Wednesday, March 27, 2024

The Never-ending FAQ: Get Rich Quick Writing Big Hit Bestsellers!

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines. If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post a public answer, but can promise every question we receive will be read and considered.

Today’s question comes from Angelique, who asks:

What is the most profitable and easiest path for success?


Seriously?

Okay, as far as I can tell, the most profitable and easiest path to success is to forget writing fiction entirely and instead to produce an endless series of books, workshops, and webinars promising to teach other aspiring writers how to get rich quickly by writing big hit bestsellers. But I will assume there is an implicit “by writing fiction” in the question as originally stated, and answer that question instead. 

Er, you’d better get your waders on. The cynicism is about to become hip deep.

§

Many long ages ago I was sitting in a very plush office in Century City, with the head of West Coast A&R for some major record company whose name I forget now. After listening to my demo tape—politely at first, and then impatiently, the longer it ran—he decided to give me some advice. The objective, he said, isn’t to be really different. It’s to be just a little different, so that your work stands out from the crowd, but at the same time to sound enough like someone else who is already a major hit-maker that the first time the listeners hear it, it sounds like something they’ve already heard six times before, and they love it and can’t wait to hear it again, to hear that little bit of novelty you bring to the formula.

At the time I thought that was quite possibly the most cynical advice I’d ever received. A lifetime later—well, I still think it’s incredibly damned cynical, but it’s also very practical. People like what they like. It’s very difficult to get them to try something truly new. The Amazon publishing empire is built on that premise: that it’s much easier to get people to buy more of what they already like than to get them to take a chance on something new.

Therefore, if the question is, “What is the most profitable and easiest path for success?”

Attend closely. Today, I’m giving this secret away for free. Next fall it will be in my best-selling book, How to Get Rich Quickly By Writing Big Hit Bestsellers!

Step 1: Write to market. 

Really study the market. Find a niche market or subgenre that is hot right now—not five years ago, now—and learn all you can about it. Amazon provides a wealth of information, if you look at the book listings. Study the keywords and subgenre breakdowns. Then pick a category you like to read and think will be fun to work in, and figure out what you can do with it that is slightly different from what everyone else and their cat is already doing.

Step 2: Learn the Lester Dent formula.

Lester Dent was a pulp fiction writer who cranked out hundreds of novels under a plethora of pseudonyms and got filthy rich doing so. His universal plot formula was designed for 6,000-word short stories, but with some adjustments it works just as well for short novels. Google it. Learn it. Apply it.

Step 3: Pick a pseudonym. 

Your name is your brand. Ideally you want to have an entire stable full of names, so that you can switch back and forth as your brands and genres heat up or cool down. Remember, this is not you. You’re in the entertainment business now. Your pseudonym is a character; a stage name; a role you perform for public consumption. It’s a mask you put on before you go out in public in the morning and take off after you come home at night.

Step 4: First, figure out how your story ends.

To paraphrase Mickey Spillane, while the beginning of your book is what gets people interested in reading it, it’s the ending that determines whether they want to read anything else by you. Your readers are giving you something very valuable: their time. You owe it to them to give them an ending that rewards them for the time they’ve invested in reading your story. You want them to be glad they took the time to read your work.

Step 5: Write short novels.

The day of the BFFB (Big Fat Fantasy Brick) is over. The optimum length for a novel in today’s market is around 50K words. If you feel your story requires a 200,000-word epic, split it up into four installments. 

Step 6: Forget traditional publishing.

Start with self-publishing directly to Kindle. It’s too hard to get in the door with the few remaining traditional publishers now, and their support for new authors is roughly nonexistent. Remember, if you’re successful at self-publishing, the traditional publishers will come to you, to beg you to take their money. 

Step 7: Consider whether serialization is right for you.

I’ve watched several writers launch successful careers recently by serializing their novels on Kindle Vella or Royal Road first before going to a full e-book and/or print release. If you can work that way—I can’t—it’s a great way to build your fan base.

Step 8: Start an email list.

No one else is going to do this for you. As your pseudonym, get a website. Build a mailing list. Start a blog. Interact with your fans. Make them feel that they are sharing in your success. Everyone loves the feeling of being able to say, “I was reading [name] before it was cool.”

Personally, I’d skip Patreon. I know a few writers who are making enough on Patreon to justify the work, but a lot more who aren’t. Ditto for crowd-funding. You must have a crowd before crowd-funding pays off. Focus on building that mailing list! Put at least a quarter of your working time into marketing your work, not to editors, but directly to readers. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your writing is if no one reads it.

Step 9: Keep writing those books!

If you come up with an idea that really clicks with readers, keep working it! Write a never-ending series! Don’t stop writing it until people stop buying it! Above all, if you get fed-up with telling the ongoing story of your lead character—and you will, it happens to all of us, sooner or later—whatever you do, do not toss your lead character off the top of Reichenbach Falls! Never write your character into an ending so final you can’t bring them back for “just one more” sequel, if your fans demand it.

Conversely, if you’ve gone three books into a series without having a bestseller, kick that pseudonym to the curb, revise your formula, and start over as someone else.

