The Last Jupiter

After a bit of a hiatus I have finally dipped my toe back into the world of short stories, and what better place to make a comeback than in Jupiter SF.

Jupiter SF, edited by Ian Redman, is a superb magazine that has been going for many years, but sadly the latest issue, Issue 50, named for the moon Herse, is to be the last. Jupiter has always had a reputation for publishing quality science fiction, featuring many well-known authors and receiving great reviews. I am not alone in being sorry to see it go and I do wish Ian all the best for his future ventures. I’ve been fortunate to have been published by Jupiter twice before and I am honoured to be featured in this final edition.

I am also in quite esteemed company. This issue features work from Ray Blank, Jon Wallace, G.O. Clark, Garrick Fincham and Christina Sng.

This issue, and many of the back issues, are available on kindle as well as in print so if you wish to support Jupiter, and read some excellent fiction, then head over to the Jupiter website or to Amazon and pick up a copy or ten. Jupiter 50, Herse, is available in kindle format from Amazon, here.

A Short Story Collection

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been busy pulling a number of my short stories together into a collection. This is something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while, especially since a good number have already been published but have now gone out of print. I originally thought I might self-publish them, but then a friend of mine told me about a publisher he had been doing some work with, CFZ publishing. Like many small publishers they are quite niche, but their niche is one that fits well my style of fiction. So I’m going to give them a try.

But pulling your short stories together into a collection isn’t such an easy task, and here are a couple of things I’ve had to take into account:

Running order: This is a tricky one. The stories need to be sufficiently distinct from the ones they are adjacent to but not so different as to be jarring. I also wanted to mix up the previously published with the new material.

Opening stories: These are the ones that will appear on the kindle ‘look inside’ option and will determine whether the reader clicks the buy button or not. Therefore they need to give a good representation of the anthology and also be some of my better stories.

Final story: The collection needs to finish on a high note so the final story needs to pack a punch. This was quite easy. I have a piece of flash fiction that I feel rounds off the collection quite well.

Character names: I never noticed before that I have a tendency to reuse names. So for example where I had two stories featuring a character called Lucy, one of these needed to be changed, otherwise the reader might think the characters and the two stories are connected.

Editing: Some of my earlier stories, when I re-read them, needed a bit of tidying up since my writing has improved a lot over the years. Even some that have previously been published!

Title: Finally what should I call my collection? I thought about using the title from one of my short stories but none really stood out. Then my friend suggested I use the title from this blog. It is certainly fitting with the style of stories – science fiction and mild horror that could well be described as ‘weird fiction’, as well as echoing the cryptozoological bent of the publisher. So The Scribbling Seaserpent it shall be.

Early days yet – but I’ll keep you up to date with developments.

A Nice Surprise

I arrived home from work today to a nice surprise - my contributor's copy of Jupiter SF 31: Aitne waiting for me in the pile of post, among the bills and junk mail.

Now I've got some quality SF to read over the next few days.

Looking at it made me realise how much things have changed since I submitted this story - and in fact since I wrote my bio for inclusion in this issue.

I have one more SF short story scheduled for publication this autumn. But for now I've stopped sending them out. I doubt I'll stop writing them - they're far too much fun to do for that. Instead I'm going to concentrate on the kids novels and see where that leads.

Back to those revisions...

Sale to Jupiter SF

They're coming thick and fast at the moment - my short story 'High Tide' has just been accepted for publication by Ian Redman at Jupiter SF.

This is the second story of mine to find a home at Jupiter.

Happy dance.

More Jupiter Reviews

Another couple of good reviews of Jupiter SF 25: Erinome have appeared – one over at the Sfsite which is very positive about Jupiter 25 in general and another, also good, over at SF Crowsnest. Here are a couple of extracts…

About the issue as a whole:

'Jupiter Magazine' allows the fiction to speak for itself and in this case we have five excellent stories to entertain the readers.'

And my story:

'The Oracle' by Kate Kelly was a rather disturbing tale. Not the sort of thing you would want to read if you were claustrophobic!"

I’m pleased with that. Just the effect I was aiming for. :-)

"The Oracle" reviewed

There's a very nice review of Jupiter SF 25: up over at SFrevu. All in all it's very positive. Ian Redman should be pleased, since all the reviews I've seen of Jupiter recently have been good ones. This is what it says about my little tale:

The settling of "The Oracle" by Kate Kelly is a near-future Italy in which Naples was covered by ash from Vesuvius, the same way Pompeii was. Aldo Martinelli leads a group of archeologists into an area where they discover an ancient antechamber. When they descend, they are overcome by gas and hallucinations. What they find is something that even predates Pompeii. Kelly contributes a fine story here.

Jupiter SF 25 is here!

I arrived home from work to find my contributers copy of Jupiter SF 25: Erinome, waiting on the doormat. It contains my short story The Oracle, and I'm really pleased to see this one in print!

So far I've only managed to read one of the stories - 'Radio Free' by Sam Kepfield, which I really enjoyed. I'll be settling down to read the rest of them later this evening - but after Torchwood of course!!

Anyway - head on over to the Jupiter SF website and order yourself a copy - this promises to be an ejoyable read!

Another Story Finds a Home

I've just heard from Ian Redman - the editor over at Jupiter SF - that they would like to publish my short story 'The Oracle'.

It should be in Issue 25 which is due out in July 2009.

Jupiter SF is a fabulous UK based SF magazine with some first class fiction that regularly appears in various awards lists. So needless to say I'm thrilled that I'm going to be part of it.

And I'm also thrilled to have found a home for 'The Oracle' which is a personal favorite of mine.

Head over to their website and check them out. You won't be disappointed.