Tag: speculative fiction

Market News: Halo In The Sky in SQ Mag

As I stated a short while ago, SQ Mag, who I have close association, wanted a steampunk story to add to a soft SP theme running in the 1 September 2012 issue, so I gladly obliged. After close consideration, the editor agreed to publishing it nine days after submission. This is my fourth steampunk story published, and there are two under consideration elsewhere in the market, so perhaps, one day, I will compile an anthology, or derive a novel from them – as most have some common threads.

Another pleasure about this publication, is that I am sharing the same edition with other excellent writers, including the luminaries Jay Lake and Gary McMahon.

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Aurealis Magazine – Poor PR

Something interesting for you Australian specfic writers, or those who are interested in Aurealis Magazine. Their editor has retired and they are closed to submissions. Those who submitted prior to the closure are totally in the dark – every query gets a stock standard blurb which makes no statement on the status of pre-closure submissions.

Their PR is poor indeed.

I sent an email query to the editor email address as well as another, generic address. When I got the following, I sent an email back to a ‘Stephen’, and got exactly the same blurb back. They are clearly not reading their email AT ALL.

Here is an image of the blurb. Try to work out how it responds to a query about what the status of pre-closure emails are about:

With the retirement of current editor, Stuart Mayne, the publishers of Aurealis, are taking the
opportunity to restructure and improve the magazine. The new look Aurealis will be in place by the end
of 2011. In the meantime, AurealisXpress, our monthly e-bulletin for subscribers will continue. We
will be open for story submissions again around the middle of the year. Updates will be published in
AurealisXpress and on the website http://www.aurealis.com.au.

All orders (books, back issues etc.) will continue to be processed as usual.

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