As you have no doubt noticed by now, I did not put, “Start out writing short stories” on this list. Once upon a time, there was some connection between the SF/F short-story and novel markets. That time was a long time ago. In today’s market it’s easier than ever to get your short stories placed and published, but almost impossible to get anyone to notice, or for you to make any significant money doing so. And since the question was: 

“What is the most profitable and easiest path for success?”

I decided to focus on the “profitable” part of the question.

Understand, writing short stories is good practice. It’s a good way to hone your craft skills and develop your concepts. But if your objective is to make money as a writer of fiction, then the short story market should be considered a sandbox, and one that you will in time outgrow and leave.

Which brings us to:

Step 10: There is no easy path to success.

Success in this business requires talent, ambition, good craft skills and work habits, and a certain amount of luck. Taking ambition as a given—if you weren’t ambitious, you wouldn’t be reading this—knowing that enormous gobs of dumb luck can sometimes trump all else, and accepting that there is no way to change your innate level of raw talent, focus on improving your craft skills and work habits.

After forty years in this business, I have seen that a modest amount of talent coupled with good craft skills and work habits beats enormous amounts of talent and lousy work habits seven days a week and twice on Sunday. Don’t sit on your butt waiting for the Muse to whisper in your ear. If you want success as a writer, WORK FOR IT!

Here endeth the lesson.

 


 

If you like the stories we’re publishing, become a supporter today. We do Stupefying Stories out of pure love for genre fiction, but in publishing as in tennis, love means nothing. To keep Stupefying Stories going at this level we need to raise at least $500 USD monthly, and rather than doing so with pledge breaks or crowd-funding campaigns, we’d rather have supporters. If just 100 people commit to giving $5 monthly, we can keep going at this level indefinitely. If we can raise more, we will pay our authors more.

 

Please don’t make me escalate to posting pictures of sad kittens and puppies…
 

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

“Pink Marble” • by Zoe Kaplan


The Queen had turned to stone.

No one could explain how or why. The greatest magicians, scientists, and alchemists in the country had tried and failed to determine the cause. They had prayed over her, enchanted her, applied potions and chemicals and fairy dust to her skin, chipped off bits of her robe and fingernails and sent them back for genetic testing. Nothing in their spells or analyses showed that she was anything other than plain pink marble in the shape of a woman.

At first it was assumed that her petrification was the work of an enemy wizard, but when no foreign power or terrorist group came forward to gloat or make threats, public perception changed. It had to be the work of wild magic, people said. It was the Queen’s own fault for commissioning a summer home so close to the border, and worse, by the ocean! Everyone knew magic was unpredictable out there. It didn’t follow the rules.

The story changed again when the Queen’s household moved back to the capitol. One young woman was missing from the roster, the very same chambermaid who had first reported the Queen’s transformation. She must have done it! the people cried. Speculation abounded.

Perhaps she was an especially powerful hedge witch, or had failed out of the Academy, or had found an ancient, arcane artifact. Perhaps she had petrified the Queen out of jealousy, or revenge for an executed family member, or anti-monarchical political leanings.

Some wondered if she too were not a victim of the true perpetrator, but those voices were few.

Search parties were sent out, scouring the country and its neighbors for the woman, but no sign of her was ever found. Eventually, the search was dropped. The Queen was installed in the castle ballroom and her nephew ascended to the throne. The people mourned for their Queen, but not too much. She had been something of a recluse, while her nephew was outgoing, responsive, popular. Years passed, and the whole debacle was all but forgotten.

Hundreds of miles away, in the galley of a small ship off the coast of Coloria, the Queen poured tea into a blue china cup. She brought it to her lover, who sat on the deck, polishing a bust. The ex-chambermaid, the daughter of a stonecutter and a master crafter in her own right, turned to kiss her on the cheek.

 


 


Zoe Kaplan (she/her) has been making up stories for as long as she can remember. She has a bachelor’s in creative writing from Appalachian State University and no less than four different swords. Her work has appeared in Tree and Stone Magazine, Hidden Realms, and the Horror Library anthology series, among many others, and her story “The Test” was nominated for the 2022 Brave New Weird award. You can find her on twitter @the_z_part or on her website, zoekaplanwrites.com.

“Pink Marble” was first published in Flash Point SF.

 

 


 

If you like the stories we’re publishing, become a supporter today. We do Stupefying Stories out of pure love for genre fiction, but in publishing as in tennis, love means nothing. To keep Stupefying Stories going at this level we need to raise at least $500 USD monthly, and rather than doing so with pledge breaks or crowd-funding campaigns, we’d rather have supporters. If just 100 people commit to giving $5 monthly, we can keep going at this level indefinitely. If we can raise more, we will pay our authors more.

 

Please don’t make me escalate to posting pictures of sad kittens and puppies…

Monday, March 25, 2024

“Magic Word” • by Greg Schwartz



Raif bounced from foot to foot. He was finally becoming a wizard! 

