Author: David Steffen

David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer. If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee! He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder, a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots. He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things.

The Best of Escape Pod 2014

written by David Steffen

It’s been a great year for Escape Pod with some of my favorite episodes ever after they and their sister podcasts came back from the brink of having to close due to lack of funds. The podcast is still edited by Norm Sherman, with some help this previous year from Mur Lafferty who has now moved on to edit Mothership, an upcoming Escape Artists tie-in. Just a few days ago there was a metacast that announced big new things coming up, including that Alasdair Stuart and J. Daniel Sawyer are now owners of the company. Here’s to many more years.

(Keeping it brief on this one because, due to technical issues, this is literally the third time I’ve retyped this)

The List

1. “Rachel in Love” by Pat Murphy

2. “That Other Sea” by William Ledbetter

3. “Kumara” by Seth Dickinson

4. “A Struggle Between Rivals Ends Surprisingly” by Oliver Buckram

5. “The Sky is Bright and Blue, and Full of Stars” by Edward Ashton

Honorable Mention

“Shared Faces” by Anaea Lay

The Best of Podcastle 2014

written by David Steffen

It’s been a great year for Podcastle with some of my favorite episodes ever after they and their sister podcasts came back from the brink of having to close due to lack of funds. The podcast is still edited by Dave Thompson and Anna Schwind and they’re doing a great job.Just a few days ago there was a metacast that announced big new things coming up, including that Alasdair Stuart and J. Daniel Sawyer are now owners of the company. Just yesterday I learned that Dave and Anna are stepping down from their editorial positions early this year after five years in the position–I hear that the full details are in the most recent episode along with the story Rachael K. Jones’ “Makeisha in Time” but I haven’t had time to sync my iPod and listen since I heard this, so I don’t know much more about it yet.

On to the list!

The List

1. “Heartless” by Peadar O Guilin

2. “The MSG Golem” by Ken Liu

3. “Stranger vs. The Malevolent Malignancy” by Jim C. Hines

4. “Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy” by Saladin Ahmed

5. “Gazing into the Carnauba Wax Eyes of the Future” by Keffy R.M. Kehrli

6. “Help Summon the Most Holy Folded One!” by Harry Connolly

Honorable Mentions

“The Old Woman With No Teeth” by Patricia Russo

“Underbridge” by Peter S. Beagle

“Ill Met in Ulthar” by T.A. Pratt

The Best of Pseudopod 2014

written by David Steffen

Another solid year of Pseudopod after they and their sister podcasts came back from the brink of having to close due to lack of funds. The podcast is edited, as it has been for years, by Shawn Garrett. Just a few days ago there was a metacast that announced big new things coming up, including that Alasdair Stuart and J. Daniel Sawyer are now owners of the company.

On to the list!

The List

1. “The Screwfly Solution” by James Tiptree, Jr.

2. “The Wriggling Death” by Harold Gross

3. “Shadow Transit” by Ferrett Steinmetz

4. “The Metal and Its Mold” by Tim W. Burke

5. “Prince of Flowers” by Elizabeth Hand

6. “The Signalman” by Charles Dickens

Honorable Mentions

“Kraken Rising” by Andrew Reid

“The Violin Family” by James Douglas

“File Under” by Lisamarie Lamb

Award Eligibility Post 2014

written by David Steffen

And now the gratuitous award eligibility post–feel free to skip over it if you’re not interested, but figured there might be someone out there who might want to see it. This post covers works by Diabolical Plots and by me personally.

From time to time people ask me if they can nominate the Submission Grinder. In the past, I thought the answer was “no” because most of the awards seemed to be very publisher focused–so the best way I thought to try to recognize the Submission Grinder would be to nominate Diabolical Plots. But there ARE a couple categories the Submission Grinder qualifies for in some awards, so I’ve listed those two first.

And just to be clear, no I don’t really think we have a shot at anything, but I see no reason why I can’t mention what we’re eligible for.

Writer’s Resource/Information/News Source

1. The Submissions Grinder

I wasn’t aware of this award until this year, part of the Preditors and Editors Reader Poll. Someone has seen fit to nominate the Grinder, so thought it would be worth mentioning.

World Fantasy Special Award – Non Professional

1. The Submissions Grinder

Likewise, I wasn’t aware of this award, but it’s another way to recognize the Submission Grinder directly if you want to see it recognized.

Best Short Story

1. “Catastrophic Failure” by David Steffen at Perihelion

2. “Always There” by David Steffen at Lakeside Circus

3. “Unraveling” by David Steffen at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine

4. “A Switch in Time” by David Steffen at Perihelion

5. “The Thing About Analyn” by David Steffen at Stupefying Stories

Best Related Work

All of the articles that I’ve written here and in SF Signal are eligible for this category, but I’m not going to list all dozens of them. I’ll just mention the one that I thought was most notable:

1. The Best Podcast Fiction of All Time (at SF Signal)

Best Editor (Short Form)

1. David Steffen (for nonfiction)

Note that although we’ve been reading slush for fiction publication in 2014, we haven’t published any fiction yet, so only my nonfiction editing can be taken into account. And Anthony isn’t eligible this year for the same reason.

