November 30 issue out!

The awesome November 30, 2019 issue of Electric Spec is live! Woo hoo!

Thanks so much to all the authors! Thanks so much to the cover artist!

Thanks so much to all the Electric Spec staff.

And, especially, thanks so much to all the readers!

Woo hoo!

Five More Days

Only five short days until the publication of the notable November 30, 2019 issue of Electric Spec! It's a very exciting time.

I haven't fully announced all the great stories we'll be featuring, so without further ado...

• "I Want You to Want Me" by Nicole Lungerhausen
• "Twenty-Nine Langwood Street" by Drema Deoraich
• "The Merciless Geometrical Angel" by Sergey Gerasimov
• "A Choice of Memories" by Michael Robertson
• "The Binary Conundrum" by Igor Ljubuncic
• Editor's Corner Story by Nikki Baird

Woo hoo! They're fabulous. Check them all out on November 30!

from Author Robertson

We're pleased to present the story "A Choice of Memories" by Michael Robertson in our notable November 30, 2019 issue of Electric Spec! Here's what the author has to say about it...

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I was trying to think of a novel way to incorporate faster-than-light travel in a story, when I was struck by the thought of horse drawn carriages. What if, instead of building a new kind of drive, people encountered a new kind of creature, and made it into a beast of burden?

That's where my idea for geists came from. Filling in the concept also added questions that I tried to address in the story. Is it moral to use a creature for your own ends? The substantial differences between a geist's consciousness and a human's complicate the moral question, and of course there are those in this world who would rather not think about such questions at all.

The characters came to life for me, first, in the ways they related to their work. I tried to give the captain a shrewd arrogance, with a dash of humor, that fit her role as a leader and someone who had climbed the ranks to get where she was. I found in Jeda a world-weary professionalism with an aversion to thinking about some of the hard questions of working with geists.

The story came together around the question of how the Solar Federation ought to treat geists. What do the characters value more, the rights of alien creatures, or the practical benefits of harnessing their abilities? Examples of both responses appear, and I nodded toward a third path with the story's resolution.

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Very interesting, Michael! Thanks!

Check out all the stories on November 30!

From Author Lungerhausen

We are pleased to present "I Want You to Want Me" by Nicole Lungerhausen in our notable November 30, 2019 issue of Electric Spec. Here's what she has to say...

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Sometimes other stories are cued up and waiting in my subconscious while I'm actively working on another project. At the time I started "I Want You to Want Me", I was working on on a secondary world epic fantasy story that wasn’t going particularly well. While I liked the world and characters I'd made, I couldn't seem to figure what to do with them, or what point I was trying to make with the story itself. And the longer I pushed and pulled on the story parts, the more of a heavy-handed hot mess it became.

So I decided to take a break from the struggle and start a new story. I wanted to write something silly and offbeat that would make me laugh while I wrote it. The inspiration point came from "100 Days of Flash Prompts" by E.A. Deverell (www.eadeverell.com). The specific prompt was "an impulse buy leads to intergalactic warfare". While "I Want You to Want Me" probably escalates to more of an interspecies fracas than intergalactic warfare, it still leads to an increasingly chaotic, dangerous, and weird journey for Panu, the main character.

I love Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shel Silverstein, and 90's Australian comedies. Though the characters, setting, and plot of this story are all mine, the story tone unabashedly echoes these influences. And it’s funny. . .even though “I Want You to Want Me” is a total 180 from the epic fantasy story I ended up abandoning, they share a similar focus on love and friendship and the fear of being left behind. It's a good reminder that, as much as I wish it was otherwise, the process of writing about the stuff that matters to me rarely follows a straight line.

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Thanks, Nicole! Very interesting!

from Author Deoraich

It's very exciting! The notable November 30,2019 issue of Electric Spec is in the works. We had our Production Meeting and, as usual, it was diffiult picking amongst so many good stories. Folks should be getting their email notifications with decisions this week. Without further ado, let's start bragging on the new stories...

We're very pleased to be presenting "29 Langwood Street" by Author Drema Deòraich. She tells us...

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“29 Langwood Street” was one of my very first short stories; its subject is near and dear to my heart, and I’d like to think I’d be as brave as Joe if confronted with that scenario.

Writing is such a big part of my life, I feel a little lost and adrift when I can’t get to the keyboard for a few days. Just like anything else, the more I do it, the more skilled my craft. And even though writing is sometimes the hardest thing to do, I can’t not write. Penning new stories, or even revising existing ones that haven’t yet found a home, feeds my spirit.

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Very interesting! Thanks for sharing, Drema!