New Issue Live!

Huzzah! The fabulous February 2022 issue of Electric Spec is live!

We need to thank our excellent cover artist and authors. Hurray for our creatives!
We need to thank our excellent editors and tech staff. Thank you for all your hard work!
And most of all, we need to thank our readers! Woo hoo! We wouldn't exist without you!
Thank you, everyone!

From Artist Candiotti

We are excited to feature cover art "Fire Walk" by Barbara Candiotti in the fabulous February 2022 issue of Electric Spec. Barbara was kind enough to send along some comments about her art.

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This artwork shows a figure entering what appears to be an entrance to an outdoor luminous neon-blue maze. The setting is nighttime, and a star in the upper right is visible and a veiled planet overhead. Two human forms guard the entrance to the maze with outstretched arms and hands, guiding the golden initiate to their journey--a trial by fire of otherworldly origin.

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Interesting, Barbara. Thanks!
Barbara Candiotti’s work can be found at https://www.artstation.com/barbaracandiotti1.
Check out the art and the rest of the issue on February 28, 2022!

From Author Arch

We are excited to feature "Furnace Dreams" by Jasmine Arch in the fabulous February 2022 issue of Electric Spec. Jasmine was kind enough to send along some comments about her story.

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Furnace Dreams is not the only dragon story I've written, or the first of my dragon stories to get published. You could say dragons are a mild obsession of mine. I've written poems about them as well. Heck, my friends and I started an entire podcast just to have an excuse to squee about dragons and dragon mythology from all parts of the world.

But Furnace Dreams was the first piece in this series. Kona was the first dragon to appear inside my head and start talking to me. While she doesn't vocalise, I've found that eloquence and silence are not mutually exclusive.

I'd read a space opera in which unicorn horn is used to power the FTL drives of spaceships. Humans being humans, you can probably guess that it doesn't paint a pretty picture.

So I thought, "What if I placed that premise in a historical fantasy environment?" and there she was. A juvenile dragon chained up in the engine room of a steamship, sad, scared, and completely unaware of how strong she is or what she's truly capable of. Treated like a furnace--named for one, even.

Because, let's face it: if dragons had been real, if they'd truly existed at some point in history, Western culture wouldn't have eradicated them. Knights wouldn't have hunted them down. Instead, they'd have found a way to capture these magnificent creatures, break their spirits, and turn them into a commodity.

After all, it's how Europeans have historically treated indigenous cultures across the world, wherever their ships landed. Actually, you can forget historically. It's how we're still treating the entire planet.

And unless we start trying on someone else's shoes for a day, or a year--in Kona's case, her claws and wings--it's how we'll keep treating anything we don't know or understand. We tend to conveniently forget about our ability to empathise, both with our fellow humans and with other creatures, but the moment we stop thinking of them as living, breathing, feeling organisms, is the moment we allow ourselves and our peers treat them as objects, resources, commodities, toys even.

The minute you realise, not just cognitively but with every bone and sinew in your body, that you have more common ground than differences with the organism you don’t quite understand, is the moment you start seeing them as deserving kindness, compassion, empathy, and everything else you’d hope to receive for yourself, if the roles were reversed.

That, I believe, is where the power of stories lies. It can take us out of our own lives and worlds for a bit. While that in itself is an adventure every single time, it’s not just about the adventure and the escape.

Even though none of us know what it's like to be a dragon, let alone an enslaved dragon, a story like Furnace Dreams can help us imagine it. When I read a book like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, Michelle Obama's Becoming, or Rebecca Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning, the story doesn't just take me on an adventure. It shows me a struggle I wouldn't experience on my own, living in Belgium, working in a radiology department, or walking my dogs, and it shows me in a way that puts me in the middle of the struggle, rather than watching from the sidelines.

Storytelling enriches lives, and teaches empathy, rather than facts. No wonder it's the oldest tradition known to human cultures across the world. It's how we remember every other tradition.

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Very interesting! Thanks, Jasmine!
Be sure to check out "Furnace Dreams" and the rest of the Electric Spec stories on February 28, 2022!

From Author Lombardi

And now the fun begins... I get to start bragging about our fabulous upcoming issue of Electric Spec. We are excited to feature "The Dream-Quest of Sphinx" by Bruno Lombardi. Bruno was kind enough to send along some comments about his story.

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The genesis of this story came about as a twitter post, specifically this one: https://twitter.com/MicroSFF/status/1402385207068614659.

I absolutely adored the microfiction and decided it deserved a full story. As it may be obvious from the submitted Sphinx story, I'm a big Neil Gaiman fan.

"Sphinx" is based on a dearly departed cat of mine, also named Sphinx.

About 6 years ago, I had to make a rather painful decision and put my cat Sphinx to sleep. He had had a lot of health issues and, alas, it became too much for him. I had had him for about 10 years at that point. We were never able to ascertain exactly how old he was, as he was a starving stray cat I found outside my apartment one day. Best guess was that he was about 5 years old and had clearly been abandoned.

This story was essentially the result of a confluence of different factors: giving my cat Sphinx a nice send-off, so to speak; trying my hand at doing a pastiche of Gaiman and Lovecraft; and working on my urban fantasy writing skills.

I was worried that it wouldn't be terribly good but I was apparently proven incorrect.

I suppose that dovetails nicely into the one piece of advice I can give to other writers: don't be scared to experiment, as you are often your worst critic.

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Thanks a lot, Bruno! Very interesting!
Be sure to check out "The Dream-Quest of Sphinx" and the other stories on February 28!

Production Meeting Report

We had a great Production Meeting over the weekend! Editors Grayson, Nikki, and Candi were especially awesome! Your hard work is appreciated. :) Huzzzah!
Thank you to all the editors for reading slush in a timely manner. :)

If you submitted a story for the fabulous February 2022 issue: Thank You!
All the authors we received stories from that we couldn't use have received rejections from us by now. (Aw!) Please try again.
A few acceptances haven't quite gone out yet, but will this week. These take a little longer because they require contracts and additional info and instructions.

We had a bunch of really excellent stories which means we will attempt to ...publish six stories for this issue, rather than the traditional five. Here's hoping that works out!
We have also selected some very nice art! Here's hoping that works out, as well! :)

You may be wondering why or if our acceptances don't always work out.
We accept simultaneous submissions, so sometimes authors sell their stories elsewhere before we can publish them.
A couple times in the long history of the 'zine, authors and story editors were unable to agree on edits. In those cases, we released the pieces.
Finally, our time for acceptance for art is a bit longer than for fiction, so sometimes art is no longer available.

Next week I'll start bragging about the fabulous February 2022 issue of Electric Spec!