Best Fanzine

1. Diabolical Plots

Next year, instead of Best Fanzine, we’ll be eligible for Best Semiprozine because we’ll be a paying fiction market.

Best Fan Writer

1. David Steffen
–For the short fiction listed above, the large number of nonfiction articles here and in SF Signal.

2. Carl Slaughter
–Mostly for interviews

3. Frank Dutkiewicz
–Reviews of Daily SF

4. Laurie Tom
–Anime reviews

The Best of Nightmare Podcast

written by David Steffen

Nightmare Magazine is the sister magazine of Hugo-winning Lightspeed Magazine, launched by editor/publisher John Joseph Adams just in time for Halloween 2012. If you don’t know who John Joseph Adams is, you haven’t been paying much attention to short SF in recent years. Besides Lightspeed, he’s probably best known for his themed anthologies.

Nightmare publishes four stories a month–two original stories and two reprints. Half of those stories are published on the podcast. My list here is only taken from the podcast, so if you like what you hear, there’s twice as many stories as I made this list from in text on the website or in ebook format.

Nightmare ran a Women Destroy Horror Month in October 2014, featuring all women staff and all women authors–this was a stretch goal of the supremely popular fundraiser Women Destroy Science Fiction project.

Like its sister magazine, Nightmare is produced by Skyboat Media Company Inc which is spearheaded by the superb voice actors Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Ridnicki

The List

1. “Centipede Heartbeat” by Caspian Gray
Woman is certain her wife’s insides are crawling with invading centipedes. But what to do about it?

2. “We Now Pause for Station Identification” by Gary A. Braunbeck
A broadcast from a station after the end of the world, sending out just a little bit of civilization to… probably nobody. One of those episodes where the voice acting turns it from a good story to really incredible, voicework by Stefan Ridnicki.

3. “Spores” by Seanan McGuire
This one could bring out the OCD in anyone.

4. “The Black Window” by Lane Robins
Mysterious opaque attic portal. Nuff said.

5. “Property Condemned” by Jonathan Maberry
Haunted house story linking childhood to adulthood–format kind of familiar, but well done.

6. “It Was Never the Fire” by Martin Cahill
Another one with great voice acting.

Honorable Mentions

“Bones” by Bones
There are some self-referential in-jokes in this one that you might only get if you’re a submitting writer or at least know some submitting writers–it probably wouldn’t be on my list if I weren’t one.

“10/31: Bloody Mary” by Norman Partridge

“Blackbirds” by Norman Partridge

Facebook “naked link” fix

written by David Steffen

Usually, when you post a link on Facebook you get a nice little preview image from the page you’re linking to along with a sample of text from the page. Except when you don’t. Sometimes it just shows the URL and nothing else–and you know that people aren’t going to click through if it’s just a URL.

I’ve had that problem with many links, especially to Diabolical Plots articles. For a while I didn’t know anything to do about it but to try again, and again, and again. Sometimes it would work well after hours, sometimes it would be incorrect for weeks.

So I was very relieved to find that there is very often something you can do about it, a trick that I’ve found very handy. It helps work around the flaw that Facebook hasn’t bothered to correct after years and years of it manifesting.

1. Visit the Facebook developer’s page.

2. In the text box enter the problem URL.

3. click Debug button.

4. On the page that loads click the “Fetch New Scrape Information” button.

5. Now go back to your regular Facebook page and try posting the link again.

After you enter the URL you’ll see a whole bunch of technical gobbledygook. You don’t need to pay any attention to that. The important thing is to cajole the Facebook engine into fetching new information about your page. Really, it should just do that whenever you post a link in preparation for making the link preview, but for some reason it doesn’t.

Sometimes this doesn’t work either, and when that’s the case I don’t know of any other solution.

Memorization Trick

written by David Steffen

It’s not uncommon for new story ideas to pop into my head at the most inconvenient times–often while I’m running errands and don’t have anything to write with. I don’t want to just discard the ideas while the ideas are flowing, so I’ve worked out a trick to try to remember such things, even a bunch of them that aren’t related.

For each idea, an important part for me is to boil each idea down to one syllable reminder of the idea–an associative hook that when you think about it can expand into your full memory of the idea. Maybe it’s an idea involving an alien hive mind. “Hive” might be suitable for that idea. If more ideas come to mind while you’re thinking on it (and they often come in big groups for me) then if another idea comes that doesn’t easily follow from the first, boil that down to a single syllable. It works best for me if the multiple trigger words flow into each other, either by sounding like a common phrase or if they rhyme, and you can change a word as long as you can think of another good association. So if you thought of a second one that involved a trinity of some kind, you could choose the word “three” for it, and then change “hive” to “bee”. So far you have the words “bee three”–it rhymes and it sounds like a Battleship play, makes it easy to remember.