Well, an apprentice at least. But today he could pick his magic word, the one that he’d use for the rest of his life. The one he’d use to summon dragons, and rain down fireballs, and—

“Next!” the old, wrinkled mage shouted.

Raif stepped forward, beaming. The mage glared at him impatiently, quill in hand.

Raif opened his mouth. Someone tripped over his robe. Lana, the prettiest girl in town, went sprawling. “Sorry,” Raif mumbled, blushing. He helped her up.

The old mage scribbled on his parchment. “Next!”

 


 

Greg Schwartz writes speculative fiction and poetry. Some of his stories have appeared in OG’s Speculative Fiction, Black Ink Horror, and Champagne Shivers. In a pre-fatherhood life, he was the staff cartoonist for SP Quill Magazine and a book reviewer for Whispers of Wickedness.

 


 

If you like the stories we’re publishing, become a supporter today. We do Stupefying Stories out of pure love for genre fiction, but in publishing as in tennis, love means nothing. To keep Stupefying Stories going at this level we need to raise at least $500 USD monthly, and rather than doing so with pledge breaks or crowd-funding campaigns, we’d rather have supporters. If just 100 people commit to giving $5 monthly, we can keep going at this level indefinitely. If we can raise more, we will pay our authors more.

 

Please don’t make me escalate to posting pictures of sad kittens and puppies…

Sunday, March 24, 2024

The Week in Review • 24 March 2024


Welcome to The Week in Review, a weekly summary for those too busy to follow Stupefying Stories on a daily basis. It’s been a ridiculously busy week here at Rampant Loon Press, so let’s just get straight to the stories.

“Broken” • by Karin Terebessy

Sometimes we can’t really describe a story, we can only say, this one is important. You should read it.

Published: 18 March 2024

“Poisoned Stew to Go” • by Henry Herz

After the deep dive of “Broken,” we needed something a little lighter to cheer us up. Like an outtake from Macbeth, with a little cozy murder.

Published: 19 March 2024

BOOK RELEASE: THE PRINCESS SCOUT
• by Henry Vogel

After a successful run as a serial on Kindle Vella, we’re delighted to announce that THE PRINCESS SCOUT, the latest book in Henry Vogel’s best-selling Terran Scout Corps series, is now available in print and e-book. We also want to stress that this is a self-contained and standalone novel, and unlike a Marvel movie, you need not have read all the previous books in the series in order to understand and enjoy this one. 

Released: 19 March 2024

Learn more…
 

The Never-ending FAQ: using Adobe Sign

Something purely practical this week. If you get an acceptance and a contract from us, and you’ve never used Adobe Sign before, here are step-by-step instructions for how to use Adobe Sign to e-sign and return a contract.

Published: 20 March 2024

“The Job” • by Andrew Rucker Jones

Speaking of contracts: “Hey kid. Cousin Vinnie wants a word wit youse. He’s gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse… less’n youse can fly.”

Published: 21 March 2024

BOOK RELEASE: EMERALD OF EARTH
• by Guy Stewart

Guy Stewart’s YA adventure novel is now available in e-book, print, and audio book. This is probably the fastest book release we’ve ever done, and to be honest, the audio book was an afterthought. We just thought it would be really funny to use Amazon’s A.I. to narrate a novel about a bunch of teens fighting an evil and homicidal A.I. that’s bent on world domination. 

Released: 21 March 2024

Learn more…

“Upper Beta Great Alcove Very Happy” • by Ron Fein

Sometimes the real message lies in what isn’t said.

Published: 22 March 2024




Six Questions for… Matthew Castleman

A few minutes of enlightenment and entertainment with author, actor, and educator Matthew Castleman, who among many other things is the author of Privateers of Mars, one of our favorite little books in the Stupefying Stories Presents line. Check it out!

 



P.S. And buy some of our books, okay?



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(Or buy just one, if that’s what you’d really prefer.)


Saturday, March 23, 2024

Six Questions for… Matthew Castleman

Matthew Castleman is a New York-raised, Washington DC-based stage actor, writer, and theater educator with a strong penchant for Shakespeare and swords. He’s penned the Clone Chronicles middle-grade series under the name M. E. Castle and short fiction under his own name for Daily Science Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways, Fireside Quarterly, Old Moon Quarterly, and of course, Stupefying Stories. He’s performed Shakespeare up and down the Eastern Seaboard and teaches acting and storytelling to many ages. He blogs about science fiction, theater, and whatever else comes to mind at castlemantransmissions.net.

We caught up with Matthew recently and got the chance to throw a few questions at him.

______________________

SS: If you could change one thing about the way you write, what would it be?

MC: I assume answering with the word “better” is cheating, so… I would improve my ability to focus on a single project at a time. The imagination that gives me strange ideas and weird story threads doesn’t really have a valve. It keeps feeding me little ingots of the bizarre and I find myself being led off into the woods while what could be a perfectly good story sits neglected on the desk. I’d easily trade 20% of my raw word output for the ability to focus it 20% more.

SS: Do you listen to music while writing? If so, what kinds of music or which artists?

