A Chat with Shane Collins, Editor in Chief of The Speculative Edge

Link to Web Site

Today, my guest is Shane Collins, Editor in Chief, over at THE SPECULATIVE EDGE, a monthly magazine of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, interviews and reviews in the speculative fiction genres. We discuss his decision to start up the magazine and check in on how the first four months are going.

 

 

Welcome, Shane. We met as fellow editors of Static Movement themed anthologies. What made you decide to move toward publishing a monthly magazine instead?

Thanks, George, for interviewing me. I’m excited to be here! Static Movement was the perfect stepping stone after working as an editor at my college’s undergraduate literary journal. Creatively, it gave me 100% autonomy. I could pick themes like “apocalyptic” or “colonizing the solar system” and choose any stories I wanted. But after I finalized the manuscript, that was the end of my involvement. I really wanted to try my hand at the other side of editing a publication. I wanted to distribute to libraries and small book stores. I wanted to choose the  artwork, collaborate with other editors and market on Facebook and other social media. I knew the creative end of editing but I hadn’t tried the business side and a monthly magazine seemed like the best medium.

 

Okay, so you decided to edit a monthly magazine. Why speculative fiction?

I think – like you – I was raised on a diet of science fiction movies. I was raised watching Star Wars and Star Trek. The first movie I remember seeing in the theater was Jurassic Park. The first book I loved reading was The Hobbit. In college, though, I really delved into the literary classics. My own writing started to evolve too. For years I had only written science fiction and fantasy and suddenly I was dabbling in mainstream fiction. However, rather than ditching my love of science fiction for literary fiction, they fused together. The idea that science fiction could have literary merit was my basis for what I wanted The Speculative Edge to be.

Well, Shane, I am impressed that so far, you are right on time--four months, four issues. I understand you and your staff have other jobs. How do you find the time to get everything done?

Haha. It’s not easy. All three of us editors have lots of other things going on. Danielle – the assistant editor – is finishing her last semester at the University of Wisconsin in Parkside. She also currently edits for Static Movement and a third publication – Straylight Magazine. Chloe – the poetry editor – works one job at a law firm and another at a bird sanctuary. And I work as a substitute teacher at a local elementary school and as a tour guide at the Harpoon beer brewery. We’re a diverse bunch.

Now that the magazine has been up and running a few months, we’ve kind of gotten into a rhythm. During the week, I can usually get two or three days to dedicate to working on the magazine. That gives me enough time to (try to) keep up with submissions, to keep the website and Facebook page up to date, to answer emails and get feedback to and from authors, along with a million other tasks. This month, in addition to our regular issues, we’re also judging our first poetry contest, and are getting ready to release our “Best of the Year” collection so it’s feeling especially overwhelming.

 Tell us about your staff.

Aside from the editors, there are a lot of other people who make The Speculative Edge such a cool magazine. John Carney is our film critic. He eats, sleeps, and breathes movies. He works on various film sets in Connecticut – last month he was working with Cuba Gooding Jr. Trevor is our book critic. Not including what he reviews for the magazine, I think he must read a book a week. Lately, he’s been into George RR Martin and one of Steven King’s series. He’s a student at Parkside along with Danielle.

Brooke – our highly esteemed intern – is a college student in Michigan. She completely handles our blog, she helps me read through submissions, and she’s currently working on an essay for an upcoming issue.

And last but not least, we have Blaise Lucey who handles all of our email marketing. If you get our newsletters, he’s the reason they’ve gotten so much prettier over the last few weeks. He’s also a think-tank for strategizing how to market the magazine and coming up with ideas for new content. He lives in the North Shore of Massachusetts and works as Constant Contact.

For our readers that may want to contribute, are you actively seeking submissions? If so, where should one go for guidelines?

We’re always looking for more submissions. We have a couple of themed issues coming up and the guidelines for our first annual Summer Fiction Contest will be going up online in a month or two. You can check out all of our guidelines here: sites.google.com/site/thespeculativeedge/submissions

What ingredients are you looking for in fiction and poetry?

Like any other publication, we’re looking for the best quality work we can find. For fiction, that means work that has depth to it. It should have memorable characters that develop over the story. Stylistically, I tend to love work that is dark and gritty. I think the best way to see what we’re looking for would be to get a copy of our “Best of the Year” collection when it comes out and check out the six stories I nominated for the Pushcart.

Tell us about some content you have lined up for future issues. What does the future hold for The Speculative Edge?

