I told you all I would bring you the table of contents.  The TOS listed here is tentative and may change in the event that some of the authors have not given me their contracts.  This TOS also does not reflect the order of the magazine itself, as we are still working on that aspect of the first issue.  But, I don’t want to waste your time babbling about all this, so here goes:

Fiction
“Chrysalis” by Josh Robert
“Cold Water” by Peter Meritt
“Memoirs of a Torn Page” by Divya Mohan
“Dried Flowers” by Adrienne Copeland
“Honor Roll Bound” by Emerald Du
“Invisibility” by Kelsey Ray
“Matryoshka Doll” by Mateo Vosganian
“Me and the Moon, Demilune” by Noah Blake
“Night Planks” by Thea Green
“One Last Look” by Nick Lyle
“Row 7″ by Gregory Wells
“The Birth of Sweet-Fish” by Chris Chapman
“Waffles” by Meagan Burbidge

Poetry
“A World Without Streetlights” by Tegan Bridge
“Frame of Reference” by Natasha Angela Gregorio
“Glass Friendship in a Play” by Niyousha Bastani
“In Plus Than Perfect Planets” by Milton Perez
“Summer of Artifice” by Benjamin E. Nardolilli
“The Rescue of a Unicorn” by Tabatha Schroeder
“The Type of Night That Makes You Crazy Just Thinking About it” by J. T. Howard
“Word to a Dramatist” by Rei Thompson

Articles
“Economies of Scale” by T. M. Hunter
“Six Ideas on Creating Memorable Characters” by Paul Genesse
“A Cure For Sap:  The Time Traveler’s Wife is a Love Story With Substance” by Mary Mann

Interviews
w/ Paul Genesse (conducted by Shaun Duke)

Quite a few of the fiction pieces are actually quite small, which explains why we have so many.  In any case, it looks like a fantastic lineup!  Thanks to all the contributors for their stories, poems, and articles!

More information will be coming as we get closer to the printer.

Thanks,

Shaun

I wanted to keep everyone up to date. We’re working on editing all the accepted submissions right now. It’s a long process. I will have a list of accepted submissions so everyone can see the table of contents.

More updates in the near future.

Thanks,
Shaun

If you have been accepted into the first issue and were sent a contract, please send the signed version to us A.S.A.P. If we do not have a signed contract, your story or poem will not be published.

Thanks,
Shaun

Why? Because we have enough stuff to fill up the first issue and will be going through all the design processes to get the book into shape. Then we have to send it off to the ISBN people, get it up on Amazon and all those lovely places, and advertise the hell out of it.

Yeah, we still have a lot of work to do, but so be it.

In any case, stay tuned! Once we figure out what the future of SBS is, we’ll let you know and submissions will probably open up again.

Take care,
Shaun

P.S.:  To those who have yet to receive a response from us, you are still being considered for the mag.  Don’t withdraw your submission.  We’ll have answers soon (we left a few spaces open on purpose, because a couple of you we intend to snatch up).

When submitting to SBS, please pay attention to the guidelines. We put them there for a reason. While we’re not anal about the guidelines, there are certain things that we’re not willing to bend on for good reasons:

• Submissions MUST be sent in either .doc or .rtf formats. We CANNOT open .docx files because we do not use Word 2007. There is a function Word 2007 to save your files in the required formats (save as, and then select the file type).
• We DO NOT accept submissions in the body of the email. Why? Because emails do not format text the same way that a word processor does. That makes it incredibly difficult for us when we go to format the book. Unless you have special permission to do this, don’t.
• When we ask you to resubmit in the correct file format, don’t assume that we’ll just read it in the body of the email. Follow directions. That’s how it works in this business and we’re treating this venture seriously.
• Follow SFWA formatting guidelines. You don’t have to be exact, but things you really should do are: Double-space, indent paragraphs, and use a uniform-spaced font (like Courier; no Times New Roman). We read a lot of submissions; this makes it easier on our eyes and easier for us to convert over into our book file.
  Things we don’t like seeing for formatting: Those giant blog paragraphs with the extra space between them that conforms to some sort of literary standard. We’re not interested in that. We’re not going to print your story that way, so don’t send it to us in that format.
• Do not submit to us if you’re over 25 unless you have special permission to do so. If you are a legitimately published author and are interested in contributing an article to us, then query. Otherwise, send your work elsewhere.

Hopefully that’s pretty clear. We’re not asking for much here. These are minor things. But if you follow the guidelines to a T, it shows us that you actually give a crap. When you half-ass it, we know, and it does influence how we think of your manuscript. If you can’t follow the guidelines, why would we want to work with you in the first place? Think of this like a job: If your boss tells you to clean something with soap and water and you clean it with air, would you expect your boss to just wave it off like it’s no big deal? Oh, maybe you would, because that sounds trivial, but hopefully I got the point across.

