tough decisions

We are still hard at work on the notable November 2020 issue of Electric Spec. We finished the stories in the slush pile. (Thank you sincerely for sending us your stories!)
The author of every story we received between July 16 thru midnight Oct 15 should have received some kind of email from us. If you sent a story during that time period and didn't hear from us, your story was not received. :( Please try sending again--with appropriate subject line.

Wow! There were a of tough decisions made! We received many good, publishable stories but had to winnow the list down to the top twenty for the production meeting.

Next time I'll tell you about the production meeting.
Take care!

Hard At Work

The deadline for the awesome November 2020 issue of Electric Spec has passed. Thank you for sending us your stories! (Of course, we are now accepting submisisons for the fabulous February 2021 issue.)

Now that you've done your part, the editors are hard at work behind the scenes. We have to carefully read the hundreds of stories we received. We have about a week left to make the first pass throught the slush pile. Sadly, some of the stories will be rejected. All the Electric Spec editors are also writers, so we hate to do this, but it's part of the process. We'd love to write critiques of all the stories we receive, but we just don't have the resources for this. :(

I'll share more behind the scenes info here next week. For now, I better get back to work!

Showing and Telling

Wow! The Electric Spec submisison deadline for the notable November issue is coming up fast! October 15, 2020! Get those stories in! We are hard at work reading the stories in our in-boxes. Thanks for sending us your stories. We have been receiving more and more stories in the last couple years (Yay!) but consequently our response time has increased. However, it cannot be more than three-and-a-half months, since we publish quarterly.

You may have heard the writing rule: 'Show, don't tell.' Like all writing rules, take this with a grain of salt. In general, however, fiction should include both showing and telling. The relative amount of showing and telling depends on the market. You can see the relative amounts of showing and telling by reading Electric Spec's (free!) past stories. We need some showing. In fact, I rejected a story recently that was all telling. Another market might have chosen it; but we would not.

Good luck with your showing and/or telling!

avoid dreams

The next Electric Spec deadline is fast approaching: October 15, 2020. Get your story in!

We've been reading the submitted stories. (Thanks for submitting!) I read one recently that started with ...a dream. In general, starting with a dream is problematic. This is because the beginning of the story is a promise of what's to come. If the story starts with skiing polar bears in a dream, there had better be something related to skiing polar bears at some point in the story. In addition, dreams are inherently irrational. Beginning with a dream promises irrationality in the story.

Thus, consider avoiding dreams in your story. Good luck whatever you decide. :)