In light of some recent problems at other publications, we’ve included a new clause in our contracts from here on out:

If the Publisher chooses to cancel publication of a story less than 30 days before the release of the anthology, for any reason other than having received evidence of plagiarism within the affected story, the Author will receive payment for the work, even though it will not be published. Evidence of plagiarism will render the story unpublishable, the Author will not be paid, and will further be prevented from working with Dagan Books in any capacity for a period of at least one calendar year from the date of notification.

We like transparency here at Dagan Books, so we’re sharing this clause with you. It’s also a warning, in its way. If we can prove that you even submitted something plagiarized to us, you’ll go on a “do not hire” list for a least a year. Depending on how egregious your use of someone else’s work, you may stay on that list indefinitely, and never be accepted for publication by us, ever again.

Hopefully this is simply a routine notice, and we won’t ever have to use it.

- Carrie Cuinn, Publisher

Thank you for your support, your patronage, your patience, and your readership.

We wish you the best this holiday season and in the new year.

- The Staff of Dagan Books

http://daganbooks.submishmash.com/submit

Looking for the guidelines for this project? Please see our post about it HERE.

We will accept submissions from December 15, 2011, at noon EST, to midnight EST on March 31, 2012.

Bibliotheca Fantastica

What we want: Stories having to do with lost, rare, weird, or imaginary books, or any aspect of book history or book culture, past, present, future, or uchronic. Any genre. Although the fantastical is not essential per se, stories should evoke a sense of the fantastic, the unknown, the weird, wonder, terror, mystery, pulp, and/or adventure, etc.

Originals only, no reprints. No simultaneous submissions. Prose fiction only (no poetry). Accepting stories of up to 10,000 words in length. We will accept two submissions per author.

Do not describe the story in your cover letter. Please put the word count on the first page of your submission. Please format italics in italics (no underline).

We will accept submissions from December 15, 2011, at noon EST, to midnight EST on March 31, 2012. We are taking submissions through an automated system that will not allow you to submit before December 15, but the link to do so will appear here: http://daganbooks.submishmash.com/submit

Dagan Books is paying 2 cents per word for each accepted story, plus contributor copies. Bibliotheca Fantastica will be available in both print and ebook, and is scheduled to be published Fall 2012.

About the editors:

Claude Lalumière is the author of two books – the collection Objects of Worship and the novella The Door to Lost Pages – as well as the co-creator of Lost Myths, and is the Fantastic Fiction columnist for The Montreal Gazette. Bibliotheca Fantastica is his tenth
anthology as editor.

Don Pizarro is an author of short fiction, and editor for Dagan Books. In addition to this anthology he is also editing Cthulhurotica 2 in 2012.

Polenth Blake, “Thwarting the Fiends”

M. Bernardo, “The Fish-Wife’s Tale”

Camille Alexa, “The Skin of Her Skin”

Megan Englehardt, “Anansi and the New Thing”

Paul Dixon, “One Let Go”

Jennifer R. Povey, “Water Demons”

Zachary George, “You, Fish”

Sam Fleming, “What the Water Gave Her”

Shay Darrach, “I Know a Secret”

H.L. Fullerton, “The Fish Are There On Land”

Alex Shvartsman, “Life at the Lake’s Shore”

Cate Gardner, “Too Delicate for Human Form”

Andreea Zup, “Maria and the Fish”

Cat Rambo, “The Fisher Queen”

Amanda C. Davis, “O How the Wet Folk Sing”

Timothy Nakayama, “Fallen Dragons”

Sarah Hendrix, “Never to Return”

Tim Kane, “Vanity Mirror”

R.L. Naquin, “Kisses In the Snow”

Maria Romasco-Moore, “Fisheye”

Jacob Ruby, “The Talking Fish of Shangri-La”

Tracie McBride, “The Touch of Taniwha”

Corinne Duyvis, “The Applause of Others”

T.J. McIntyre, “How Did the Catfish Get a Flat Head, You Wonder?”

April L’Orange, “Quick Karma”

Vivian Unger, “A Fish Tail”

Mel Obedoza, “The Fisherman and Golden Fish”

Andrea Kneeland, “Becoming Human”

Jessie Kwak, “Needlepoint Fish of Azure City”

Claude Lalumière, “Xandra’s Brine”

Andrew Fuller, “A Salmon Tale, 2072”

Suzanne Palmer, “Lanternfish In the Overworld”

Mike Wood,“The Last Fisherman of Habitat 37”

Ariyana Spencer, “Fish Tears”

Ken Liu, “How Do You Know If a Fish Is Happy?”

The book comes in at about 80,000 words, and our like previous anthologies, will be illustrated. The book will be available on February 8, 2012.

About Wendy N. Wagner:

Ms. Wagner’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Crossed Genres, and the anthologies Rigor Amortis, The Way of the Wizard, and The Beast Within 2. She is the Assistant Editor of Fantasy Magazine.

