Huzzah! Marvelous May Issue!

Huzzah! The Marvelous May 2023 Electric Spec issue is live!

Thank you to our cover artist! Thank you to all our authors! Woo hoo! We appreciate you!

Thank you so much to the entire Electric Spec editorial team! Woo hoo! We appreciate you!

Thank you especially to the readers! We wouldn't exist without you. :)

Issue Sneak Peek!

Wow! Things are coming down to the wire! Tomorrow we will publish the marvelous May 31, 2023 issue of Electric Spec! This is the second issue of our eighteenth year! Woo hoo!

Psst! If you're interested, there's a link to a secret sneak peek of the new issue: here.
It's only good for a limited time...

Stories Announcement!

We are hard at work behind the scenes creating the marvelous May 2023 issue of Electric Spec! The stories are all coming along! I can't believe we'll publish the new issue in just a little over a week's time. We are far enough along that we can announce the fabulous featured stories. Without further ado they are:

• Secret Identity by James Van Pelt
• Blackwood Dragon Blues by Michael Haynes
• The Woman in the Mirror by Marissa Synder
• Bad Weed by Alison McBain and Edward Ahern
• Between a Roc and a Hard Case by L.V. Brooks

Woo hoo!
Be sure to check them all out on May 31, 2023!

First Lines

We are working hard behind the scenes on the marvelous May 2023 issue of Electric Spec! We're excited about it. :) To entice you as well, here are the first lines of the stories we will feature:

• The box was the wrong size.
• Charlotte, Cepeda's prim administrator (no one has secretaries anymore), showed Heather into the office.
• "Right," Martha said, reappearing as suddenly as she'd vanished.
• Naim snuck out of the house just after midnight dressed in black jeans, black shirt and a black balaclava pulled over his face.
• The space between worlds is cold and fragile, thin as a film on still water.

Stay tuned to this spot for more info about the new issue next week!

From Artist King

We are excited to feature original art "Argyle Cat" by E.E./Elizabeth Eve King for our May 2023 cover. The artist was kind enough to send along some comments about the piece:

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White reflects all color. Look at a "white" wall and concentrate. You will see browns, blues, yellows, magentas, and infinite shades of reality.

All colors absorb light reflecting a single hue back to the observer, except black. Black absorbs all light. It rarely occurs in nature, and only then in minerals. I never use black paint, instead I use mixtures of umber, acra and phalo blue which look dark, but unlike black draws the viewer into the painting.

In my work, I make details as intrinsic a part of the painting as the focal point. By emphasizing the details that form the whole, I emphasize the mood. Since emotion is shaped by the totality, my pieces focus on emotion. And life is neither emotionally, nor visually simple.

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Very interesting! Thanks a lot!
And without further ado, here's a sneek peak:

Notes from the Production Meeting

We recently had our Production Meeting for the upcoming marvelous May 2023 issue of Electric Spec! We had great quality stories in slush. If you submitted: Thank You Very Much!
I think all the rejections have gone out. (Check your spam/junk folder!) Editors are still contacting authors regarding acceptances. (Check your spam/junk folder!)
One of our editors saved the day by reading an extra amount of slush. (Thank you, Candi!)

We had a fun discussion on the pros and cons of ambiguous-ending stories. Do you like them or dislike them? Different editors had different opinions.
Oddly, we had a bunch of ghost stories that made it to hold-for-voting. Sadly, we could only choose one ghost story. It's curious how stories for a particular issue seem to have similar themes or topics. For example, this time we had ghosts and last time we had a bunch of twins/triplets stories. We are seeing more stories of high fantasy mashed up with other stuff; I've been enjoying those. We hardly had any hard SF this time. (Weird!) We are seeing fewer stories with a political axe to grind (Thank goodness!).

Next week I'll start bragging about our new stories! And, hopefully, we'll start hearing directly from our new authors!