May 2015 prod meeting

We, the Electric Spec Editors, are hard at work on the marvelous May 31, 2015 issue! Recently, we had the production meeting. We met at a new establishment which did serve adult beverages. We all got carded--which was hilarious. :) I, personally, imbibed 5 different types of beer, but Editors Betsy and Dave went all fancy with the bourbon. The food was yummy. We did pat ourselves on the back a little for making Electric Spec a success for almost a decade. (Yeah!)

But, I know those aren't the types of details you're interested in. We had a vigorous discussion of the stories. One major consideration ended up being issue balance. We picked 2 SF stories, 2 fantasies, and 1 horror story. It was difficult because there were so many good ones, but we couldn't pick 5 fantasies, for example. Another major consideration was the story ending. Did the protagonist(s) do anything to cause the ending? Was something different at the end?

I emailed all the hold-for-voting folks who didn't get into the issue. If you're one of those, you should feel good about getting into hold-for-voting. We're sorry we can't published all the stories in h-f-v! We are in the process of emailing all the "yes" authors. Please send back your contracts promptly so we can start editing. We'd love to have more authors blog about their stories here, too. Please consider it if we're publishing your story.

Fun fact: we are nearing the half-million mark (500,000) for page views of the blog. Tell your friends. Come on, let's push it over the edge. :)

I'd like to give a special shout-out to our Associate Editor Nikki Baird who helps us read the slushy stories. Yeah, Nikki!

I'd also like to give a special shout-out to prospective authors. We wouldn't even have a 'zine if you didn't send us your works of art. Yeah, you!