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Shipping. Blurbage. Submissions status. Or: "It's compressive, intelligent, and enlightening." And open!
Posted on 2010-03-15 at 16:35 by montsamu
Well, I’ve printed a holiday greeting cards list number of shipping labels… but no UPS truck in sight. So a quick update on two topics.
Blurbage! From Tim Deal of Shroud Publishing, on my interview of D. Harlan Wilson:
“It’s compressive, intelligent, and enlightening.”That’s fun stuff right there. So, on to point number two:
Submissions status! I’ve been unofficially open since early February, and might as well just call it official. While the guidelines are a touch out of date (now that I’m printing physical magazines as well) they suffice for the most part, with perhaps a touch of extra guidance and hintery as to what I am looking for:
- Local (somewhere around Durham, NC, US) short fiction, both original and reprint.
- Poetry, both original and reprint.
- For non-local short fiction, it needs to be on the shorter side, 1000-3000 words or so. I’ve committed to a great non-local story per issue through 2010, so if you want to know before late 2010 if I can pick up your story of 4000+ words, I’m probably not a great place to submit for that right now. That said… I’ll read pretty much anything you care to send.
- Reviews and interviews and articles. Query on this, I have some things in mind I’d like to include reviews of, so if you’re open to suggestions, go ahead and ask. (editors at bullspec dot com)
- Art and photography, both original and reprinted, and both stand alone and to accompany stories. For the latter, query with some sample art and we can talk.
- Cover Art for Issue #2 is pretty high up on my list.
- Looking way, way ahead: some pitches for 2011’s serialized graphic short story.
Whew. Still no UPS truck. Totally unfair. I have nearly every page for issue #2 accounted (or at least planned) for, but I’m going to let #1 have the spotlight a little longer. I do nearly desperately need a local fiction piece for issue #2, so if you’re local, say hello!
Posted in announcements
BULL SPEC #1 Launch Party: Tuesday 23 March at 7 PM at The Regulator Bookshop
Posted on 2010-03-11 at 18:15 by montsamu
You are (well, everybody is!) cordially/enthusiastically invited to the BULL SPEC #1 launch party on Tuesday the 23rd of March at 7 PM! The host will be Durham’s The Regulator Bookshop on 9th Street. (720 Ninth Street to be exact.) So come in, come downstairs, meet and greet some of the authors and other folks involved with not just the first issue but the rest of Bull Spec — translators, narrators, editors, helpers, etc.
No cost to attend (of course! that would be weird…) though, also of course, there will be copies of BULL SPEC #1 on hand. I’m hoping to have at least one of the local authors read from their story, along with a few other surprises. (We’re working on a giveaway item or two, nothing finalized yet so no promises.)
So: please! Please come and say hello, talk about writing, talk about editing and publishing, talk about reading, and help celebrate the end result of a few months of pretty darned hard work.
And if you are on Facebook, there’s an event page there, too.
Posted in announcements, bull spec #1, events
The presses are rolling!
Posted on 2010-03-08 at 17:13 by montsamu
Well, it has been quite a learning process. But, finally, the proof corrections are in, re-proofed, agonized over, and, gulp, paid for. But the presses are finally rolling on BULL SPEC #1!
Final content for issue #1 (72 pages, 16 in full color):
SHORT FICTION:
- C. S. Fuqua: “Rise Up” (with cover illustration by Mike Gallagher)
- Peter Wood: “Almost a Good Day to Go Outside”
- Natania Barron: “Doctor Adderson’s Lens” (with photo by Tennille Heinonen)
- Michael Jasper: “A Gathering of Doorways”
- Michael Gallagher: “Closed System” (part 1 of 4)
- Kaolin Fire: “Inspired by Windmills”
- Ralan Conley: “Ratang”
- Josh Whiton: “There Are No Orcs” (translated into Spanish by Itzel Leaf and into French by Andrew Matte)
- Jamie Keys: “Environments Exercise Part 1”
- Christopher Woods: “The Clairvoyants’ Hotel”
- D. Harlan Wilson
- Lee Hammock
- Sci-Fi Genre
- Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction (by D. Harlan Wilson)
- Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance (by D. Harlan Wilson) (reviewed by J. David Osborne)
- The Windup Girl (by Paolo Bacigalupi) (reviewed by Blue Tyson)
- Panverse One (edited by Dario Ciriello) (reviewed by Charles Tan)
[Update: After the break, the final cover as well as page 2 of Bull Spec #1 which is the “contents” page…]
[Hooray! And per my printer, the first print run is scheduled to ship out tomorrow (Thursday the 11th) morning!]
Posted in announcements, bull spec #1
BULL SPEC #1 has gone to the printers!
