For you writers, belated presents for your works

What you wanted wasn't under any tree this week. So, to give you some inspiration, here's things stuck in the bottom of your stocking. Hope they give you some ganas to begin the new year. Check all upcoming deadlines.

Nakum - a website for mestizo writers

For Chicanos y otros to connect their writing better to our indio roots.

Info from the website: "For centuries, the identities of the peoples native to the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico have been subject to legal, political, and social interpretations that serve colonial interests.  The mission of Nakum, the Coahuiltecan word meaning “we speak” or “I speak to you,” is to offer a public forum through which scholars of Native and Chicana/o studies can do precisely what the title suggests: speak from their own perspectives.

"In keeping with the general mission of the Indigenous Cultures Institute, this journal offers a space for the continued exploration of Hispanics’ indigenous identities.  The journal thus brings together many of the conversations that the Institute has cultivated and, through its online presence, makes them available to a vast and growing audience of scholars, journalists, creative writers, and students with an abiding interest in hearing the voices of those who contribute to those discussions."

Open call for Sci-Fi reprints

Deadline: 4 January 2015.

Upper Rubber Boot Books issued an open call for reprint submissions for an upcoming anthology of fiction and poetry, The Museum of All Things Awesome And That Go Boom, to be published in 2016.

"Editor Joanne Merriam is interested in explosions, adventure, derring-do, swashbuckling, dinosaurs, ray guns, von Neumann machines, fanged monsters, flame-throwing killer robots, chainsaws, antimatter, and blunt force trauma. She is also interested in writing which explodes our perspective of science fiction itself—literary fiction employing SF tropes, cyberpunk, speculative fiction, magical realism, infernokrusher, etc., are all welcome."

Here's the details.

Open call for First Contact submissions

Book Smugglers Publishing is looking for original short stories from all around the world, written in English. "Our goal is to publish at least three short stories, unified by a central theme. Each short story will be accompanied by one original piece of artwork from an artist commissioned by us separately.

"The theme is: FIRST CONTACT. While we are huge fans of aliens and would very much like to receive submissions featuring first contact with aliens, we would love to receive a broader pool of stories and traditions. We welcome authors to subvert this theme, to expand horizons and adapt the prompt to other possible connotations and genres within the Speculative Fiction umbrella.

"What We’re Looking For:

• Diversity. We want to read and publish short stories that reflect the diverse world we live in, about and from traditionally underrepresented perspectives.

• Middle Grade, Young Adult, and Adult audience submissions are welcome.

• Creativity & Subversion. We love subversive stories. We want you to challenge the status quo with your characters, story telling technique, and themes.

• We are looking for original speculative fiction, between 1,500 and 17,500 words long. These SFF offerings must be previously unpublished."

Deadline: December 31 2014

Hidden Youth: Submissions

Crossed Genres Publications will publish Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (expected release Jan., 2016).

"We welcome stories by authors from all walks of life. We especially encourage submissions from members of marginalized groups within the speculative fiction community, including (but not limited to) people of color; people who are not from or living in the U.S.A.; QUILTBAG and GSM people; people with disabilities, chronic illness, or mental illness; and atheists, agnostics, and members of religious minorities. The protagonists of your story do not have to mirror your own heritage, identities, beliefs, or experiences.

"We also especially encourage short story submissions from people who don’t usually write in this format, including poets, playwrights, essayists and authors of historical fiction and historical romance."

Follow submission details carefully. Submissions due April 30, 2015

Before you sign a contract–things writers should know now

An article by Kristine Kathryn Rusch contains only her opinions about where U.S. publishing is headed. It's not all good, but seems to be worth knowing about. Read it after half a bottle of whiskey.

 

From: Business Musings: What Traditional Publishing Learned in 2014.

"Change has been happening for years, as mergers and acquisitions grew. Some of it has come from the fact that the large companies have finally understood the impact ebooks and online shopping have had on the industry.

"Much of the change is in response to 2013’s dismal fall sales, which happened courtesy of the Justice Department’s investigation of six major publishers and Apple for price-fixing. It didn’t matter how that case turned out; the case itself changed business as usual inside publishing."

Read the entire article.

Es todo, este año, 
RudyG