Apex Digest #12

Here are a couple reviews of Apex 12.

SFRevu Column gives every story a Very Good.

The Fix reviews the issue favorably, and has this to say about "Dear Diary":

Summing up this double issue is “Dear Diary” by Sara Genge. Diary-style stories are often heavily done, but this one combines a childish voice and a touch of fantasy that ties together the first two pieces of the issue and the middle, religious-toned ones. A surly little girl rages against her mother who makes her kill the “gods” in their basement and destroy her “dead god collection” in an effort to keep the ministers off their backs. But mother, daughter notices, has a bit of a secret.

As you may already know, Apex Digest is holding a subscription drive. The magazine needs at least 150 new subscribers to keep on publishing some of the wackiest SF-horror out there. I don't need to remind you that Apex Digest stories straddle the void. There's no other magazine out there that covers the same niche. This means that if Apex goes on hiatus, the supply of fresh raw brain-sf will dry up. And when the zombies can't get their brain-fix the easy way... Let's just say, the world will be a happier place if you go ahead and subscribe. At 20$ in the US and 34$ abroad, Apex Digest is good value for money.

US residents can also get a lifetime subscription for 100$. There are even prizes for being a lifetime subscriber. I'm so jealous of you, guys.

Writing Stuff

Apex Digest #12 is out! Dear Diary is in it! It's a special double issue with a cool cover! Go buy!



Ok, now that I've gotten the squee moment out of the way, let's proceed to other things:

I signed up for SFWA and sent out the contract and proofs. The photocopies were crappy, but I don't own a working copier and there aren't many places where I can get a photocopy in my neighbourhood. I hope the accept my mangled copies as evidence enough.

Which takes us to the second point. Brace yourselves: I am not a particularly neat person. I seem to attract more entropy than is my due: my shoes wear out faster than a normal person's, my clothes bleed colors in the wash, and don't even get me started on the three or four times a year when I try to wear makeup.

Sometimes I think there's a fundamental rule I'm missing, one of those things people learn implicitly in kindergarten which make it unnecessary for their mothers to warn them that "you should not eat your classmates" (Intended Heinlein reference there). M says "I'm hard on things", meaning, the coffee maker you gave me for Thanksgiving? It'll still be working by Christmas, but it might look a little... tasered? burnt? melted? You get the idea.

Most of the time there's nothing particular I've done wrong in order to hurt the things in my life. Malfunction just seems to gravitate towards me, like bad handwriting (1). Hence, the bad photocopies at the shop today. I didn't even make them myself; there's no way those can be blamed on me, but I still have the nagging feeling that if one of the perfect people had gone to get her contracts and table of contents copied, she'd have walked out of there with a readable version.





(1) The whole point of this post is to make excuses for my poor handwriting. I'm sneaky like that.

Apex Digest 12 is out

And it's got my story "Dear Diary" in it.

Go buy! It's available in Canada and the US in B&N, Hastings, Chapters, and Joseph-Beth Booksellers, as well as through the Internet, of course.

The Sweet Spot in Apex Digest

My story "Dear Diary" which is part of the Dear Diary series published in dailycabal, is in the tentative TOC for Apex 12.

Here's the full list:

Brian Keene & Steven Shrewsbury - "Death Comes For All"
Paul Jessup - "Post Flesh"
Michael West - "To Know How to See"
Ryck Neube - "Feverish Solutions"
Joy Marchand - "Clementine"
Geoffrey Girard - "Cain 4"
Sara Genge - "Dear Diary"

Interviews:
Laura Anne Gilman
Jeff VanderMeer - (interviewed by Hal Duncan)

I've always had a soft spot for the Apex's parting shot. I'm a lazy reader, so the flash is the first or second story I read in every issue. I don't usually write with a magazine in mind, but in this particular case, I spent some time trying for Apex-length flashes. This was nicely compatible with producing material for Daily Cabal: if it was under 400, it went there, otherwise, to Apex.

Then, of course, Dear Diary turned out to be fantasy. Luckily, Apex took it all the same.