Okay, so I’ve waded through most of the submissions now. I’ve still got 27 in my inbox that I haven’t read yet. Everything else has either been rejected or been set aside for further consideration (or possibly inexplicably lost–possible, but unlikely).

I want to say again how pleased I’ve been with the overall quality of submissions. I only wish more of them were shorter and/or I had more room for stories in the issue. Unfortunately, I received many stories that pushed the word count limit (5000), and some that exceeded it. Well, it wouldn’t be unfortunate if they were no good, but a lot of them were, so there’s going to be a lot of tough choices to make.

Looks like I have 29 in the “Under Consideration” folder, totalling more than 113,000 words. Admittedly, some of those are just stories I think I need to re-read to make sure before I pass on them, but still — that’s a lot of good fiction there, and less than a quarter of that is going to make it into the issue, so competition will be fierce.

For those wondering about overall numbers, I’ve got 100 stories in the rejection folder, so add that together with the 27 unread and the 29 under consideration, looks like we got 156 stories submitted overall.

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Today’s the last day to submit your pirate stories to the Shimmer pirate issue. Pull up your anchor and let that ship set sail.

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If you can manage to catch the Mythbusters special on pirate myths, by all means do check it out. It’s a little late for it to help you write a pirate story for Shimmer’s special pirate issue, but learning things about pirates is fun pretty much any time. Here’s some of what the show will teach you:

• Pirates wore eyepatches to preserve night vision in one eye at all times. That way if they get attacked at night, and they come out on deck from a candle lit cabin or hold, they won’t be at a disadavntage while their eyes adjust.
• It is not true that more pirates died as a result of wood shrapnel caused by cannon balls rather than the cannon balls themselves. The cannon balls do create a stupendous number of splinters, but they don’t travel at sufficient velocity to embed in the flesh to cause mortal injuries.
  
• If you try to jump down to the deck from the mast, using your dagger or cutlass to slow yourself down by slitting the sail open won’t help you. If your weapon is sharp enough to cut through the sail seams, it won’t slow you down enough to keep you from breaking your legs (and perhaps worse). If your weapon is dull enough to slow you down sufficiently, it won’t cut through the sail seams, which would also be bad because hitting the seam would “kick” you off of the sail, leaving you to free fall the rest of the way to the deck.
  

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Ahoy there —

We’ve extended the deadline for Shimmer’s Pirate issue to Feb. 28.

So there. Now you have no excuse not to finish that story. Yes, I’m talking to YOU.

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Mythbusters (Discovery, 9 PM) will be doing a show on pirate myths next Wednesday, January 17. That’s so gonna rock. And in case you watch something else at 9 PM, it’s on again later in the evening, and will probably be repeated a few more times, so you have no excuse for not watching. Anyone who misses it will be keelhauled.

(Thanks to Sean Melican for the tip!)

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Did anyone happen to catch the History Channel’s pirate documentary, True Caribbean Pirates? I just got around to watching it (it had been languishing on my DVR since July). It was damn entertaining (and educational). If you take a look at the History Channel’s online store, you’ll see that they’ve got a few other pirate documentaries available on DVD, which I’m now interested in seeing. Sadly, it doesn’t appear that any of these are available via Netflix. But True Caribbean Pirates is well worth watching, and it looks like it’s scheduled to re-run on Sat, Dec 23 @ 8:00 PM and Sun, Dec 24 @ 12:00 AM on the History Channel.

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In a comment to the post in which I proclaimed the Shimmer Pirate Issue open to submissions, Danny Adams wrote:

This is a hypothetical question for me, but others might be wondering:

If you turned down a pirate story for F&SF, is it still all hands hoay for Shimmer?

That’s a good question, and here’s the answer: If I turned down a pirate story submitted to F&SF, I’d say don’t bother submitting it to Shimmer*. If Gordon, on the other hand, rejected your pirate story, by all means do send it to me. After all, if Gordon rejected it, there’s a good chance** I saw it first and passed it up to him, and so theoretically that means I would have liked it.

If anyone else has any other questions, please feel free to use this as an open thread to fire away.

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*Unless, of course, it’s been so drastically revised and improved that you feel it’s substantially changed as a story.

**I say a “good chance” because there are, of course, submissions Gordon looks at automatically (i.e., they don’t pass through the slush), so of course any stories like that are welcome too.

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Avast ye rowdy sea-dogs!  The Shimmer Pirate Issue will officially be open for submissions Dec. 1st!  Get your stories ready to set sail.

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Pirates say “Arrr!”, damn it: no “gh.” “Argh!” is a cry of frustration (it is, also apparently a fungeoid esoteric programming language). I keep seeing this error over and over, and as the editor of a piratical periodical, this bothers me.

Strangely enough, there’s a pirate poster at F&SF’s bank which has the same error. When I asked about it, they said they have to answer the phone that way because they’re doing some promotion. How confusing would that be, to call the bank and have them go all pirate on your ass? In any case, I corrected them. One of the tellers said “Oh, that [poster] came directly from the main office.” Sounds to me like someone at the main office needs a good keelhauling.

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