We’ve got some great stuff coming out soon. For December, we have an apocalyptic issue to celebrate the end of the Mayan calendar. It has a HUGE fiction section. Apocalyptic fiction has always been one of my favorite genres – I may even be slipping one of my own stories in there. We’ll be interviewing Jo Cannon – a UK author who published a great collection of apocalyptic stories a couple years back. And, with the rising popularity of survivalism and shows like Doomsday Preppers, we’re publishing an essay by James Wesley Rawles, author of How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, about prepping.

After that, Danielle will be guest editing a romance issue for February and also something special for April Fool’s Day. We’re currently conducting a reader survey that will help us decide where to go from there. We’re hoping to revamp the website in the future – that’s one of our big goals to do in the next six months.

Are you working on any other projects?

Oh, man, am I. Haha. I recently finished editing a pair of novels and am looking for representation. One is the first book of two in an epic military science fiction series about the first navy in space. The second book is a coming-of-age new adult book about a typical college student on a road trip with his ex girlfriend but with one caveat – he’s in ROTC and is about to become an active duty officer in the army for the next seven years.

And this January, I will be going on an adventure to the final frontier: beginning graduate school to get my MFA in Fiction at the Stonecoast program alongside Danielle.

Thanks for the interview, George!

Thanks to you for stopping by. You can visit The Speculative Edge by clicking on the link at the beginning of this post or right here: https://sites.google.com/site/thespeculativeedge/.

Please take the time to check out this exciting new magazine.

 

 

 

 

Do You Believe in Ghosts? Stories in my new book SILHOUETTE OF DARKNESS Explore this Universal Theme

It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

-SAMUEL JOHNSON, The Life of Samuel Johnson

This quote is as true today as ever. Even though the show Ghost Hunters and its countless imitators has offered a certain level of proof spirits exist, most often that evidence is still not nearly enough to win over stanch skeptics.

Over two hundred more years have passed since Johnson wrote this—two hundred years of vast technological advancement—and still, this subject comes down to the simple notion of belief vs. disbelief.

Fiction provides an effective venue where this debate can be mediated in a safe environment. While readers entertain the notion that ghost smay exist, we are safe in this created world we can leave at any time, compared to a more extreme form of experiment, such as agreeing to attend a séance or serious session with a Ouija board.

In his book The Fantastic (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975), Tsvetan Todorov offers one of the best explanations of how readers participate in a “gothic hesitation” to sort out this potentially disturbing subject.

The fantastic, we have seen, lasts only as long as a certain hesitation: a hesitation common to reader and character, who must decide whether or not what they perceive derives from reality as it exists in the common opinion. At the story's end, the reader makes a decision even if the character does not; he opts for one solution or the other, and thereby emerges from the fantastic. If he decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we say that the work belongs to another genre: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous.

I have had my own brushes with the uncanny and found there is always a frustration when trying to relay the experience to a friend later on. In the moment, I was positive I was faced with the “new laws of nature” Todorov presents, and that “all belief was for it,” but once I began explaining it to another person, the certainty became diminished with each passing word I tried to place upon it.

This is why ghost stories are so popular. We read the book, or watch the film, and can safely entertain the notion, in the guise of fiction, that we accept the supernatural as real. We are safe there. We wander the halls of The Overlook or Hill House expecting entertainment but also to enter the world of the what if, the Todorovian hesitation that allows for the real possibility that the spirit world is real.

My new collection, Silhouette of Darkness includes two ghost stories.

The Blues in A Minor

Since surviving a tragic accident, Mona is troubled by blackouts. Waking from one of these spells, she enters an eerie tenement and discovers Zach, a young man who plays blues guitar that speaks to her soul.

An Act of Naming
Norman wanders the streets after a night of drinking and meets Angela, a homeless amnesiac. The moment their eyes meet is the beginning of an evening of mystery.

These stories are not meant to frighten or disturb, as are most of the other selections in Silhouette of Darkness. Rather, they explore the classic themes at the heart of every ghost story—who are the ghosts and more importantly why are they spirits? What has trapped them in the region between life and whatever exists beyond death?

To read these ghost stories, and eleven other tales of horror and dark fantasy, check out Silhouette of Darkness, available in all electronic formats through Musa Publishing  here:

http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=397

And I Swear This is True--My anthology of Urban Legends

STATIC MOVEMENT
is a great small press for beginning writers and editors alike. Since it is non-paying, there is less competition than one faces if trying to answer a call for submissions with semi-pro or better rates. Though there is no pay involved, the process gives writers exposure and also the chance to work with an editor.

One of my first completed Static Movement anthologies as editor was
AND I SWEAR THIS IS TRUE, stories inspired by urban legends. I left the theme wide open, encouraging writers to conceive their own legends or an original twist on a well-known one.

