mbranesf | Entries tagged with fantastique unfettered

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M-Brane Press's beautiful new magazine Fantastique Unfettered, created and edited by Brandon Bell, just got its first major notice, this review at the Future Fire site. Go read about and then visit the FU site for more info on buying the lovely, gorgeous print version or downloading and electronic copy (hint: we really, really want to sell some more copies of this, and anyone who doesn't have one is missing out; available also on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, and the UK Amazon).

My favorite line from the review is, "By and large the sensibility is ‘literary,’ and the quality is high (the two, of course, not always the same thing)..." I could not agree more, and would say so even if I weren't its publisher. Instead of starting small and slowly growing it like I did over two years with M-Brane SF, Brandon had the vision and daring to bring FU to life, full-blown, immediately with the first issue. This first issue is not just a first effort with a few hints of greatness, a mere promise of the future. It is from cover-to-cover a work of great quality, and once more people find out about this first issue and see the second (due soon), I believe that FU will suddenly move from being an obscure new publication that no one knows about yet to a leading, defining periodical of its genre.

One other point: If you are a reader of fiction but think you're not especially into fantasy, you might be wrong. When I started M-Brane SF, I broadly excluded fantasy in favor of science fiction because I felt that the sf genre in particular needed a new outlet and it's what I wanted to read more of; also, I didn't want to read a lot of wizard/dragon/magic or Tolkienesque or Jordanesque story submissions, because I am not a big fan of that particular subset of fantasy (though I have, in fact, run a fair number of stories that might be more fantastic than science fictional over our 26 issues). If you read the review at Future Fire, it will give you a sense of what sort of fantasy editor Brandon Bell is into, and it's the kind that I, a reader who isn't always drawn to the genre, likes as well.

End of the year is a logical time to review one's status, either to identify things that point toward a decent next year or suggest that much improvement is needed. In no particular order, these were the major features of my year 2010:

Professional: In May of this year, I returned to a proper day-job as a working culinarian after years spent in the Exile. This has made all the difference as far as the management of the household economy and my general attitude on the ongoing, intractable need to work for a living. I owe this turn of good fortune to a very dear friend. Since I don't talk specifically about the day job here, and because I do not want to embarrass anyone, I will not mention him by name here. But good friends are things to be thankful for even more so this year than most.

Homelife: We returned from the Exile this year. Our long, dark, insanely self-imposed sojourn in OKC was finally brought to its blessed bloody end by my partner's clear thinking. Well, Jeff had some help in the form of inheriting enough money to finance a move, but he talked me out of delaying the move until the end of the lease on our OKC home and instead saying "fuck that" and moving months early like we did. This wisdom on his part not only brought the Exile to an end months earlier but made the timing perfect as far as getting my new day job.

Writing: I wrote a lot, but didn't finish very much. On the other hand, I submitted two short stories for publication, which is far more than the zero that I had submitted during the previous three years. Of the two stories that I submitted, both were for specifically-themed publications and both were accepted. That puts my acceptance rate for the year at 100%, bitches! (Only two, I know...but still!) But tempering that success was my epic fail at NaNoWriMo in November. While I did clock about 30,000 words, they were quite a mess. Also, they were 30K words of a thing that needs to be more like 100K to actually be done rather than NaNo's 50K winner threshold. Projects that had fallen more or less into hiatus, like my military sf novel Shame and my non-fiction restaurant memoir/cookbook Stackin' Hogs, did not advance much during 2010, though both did have some words added and neither have been given up upon.

Publishing: If the actual work that I perform to make a living is my "day job," then my other job is as the editor of M-Brane SF and the publisher of the recently retooled M-Brane Press. 2010 was really only my second full year in this role, but it was a big one. Other than edit and publish the monthly issues of M-Brane, I also brought out a couple of single-author collections: Cesar Torres' The 12 Burning Wheels and Derek J. Goodman's Machina. I co-edited with Jaym Gates a one-off (maybe) erotic spec fic zine for Crossed Genres called The Little Death. I also published 2020 Visions, a really remarkable collection of near-future spec fic, edited by Rick Novy. We also started a second zine. Brandon Bell's Fantastique Unfettered published its first issue just a few days ago in a beautiful print edition. But perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the year was the publication of The Aether Age, co-edited by Brandon and me and published by Hadley Rille Books. This one was a long time in process and is absolutely the coolest book of the year, period. There's nothing quite like it. Anyone who thinks they know what it is but hasn't seen it yet is wrong. It may take a few months for the word to spread, but begun the Aether Age has!

Political: My undying disgust for teabaggers, Republicans, and other assorted morons reached new heights in 2010. If anyone had any doubt that American "conservatives" are wholly invested in promoting plutocracy, theocracy, know-nothing-ness and bugfuck dumbassedness, then no one need look any further than than the news of 2010. I actually don't much care at the moment that these people have taken control of the House of Representatives. In fact, I look forward to how they will have to explain to the public why they want to destroy everything. The public needs a fucking refresher anyway: these are some of the same jackasses (Boehner) who ran the Congress just a few years ago, and now they are joined by some even crazier ones. On the upside: the health care law was passed and so was the REPEAL OF DADT!! In your face, McCain!

Personal: Ten years into the relationship with my significant other, I have never been more in love. This is why I do and care about all the rest of it.

I think that's everything from 2010.

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