You can learn more about Wendy at http://www.winniewoohoo.com. Or catch her on Twitter: @wnwagner.

1. Alexa, Camille “The Skin of Her Skin”
   
2. Bennardo, Matthew “The Fish-Wife’s Tale”
   
3. Blake, Polenth “Thwarting the Fiends”
   
4. Darrach, Shay “I Know a Secret”
   
5. Davis, Amanda C. “O How the Wet Folk Sing”
   
6. Dixon, Paul A. “One Let Go”
   
7. Duyvis, Corinne “The Applause of Others”
   
8. Englehardt, Megan “Anansi and the New Thing”
   
9. Fleming, Sam “What the Water Gave Her”
   
10. Fuller, Andrew “A Salmon Tale, 2072”
    
11. Fullerton, H.L. “The Fish Are There On Land”
    
12. Gardner, Cate “Too Delicate for Human Form”
    
13. George, Zachary “You, Fish”
    
14. Hendrix, Sarah “Never to Return”
    
15. Kane, Tim “Vanity Mirror”
    
16. Kneeland, Andrea “Becoming Human”
    
17. Kwak, Jessie “Needlepoint Fish of Azure City”
18. L’Orange, April “Quick Karma”
    
19. Lalumière, Claude “Xandra’s Brine”
    
20. Liu, Ken “How Do You Know If a Fish Is Happy?”
    
21. McBride, Tracie “The Touch of Taniwha”
    
22. McIntyre, T.J. “How Did the Catfish Get a Flat Head, You Wonder?”
23. Nakayama, Timothy “Fallen Dragon”
    
24. Naquin, R.L. “Kisses In the Snow”
    
25. Obedoza, Mel “The Fisherman and Golden Fish”
    
26. Palmer, Suzanne “Lanternfish In the Overworld”
    
27. Povey, Jennifer R. “Water Demons”
    
28. Rambo, Cat “The Fisher Queen”
    
29. Romasco-Moore, Maria “Fisheye”
    
30. Ruby, Jacob “The Talking Fish of Shangri-La”
31. Shvartsman, Alex “Life at the Lake’s Shore”
    
32. Spencer, A. D. “Fish Tears”
    
33. Unger, Vivian “A Fish Tail”
    
34. Wood, Mjke “The Last Fisherman of Habitat 37”
    
35. Zup, Andreea “Maria and the Fish”

Please note the Table of Contents is currently listed alphabetically by author’s last name, and does not reflect the final order of stories.

We are looking for speculative fiction, particularly science fiction (hard, soft, near-future, etc), magic realism, urban fantasy, and apocalypse fiction. We rarely like sword and sorcery type fantasy, aren’t interested in “slasher” type horror, don’t care for religious themes (which includes demons/the devil), and will not accept poetry of any kind. Please do not send us a romance novel, no matter what setting it is in, as that just wastes your time and ours. Seeking complete (finished, edited) manuscripts of up to 120,000 words.

Step one is to submit a query to us using our automated form. If interested, we will reply with a request for a synopsis and the first three chapters.

Please note: If you are submitting a collection of previously published material, you must have recovered all rights to those stories BEFORE submitting to us. Do not submit a collection which contains stories still under copyright to another publisher.

If you’d like to submit work to Dagan Books, please see our Novel, Collection, Novella Submissions page for more information and the query form.

From Carrie:

Readercon, The Loot Edition (or, what happens in the dealers room has to find space in your luggage)
Readercon 2011 Recap: Thursday / Friday
Readercon 2011 Recap: Saturday / Sunday (and we’re done)

and So You Want to Write an Author Blurb? Readercon Edition, With Advice from Ken Liu and Don Pizarro

From Don we have deeper thoughts about individual panels:

ReaderCon Shout-Outs, an intro of sorts
“He held the Beast of the Apocalypse by its tail, the stupid kid!”, a look at Mike Allen’s ”Speculative Poetry Workshop.
“Sooner or later, it comes down to you and the paper.” a write-up on the “What Writing Workshops Do and Don’t Offer” panel
Know Your Limit, the  ”Writing Within Constraints” panel
Foreign Deviltry, about the ”Complicating Colonial Encounters” panel
Feeling Very Fuzzy, the “Surrealism and Strong Emotion” and “Feeling Very Post-Slipstream” panels
“I am dressed as the woman of the opposite sex”, about the ”Daughters of the Female Man” panel

and A Day Late and A Dollar Short, a wrap-up, or something like it.

Overall, it was a wonderful convention, and one we’re planning to have a bigger presence at next year.

Submissions for the FISH anthology are now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted. Final decisions will be made by September 30, 2011.

Novella and Novel-length submissions:

We will be open for submissions of these longer works from individual authors beginning October 1, 2011. Additional guidelines will be posted before that time.