Thanks,
Shaun

The issue is still on its way. Never fear! We’re inches away from filling this baby up. The good news is that we have also lined up a published author to be a part of the first issue. You’ll learn more about that as it becomes more of a reality.

Some quick notes:
When submitting to SBS, please do not submit as .docx. We can only read .doc and .rtf. Also, make sure that your file has the .doc extension (or .rtf). Some files have been sent to us missing this and it messes with the formatting, unfortunately.

Also, we could really do with book reviews and other non-fiction work. If you have something we might be interested in, please send it our way!

Thanks,
Shaun

I figure it’s a good time to update again.  Firstly, submit submit submit!  We’re getting dangerously close to filling and, well, if you have something in the hopper, send them our way!  This will be our first issue and we want to make it a special one, so if you have something really good, we’d love to see it.

Also, we should probably announce that there will now be a contest winner from YWO published in the first issue.  The story is called “The Bus Stop” by Diocletian (his real or pen name will be used in the magazine).  The contest was open only to YWO members and the prize was publication in SBS, at $25 gift certificate to Amazon or to YWO’s Zazzle Store, and an interview published in the first issue of SBS.  There may be more contests for future issues, by the way, so keep an eye out.

Now to statistics:
Fiction:  49 submitted; 10 accepted, 35 rejection, 4 in the hopper; 22% acceptance rate.
Poetry:  72 submitted:  8 accepted, 64 rejected, 0 in the hopper; 11% acceptance rate (note:  people may submit up to two poems at a time and we generally don’t take both of them, hence the much higher submission rate).
Plays:  1 submitted; 1 rejected, 0 in the hopper; 0% acceptance rate.
Articles/Non-fiction:  3 submitted; 3 rejected; 0% acceptance rate.

We could really do with some non-fiction, particularly book reviews (or relatively prominent titles or particularly interesting ones), interviews with authors of note (not necessarily best selling authors, but at least authors people might know or be interested in), literary criticism, and other forms of non-fiction that might be of interest.  If you have a particularly well researched article on some aspect of writing history, we’d love to see it.

And I think that is all from me today!  Take care and keep submitting!

This is just to let you know that we haven’t forgotten you out there. SBS requires a unanimous vote from both editors, and thus it sometimes becomes a little difficult to make quick decisions for works we disagree on. If you haven’t heard from us, then that means one of two things: either your submission is new, or we’re deliberating.

Hang in there. We’ll have decisions shortly!

In case anyone has been wondering where we’ve been, I figure it’s a good time to have a little update.  So here goes:

• Submissions
  We could always use more, but we haven’t had too many issues with submissions thus far and our inbox is still full.  We’re working our way through as we speak, so if we have something of yours it’s either been read and we’re deliberating or it hasn’t been read yet.  No worries, though.  We’ll get to it soon enough!
• Publication
  We’re nearing publication for the first issue.  Currently we’re around two-thirds full for the first issue, which is good.  We expect to close submissions in January and begin formatting for a release date in late February or March.  That’s the hope.  It all depends on you folks out there!  The more submissions we get, the sooner we can fill the issue!
• Website
  While we’ve been using this WordPress page successfully for SBS, we’re not planning to keep it.  SBS will eventually be moving to its own domain.  Not sure when, but I imagine it will be around the release of the first issue.  You’ll all know more when I know more!

On a side note, for those of you just stumbling upon us, we are currently looking for the following:

• Interior Art
  Small single-panel comics, or even short multiple-page comics would be fine.  We’re looking for funny things related to writing or simply funny things.
  Additionally, we could always use general artwork for the issue.  Read the guidelines for artwork/comics first, then submit!
• Articles on Writing
  Looking for articles related to the craft of writing.  If you have something interesting, send it our way.
• Literary Criticism
  Whether it be academic or casual, we’re open to having literary criticism…provided it’s interesting.  We’re not particularly interested in long-winded, overly thought pieces (such as works that read more like attempts to show off one’s vocabulary).  It needs to say something interesting about literature or a particular piece of literature.  Bonus points if you do an interesting analysis of more modern works.
• Book Reviews
  Always looking for these.  They should be relatively short pieces, though.  Books should be relatively new.  Older literature should be reserved for literary criticism rather than reviews.  The point of book reviews is to point people to new works of interesting literature.

And I think that about wraps things up!

With SBS getting ever closer to publication I’ve decided to open up to anyone who reads this blog regarding advertising. SBS is very open to the prospect of doing reciprocal advertising with folks in the community, whether they be comic artists, regular artists, writers, publishers, etc. If you would like to pay for an advertising slot, then by all means we’re open to that prospect too (just make us some sort of offer).

With that in mind we’d like to extend an open hand to anyone interested in exchanging advertising with us. Feel free to send us an email (look in the contact area) about your project/art/publication and we’ll talk! Or email if you have questions!

Thanks!