While some writers did use an existing concept for their launching point (e.g. Chupacabra by Jonathan Savill eorThe Zodiac Killer by Andy Echevarria) each offered unique twists on the legends.

Most of the stories, however, are the writer’s own invention, but all still have the exciting qualities of urban legends—the insistence that (hence this book’s title) the narrator “swears it is true,” the small shred of evidence left behind that can be passed off as coincidence only by the most tenacious skeptic. There are several stories of haunted places and for some reason quite a few involving spiders.

Some of the writers explore the reasons these legends might be so prevalent. The Devil and Rich Levi by Ken L. Jones is dedicated in part to Washington Irving and emulates that writer’s style well. It also reinforces the idea that urban legends are not a new phenomenon at all.

In one way or another, some character in each of the tales "swears it is true." Skeptics requiring proof write the supernatural off as nonsense. The tales collected here provide enough evidence to the contrary to leave the incredulous reader a little less certain about that stance.

 

We believers have always known there is a world of shadow beneath reality.

Urban legends are simply the stories where the layer between those two planes is paper thin.

You can purchase this exciting anthology at Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/And-I-Swear-This-True/dp/1617061727

Jeffrey Thomas Talks Punktown in a New Interview with Taylor Preston

In a new blog post, Taylor Preston (author of BLOOD RED MARS) interviews writer Jeffrey Thomas on world-building in science fiction, and the creation of his dark future setting "Punktown": 

http://taylor-preston.blogspot.com/2012/10/interview-with-jeffrey-thomas.html

AUDIO PODCAST: The Gangster's New Clothes, A Dark Fantasy Tale

 

THE GANGSTER'S NEW CLOTHES

A Tale of Dark Fantasy from

On the Verge of Madness

by George Wilhite 

This audio presentation is a slightly edited version of this story, read by J.B. Goodspeed, originally presented on the Well Told Tales podcast.

Lars, a hitman waiting for his mark to arrive, bored stiff, held up in a one-horse town, decides to indulge himself in a new suit.

A convenience store owner suggests a tailor, which Lars finds kind of odd, but he makes the fateful decision to visit Hymie, the purveyor of "a perfect fit."

This Twilight Zone inspired tale from my self-published debut collection On the Verge of Madness finds Lars wandering the city streets in his new suit, soon doubting his sanity as the world shifts around him in space and time.

Hear the whole story here:

http://archive.org/download/WellToldTales-PulpFictionPodcast/wtt_56_gangsters_new_clothes.mp3

If you like what you hear, check out this blog's  On the Verge of Madness page by clicking on the link below the cover:



ON THE VERGE OF MADNESS PAGE

For Dorothy Who Took Forever To Understand the Truth About The Ruby Slippers by KEN L. JONES

For Dorothy Who Took Forever to Understand the Truth About

The Ruby Slippers

Ken L. Jones

A constellation of stars led to all that I touched

Turning to solid gold long ago in a land of planted corn

Where I seized its pretty bird songs

And trapped them in a jewel encrusted cage

And like a stray cat shredding the vanishing dusk

I cast my gold coins of great sadness

Out over the unending sea until they

Turned into beautiful butterflies

To the tune of a singing harp that

Could also lay golden eggs when asked to by me

I want to be transformed into a beautiful swan

I want to escape past the pigsty gate

I want to enlist the four winds to fly me to a castle

That lies east of the old red barn’s drooping weather vane

But the forest is now all covered long by snow

Harsh winter guards it like some trickster tiger

And some unseen long dead Tsar has decreed

That I will never achieve all that my heart desires.

Ken L. Jones has been writing professionally for several decades. Although he has written everything from Donald Duck comic books to putting words in the mouth of Freddy Krueger in the movies he likes to think of himself first last and always as a poet.Currently he is working on a short horror movie with his son and sometimes collaborator Kevin for horror director David Todd Ocvirk. When not doing that he is also writing an insane amount of horror and other types of genre short stories and novellas and is editing three or four huge collections of his never ending flow of poetry including a volume of his much published horror work Blood Is Red which will be his second solo book of horror poetry.

COFFIN HOP CONTEST WINNERS

THE WINNERS ARE

cheralyn    

has won a copy of The “Collector’s EP” (electronic preview)  of the upcoming Coffin Hop: Death By Drive-In anthology

Jeanette J

and

the fishing widow  

both win their choice of a free copy of my ebook "Silhouette of Darkness" or a signed copy of my book "On the Verge of Madness"

Julianne Snow

has won a copy of Haunted.

Julianne and the fishing widow: I do not have your email addresses, so please email me at geojazz@sbcglobal.net with your contact information.

Thanks to all who stopped by.