Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 8: Recap

So a week ago today, I acted on this crazy idea I had to look at a different venue for online fiction every day for a week, with as much a focus as possible on fantasy.  I called the project Seven Days of Online Fiction.  It started when I read Karen Burnham's list of work that had received multiple award nominations this year; most of the short fiction was available online.  (Karen updated the list on Wednesday.) 

I've had the opinion for a long time now that what has been appearing online is just as good as what the print magazines have been publishing.  I intentionally left anthologies out of the mix because even the few anthology series that appear regularly have at least a year between volumes and are often trumpeted as Events.  I wanted to look at what was appearing on a consistent basis.

So I managed to read and post for seven days in a row, although the last couple of days were a bit of a strain from a time commitment perspective.  Links to each day are in the sidebar on the right.  The next time I do something like this, I'll have at least half the posts done before any go live.  Anyway, I thought I would take today, Day 8, if you'll allow, to look back and see what I've learned from this experience.

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 7: Quantum Muse

For the almost final installment in the Seven Days of Online Fiction series (I'll do a summary post tomorrow or the next day; here are installments one, two, three, four, five, and six for those who missed them.), we'll look at another site that was new to me.  This one is called Quantum Muse. It's a monthly with a featured artist, an editorial, and weekly flash fiction updated on Mondays.  The editorial process here is a little different from most.  Stories are submitted to a peer review group, which contributors have to join.  In order to have their stories critiqued, authors must review the work of others.  Once a story has received five critiques, it's moved off the list for consideration by the editors.  This is an interesting way to do things, which frankly makes me a little leery.  Peer review of fiction can weaken a story, making it more bland, just as often as it can strengthen one.

The story for consideration is called "The Quack" by Ross Kitson.  I couldn't find much about Dr. Kitson from the internet, so all I know of him is what's in his author bio.  I'm assuming that "The Quack" is his first published story since his bio doesn't list any other publication credits. 

The story concerns a young man, probably not much more than a boy, named Anase who ends up working for what would be called a snake oil salesman named Deradin.  Only this is a pseudo-medieval world, so the term snake oil salesman probably wouldn't have been in use.  I'm not sure when the term "quack" entered the English language, but I suspect it was later than medieval times.  But that really doesn't matter much since this is a fantasy, and unlike some titles, this one tells you something about the story.

Anase is a troubled lad, whose mother died in a tragic fire.  He's terrified of fire now.  Of course this is going to be significant before the story is over.

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 6: Abyss & Apex

Today's online magazine is a quarterly called Abyss & Apex which shouldn't be confused with the similarly named Apex Magazine.  The former is a quarterly, while the latter is a monthly.  Also, Abyss & Apex bills itself as a speculative fiction magazine.  Apex Magazine, which made the transition from print to electronic formats a while back, tends towards dark science fiction and horror.

Based on a perusal of the contents (I don't have time to read all the stories if I'm going to stay on schedule with the Seven Days), the current issue of Abyss & Apex seems to have a good mix of core science fiction and fantasy.  That's a good thing, a very good thing.  An additional good thing is the story I've chosen to take a closer look at is sword and sorcery.

This one is titled "Demonfire Ash" by Helen E. Davis.  It's something of a mystery, so I'll only give you the setup.  Much of the satisfaction comes from the unfolding of what happened over the  previous years.

The protagonist, Geoff Bowman, is a journeyman sorcerer, and not a very good one.  In fact, he's at the bottom of his class.  As the story opens, he wakes up in a bed not his own with a strange woman going through a trunk.  He recognizes the chamber as that of the Hall Master.  The woman makes a cryptic remark about Geoff being alive and her not undressing him, takes the Hall Master's demon killing knife from the trunk, tells him he can rot, and leaves the room. 

Geoff  is puzzled, but when he looks in a mirror, he sees he's now an old man.  Things get worse from there.