MC: My go-to writing music is doom metal; bands like Sleep and Electric Wizard are in frequent rotation. Heavy, hypnotic, slow, repetitive, ominous. It’s loud enough to shut out the world but not fast or intricate enough to be distracting. The natural head-nodding pulse helps keep the words flowing, and the fuzzy minor and diminished melodies jive well with the kind of stuff I tend to write about. Recently I’ve been experimenting more with writing to rain sounds, when I really need to buckle down. Nothing beats an actual heavy rain outside, though.

SS: What feels like your best natural length for a story?

MC: I seem to be a short story specialist born a hundred years too late. I’m more a scene writer than a plot writer, so the more scenes need to be strung together the more strain I feel trying to build a bridge solid enough to properly support them. I’ve improved with practice, but I still feel it grating against my natural inclinations.

SS: Your book, Privateers of Mars: is there anything special you’re hoping readers will notice or appreciate in it?

MC: More than anything, I’m an ensemble writer. There may be a nominal or seeming main character in my writing, but all of my work of any significant length is about a group or a community first, and it is always their bond and ability to combine their skills that leads to success. I’m a tiny stick figure exerting a little pull on the massive lever of the contemporary and especially American illusion that any one person can do much of anything important all by themselves. Remarkable and interesting individuals are great; I obviously love characters with very distinct personalities and characteristics, but what makes remarkable individuals remarkable is how they use their remarkableness with other people to build bigger and better things.

SS: If you could snap your fingers and make one cliché, trope, or plot gimmick vanish, which one would it be?

MC: Building on the above: “I, Protagonist, am the Only Smart Person Alive. I drift through shuffling herds of numbed drones, alone in my understanding of how the world really works, pitying them through my cool guy cigarette smoke.” Note: I’m not against having a character who thinks like this, because we all think like this sometimes and maybe a lot of the time. It’s having the story at large vindicate this kind of thinking that’s the problem. It’s the difference between writing a character as the main character of the story and writing them as the actual main character of the world.

SS: Did you always know that you wanted to write genre fiction, or did you start out intending to write something else?

MC: I always knew I wanted to write genre fiction, though I should point out that ‘literary fiction’ is the ‘I don’t have an accent’ of genres. I don’t think that contemporary naturalism deserves the honor of not being a genre just because it’s the least exciting genre. Genre fiction is perfectly capable of both helping us examine the concrete and philosophical problems of our everyday lives, and being a needed escape vehicle to get us away from them for a while. Very good genre fiction usually does both at the same time. One of the points I always come back to when I teach theater classes is that stories frequently do more than one thing at once and rarely are the various effects a story can have on the mind mutually exclusive. I think that’s a lot of what makes them so engaging in the first place. If you want to write two different kinds of story, there’s a good chance you can do it with one story. Try it out, see what happens. And you can take that little phrase of advice and apply it to most things.

SS: Thank you for your time, Matthew. And now, if people want to see how you handle writing ensembles, here’s where we throw in the plug for PRIVATEERS OF MARS.

___________________

 

Meet Jacob Rhys: scoundrel, brawler, gambler, drunk, and licensed privateer working for the Free Mars State—until the authorities on Ceres seized his ship…


When shipyard engineer Valerie Morton found him a week later, face-down in a bar, she showed him the official report on what was discovered in his ship’s cargo hold. As Rhys read the report he began tapping nervously on the grip of his sidearm. Then he suddenly stopped tapping and looked up at her.
“I’m getting my command crew back together,” he said. “We are, handily, short an engineer. Do you have strong aversions to petty or grand larceny, extortion, card cheating, recreational and spiritual drug use, sexual practices that may involve recreational and spiritual drug use, and ubiquitous, often unnecessary violence?”

After a slight hesitation, Morton shook her head.

Rhys smiled. “Good. Welcome to my crew.”
What happens next? Join Rhys and rest of his slippery crew and begin the dark and dirty adventure of tomorrow today! If you liked COWBOY BEBOP, you'll love PRIVATEERS OF MARS!

Friday, March 22, 2024

“Upper Beta Great Alcove Very Happy” • by Ron Fein


Marco and Rada were hunched over the computer in the family room when the message arrived from their son, Nate: “Upper Beta. With a great alcove. Very happy.” 

They exhaled with relief. Nate had received his berth at the international base on Jupiter’s moon Callisto. 

“He wanted the Beta habitat,” said Rada. “He thinks it’s better than Alpha.”

“And he must prefer ‘upper’ Beta over ‘lower’ Beta, whatever that means. Maybe the view of Jupiter is better?” 

“I doubt it. Every room has a million-dollar view.” Callisto was tidally-locked, and the habitat always faced the planet. “He probably didn’t care which level. I think he was just sharing additional details, like the alcove.”

“There must be some reason he prefers the upper level, or else he wouldn’t have mentioned it. Why waste the characters if it wasn’t important?”

Bandwidth limits bedeviled the loved ones of Callisto crewmembers. For much of the moon’s seventeen-day orbit, communication lines between Earth and the habitat were blocked either by the moon’s backside or by Jupiter itself. Someday, a relay satellite would bridge this gap. Until then, clear communications were possible only near quadrature—when the moon was, from Earth’s perspective, to Jupiter’s left or right. But during those short windows, the massive volume of mission data held priority. So bandwidth for personal messages was severely restricted—just forty-eight characters per message. 

