruce Holland Rogers, Stephen Graham Jones, and Mark Rich.

I think I want to make this my official rejection letter. Is that wrong?

I hate turning things down, even when they're awful, because they're almost always not awful, just a bad fit, not quite what I'm looking for, or better suited to somebody else. In a perfect world, every submission to Kaleidotrope would be wonderful, and I would have the space and wherewithal to print every last one of them.

That even a small percentage of them are wonderful still amazes me sometimes.

So, um...t-shirts! For the consumer-minded among you.

They each feature Remi Treuer's nifty cover illustration from issue #2 (still available, by the by). I'm wearing one of the black t-shirts right now, and I'm really pleased with how they came out.

Heather was one of the first supporters of Kaleidotrope, so it seems only fair that I should do a little of the same for her new endeavor, Project Paper Crane. The way it works is pretty simple:

1. Send an email Project Paper Crane. Name and address, please.
2. Wait for said crane to arrive (it may take a while).
3. Email a picture of your crane when it arrives.

I'm going to take part and maybe donate a little folding money -- get it? it's origami, so folding money's a pun...? It's...oh, never mind. Just go, get a crane.

Copies of Kaleidotrope #2 are now available for purchase. Each issue is just $4 -- less than ten cents a page -- and a four-year subscription is just $16 altogether. (International rates may vary.)

And while you're sending Kaleidotrope a little love, why not also consider these fine publications?

• Army of the Fantastic -- "13 original tales of fantastical battles for anyone who needs a dose of un-reality."
• Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing -- "Nineteen writers dig into the imaginative spaces between conventional genres-realistic and fantastical, scholarly and poetic, personal and political-and bring up gems of new fiction: interstitial fiction."
• Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories -- "We asked twenty-one of today’s most talented and inventive writers to go even further and pen an original tale inspired by one of dozens of obscure and fascinating championship words."

I think I'm going to go pick up a copy of each. You can never have enough good stories to read.

So apparently, there's a new Livejournal out there called Kaleidotrope. I'm confident this is just one of life's weird coincidences. There's also a Kaleidotrope.com (although nothing's there, it would seem).

Anyway, I would be remiss if I didn't use this as a shameless opportunity to remind you that copies of the second issue of my Kaleidotrope are available for purchase, and I'm currently accepting submissions for the October 2007 issue and beyond.

With, I think, just a couple of exceptions, copies of the second issue went out to contributors and subscribers earlier this morning. Reviewer and distro copies will have to wait until tomorrow, if not early next week. (Kaleidotrope is a one-man operation, and there's only so much that this one man can carry with him to the post office.)

I think the issue looks really good overall, but I'd love to hear what readers have to say, good and bad alike.

Somehow this escaped my attention, but the first issue of Kaleidotrope got a couple of nice write-ups in the March 2007 issue of Xerography Debt. Both Eric Lyden and Gavin Grant received copies of the zine. Here's what they had to say:

Eric:
On first glance I wasn’t sure this was my cup of tea. But as I glanced I saw it had an article on the Transformers so I figured if nothing else I should give a quick skimming. And in spite of the fact that Jim Cleveland (the author) didn’t care for the Transformers movie (he says it was too violent for his tastes which was kinda the point—no one died on the TV show so in the movie they offed a whole bunch of Transformers. Add to that the minor but very memorable cursing and... how any true fan can dislike the movie is beyond me.) it was an enjoyable read for anyone who grew up with the show. So I read a little more and aside from the poetry (Poetry + Eric = dislike. That was a clumsy was of putting it, but fact is it just ain’t my thing) I found it to be a pretty enjoyable read. The fiction was all solid (and I’m trying to think of one story that was a real stand out, but in general it was all good. None of it quite reached “Holy shit, I will never forget this story!” level, but it was all good) and I enjoyed the back page blather where Stuart Crause just sorta goes on about topics ranging from magnetism to fashion to math. One of the better literary type zines I've seen lately. 44 not quite full size but bigger than half sized pages. No price listed but send a couple bucks at least to Fred Coppersmith

Gavin:
First issue of a new science fiction leaning lit zine that will be familiar to readers of ELECTRIC VELOCIPEDE or FLYTRAP. It’s not up there with those two yet, but these are early days and Fred shows a good amount of enthusiasm putting this together and getting it out there. The Horoscopes were a nice addition, i.e. “Leo: You have an active imagination and a keen imagination,so it will be all the more sad when that pack of rabid wolves finally get to you.” It’s the “finally” in there that gets me. All those years avoiding the wolves only to be brought down at last. Ach.

Electric Velocipede and Flytrap are definitely models of the sort of high quality, if not necessarily the exact same material, that I'd like to see in Kaleidotrope. And I think each issue -- I've already started putting together #3 -- is a little stronger than the one before, as I learn from my mistakes...and learn to make new ones.

It occurs to me that I haven't posted the actual contents of Kaleidotrope's second issue. So here, for just $4 -- all of which, I think I can safely say, will wind up in my contributors' hands -- is what you'll get:

Fiction
"The Pilgrim" by Carol D. Green
"First Peeling" by Daniel Ausema
"The Diary of Hillary Sorensen-French" by S. C. Bryce
"The Role of Plumage in the Mating Habits of the Karraw" by J. R. Blackwell
"Midnight Gardener" by Bill West
"The Bride" by Adicus Ryan Garton
"Abergavenny" by J. Anderson Coats
"Einstein's Lost Paper" by George O'Gorman
Three stories by Beth Langford
"Wonan the Barbarian and the Sentence of Certain Death" by Kiel Stuart

Poetry
"Biology Experiment" by Sheri Fresonke Harper
"Sleep" by C. A. Gardner
Two poems by Terrie Leigh Relf
Two poems by Jennifer Crow
"How to Be a Bunny" by Rachel Swirsky
"Scifaiku I-V" by Daniel C. Smith
"Bee-Bop" by d. cat chopra
"Contact" by Tracie McBride
"Merchants" by John Grey
"A Lesson in Magic" by Kristine Ong Muslim
"Signal" by Aurelio Rico Lopez III

Artwork
Remi Treuer
Amelia Peel
Cathy Buburuz
Jim Cleaveland
Rod Walker
Erik Wilson

Plus an in-depth interview with popular fantasy author John Marco, horoscopes, and some other incidental bits and pieces, pieces and bits.

Well, I was expecting to have copies of the second issue in-hand by this afternoon, but, thanks to a screw-up at the printer, that isn't going to happen. Maybe it's time to find somewhere more reliable than FedEx Kinkos. (Certainly it may be time to investigate somewhere cheaper^*.)

My apologies in advance to contributors and subscribers alike. The issue almost certainly will be out before the month is over. In the meantime, if you'd like to purchase an advance copy, I definitely won't stop you...

* At the very least, an RFQ to places like Paradise Copies -- which I know prints both Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and Electric Velocipede, two fine and wonderful zines -- wouldn't be wholly out of order.

Rachel Swirsky, who has poetry forthcoming in this month's issue of Kaleidotrope, wonders over on her journal just what it is we love about stories. It's an interesting discussion.

Via Gwenda Bond.

John Marco, who I interviewed for the second issue of Kaleidotrope, is holding a contest for three free copies of his upcoming fantasy anthology, Army of the Fantastic. The book features thirteen stories about fantastical armies from writers like Tanya Huff, Alan Dean Foster, and Tim Waggoner, and it looks like a lot of fun. Drop John a line for your chance to win a copy!