Buying Time!

Hi All,

So Shawna has done another round of purchases for the magazine:

“The Man Who Made No Mistakes” by Scott William Carter

“Collateral Damage” by Kate Reidel

“Return to Paraiso” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

“Side Effects” by Susan J. Kroupa

“Leap of Faith” by Alan Smale

“Barbie Marries the Jolly Fat Baker” by Nick DiChario

“Second Childhood” by Jerry Oltion

“Isabella’s Garden” by Naomi Kritzer

“The Progress of Solstice and Chance” by Richard Bowes

“Wet Work: A Tale of the Unseen” by Matthew S. Rotundo

“Seeking Captain Random” by Vylar Kaftan

“Sweeping the Hearthstone” by Betsy James

Congrats to the authors! Nick Dichario, Richard Bowes, Matthew S. Rotundo, and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz will all be appearing in the magazine for the first time. Rochita is a slush survivor, and after almost six years of plucking them from the piles I’ve yet to grow tired of this.

As you might notice, this is a pretty big buying run. The reason for this is that Shawna had a pretty backlog to work through that built up during the Tir Na Nog Press era due to a buying freeze. But with this buying run, the fiction department is a lot closer to caught up. Anything that Shawna had under consideration that was submitted before 9/26/10 should have received a response by now.

Now, I can almost hear the Intranets here: “9/26/10? It’s March 29th, 2011 now. That’s six months later! Come on, what’s taking so long?”

Good question. I’ll do my best answer it.

First, due to the buying freeze, Shawna had pieces that went all the way back to January 2010. So instead of there being pieces that were as much as fourteen months old, now we’re at six months old. Second, don’t forget that from mid-October until mid-November Realms of Fantasy was canceled and between publishers. So nothing during this time nothing was submitted to us. So while it’s six months later, it’s now only five months of materials to get through. Third, as nice as it would have been to read through everything and say “All caught up!” the reality is that more materials needed to be bought now to get future issues into production, and there is also only so much inventory the magazine can carry at a time. So while we remain open to submissions, at this moment our literary coffers are full of riches. That’s what happens when you sift through nine months of materials.

So now that I’ve answered that I can almost hear the other big question from the Intranets: “So where are you guys now? When exactly will you be caught up?”

More good questions. When Damnation Books took over the magazine, you may recall a post of mine wherein a special exemption was made for certain writers, allowing them to submit electronically. In a nutshell, these writers were supposed to have their manuscripts passed along to Shawna, but after the magazine was discontinued under Tir Na Nog Press, these manuscripts ended up getting discarded. So as a show of goodwill, we allowed any of these writers who wanted to resubmit to us to do so electronically. The authors who fall into this category were among the last to submit stories to us during the Tir Na Nog era. These stories are the next ones Shawna will be considering for the magazine. A few of them have already received responses. After this, everything submitted to us during the Tir Na Nog era will have received a response. The first batch of stories submitted to us during the Damnation Books era that were passed along to Shawna comprises a very small amount of manuscripts, so once she’s done with the last of the Tir Na Nog subs, it shouldn’t take her too long to get through this first batch of Damnation Books subs.

As to the current slush and unread manuscripts submitted in the last few months …

We’ve received a number of queries in the past few weeks, wondering about a story that was submitted to us on such and such a date. I know we’re a little bit behind in responding to submissions. Believe me, I haven’t forgotten you. I started working at this magazine by sifting through the slush, and I’ve always done my best to get through our submissions in a timely fashion. I also like to write, so I can appreciate how much authors hate waiting for long periods of time, hearing nothing about their manuscripts at all, feeling like they’ve disappeared into some uncaring editorial black hole.

That’s not the taste I want to leave in your mouth after submitting to RoF. I do want to get to your submissions in the near future and get back to you as soon as I can. I’m hoping Shawna and I can do a slush transfer in the near future to make this happen. But to keep the magazine running smoothly under the new publishers, other things had to take precedence for a while. It’s not that the slush is unimportant. The slush is very important. No fiction magazine can exist without its writers. But the simple truth is that if other things weren’t take care of first, then RoF would in fact cease to exist, because production would have ground to a halt.

This second relaunch has been easier than the first one, but it has by no means been easy. You may recall that when Tir Na Nog bought Realms of Fantasy, it was in March of 2009. We didn’t open back up to submissions until October of 2009. This time, when Damnation Books bought the magazine, we’ve stayed open to submissions from day one. I’m glad we were able to do this, but going this route has led to us falling a little behind in getting through the slush while we got other departments more caught up. Combined with the first issue under the new publishers for the Feb. issue, our first-ever themed for the April issue (about to ship), and getting issue 100 ready for our June issue, well, suffice it to say things have been busy around here.

But we are a lot closer to where I’d like us to be, and continue getting closer each and every day, and now that I’ve explained some of this in detail, I’m hoping any authors who have submitted stories to us and haven’t heard back yet will stay patient a little longer, and I promise, you will hear from us.

If you all could boost the signal on this one, that would be fantastic. Thanks all.

Tagged as: rof purchases