Happy Holidays!

girl cooties rock!

There's a new group on our planet called Girl Cooties. They are all about Science fiction for women by women. Their welcome page says If you’re interested character-based stories that examine who we are and how the big questions of science and society affect us in our daily lives, this is the meeting place for you. Yay!
And We have no interest in negativity or in tearing others down. Yay!

They formed to help address The Leaky Pipeline: Where are Women’s Voices in Science Fiction? question. The bottom line is fewer female SF authors are published and reviewed. Boo! Check out Dr. K. Kitts' article here.

Personally, I love SF--and,spoiler alert--I am female. If you love SF, Definitely check out the whole awesome Girl Cooties site here. Girl Cooties Rock!

And don't worry, here at Electric Spec we still love male (and agender, bigender, transgender, cisgender, basically all genders) authors and fantasy, and macabre horror, and all other kinds of speculative fiction.
Send us your stories!

story endings

Yes, we are still revelling in the fabulous November 30, 2016 issue of Electric Spec! But we are also starting work on the fabulous Februrary 2017 (!) issue.

I've been working on the slush pile...

There seems to be two different schools of thought on story endings. I've read some stories in slush which seem to sort of peter out.
Some people might say this is a sophisticated ending, an artistic ending. I'm afraid I would say this is not an emotionally satisfying ending. If you survey the stories in our 'zine we tend not to publish the peter-out endings.

The alternative school of thought is a kapow-whiz-bang! ending. I prefer these. I want authors to engage my emotions. Make me laugh! Make me cry! Make me say, "Aw!" I want authors to take me on a journey. Let's go somewhere. Let's have an adventure!

Of course, not all editors agree with me.

No one ever said writing was easy...

favorites

Here at Electric Spec we're still revelling in the stories in our November 31 2016 issue. They're all quite different, from Lenin's Nurse: Notes for a Dissertation by Chris Barnham to Gazer by Karen Osborne to The Yuru-chara of Hector, NY by Morgan Crooks to Childe Roland by Sidney Blaylock, Jr. to Mered's Lament by Chris Walker. (And yes, that may be the longest sentence I've ever written!)

What's your favorite? I must admit, I really enjoyed them all!

If you haven't read them all yet: do so!

It's also neat that we got so much behind-the-scenes info from authors, here on the blog.
Thanks, authors!

And soon we'll begin work on the 2017 issues...