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What Is Important in the Culling?

I thought that I would let people in a little today to the inner workings of an author's constant work. At least it's my constant work. The job is researching. I don't have to be working on any particular project to be researching. I do it, well, all of the time. I keep up on any number of topics in any number of manners. As a specific example I like to look at what is new in technology from the perspective of what people do with it, will do with it when the next new thing comes along--whether it seems to be the "next big thing" or not.

Yesterday I was perusing my social sites where a lot of content comes to me without any effort. I ended up looking at Opening government, the Chicago way, which led to The News Challenge-winning PANDA Project aims to make research easier in the newsroom, which in turn led to What is data science?, and then to Digital Cities 6: urban media / urban informatics and different notions of public space. In and amongst those were a host of other sites to read up on different words and concepts to help in grasping the rest.

Somewhere in the midst of it all I stopped off at Google+ to leave the following note... "Once again I brushed against something of gargantuan scale and intense complexity. I tried to feel my way around it, and then to step back far enough to get a sense of what it was. It spawned a number of lesser forms that milled around, and mired be down until whatever I was beginning to fathom of the great beast slipped away back into the depths until I find it by happenstance once more. Like a nightmare it is an endless loop and nothing new will come of it. It's very frustrating and my only consolation is I do not know if anyone else has ever grasped it either."

So what did I gain from this raft of links? I don't know as of yet. That's the way it goes sometimes. I've been chasing this idea of how the world will change. It's not about the technology or software itself, it's about what we will do with it. What will it allow us to do? How will we relate to it? How will it affect the ways we interact with each other and with the world?

As a parting thought, why am I interested in this since I'm a horror author? Well certainly just about everything has its dark side, but beyond that it all comes down to characters and the myriad of ways their psychology and makeup, and their place in the world and the objects they use in self-defining ways. That is the common thread in all fiction, no matter your genre.

• Tags: characters (fiction), future, Google+, idea, implications, information, psychology, research, science, technology.

Submit to Killing Time

This is a big weekend here in my hometown so I am going to keep this short, but I hope you find it very sweet. Battered Spleen Productions™ is now open to submissions for my Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™ magazine. You can go read about it at Submit Your Fiction to Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™. Thank you and have a great weekend.

• Tags: Battered Spleen Productions™, Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™, submissions.

Heat Haze Work Vs. Work Wonkiness

Here we are in August already. It's still amazing to see how fast time flies by despite how long any single day or even hour can be. I had wanted to unleash my submissions policy for Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™ this week, but I think it needs just a touch more work and I have to make sure the contract that everyone will agree to upon acceptance is complete, accurate, and as clear as possible. It might have all been ready to go this week except that I have to prioritise current paying work versus potential future revenue.

I still keep asking myself if this is the right course of action from a complexity standpoint. The concerns include scheduling, too few submissions, too many, the responsibility of taking and releasing publication rights, and any of the legal ramifications involved in dealing with second parties. This last one is the worst spectre. As it stands, if I write something, put a warning on it, insist on agreement that all sales are final and as is and that there is no liability for how it makes the reader feel, etc., and then I'm as worry free as it gets. There are a lot of ways that business transactions with submitters can go sideways. The chances hopefully are low, but it does bear some thought.

Lastly, I still question asking for publishing rights for zero monetary gain. The one solution I did come up with is that there are less tangible rewards, the primary of which is that I will promote the author here in the blog entry for the release day of the new issue they appear in. This of course is all aside from the fact that the author will receive recognition for having been accepted--for whatever that is worth depending on where they try use such recognition. It's the best I can think of at the moment.

• Tags: authors, business, copyright, Killing Time - Horror E-Rag™, law, publishing, recognition, schedule.