Austin SlugTribe Newsletter

Date: April/May 1996

Premier Issue!

Hello, and how ya doing? What used to be a monthly publication of the AWL's Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Study Group has kind of died down to a yearly edition. I, Wendy Wheeler, am considering resurrecting this here newsletter as a bi-monthly thing. We have so many folks who live far out of town and drive in, others who get busy and forget about the 2nd and 4th Tuesday night meetings (starts at 7 pm, still at Hancock Rec, still FREE!), and still other new folks who can learn of fellow SlugTribers through this publication that they may never meet face to face. Also, we have reason to believe many of the people who used to be regular attendees can't find the free time anymore. For those folks, and for everybody else!, the SlugTribe is getting truly networked. If you're on the InterNet, or have access to email on the InterNet, read below to find out how to be on the SlugTribe mailing list.

SLUGTRIBE-SMOF@IO.COM

Slugtribe members can hold discussions, and can send out news, by using the slugtribe-smof mailing list. It is made available to us thanks to the generosity of Earl Cooley III (aka "Shiva") and the good folks at SMOF, who put on the great SF conventions in Austin and San Antonio.We've been using this to share market news, chat about movies, keep up with each other's sales, etc.

To join the slugtribe-smof mailing list, send the following as an e-mail msg:

To:  majordomo@io.com
Subject: 
subscribe slugtribe-smof Jane Evans 
end
This should only take up the first TWO lines of the msg (begin in col 1). Obviously you want to personalize this message for your own name and email address. Having "end" as the final word helps when you have signatures or other piffle ending your message.

After you hear back that Mikus (Mikus@bga.com) has okayed you as a True SlugTribe attendee, you can send messages to: slugtribe-smof@io.com and the messages will be "broadcast" to all who are subscribers of the list.

To unsubscribe from the slugtribe-smof mailing list, use text:

unsubscribe slugtribe-smof 
end

Bill Spencer Receives 3 Horror Nominations

The list of nominees for the HWA (Horror Writers of America) Bram Stoker Awards has William Browning Spencer for both novels, Resume with Monsters and Zodwallop, plus a novella published in Century magazine, "The Ocean and All Its Devices." Bill got more nominations than any other single writer this year! That gives him better odds when the awards are voted on and presented. And he just sold the Japanese rights to Zodwallop for some serious Yen. The mind just boggles at what a Japanese translator might make of the word Zodwallop. My guess: phonetic, as in "zoddo-warrupo." Plus Bill was featured in several events during the Texas Writers Month, and just taught a half-day course on "Chapter One of the Novel" for the AWL.

Fred Askew's Snake Gold

Last summer, we celebrated Fred's first major fiction sale with a bag of bones and a fake rubber snake! He sold his Southwestern-flavor horror story, "Stealing from the Woman Snake," to Realms of Fantasy. It had a totally cool full-color illustration and everything! This sale was in addition to a smaller sale to Pulphouse!

Mike Brotherton's Many Hits

Despite immersing himself in 70- to 80-hour work weeks to complete his astronomy dissertation by April, SlugTriber and PhD candidate Mike Brotherton has also knocked off some sweet little SF and horror short story sales! "A Rare Breed" to WonderDisk; to appear Summer 1996? "Jack in the Box" to Talebones; published Oct 1995, issue #1. "Rusted Roots" to Talebones; published Feb 1996, issue #2. "The Hand of Quarga" to Nuthouse; published Jan. 1996. "Pearl" to Tales of the Unanticipated; to be published either April or December "The Striped Woman and the Contoured Man," took 4th place in the first quarter of the 1995 WOTF contest. His biggest money-making sale, "A Modern Tantalus," to the Blood Muse anthology was dropped at the last minute due to lack of space. He got to keep the $211, though! And come June, Mike will be shipped to Shanghai for an astronomy conference, then come back and start packing for his move. He's been offered a post-doctoral position at the Lawrence Livermore Labs in California! Boy, we'll really miss the little guy...

More Fairy tales

I just heard from Ellen Datlow (editor of many anthologies as well as fiction editor of Omni) that she and Terri Windling liked my (very long) adult fairy tale "Skin So Green and Fine." They're working on Volume 4 of their fairy tale anthology series, and will probably buy my story! I'm still waiting to hear back if a rewrite is needed. Volume 3, entitled Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears, just came out in hardback. It has stories by local writers Susan Wade and Howard Waldrop (okay, Howard moved, but he lived here when he wrote the story!).

Emily Off to Iowa

Emily Coyner got accepted to the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop mid-May in Iowa City. This is put on by the University of Northern Iowa's English Dept., the same folks who publish The North American Review. She'll hang out with the pro's and learn new stuff! Then when she comes back, we can pick her brain clean. As a sidenote, Emily has come up with a name for her bead jewelry business (yes, she still has her day job for the State of Texas Pollution Control). It's called Terrapin Treasures.

WorldCon in Scotland

Probably the highlight of my year was going to Great Britain in late August and attending four days of the World SF Convention in Glasgow, Scotland. I even got to sit on a panel! I was the obvious rank newbie, but it was fun! They speak real funny over there and use toy money, but it does seem that, wherever you go, SF fans are SF fans. Russ (Williams) and I rode trains all over and saw London, Edinburgh, Stratford, Salisbury, and South Wales. I got pictures if you wanna see 'em!

Asimov's Magazine

was recently sold (again) by Bantam/Doubleday/Dell to Penny Press. Gardner Dozois, editor, was quoted on email: "At a much-smaller company like Penny Press, where the overhead should be considerably less high, the magazines will become more profitable even if the circulation DOESN'T go up significantly. If the digests had been able to stay at Davis Publications, where the overhead was low, they'd be doing fine; it was cash-flow problems in other parts of Davis that caused the digests to be sold, not because Davis wanted to get rid of them-in fact, Davis was able to sell them BECAUSE they were profitable, the only part of the company that was.=8A" Word is, you submit to the same addresses for Asimov's and Analog as before, but they may be moving in the future.

Other Market News

Omni Magazine will no longer produce any print media. They are all electronic now. The downside to this, for writers, is that fiction published in Omni no longer meets SFFWA requirements for magazine publication. Bummer for Ellen Datlow-several Nebula finalists were always ones she printed in Omni.

Dimensions of Madness (s.hutchinso6@genie.com) is reading 4/1 - 7/31/96 for an SF/F/H anth. 15k wds, 3-6 cents/wd; reprints 1 cent/wd. Horror: Sandra Hutchinson, 7 St. Luke's Road, Allston, MA 02134. Fantasy: Dawn Albright, 1021 Mass. Ave., Arlington, MA, 02174.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress Vol 14 will begin reading 4/1/96 to 5/15/96. If you've ever submitted before, you know those dates are FIRM. They will return your manuscript unopened if it's too early or too late! Stories should feature a strong female, but both men and women writers are okay. Your best bet is to send for GL's! PO Box 72, Berkeley CA 94701.

Pulphouse Magazine, owned and sometimes edited by Dean Wesley Smith, a guy who likes Austin writers!, is now dead. They had enough money to pay kill fees and buy up subscriptions, and he chose to do that to concentrate on his writing.

A Few More Notes:

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