Rada sighed. “Is that really what you want to waste our reply on—upper and lower levels?”

“No,” he agreed. “How long do we have?”

She checked her watch. “Almost ten minutes.” 

“All right.” Marco cracked his knuckles and flexed his fingers over the keyboard. “How about we start this way: ‘Mom and I—”

“No,” she interrupted. “You don’t need to waste space on things like ‘Mom and I.’ Nate knows it’s from us. You don’t even need to say ‘we.’ That’s assumed.”

“Fair enough,” conceded Marco. “But then why did he say ‘a’ great alcove? If he’d just said ‘with great alcove,’ he’d have saved a character—actually, two characters including the space. That plus the other four could have been an additional word.”

Rada rolled her eyes. “You’re overthinking this.”

“Come to think of it,” he continued, “Nate didn’t use all forty-eight characters. His message is just forty-four.”

“He probably just stopped at a convenient place.” 

“Or maybe he’s trying to send some sort of subtext by not using all of his characters?”

“Let’s stay focused,” she urged.

“And why say ‘with’ great alcove? He could have just said ‘great alcove.’ That’s another—” He counted on his fingers. “Five characters. If you combine them with the unused four and the two from ‘a,’ he’d have eleven characters available if he’d just written ‘Upper Beta. Great alcove. Very happy.’” 

Enough,” Rada snapped. “This is pointless.”

But Marco was on a roll. “And why the periods? Leaving them out would have freed up three more characters. So fourteen available to say something else.”

“That’s it,” she muttered. “You’re done. Get away from the keyboard, I’m doing this myself.” 

Marco rolled his chair aside. “I’m telling you, something’s wrong,” he insisted. “Nate must have known that I’d begin ‘Mom and I,’ and that you’d make your point about the unstated parts.”

“I’m not listening,” sang Rada as she typed a response.

“Furthermore,” Marco persevered, “he must have anticipated that I’d take the logic to the next step and notice that he wasted fourteen characters. He only gets to communicate with us once a week, and he leaves a third of his space unused? Doesn’t make sense. Unless there’s something else—a hidden message, encoded in the unused characters.” 

“You’re unbelievable,” muttered Rada as she finished composing her reply. “There’s only two minutes left.” 

“A message in the negative space,” rambled Marco. “Like the optical illusion of two faces that create the outline of a vase in the emptiness between.”

“Do you want to look this over before I send it?” demanded Rada.

But Marco didn’t hear her. “A message, fourteen characters long, so secret and powerful that he needed to conceal it,” he mused. “What could it be? ‘Get me out of here’? No, too long. Wait, without the spaces—‘getmeoutofhere’—that’s fourteen exactly.”

“Sixty seconds or we miss our window.” 

Marco gazed out the window, steepling his fingers and murmuring to himself. “But that has no spaces. That’s inconsistent with the rest of the message. A fourteen-character phrase including one or more spaces… twenty-seven to the fourteenth. But most of those aren’t valid English words. I could write a program…”

“Time’s running out,” growled Rada.

Marco rubbed his temples. “‘Food repulsive’? That fits, but it doesn’t explain the secrecy. There must be a reason for sending the message in a hidden code.”

“Thirty seconds.”

Marco frantically waved his hands. “Oh my God—he must be on some sort of secret mission, sending hidden messages to his handler.”

“Twenty.”

“Um, um—oh, I’ve got it!” Marco cried. “‘Asset acquired’! That’s it! That’s the message!”

“Time’s up,” Rada announced.

“But what the hell is Nate doing out there, on a secret mission sending coded messages about acquiring assets? What kind of assets? Military secrets? Is he trying to turn his foreign crewmates? Is he an undercover spy?” Marco’s eyes widened and he stared at Rada with horror. “Is he passing a secret spy message to—” 

“I’m sending this now,” Rada interrupted, and pressed enter. “Marco, you need therapy.”

§

Forty-three minutes later and three hundred ninety million miles away, in the comm center at the Callisto habitat, Nate read the message from his parents: “Terrific. All ok here. Miss you. Love.”

He stared at for a moment, and then counted the characters. Thirty-eight—ten left unused.

Damn it, he thought. That could only mean one thing: “Dad knows!”



 

Ron Fein is a Boston-area public interest lawyer, writer, and activist who writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and comedy. His work appears in Nature, MetaStellar, Daily Science Fiction, Nonprofit Quarterly, Factor Four, Mystery Tribune, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Find him at ronfein.com, on Mastodon @ronfein@masto.ai, on BlueSky @ronfein.bsky.social, and on Threads @ronaldfein.

 


 



Thursday, March 21, 2024

WHAT, *ANOTHER* NEW BOOK RELEASE?!


All we were trying to do was push this book out a little early, so that Guy Stewart could have copies in-hand when he showed up at Minicon 57 next weekend. 

» Click anywhere on the above image to go to the list of links.

