Here's how things stand right now: The slush pile is getting consistently cleared, thanks to Elle's hard work.

And the editorial board has even approved a few more of thes stories for publication, but we're still far short of a full roster for the next issue.

Meanwhile, Sanjay2, the official Space Squid photocopier continues to give me trouble. I can only print off thirty copies at a time before it makes copies with ugly dark streaks. We've decided that this is the last time we print off an issue in my closet like a bunch of hoodlums. Two thousand copies? That takes a long time to run off.

It works well enough that the issue is getting out on the street. The current issue is now available at a number of drop points in the Austin area, including Quack's Bakery, Monkeywrench Books, and Domy. More drop points will have issues as I get around to biking past them.

I want to give everybody a final warning, there's less than a month to enter in the 8 Minutes anthology contest run by our good friend D.D. Tannenbaum.


The theme of the anthology/contest is pretty simple: "Something has happened to the Sun. In 8 minutes, everything changes!" Does that whet your creative juices? Are you, even now, ruminating on possible story concepts? Would your story be dramatic and violent? Would it be something personal and poignant?

Now, I don't think you should enter to get a shot at the fabulous prize money, or to get your work in front of the most award winning writer in Sci-Fi history, Mike Resnick. You should enter this contest because you are a science fiction writer, and because you know in your one-or-more heart(s) that you are better, smarter, and more talented than all the other writers out there.

You deserve this opportunity to beat your so-called colleagues at their own game.

Unless you don't think you're that great a writer. Then you shouldn't bother entering.

For those of you who regularly contribute to Space Squid, you might have noticed that the return times are a lot better than normal. That is due to the hard work of Space Squid's new assistant editor, Elle Van Hensbergen. Reading the slush is one of the biggest drains on Space Squid energy and resources, so we're all very lucky that Elle is volunteering her time.

At the moment, we're standing at well over a hundred submissions and only two fiction subs have been accepted. Which is to say it's a wide open market! So send in your stories, your flash, and your apocrypha, and you can expect the high level of editorial service that has become synonymous with the name Space Squid.

For those of you who are interested in volunteering your time and resources to this skeezy little zine, drop me a line on the Space Squid submissions email. There will be additional volunteer opportunities in the coming months, such as stapling, mailing, and research.

Once again, I have cleared out the submissions and caught up on all the necessary correspondence. If history repeats itself, there's going to be a period of a couple weeks that I read every sub as it comes in, before I stop keeping pace and there's forty unread emails in the account. So now is the time to send in that zany piece of fiction that no sane market would ever accept!

That being said, there has been a sudden and inexplicable tightening of the acceptance rates. Here's how the process works in general:

*Step One, I read through the incoming emails and sort through the stories that I would like to see in the zine, and the ones that I wouldn't. This ratio is about ten to one. The stories I approve I ask to hold on to while I send them to the other editors.

*Step Two, the other two editors read through the list of stories I have forwarded and they each get the right of veto.

In practice, this means that three human beings have to all agree that a story is awesome before it makes its way into Space Squid. Historically, about a third of the stories I have passed onto the second round of reading make it into print. I'm sure there's some sort of statistical significance to that.

The drawback of this system is that stories have to fall into a narrow Boolean range of editorial overlapping interests and tastes. Too often this means that a story with a fart joke gets through while an edgy and experimental story gets put aside. Not to say that I don't like a good fart joke, I would just prefer no more than one per issue.

Recently, the editorial review system has been unusually stringent. We've had over seventy submissions for the current issue, and so far we have accepted ONLY ONE STORY. This is the sort of submission/acceptance rate you would expect from a much better publication.

What I'm trying to say is, if you submitted and didn't get in, submit again, because we need your work! At this rate we won't be able to put out a new issue until July.

On a separate, yet tangentially related issue, Space Squid is looking to expand our work force with some volunteers.

This operation is getting to the point where it's too much work for just three people. For instance, it took me four hours to read through the slush pile yesterday. That's four hours I could have spent eating deep-fried eels.

There's some areas where we could use extra help. For instance, folding and stapling. We're going to have a folding/stapling party soon. I have committed to making pizza, because I'm just that kinda guy.

If you want to lend a hand, get your foot in on the Space Squid operation at the ground floor, then you should send me an email at the Space Squid address:
squishy ((at)) spacesquid ((dot)) com
And I can put you on the invitation list. Hope you can make it! And keep writing those Space Squid stories!

If you're a Space Squid contributor or illustrator, and I didn't give you your payment and contributor's copy at Armadillocon, your Squid is in the mail.

There's a couple of donators and advertisers that I'll mail on Monday, but in general, that's taken care of, so if you don't see what's coming to you in a reasonable amount of time, let me know.