Then I repeat the phrase in my head whenever my attention is not otherwise occupied–soon it sticks and when it sticks it usually sticks for a day or more so I have plenty of time to write the whole ideas down. I’ve strung together a half dozen or so trigger words that when typed out into full explanations gave me more than a 1000 words into my idea file. It’s very handy for making sure you don’t lose the gem of an idea you thought up in the cereal aisle at the grocery store.

Unbranching Personal Narratives

written by David Steffen

When I was about nine years old I was out at a story with my older brother who would’ve been about eighteen years old at the time. I think it was around Christmastime and there were a few inches of snow and ice on the ground. As we were walking out of the store, minds casting ahead to what we were going to do at home. Before we got to the car, a woman walking alone ahead of us slipped and fell on the ice, ending up flat on her back ahead of us.

If anyone had asked, I would’ve considered myself a compassionate person. But my kneejerk reaction was that we would keep on walking. But, to my surprise, my brother stopped and made sure she was okay. She was capable of responding and had no apparent injury. We helped her up to her feet. Some other people came over to check she was okay and then we were on our way. She was okay and no harm done, but of course I didn’t know that at the time.

That incident comes up in my mind from time to time, especially at times when I have a chance to help someone. I expect my brother doesn’t remember it. The woman probably doesn’t remember it either. But it comes to mind when I have an opportunity to help someone, so I don’t make the same mistake. It was a formative moment even though it probably wasn’t significant to anyone else.

From time to time I wondered why I acted that way at the time? I thought of myself as a compassionate person. So why didn’t I even think to help? I learned the Golden Rule in school and believed it was right, and if I fell I’d want someone to check that I was okay. The best explanation that I can think of is that I was focused on my own personal life narrative and I didn’t see how this stranger fit in–I was ready to get on to the next scene. But that’s no way to go about life. Everyone has their own storyline and maybe sometimes you’re just playing a bit role in someone else’s story–maybe no one will even remember it, maybe they will, but doesn’t matter.

GAME REVIEW: Chains

Chains is a color-matching app-style game released by 2DEngine.com. At first glance, it looks like other color matching app-style games like Bejeweled and Candy Crush. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, mind you, but Candy Crush already does what it does so well that most people don’t need another Candy Crush.

The concept is similar, to link up adjacent like-colored objects to clear them out. But Chains goes above and beyond by giving a much more varied level design and with different objectives. In some levels the objective is simply to reach a certain level of matches, or to reach a certain level of matches without losing more than x off the side of the screen. Still others require an extended chain of more than X balls to pass the level, to exactly match two pails full of balls that each have a “weight” value, or to make exact change with numbered balls. My personal favorite is a level where the balls are flowing in a river through a partial obstructed streambed and you have to make matches to keep the stream clear. Fast paced twitchy fun.

Visuals
What you’d expect for a color-matching game.

Audio
Good instrumental museum.

Challenge
Some of the levels are pretty challenging, trying to keep up with the high pace of matching.

Story
None

Session Time
None of the fast-paced levels take more than a few minutes. You only lose your progress within the level, probably just a few minutes.

Playability
Very easy to pick up–click on a colored ball and drag across nearby ones. Release button to clear or right-click to cancel. Easy peasy.

Replayability
Depends on how “record” oriented you are. If you like to try to beat records could replay for that, I guess.

Originality
Not super original, being more of the color-matching variety. But I thought they did as good a job with level variety as they could.

Playtime
It took about 2 hours to play through the 20 levels.

Overall
Fun game, of the app variety, does a better job with level style variety than most color matching games. $5 on Steam.

Persistence

written by David Steffen

One of the most important traits to lasting as a writer is persistence even in the face of long odds. I’m nothing if not persistent–I’ve sent more than 1500 submissions since I started submitting 6 and a half years ago.

Thinking back on my childhood, there may have been some early signs that I was (perhaps unreasonably) persistent. One particular story happened in 1991 with the release of Super NES game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I’d grown up playing the first two Zelda games on my brother’s NES. I had my own SNES and I was very eager to try out the game. But when the game was released, I didn’t have $50 on account of being an unemployed child. I had my eye on the game at the Lewis Drug down the street, and I was scrounging for pocket change in the couch, doing odd jobs for family, and so on. While I was saving up, I was worried the game would go out of stock and never come back in, so every single night 10-year old me would call Lewis Drug and ask them if they still had the game on their shelves. Somehow I was genuinely surprised when, after the first night or two, they didn’t actually go check before they told me they have it. It never occurred to me that I was most certainly the only one calling every day to ask about an item I didnt’ buy. Eventually I did come up with the cash to buy the game. And I’m pretty sure that when I came into the store the clerk asked me if I was the kid who called every day… before I counted out $50 of pocket change onto the counter.