This was quite possibly the fastest book launch we’re ever done. The Kindle edition went live in less than an hour. The Nook, Apple Books, and Smashwords e-books were live this morning, and new e-book vendors are coming online hourly.

» Click anywhere on the above image to go to the list of links.

The print edition was approved so quickly, it looks like we may have commercial copies from Amazon in-hand before the case of ARC copies I ordered from Ingram shows up. Thus we’ll have the opportunity to compare the Amazon and Ingram printings side-by-side, and decide which we prefer. In theory, releasing the print edition through Ingram gives us much wider distribution, including into bookstores. In practice, that rarely happens. 

» Click anywhere on the above image to go to the list of links.


ENORMOUS THANKS TO DON MUCHOW, for going way beyond the call of duty and burning much midnight oil to make sure that this book got finished and released on time! THANKS, DON! 

P.S. And consider buying the book, okay?

P.P.S. One more thing: an audio book edition is in the works and should be available shortly. Guy and I talked it over, and decided that using Amazon’s AI to narrate a story about a bunch of teens fighting an evil homicidal AI bent on world domination was just too ironic an opportunity to pass up.

“The Job” • by Andrew Rucker Jones


23 … 24 … 25 … Mom’s not going to be happy … 28 … 29 … ding! 

The suit next to me gets off the elevator without even a nod at the scrawny teenager in the worn black mantle slouched in the corner, tripled by the mirrors on both sides of the elevator walls. The mantle belonged to my grandfather, whom I never knew, but I grew up hearing tales of his hermitism and love of birds. He must have been an odd bird himself, and that makes me at home with my secondhand memories of him.

The doors close and I’m left alone with the musk of the suit’s CK One. I bet that guy passed his trigonometry tests when he was my age. 34 … 35 … The fat, red “F” on the test crumpled in my hand goads me. I asked around at school, ostensibly to study the right solutions, but on no other paper had Mr. Farkas scrawled a grade over a student’s name like he had over “Chris Abadia.”

40 … 41 … ding! The doors open. Mom insists I bring failed tests to her work after school so we can correct them together “while it’s still fresh.” I’ll probably thank her when I’m older, like adults always say. Like maybe once I find something—anything—I’m good at.

I hang back. I know exactly when the elevator doors will close, and I wait for that moment before slipping out.

Urgh! is all I say before a burly hand covers my mouth and I am lifted by one man per arm and hauled backwards into the elevator. A third hits the button to close the doors, jams a key into the maintenance override, and punches an orange button labelled “ROOF.” The elevator jolts up.

The man on my left rumbles, “Where’d you get the key, boss?”

The man standing before me is pot-bellied, sports a glistening pate with a ring of thinning hair around the back of his head from ear to ear, and looks Italian. “The janitor is a former business associate,” he says. “He excelled at cleaning up the family’s messes.”

Ding!

Thick fingers dig into my arms and hold me off the ground as we step through the doors. A stiff New York City wind rips at my mantle and freezes me in my short sleeves. At least my mouth is free.

“Who are you guys? What do you want from me?” I try to twist, but the men have me tight. No matter where you are on a roof, there’s really only one place you can go: the edge.

The pot-bellied man smirks. “Kid, I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you.”

The man holding my left arm yanks my backpack off the shoulder it’s slung across and tosses it to the rooftop.

My weight shifts as the other man leans over the edge. “Are you sure this is the right guy, Vinny?”

The pot-bellied man smiles. “Positive. His grandfather, may he rest in peace—” Vinny crosses himself, “was part of the family, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Boys, teach him to fly.”

A shove back and I’m falling forty-three stories, feet first. My Adam’s apple squeezes toward my palate and forces a scream out ahead of it. My grandfather’s mantle snaps and twists above me.

The sidewalk observes me, welcomes me with arms stretched from the Hudson to the East River. It soothes me with its Zen acceptance of sidewalk inferiority and promises I’ll never take another trigonometry test again.

Suddenly, all I want is to take trigonometry tests, one after another, until I’m wall-eyed.

Searing pain rips through my shoulder blades, and something in me tries to escape—to molt. My shirt is stretched against my chest, vising the breath from my lungs. An instinct asserts itself and I scratch, tear, beat, but not with my fingers. The sound of cloth ripping is audible over the wind in my ears, and a nascent force stretches from my body like a second pair of arms. I beat. I beat for life. I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I beat.

The sidewalk slows its approach, then halts, still ruminating on me from twenty stories distant. I stick my tongue out at it between my dangling feet.

My breath is heavy from the unaccustomed effort. I rise past the twenty-three stories above me as fast as fury rises within my chest. I rip the trigonometry test I still clutch in half, cast it to the wind, and ball my fists.

The Italian still smirks when I alight on the rooftop. I want to exact revenge, but I’m too winded even for an intimidating display of power. I kneel to catch my breath and let my arced wings collapse around me, cocoon-like, my grandfather’s black mantle resting on my back between them. Sunlight pours in from above, and I am cradled by a prism of azure bespeckled with flame-orange and fringed with emerald as the sun greets my feathers.