Posted on 2010-02-26 at 17:14 by montsamu
Well, I just uploaded the file bullspec-01-201002261115.pdf to my printers. I don’t really know what to expect next as this is the first issue, but, well, it’s out there! 72 pages and about a month later than I’d hoped, but I’m incredibly excited to receive that first shipment of a big box of magazines and start delivering them to local bookstores The Regulator Bookshop, Quail Ridge Books & Music, and Internationalist Books & Community Center and mailing out (or for local folks, delivering courier-style!) those pre-orders.
So much to say, but for now, a few bits which didn’t make it into the “thanks and welcome to Bull Spec” editorial column:
First and foremost, because I thanked her nearly lastly in the magazine, the biggest thank you of all goes to my wife, Kendra, for her support of this crazy dream. Probably she should have talked me out of it… but instead she told me to “go for it” and backed me up every step of the way.
Thank you to all the writers who trusted me with your submissions, which overwhelmed me both in their number and in their quality. Thank you to Duotrope’s Digest and Ralan’s List for your support and pointing those writers my way.
Thank you to Dan Shannon (pictured) at Durham Magazine (and Chapel Hill Magazine) for your advice on publishing and encouragement, and for sharing your printer, Publishers Press, with me. I don’t think this would have been possible without their support. Thank you, Bryan and Dee at Publishers Press, for treating a tiny, tiny customer like an important one.
Thank you to Jeff VanderMeer for your good luck wishes! Sure, it was a long line of people getting you to sign Finch and in so many words telling you what to write in it… but I’ll take it.
Thank you to Paul Riddell for the fun mailer from your Texas Triffid Ranch, the first “official” BULL SPEC mail. (I won’t count the pile of mass mailings addressed to the PO Box’s previous occupant if you won’t.)
Thanks to the twin buoys by which my likely ill-advised efforts have been guided. The first is Mur Lafferty’s advice on her I Should Be Writing podcast, “It’s OK to suck!” Having decided to apply this to editing, design, and publishing, new editor of Durham Magazine Matt Dees had another point of view for me, “Dare not to suck!”
Dad, while I thanked you for my life-long love of science fiction and fantasy, thanks in particular for Heinlein’s “Space Cadet.” I couldn’t have asked for a better first “real” book. Mom, while I thanked you for the trips to the library, thanks also for always encouraging me to be myself and follow my dreams. Heather, thanks for bookshelves full of “hand me down” books over the years and someone to talk to about them.
All those teachers over the years: Mr. Loeffler, Mr. Stuckey, Mr. Cox, Mr. Shank, Mr. Munn, Mr. Brice, Mrs. Ross, Mr. Walton, Mr. Hill, Prof. Rauh, Prof. Mathur, and so many others I cannot even recall by name. I am not sure how many individual pieces of information I remember but I remember scenes and themes, the overriding theme being one of an expectation of an honest effort, and a feeling that you all genuinely cared that I learn something, whether it was grammar, or history, or math, or how to make a turtle move on a computer screen, or simply how to grow up and take responsibility for my own life. You were all role models to me and I often think fondly of each of you. Thank you so very much for a foundation of learning and life.
Thanks to Kim Stanley Robinson’s inspiring challenge that “we need to imagine what it might be like if we did things well enough to say to our kids, we did our best, this is about as good as it was when it was handed to us, take care of it and do better.”
Thanks to Uri for being more understanding than I deserve about moving his fiction to issue #2. Thanks to Duotrope’s Digest for giving me reprint permission for some of their market information, even though that is another thing which didn’t make it into the final 72 pages. (It was supposed to be 64, darn it!)
And finally a heartfelt thanks and welcome to anyone so gracious enough to give this magazine a chance and a read.
Whew. Now I get to do this all over again. (Along with getting out and spreading the word about the issue, finalizing the electronic versions and audiobooks, …) This time I’m aiming for just two weeks late instead of four…
Posted in announcements, bull spec #1
64 pages cannot contain Bull Spec #1.
Posted on 2010-02-19 at 03:32 by montsamu
So it will have to be bigger.
That is all.
Posted in Uncategorized
Sneak Peek: BULL SPEC #1's cover (draft)
Posted on 2010-02-05 at 22:36 by montsamu
Still some tinkering to do in all likelihood, but for the most part I’m going to leave it alone. Interior design and layout is going actually quite nicely this week, though still some important things to decide on and some last bits of art to select and place.
Anyway; here’s something fairly close to what should any week now be on a shelf near you, if you’re in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area, or in your mailbox if you’re elsewhere, with cover art by CLOSED SYSTEM’s Mike Gallagher to accompany the feature fiction for this issue, C. S. Fuqua’s RISE UP:
And after the jump? The back cover, though it is much, much more subject to change and tinkering.
Thanks for checking it out, and for any feedback! The “font of interest” here is Bleeding Cowboys and it is used by permission. As always, the Burning Catalonian Bull is by Stuart Yeates and is used and available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.
Posted in announcements, bull spec #1, sneak peeks
Updates galore.
