What Happens to your story before Publication

So, ever wonder what happens to your story in-between the submitted Word document and the final output? Here is a quick overview of what I do.

  1. I copy and paste the story into plain text. This strips out all formatting, all styles, but most importantly, all of the sins of the word processor used to create it.
  2. It is Find and Replace time! Remove the Tabs, and double spaces after punctuation. Change it so ultimately it is two hard returns after a paragraph, with no hard or soft ones in-between.
  3. Quotes are straightened, single and double. Each dash and hyphen is inspected to ensure it is the correct punctuation mark.
  4. Any spacing between sections is normalized. I use either * * * or just blank space.
  5. I open up the original again, and reformat any italics in the piece. I check to make sure the paragraph breaks are correct, all the section breaks were marked.

And now I have a clean and correctly formatted version of your story in a TXT file. From here, I can convert it to DOCX or EPUB or just about anything I want without formatting worries. If there is a change to be made, I can make it in the TXT file, and it is changed everywhere.

Submittable Status Changes (a primer)

There are a few different statuses offered by Submittable to the reader as they go through the review process.

The mostly obvious ones are “withdrawn”, “accepted” and “declined”. These three are pretty clear. “Accepted” appears in green, and “declined” in red to further the point, but with each the word is sufficient.

The trouble comes with the first ones you see: “received” and “in progress”. Specifically that “in progress” one causes much confusion.

“Received” for the most part is self explanatory. The confusion comes with the how, when and why it changes to “in progress”. For the most part, this change in the status offers little to no real information to the writer, and I would prefer it to be removed all together.

Here are the things that cause that change:

  1. Voting on the submission
  2. Leaving a note
  3. Changing the editor assignment (does not require opening the submission)
  4. Opening for editing (does not require opening the submission)
  5. Adding a tag (does not require opening the submission)

Things that do NOT change the status change:

  1. Opening the submission
  2. Reading the story
  3. Forming an opinion on the story

In other words, the editors and readers can interact with your submission and the status won’t change at all. Or, in the case of changing editorial assignments, cause it to change to “in progress” without even opening it.

That means your status can go from “received” to “accepted” without ever seeing “in progress”. It also means it can go to “in progress” without anyone ever looking at it. Either way, the status is offering not much to the writer other than confusion.

The more you know…. star swoosh

Adam Cesare Rejected My Wagon (Scares That Care, 2016)

Scares That Care Weekend is an annual charity event dressed up in a con costume for horror lovers. We gather in Williamsburg, Virginia and go to readings, costume contests, have a trick or treat parade, all for charity.

This year was its third, and dare say, its best yet. I’ve been to all of them, and each has had a great experience, with Karen and her crew improving and refining things for us all.

I sold books in the dealer room, this year next to Adam Cesare, Scott Cole and Matt Serafini to one side, and comic artist, Marcus from Soul Bullet (who you should check out).

Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the table… But it was magnificent. Trust me.

Both John Boden and Victorya Chase hung around the table for the weekend. We had new books by them, Jedi Summer by Boden, a creepy coming of age story published by Post Mortem Press, and advanced reader copies of Marta Martinez Saves The World by Chase, a kaiju novella published at Apokrupha (the first in a new series, Kaiju Revisted!). Amber Fallon made a stop in on Saturday with her new book, Terminal.

John and I did a reading at 10 am on Saturday morning, and despite that, there were people in the audience. We made some nifty hand outs, a little chapbook inspired by The Zine, called The Book of Jacks. Here is the nifty cover:

Book of Jacks

 

It had some poetry and flash fiction from the two of us in a flip book format. And was fun to make, with each copy hand folded and stapled. Yes, right before the reading…

The trailer for I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday, written and directed by Mike Lombardo, premiered as well. I cannot wait for this movie.

Overall it was a great time, with lots of shop talk, writing talk, random talk. There was Jaws at the pool, Count Gore De Vol, costumes, and lots of laughter all around.

It was also the first test run of my new wagon. I got tired of hauling books or waiting for carts, so I grabbed a folding one to bring with me. It was a great help getting set up, and taking down. I offered it to my neighbors to use, so they too could enjoy the relief a wagon could bring, but Adam was unimpressed, and instead grabbed all of the boxes of books he had in one hand and said “I don’t need your stinkin’ WAGON!” before flipping the table and taking flight.

True story.