Port Iris Magazine is up for a few awards, so please follow the links below to vote for us:

Best Fiction Magazine/e-zine: Port Iris

Best Fiction Magazine/e-zine Cover Art: Port Iris Magazine #3 – Scientific Experiments

Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story: The Father of the Riverborn by Megan Arkenberg

Polls close on Jan. 26, 2011.

Sarah Hendrix is a writer of speculative fiction and has acted in a variety of positions within the publication industry, including three years at a print newspaper. She currently acts for Dagan Books as slush reader and for Apex Books as eBook assistant and head of their streat team, The Buzz.

Sarah keeps an active blog at shadowflame1974.wordpress.com, where you can find more about her. As @shadowflame1974, Sarah co-moderates #UFchat for urban fantasy writers on Twitter as well as helps out with #sffwrtcht (SF writer chat) and #zinechat. (SF publishing).

Sarah will officially start contributing to the magazine with Issue #5. We’re certainly happy to have her on board.

-Casey

Because I don’t believe that blogs should an output for all of ones personal problems and I don’t want to bring in the New Year by sharing mine, I won’t go into detail with everything that has happened here except to say that it has effected my ability to produce Issue #4 of Port Iris Magazine on time. For that, I sincerely apologize. An official announcement for the pending release is up at PortIris.com.

However, I will share my good news.

Although I lost the licenses to all my Adobe products, which I rely heavily on to produce Port Iris Magazine, I have arranged access to a CS5 upgrade, so there are no worries there. This is the second time that I have lost the use of Adobe to the detriment of the magazine, so one of this year’s goals is to switch to open source alternatives of InDesign and Acrobat before I permanently loose these products when I graduate.

My pending graduation is good news #2. I am now in my last year of my dissertation research and on track to be Dr. Seda by December. However, I will certainly need more help in producing Port Iris Magazine for the next year. I am actively looking for someone to act as assistant editor or even co-editor. More information for what I’m looking for can be found here. I have yet to receive any contacts about the position.

Luckily, I may already have a job lined up after graduation. I have been personally invited to apply for a post-doctorial research fellowship in a government lab. So some of the current unexpected activity is due to trying to put together an application packet and an additional research proposal unrelated to my own research. I will no longer be on a graduate student income (For just how pathetic this amount is, click here and realize that mine is below the average.) A real job will mean an expansion in the pay rate and/or number of stories in Port Iris Magazine.

One more goal for 2011 is for me to maintain a more active blog, so I will do so at my new personal blog, caseyseda.wordpress.com.

Despite the setbacks last year, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, and this year is already looking up. Good luck to everyone in 2011.

Casey Seda

I will not go into all the details except to say that one crucial event involved switching to a new computer which promptly crashed after the old one had been wiped, thus putting without a computer for some time in which I lost a few files and, more importantly, many of my account settings for email clients and webpage accounts, which has set me back tremendously.

All of the artwork and stories for Issue #4 have been selected, and once all edits have been made, the issue will be released. Hopefully, I’ll have that to you by the end of the month.

Thank you for your patience.

Port Iris Magazine is small and relies heavily on my own resources, and it could really use the support of others, even if it mostly comes from other little guys.

Since there is not much to gain at this stage in publishing by being reclusive, it makes more sense to me to share with others to collectively support the growth of an online speculative fiction audience so that we all have readers.

There really is strength in numbers. It is for this reason that grassroots movements can make a difference, and that is why I started ISFPA.org and why I use the #supportthelittleguy hashtag on Twitter to at least spread the word about other speculative fiction markets.

Successional theory is a fundamental concept in ecology for explaining the expansion and regrowth of forests. By this theory, the ecosystem expands in a gradient of succeeding species of plants which prepare the habitat for the next species.

For example, in the case of a cleared plot of land, the small, fast growing plants such as grasses and weeds will be the first to repopulate the land. These plants will then give way to larger, slow growing shrubs and bushes. Then the softwood trees like pines, which grow to block sunlight to low laying plants, clearing the way for the longer-living but slower-growing hardwood trees. Thus over a long time, a forest is born.

I see the state of the publishing industry in this way because the internet has provided a vast and fertile ground on which small markets can proliferate. The diversity of niche markets that were once available in the heyday of pulp fiction now have the freedom to disperse their material at a relatively low cost.