Posted on 2010-01-28 at 18:46 by montsamu
Wow, somehow it’s been two weeks since the last post here, and I wanted to let folks know BULL SPEC is still here, and that there are a few updates on what BULL SPEC has been up to, bullet point style:
- Spanish narration is (beautifully!) done for our first benefit short, Joe Meno’s “The Architecture of the Moon,” thanks to Yda Balcazar. Additional huge thanks to Itzel Leaf, Spanish translator, and Matthew Nis Leerberg, who provided editing for the Spanish translation. Andrew Matte finished his first draft of the French translation, but there’s still some work to do there to edit, finalize, and narrate. Finally, I had a chance to sit down with the folks at Durham Literacy about the project, and they’re excited to see the end result. So am I!
- The transcriptions of the Lee Hammock and Sci Fi Genre Comics & Games interviews came in at 8000+ and 9000+ words, respectively. Both were a lot of fun, and many thanks here to the interviewees as well as to Chris Hemp, who handled the video.
- BULL SPEC #1 will include a second original short story, by Raleigh’s Peter Wood.
- BULL SPEC #1 will include a steampunk short story by local author Natania Barron. She said it was an awesome thing, and who am I to argue?
- BULL SPEC #1 will include a “Mystic Israel”-set Choose Your Own Adventure by Uri Grey.
- BULL SPEC #1 will also include an excerpt of local author Michael Jasper’s novel A Gathering of Doorways.
- And now the bad news. BULL SPEC #1 is not going to make the hoped for “go to print” date of “late January.” I’d rather take a little more time to get a few more things right (and hopefully finally finish that crossword?) than rush something that’s not finished, though eventually I will stop tinkering and “press the button.” So: the “Spring” issue will be available in mid-to-late-February.
- Going along with that, BULL SPEC will not be opening for submissions on 1 February. I need to finish #1 and have a few days to breathe, so certainly not before 10 February and I will keep everyone posted.
Posted in announcements
Sneak peek: "Closed System" by Mike Gallagher.
Posted on 2010-01-13 at 19:21 by montsamu
“Closed System” is a graphic short story (comic book) which will be serialized in the 2010 quarterly run of BULL SPEC. When artist and writer Mike Gallagher pitched the idea of a “guide to time travel by giant disembodied ape head” I must say I was pretty interested. When he sent me the first sketches I knew I had the artist I wanted, and now that I have the first installment of the story for BULL SPEC #1 I can’t wait to show it off. So, the cover for CLOSED SYSTEM:
I didn’t give Mike much of a runway to put together the first four pages for the first issue, but he really came through both with an interesting story and lovely art:
Posted in announcements, bull spec #1, closed system, mike gallagher
BULL SPEC #1 will be available at...
Posted on 2010-01-09 at 03:28 by montsamu
At least three fine local bookstores, and of course online where some pre-orders have indeed started to trickle in. Thanks very much for those, it is deeply appreciated.
First up was The Regulator Bookshop on 9th Street in Durham. They’ve been my local bookstore for almost 10 years now, and were very enthusiastic and supportive of carrying the magazine. So enthusiastic that we’re trying to work out a date for the BULL SPEC #1 launch party there in early February! I’m glad to be able to say (after having a nice meeting with them) that some folks from Durham Literacy will be there as all BULL SPEC proceeds from sales at the launch party are going to them and I really hope it will be a fun event, with readings from some of our local narrators and translators, maybe some other fun in the works. More to come on that in the coming weeks to be sure.
Then a very happy New Years Eve bit of news for me was hearing back from the excellent Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh that they’d love to find me some shelf space as well, and yesterday I found out that I’ll also have a place to call “home” in Chapel Hill in the form of Internationalist Books on West Franklin Street.
Thanks very much to the folks at these great local bookstores for, sight unseen, being so supportive and positive about carrying BULL SPEC. It’s very much appreciated and I’m still feeling the warm fuzzies from the well wishes.
Posted in announcements
We're pleased to announce that BULL SPEC #1 is open for pre-orders.
Posted on 2009-12-14 at 14:20 by montsamu
While I’m sure we’ll find the edge cases that lurk and wait to bite, no orders are getting mangled or lost. So: BULL SPEC #1 is open for pre-orders: http://www.bullspec.com/order.
[And source code for the Google App Engine to Paypal ExpressCheckout portion of the site is available on GitHub: bullpay.py]
While any feedback would be great, in particular:
- Is having a pre-filled “suggested” gift appropriate? If not, should it be “0” or “empty” — with “empty” requiring some value to be entered before submitting the form?
- Do the gift buttons (0, less, more, roundup, enter my own, suggest) make sense?
- Would a “pre-confirmation” page be better or worse? It would fit in between the order form and navigating to Paypal. We started with such a page but took it out.
Thanks! We even had one pre-order already this afternoon!
Posted in code, meta
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