written by David Steffen
Diabolical Plots has been continuously providing nonfiction content related to speculative fiction since I launched it in 2008. Reviews, interviews, “Best of” lists, relating to magazines, books, TV shows, games. It was founded by me in 2008 on a very simple Blogspot page. Anthony and I joined forces in 2009 and, among other things, moved to the much nicer site that is still used today, commissioning the iconic mad scientist artwork by the wildly talented Joey Jordan.
In January 2013, Diabolical Plots launched the fiction writers’ submission-tracking and market-finding tool, The Submission Grinder.
This post is to announce the news that Diabolical Plots will trying something entirely new, expanding to become a professional-paying publisher of original speculative fiction! We’re not open for submissions quite yet, but we wanted to share the exciting news and let you prepare your very best short stories that are 2000 words or less for submission. For full guidelines see <LINK TO GUIDELINES>.
And Diabolical Plots the fiction market now has a market listing on the Grinder <LINK TO GRINDER LISTING>. We’ve put in requests to Ralan for the same.
This is all a grand experiment to see what kind of interest we get from writers and from readers. At this point we’re aiming for a single original story of 2000 words or less once a month for a year. What happens after that depends largely on how much interest. We have set up a Patreon page <LINK TO PATREON PAGE> with some goals for breaking even and goals for expanding our offering to more stories. If we get enough support through Patreon or through PayPal (and support of the Grinder all goes into the same place so Grinder donors, thank you as well) and iwe enjoy doing this fiction thing, then we’ll keep on going after the year is up. If not, we will surely have learned from the experience , and we will have helped the twelve authors find a venue for their work.
So, thanks for all the support over the years, everyone. We hope you’re as excited about this grand experiment as we are.
The SF award nomination season is here. The Nebulas (the writer-voted award) have been open for a while and close in February. The Hugos (the fan-voted award) opened on January first. Both sets cover works published in the 2012 calendar year. About this time of year, every writer and their dog posts a list of their eligible works.