Strange Horizons! And right now they’re having a fundraiser.
Strange Horizons is a professional market that pays its writers well. My experience editing my story Birds with Karen Meisner, one of their editors, was really top-notch. She was fully engaged with piece, and made sure the story shined. And Strange Horizons is widely read, too (how do I know? Among other places, Birds turned up in Chinese, was debated in Sweden and reviewed by Locus Magazine)
As I mentioned, they’re having a fund drive, which means you get to directly support a well-curated list of writers producing excellent work. Also, their fund drive includes a number of prizes — donated works from their writers (including, incidentally, a signed copy of Couch).
Street Books has had a fantastic Summer. In fact, I think the project went so much better than Laura expected that she and her and her co-conspirators (Sue Zalokar, among others) have decided to turn it into a year round project.
One of the things I’m most excited about in the long-term project is converting existing patrons into paid librarians. Totally awesome.
In order to get a start with funding, they’ve started a Kickstarter project:
Reading Local asked a few other writers to contribute a piece for their re-launching this Summer.
My piece on the theme is now out. It’s a strange little cubicle-landia, ad-agency piece, entitled “Launch Night at Dante’s Ad Agency“, and in the spirit of James Frey, that pretty much happened to me exactly.
My fellow writing-group member Karen Munro had her piece on the same theme (though a different sort of launch) come out last week. It’s called ‘Flight Suit‘, and it’s a great piece. Check it out.
We’re going to see a play, some art galleries, eat some good food and weather a hurricane. Your basic NYC trip.
Hurricane hits Saturday night, and the apartment we rented is at the Zone A/Zone B boundary line in the map below. Zone A is mandatory evacuation. Provided our flight doesn’t get canceled, see you on the other side!
Even better, she announced on the Street Books blog that they’ve officially decided to continue past their original end-date (and we three on the home-front are happy to hear that she will have help).
The section I read was extremely fun – and just look at that cover!
While I’m at it – I just had a look at some of the other books by writers I met while there. I read sections from nearly all these books/stories, and it’s really fun and exciting — nay, magical — to see them in print now.