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 5: Fantasy Magazine

Some of you may have been wondering when in this project I would get to Fantasy Magazine, as it's one of the more high profile online publications.  I'm trying to alternate between venues with which I am familiar and those that are new to me.  The drawback is that what's new to me might not be new to some of you.  One of the goals of this series is to introduce some new sources of reading material to some of you as well as expand my reading horizons.  For those reasons, I'm not necessarily going to look at the more well-known venues.

Anyway, onto Fantasy Magazine.  This publication started out in print form and made the transition to electronic format a few years ago.  The format of this one is slightly different than the others we've looked at so far.  It's a monthly publication consisting of fiction (2 new and 2 reprints) and various nonfiction features, but they don't put all the stories up at once, nor do they leave the stories and features up once they've been posted.  Instead the contents of the main page rotate on a weekly basis throughout the month, changing on Monday.  Of course, if you don't want to wait, you can purchase the complete issue in electronic format on the first of the month.  (And if you like this magazine, you should consider doing that to support them.) Once something is rotated off the main page, it is available through the archives..

The story I'm going to look at is "The Devil in Gaylord's Creek" by Sarah Monette.  This was an enjoyable urban fantasy in a rural setting.  The main character is Morgan, a young lady who happens to be dead.  She travels with her companion Francis.  He's the replacement companion; the first was eaten in the line of duty. 

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 4: Ideomancer Speculative Fiction

Today, in the fourth installment of this project,we turn our attention to Ideomancer.  Or more correctly Ideomancer Speculative Fiction.  This one has received a bit of critical acclaim if my memory is serving me correctly.  I don't recall where all I've seen the acclaim, so I might be getting two different sites confused.

Anyway, there were three stories in this issue, along with some poetry and features such as reviews.  One of the stories was science fiction and the other two were fantasy.  Since science fiction and poetry isn't really the focus of Seven Days of Online Fiction, I'll look at the two of the stories which are fantasy.  Both of them are short.

One of the nice things about this site is a box (I'm not sure what you call it) at the top of the ToC which rotates the first few lines of each item in the ToC.  This allowed me to quickly realize that one of the stories was science fiction, and so I didn't need to read it for the purpose of this series.  It also showed enough profanity in just a few lines that I knew I wouldn't be reading it period.  But I digress.  I think is a cool idea.  It allowed me to sample the first paragraph (or the first few lines in the case of the poetry) and get an idea of whether or not I would want to read the rest of the story.

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 3: Electric Spec

For the first two days of this project, I looked at two sources of online fiction with which I was already familiar and read regularly, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  For Day 3, I turned my attention to a site I haven't read before, Electric Spec.  This is a quarterly publication which publishes "schockingly good short works of science fiction, fantasy, and the macabre."  That's a pretty big statement.  So just how well does the magazine live up to its own billing, at least as far as the fantasy is concerned?

We'll look at two stories and see.

Seven Days of Online Fiction, Day 1: Beneath Ceaseless Skies

The first story we'll be looking at in our Seven Day of Online Fiction is"Buzzard's Final Bow" by Jason S. Ridler in the May 5 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies.  This is issue number 68 for those of you who are counting. The other story in the issue is "The Finest Spectacle Anywhere" by Genevieve Valentine.  It's the second in a series.  Since one of the rules of The Seven Days is to only look at standalone stories, it won't be considered here.  It looks intriguing, though, so I may post about it after The Seven Days.

Announcing Seven Days of Online Fiction

I've held for a while that the online sources for short fiction are providing quality fantasy and science fiction, and in many of a quality at least as high as, if not higher than, the traditional print sources.  Apparently I'm not alone in this view.  Karen Burnham, at the Locus Roundtable posted a list of the works which have received more two or more award nominations this year.  While (not surprisingly) none of the novels on the list were published online, the short fiction of all lengths is a different matter.  Two of the four novellas, all three novelettes, and two of the three short stories on the list were published online.

There are multiple sources of online fiction.  In fact the online landscape can change suddenly.  New websites arrive and disappear quickly.  If you're not paying attention, you could miss something.  I thought this would be a good time to survey some of the sources of short fiction on the web.