There is nothing more irksome, working my way through the slush pile for Every Day Fiction, than coming upon a submission in which the author has made no attempt at formatting. Lynn Price, editorial director for Behler Publications, offers up a wonderful little rant about such Philistines. Every writer should memorize her words.
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It’s a sad day in Munchkinland. Mickey Carroll, who played the Munchkin town crier in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, one of my favorite movies, died yesterday in St. Louis. He was 89.
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Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a new online magazine “dedicated to publishing the best in literary adventure fantasy.” It began publication last October and so far it has delivered on that promise.
Kris Dikeman’s Clockwork Heart, Clockwork Soul, a fresh reworking of the Frankenstein legend, is a fantastic example of the sort of story this magazine presents. It appears in the May 7, 2009, issue and it just may be the best piece of fantasy-horror writing I have ever read.
K.C. Ball 
The Behler rant is really funny and brings up good points. I like the torpedo analogy as my son is in sea cadets and plans on being in the navy some day…I’ll use that one on him next time he tries to pass off shoddy school work.
I will hit “submit” and see if this posts. I’ve been having problems the past couple of days getting comments posted. My comments on todays EDF story wouldn’t take, nor at a couple of other sites. I’ve set up a blog profile (also in the past couple of days) so that may have something to do with it.
The last couple of posts have come through okay, Alan. Let me know when you get your blog up and running and I’ll post a link here.
Perhaps we can exchange some e-mails about where you live, too. I’m a big fan of Annie Proulx’ The Shipping News and would love to know how faithful she was to Newfoundland.
Hi KC,
I can’t figure out why I could post here, yet not comment on the EDF story. Nor could I post at Musings of as Aussie Writer (I follow BT’s blog in Oz.)
Re. the blog, I only started a profile because I figured that if I was going to comment on people’s stories and their blogs, etc. I should at least properly identify myself (and get my face and name out there in the writer’s world). I have been considering a web page but I need to give it more thought as to how to present it. I also need to talk my neice’s boyfriend (the IT guy) to help me setting it up at a resonable price, of course…
Re. ‘The Shipping News’ I have not read the book yet. My brother-in-law here hated it because the protagonist was quite “wimpy”. I have ‘Random Passage’ by Bernice Morgan set aside to read. I just finished ‘The Custodian of Paradise’ by Wayne Johnston. A great story set both here and in New York in two time frames. One in 1914 or so, the other near the end of the war in 1944 or so. The protagonist is a woman who is unusually tall, somewhat alcholic and writes scathing articles for the local paper. A lot of the story is told through letters between her and her anonymous benefactor.
…and I would also recommend ‘The Confessions of Nipper Mooney’. A coming of age story about a boy (again in the St. John’s area) who attends the local schools taught by nuns and the Christian Brothers. I’m a bit biased on that one as the author, Ed Kavanagh, taught the two night school classes I attended at the university the past couple of years.
The writer’s market here is quite unusual in insulated from other parts of North America, but that’s a whole other conversation…back to work for me, have a great day, KC!
BCS is an excellent new mag. I’ll head over to check out the Kris Dikeman story. . .I really loved the piece she has up at Strange Horizons from last year:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20081027/sundays-f.shtml
It’s my favorite SH story to date.
Re. formatting – if they haven’t bothered to learn standard manuscript formatting, chances are they haven’t bothered to learn much else about the craft. There might be “natural genius” exceptions out there, but for the most part I wouldn’t even bother reading the story.