Will there be large markets to come out of this paradigm shift in publishing, and will many of the fledging independent markets perish? Surely, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Markets that can’t gain the resources to operate or can’t find a suitable audience won’t make it, but just because everybody can start a magazine doesn’t mean everyone should.  However, as I mentioned before, the room for growth on the internet is expansive. There will always be an edge where the big guys just can’t go, and it is in these places that the little guys will be fruitful.

By acting together, the little guys can just do it a little better and a little faster.

For more information on

Independent Speculative Fiction Publishers Association: visit http://www.isfpa.org

#SupportTheLittleGuy: visit http://supportthelittleguy.wordpress.com/about/
or follow the tag

The rules of AlterNaNoWriMo are simple:

1. Just like the real NaNoWriMo, the work you’re rewarded for begins on November 1st and ends at midnight on November 30th but doesn’t have to be a novel, or even 50,000 words.
2. Be accountable. Blog and/or tweet tweet (with the #alternano hash tag) your goal(s) your progress.

Because I would also prefer to write short fiction and see it as a more productive use of this time, I am revising my goals for November stated in yesterday’s blog post.

Goals:

• Write everyday
• Weekly Blog Updates
• Daily Twitter updates (at @caseysays)
• Draft, rewrite, and submit untitled story for 20Spec
• Rewrite and submit Familiar
• Rewrite untitled zombie story
• Draft 1 fantasy  and 2 sci-fi stories that I have outlined

Anybody that follows the buzz of excitement that precedes NaNoWriMo knows that the latter half of October is filled with blogs, podcasts and Twitter feeds meant to spread excitement and encouragement. And I’ve been caught up in the infectious enthusiasm this year, so I’m announcing my intent to participate.

My workload is the same, although the conference is set a week earlier than normal. In fact, I’m faced with the extra pressure this year of producing Issue #4 of Port Iris Magazine for December. If there is one thing that I gained from college aside from my education and my lovely wife, it is learning that I work best under pressure.

Nothing works better for my productivity than an intense workload and hard set timelines, which explains my attraction to NaNoWriMo. My immersion into publishing by starting Port Iris has greatly increased my writing output–words produced not published–to its highest point yet. Still, I face the all too common obstacle of procrastination, so I’m taking this chance to force my hand and to join the multitude of others this November to write my first novel.

The beginning of November will still be crunch time, so output will be limited at first. But I will be taking full advantage of the lull that follows the storm, not allowing myself to slack in that time or too much in the inevitable food coma to follow Turkey Day.

I’ll be keeping people posted of my progress on my personal twitter account, @caseysays.

Happy Halloween and good luck to all you fellow NaNoWriMo writers.

Because next year is going to be a hectic year for me too–I’ll be finishing my Ph.D. studies–I’ve decided to ask for a volunteer to take a more active role in helping me with the magazine and its growth.

I’m looking for somebody with a strong background in English, and I would prefer somebody that has spent time editing or at least reading slush elsewhere. If interested, please contact me at portiriszine [at] gmail.com with the following information:

1. Name
2. Email address
3. Why do you want to do this
4 How much time are you willing to devote to this project (weekly)
4. Any experience (Education and how long you’ve been editing, writing, reading speculative fiction)
5. What are your favorite stories in Port Iris Magazine and why
6. A little about your tastes in SF (Which Magazines, Editors, authors, etc. do you follow.)

All applications will be kept confidential.

The ISFPA is an organization to promote science fiction, fantasy and horror  magazines and small presses. This website contains references for publishers and people looking to start in the industry. Features include a browsable list of speculative fiction publishers, a location to provide information about #zinechat and a forum for interactive discussion between publishers and enthusiasts.

Website membership is open to all. Please enjoy.

Casey Seda

Once again, I’ve been working with Jaym Gates for this one. After the success of #zinechat, I brought up the idea of creating an organization for the publishers of speculative fiction magazines. As it turns out, she was already considering a similar project for small presses, for which #zinechat was to be a part. We decided to join our efforts to create the Independent Speculative Fiction Publishers Association (ISFPA).

Staying in the vein of #zinechat, the ISFPA will be open to the everyone in the SF community: publishers, writers, and readers. However, its purpose will be to nurture the creation and continued existence of independently operated magazines and small presses.

I am currently in the process of securing a domain name and a web server, but the ISFPA website will be coming soon. Once the website goes live, I will have a more detailed announcement here.

2 down 1 to go: portiris.com version 2.