Hands grasp me under my arms and lift me, gentler this time. Vinny beams.

“I’ve got a job for someone with your special talents. A once-in-a-lifetime offer.” He motions to the men at my sides, who release me but make sure I’m balanced. “On your left is Joseph, my man for dough.”

“The mantle’s a nice touch,” rumbles Joseph from somewhere under his fulsome mustache. At his mention of the mantle, my grandfather’s fabled avian predilection clicks into focus.

“On your right stands Mack.”

Mack is a giant of a man. He nods curtly and adds, “Toppings. Sorry about before.”

“Chris, I’m Vinny, your second cousin twice removed, and I’d like to offer you a job at Vinny’s Old Italy, the best pizza parlor in NYC. Because son, you are going to be the best pizza delivery boy in the Big Apple!”

 



 

Andrew Rucker Jones is a former IT dweeb and American expatriate living in Germany with his Georgian wife and their three children. He’s had about thirty stories published or accepted for publication so far, in The Four Faced Liar, Dark Matter Magazine, On Spec, and Tales from the Fiddler’s Green, among other places. Learn more at http://selfdefeatistnavelgazing.wordpress.com/

“The Job” was first published in the now-defunct The Wondrous Real Magazine. If you enjoyed this story—or have a weird thing about birds—read “Shiny, Glinting, Silver,” which we published last October.

 

 

 


 

JUST RELEASED! NOW AVAILABLE IN E-BOOK OR PRINT JUST ABOUT EVERYWHERE! CLICK THE IMAGE FOR THE LIST OF LINKS!



Wednesday, March 20, 2024

The Never-ending FAQ: using Adobe Sign

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Never-ending FAQ, the constantly evolving adjunct to our Submission Guidelines. If you have a question you’d like to ask about Stupefying Stories or Rampant Loon Press, feel free to post it as a comment here or to email it to our submissions address. I can’t guarantee we’ll post a public answer, but can promise every question we receive will be read and considered.

Today’s question comes from Arnoldo, who in response to our acceptance of his story asked:

Please share all necessary instructions with me, as I have no experience with Adobe Sign.


I’m really glad you asked that question. A lot of people have asked that one, so I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for us to present a quick tutorial on how to use Adobe Sign. 

The process starts when you return our acceptance letter, and provide us with two crucial pieces of information: your real name for contract purposes, and the name you want the publication to be credited to, if not your real name. We use that information to fill in the blanks on our standard contract form, then go out to the Adobe Sign web interface, drop the contract into the hopper, punch in a few more pieces of information, most notably your email address, click the big blue Send button—

And in a matter of seconds, something like this shows up in your email inbox.


You open the message, and see something like this:


Click the big blue Review and Sign button, and the Adobe web app opens up. 

It looks slightly different depending on whether you’re running it in a web browser on your computer or your phone, but both versions work about the same. This is what it looks like in Firefox on a PC.

If this is the first time you’ve used it, you’re first asked to accept the Terms of Use, by clicking—one guess what color the button is:


Then the gray-out disappears, and you can look at the contract and scroll through it if you like, but since you should have done that already, you can click the big blue—

 

Haha, fooled you, it's an arrow this time! This takes you down to the place where you need to “Click here to sign.” Click the yellowish box.


 

A pop-up window opens. It auto fills an e-signature. If you prefer you can replace it with a photo of your signature, or type it, or draw it with your mouse.


Though that rarely turns out well.


It doesn’t matter. It’s all the clicking and approving that makes this a legal e-signature, not how well you can transfer your calligraphy to the computer. 

Then, after you click the big blue Apply button, you pop down to the bottom of the document.

 


Click one more big blue button to sign and send the contract, and you’re all set!


 

Whatever you do, do NOT click the Create account button at this point! Adobe has legions of hungry minions on standby, just waiting to pounce on you and talk you into buying something you don’t need if you click that button. Don’t do it!

In a few seconds an email message will pop up in my inbox telling me you’ve signed the contract, and I basically repeat the same procedure to counter-sign the contract. As soon as I do so, the fully signed and executed contract is sent to both of us automatically, and we’re in business.

Which leads to the next question, which was asked by a writer who was experiencing severe techno-trepidation at the prospect of doing an e-contract, before finally seeing it done. Afterward she asked:

Wow! That was so easy! Why don’t all publishers use this?

Shrug. Dunno. They’re Luddites?

______________________



Tuesday, March 19, 2024

RELEASING TODAY: THE PRINCESS SCOUT, by Henry Vogel


THE PRINCESS SCOUT, the latest novel in Henry Vogel’s best-selling Terran Scout Corps series, is now out and selling worldwide in e-book, paperback, and hardcover, on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Everand, Bibliotheca, Hoopla, OverDrive, Vivlio, Baker & Taylor, Tolino, Gardners, BorrowBox, Odilo, Thalia, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson… 

And probably a few more in the time it took me to type this. New sales links are going live by the minute. Click anywhere on the above image to see the latest list of booksellers carrying THE PRINCESS SCOUT. Thus far Amazon seems to be the only one that’s linked the e-book listing to the paperback and hardcover listings, but this will change as the other booksellers catch up. 

