In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

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Editors get familiar with certain names on submissions, and form opinions on who is getting close and who they hope will succeed. Do you also form negative opinions of writers who submit, and assume they’re never going to write something you like?

I’m sure editors do, on occasion. I have in the past…and then been proven wrong. I never GAVE UP on them, mind you, but I can certainly think of a few writers who I thought would never write anything I’d like. But I can think of a couple of occasions where I had rejected a ton of stuff by the writer only to then eventually find something I liked. In some cases, the writer turned some corner creatively and all of a sudden I like basically everything I’ve read since buying that first one; in other cases, I still don’t like most of what the author sends, but at least there was that one where we matched up.

I try to avoid forming that kind of negative association as much as possible as it serves no good purpose. Ultimately, though, I think the only writers at risk of that kind of thing are people who are extremely prolific. Like–if you reject a writer 50 times in a year, several years in a row, it would be really hard to not think it was hopeless. There’s probably also a greater risk when the editor is reading the slush him/herself, like when I was an assistant editor at F&SF.

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From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

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In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Do you think podcasting is going to somehow influence the short story, and if so how? More dialogue? Less? No weird formatting or wordplay or epistolary work? For example, over at Star Ship Sofa, they recently had Jack Vance’s “The Moon Moth” and I’m sure listening to Josh Roseman’s wonderful narration/singing (the story involves a planet where speech is sung instead of spoken) is quite a different experience than reading the original.

I can see that happening, but probably not for everyone–it’s likely only to affect people like yourself who really find podcasts interesting. I think the biggest area that might be influenced would be just in the rhythm of the language. One of the best things you can do as a writer is to try to read your work aloud, to make sure that the sentences flow properly, because it’s very easy to construct a sentence that might be grammatically correct but isn’t really the easiest thing to parse. I’m sure people like Neil Gaiman consider his prose so that it will sound just as good on the page as it would being read aloud.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Since you edit both online and “print” (for whatever value print is these days), do you think there’s a certain type of story that’s better suited for an online magazine? Or is there a certain “look” for a story that’s better online (or print)? In other words, do you think the medium makes a difference to a story?

Not really, not if you’re talking about fairly typical, traditional narratives. Obviously we can all think of experimental type things that might be better suited to the web (hyperfiction, etc.), but that goes the other way too — text that requires a lot of formatting manipulation tends to work a little better in print, where the “display” is not fluid.

There are probably stories that will be MORE SUCCESSFUL if published online, due to the potential viral nature of having things freely available on the internet, as opposed to something that you’d have to find and buy in a store (or order). But that doesn’t really make the experience of the story any better (except for the author, if it goes viral, I guess).

P.S. Any advice on on living with a writer?

Here is my two-fold piece of advice:

1. Remind your writer of the things they’ve accomplished often, even if they were very recent as they tend to quickly forget such things.

2. Keep your writer well-stocked in wine/chocolate/coffee/vice-of-choice.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Which is more likely to succeed with you? A superbly written story on a well-worn subject, or a competently written story on a more original subject?

FALSE DICHOTOMY!

Um, that is, you know, either way, man.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

What turns you off as an editor or what do you see too much of? Especially as it relates to Nightmare submissions.

I don’t like to point to specifics like that because although I may GENERALLY dislike a particular trope or whatever, I might like the BEST EXAMPLE of that kind of thing. And I don’t want to say something in an interview, or on my guidelines page, that I don’t like X, and then have the writer who wrote the best example of X not submit it to me because they read that.

With Nightmare, I will admit that I’ve been close a couple of times to adding something to our guidelines about how we’re not interested in rape fantasies, because boy howdy do we see a lot of those.

Case in point, though: I also contemplated saying something about “torture porn.” But at least one person referred to a story I published called “Chop Shop” as torture porn, so if I had put in my guidelines that I’m not interested in torture porn, would I have missed out on that story? (I don’t happen to agree that it’s torture porn, but that’s beside the point.)

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Douglas Cohen: You’ve had a chance to co-edit anthologies with two different people, one being myself, on Oz Reimagined and the other being Daniel H. Wilson, on your forthcoming Robot Uprisings anthology. Obviously the content for these two projects could not be more different (except for that one Oz story with the cyborg, I guess), but in terms of working with another editor, did you find these two experiences to be completely different or more or less the same?

It was more or less the same. You and I worked together really well, and the same was true of Daniel and I. With Daniel, I wasn’t sure at first how involved he’d want to be as an editor; I figured that he would want to mostly just consult on author invitations and would want to weigh in on acceptances/rejections, etc. I figured his primary contribution, really, would be advising the authors on robot science since he’s a professional roboticist. But he ended up being a full partner on the project, and he basically did everything I did on the book. (I think the only thing he didn’t do that I did was sending out the contracts and payments, just because it was easier for one person to do that.) Also, Daniel and I agreed editorially about pretty much everything–I think we had one or two minor disagreements on the merits of stories–so it was a very smooth collaboration.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Since we have a few editor/writers here, what observations would you offer about the things new editors are doing right, doing wrong, or could do better?

It’s hard to generalize about that kind of thing, but the first thing that comes to mind that I’ve seen a number of times is just people treating writers poorly. This is mainly manifested in posting snarky things online–sometimes while reading slush, which of course makes every writer who has a story in your slush pile feel terrible and assume you’re talking about their story. So there’s that kind of thing. The thing is, if you do that kind of thing, writers aren’t going to want to work with you. And it’s also just mean, so there’s that.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

We just ran an internal contest on speculative history. Would you consider an Alternative History piece? Something in the vein of what Turtledove turns out?

Sure, I’m definitely open to Alternate History. I’m not likely to publish something that has a very subtle alternate aspect to it, but otherwise I’m definitely open to it in general.

And thanks for the question, because that actually reminded me of a story I should totally try to reprint because it’s one of my favorite alternate history stories, and I don’t think I’ve actually had any in Lightspeed as of yet.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Any ambitions to edit novel-length work at some point, or is short fiction where your heart is? 

Short fiction is definitely where my heart is. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t ever take a gig editing novels, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I have any ambitions in that direction. I’d be perfectly content with my editorial career if, when all is said and done, all I ever did was edit short fiction.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More

In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

Do you ever read a story and think, “Yeah, this is great. Great story, well done, an important story even. But I don’t like it.”

Oh, sure. I don’t like plenty of “important” stories! I can think of any number of classics that seem universally loved yet I don’t connect with them at all, though at the same time I can appreciate why so many other people found them to be excellent.

One of the challenges as an editor is whether or not to publish such stories. Obviously if I *hated* a story I wouldn’t publish it even if it seemed like one of those “important” stories, but in the cases where it’s maybe not quite my cup of tea, but is obviously a good story…that’s where it’s tough. Because at least some readers are reading my magazines and anthologies at least in part because they specifically trust my taste, so if I ever deviate from my completely honest opinion (i.e., trying to guess what other people will like), that’s dangerous territory.

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!

Read More