We want to stress, THE PRINCESS SCOUT is an all-new standalone and self-contained adventure, with new characters on a new world, so you don’t need to have read all the previous books in the Scout series to enjoy this one. 

Of course, we wouldn’t object if you were to buy the entire series

“Poisoned Stew to Go” • by Henry Herz


(with apologies to William Shakespeare)

BANQUO (to himself): Ah, Macbeth, thou art king now, as the witches promised, and I fear thou played’st most foully for it. Still, they also said the crown would pass not to your posterity, but to mine. So I have’st that going for me.

(Enter Macbeth and Lady Macbeth)

MACBETH: Welcome to our castle, Banquo. Thou art our chief guest. No celebration would be complete without thee. We have arranged a special dinner on your behalf. So please, no snacking. As anticipation shall make the, um, banquet sweeter, we will keep ourself alone till suppertime.

BANQUO: My lord.

(Exit Banquo)

MACBETH: To be the king is nothing if I am not safe. Banquo is my enemy and scarest the bejeezus out of me. He is noble, willing to take risks, and his mind never stops working. He has the wisdom to act bravely but also cleverly.

LADY MACBETH: Why not simply take his head, milord?

MACBETH: Well I could with barefaced power sweep him from my sight and take claim of the deed. Yet I must not. For there are certain friends that are both his and mine, whose support I cannot lightly discard. I must be able to wail his fall who I myself struck down. And thence it is, I must mask this foul business from the common eye.

LADY MACBETH: What will you do, milord?

MACBETH: Remain innocent of the plot, my dear, till thou may applaud the deed. Come, night, and raise your bloody, invisible hand to extinguish my foe. The day creatures begin to drowse, while night's black agents to their prey do rouse!

LADY MACBETH: My lord! Thou employ’st rhyme?

MACBETH: Marvel at my words, but hold thee still. No one questions my iron will. To sharpen a blade, one must hone. Now, where’s the royal telephone? 

(A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder. Phone rings.)

FIRST WITCH: Thank you for calling Acheron BBQ Pit. May I take your order? Uh, huh. Anything else, Lord Macbeth? Very well. That will be three pound twenty. Your order will be ready in the hour. We are open all night, milord. Yes, we do take credit cards. Good evening.

(hangs up)

FIRST WITCH: Four orders of beef stew, one with poison!

SECOND WITCH: Four stew, one spicy, aye.
Round about the cauldron go,
In the poisoned entrails throw.
Toad bespeckled, wart and blot,
Boil thou first in rusted pot.

THIRD WITCH: Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH: Fillet of a forest snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake.
Eye of new and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog.
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.

THIRD WITCH: Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH: Tooth of wolf and dragon scale,
Witches’ locks, teeth and tail
Of a ravenous deep-sea shark.
Root of hemlock dug in the dark.
Liver of a kangaroo,
Gall of goat and slips of yew,
Slivered in the moon’s eclipse.
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips.
Finger of birth-strangled child,
Ditch-delivered and reviled.

THIRD WITCH: Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH: Cool it with a wand of wood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
And now about the cauldron sing,
Like elves and fairies in a ring.

THIRD WITCH: By the pricking of my thumbs,
Someone wicked this way comes.
Open, locks, whoever knocks.

(Enter Macbeth)

MACBETH: We are in a royal hurry, as our coach is double parked. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?

FIRST WITCH: There’s no need for name-calling, milord. Welcome to Acheron BBQ Pit. Will you dine in or are you here to pick up?

OTHER CUSTOMER (interrupting): Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!

MACBETH: What’s this? How dos’t thou know me? Had I three ears, I’d listen with them all.

OTHER CUSTOMER: Oh, king be bold and laugh to scorn,
Banquo’s power for none of woman born,
shall harm ye.

MACBETH: That is all to the good, but I’m no fool. Will Banquo’s sons yet come to rule?

OTHER CUSTOMER: Be lion-hearted and take no care,
who frets or where conspirers fare.
Macbeth shall never vanquished be,
until to Dunsinane come a host of tree.

MACBETH: I like the sound of that, good dude. Excuse me whilst I claim my food. I called in four orders of stew. Poison into one you threw?

FIRST WITCH: Yes, milord. That’s three pound twenty. 

MACBETH: You have filled my urgent need. Now, I’m off to do the deed.
Keepeth the change.  



 

 

Henry Herz’s stories will/have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Pseudopod, Metastellar, Titan Books, Highlights for Children, Ladybug Magazine, and anthologies from Albert Whitman & Co., Blackstone Publishing, Brigids Gate Press, Air and Nothingness Press, Baen Books, and elsewhere. He’s edited seven anthologies and written twelve picture books. www.henryherz.com

 

 


 

RELEASING TODAY!

THE PRINCESS SCOUT

The new standalone novel in Henry Vogel’s best-selling Scout series. New characters! A new world! An all-new adventure!

Available TODAY, wherever e-books or print books are sold!

LINKS!