Niteblade

Archive for 2013

Issue #26 of Niteblade is a theme issue. Earlier in the year we held a fundraiser and one of the perks donors could choose was to pick the theme for our December issue. An generous donor who would like to remain anonymous, donated $100 to Niteblade for the chance to pick the theme for this issue and they chose ‘Ghost Stories’. They especially wanted winter ghost stories, but were open to any type of haunting tale.

After reading through a great many submissions the poetry editor, Alexandra Seidel, and myself (with the help of our fabulous fiction slush readers Alexis and Samantha), have put together a fantastic line up of ghostly verse and stories. This is a big issue packed full of spooks, spectres and all manner of things that will send chills up your spine.

Table of Contents:
House 5 by Adele Gardner
Memory Walking by KB Lawrence
A Fixer-Upper by Amanda C. Davis
Soldier’s Return by Robert Dawson
Envying the Dead by Francis W. Alexander
The Isle of Skye by Adele Gardner
Hot Biscuits by Elizabeth Archer
Hanashi Ukemi by Kenneth Kao
A Voice, Independent by Christos Callow Jr.
Dead Letters by Sandi Leibowitz
Heaven & Earth by Adrienne J. Odasso
Pushed Out by Jay Wilburn
Wintery Silence by Shari Jo LeKane-Yentumi

I have a love/hate relationship with the Pushcart Prize. I love that I get to nominate six works every year for this extra recognition and the chance to win. I hate that I only get to nominate six works every year for this extra recognition and the chance to win. Still, rules are rules, so each year come November I re-read each of our issues and pick six works to nominate.

I dropped the package in the mail today, so it’s official. This year, on behalf of Niteblade Magazine I have nominated the following works for the Pushcart Prize:

Infectious by Lilah Wild (March 2013)
before by Lynn Hardaker (March 2013)
Compassion, During and After the Fall by Cory Cone (June 2013)
Not Too Bold by Shira Lipkin (September 2013)
Pushed Out by Jay Wilburn (December 2013)
Memory Walking by KB Lawrence (December 2013)

Congratulations to all the nominees, and good luck!

Rufus
©2010 Save the Chimps
www.savethechimps.org

This is Rufus. Due to the generosity of many of Niteblade’s authors and poets, we were able to “adopt” Rufus from Save the Chimps last month. As described in this Miscellanea blog post, contributors are given a choice of being paid via paypal or of donating their payment to Save the Chimps. I had hoped that maybe we would be able to adopt a chimp every 18 months or so, but I was blown away by the number of people donating their payment. We reached the $75 goal quite some time ago and then had a bit of a vote to decide which chimp we’d adopt. Rufus won by a landslide.

You can learn more about Rufus (and see more photos of him) right here — All About Rufus.

The reason I’m just blogging about our adoption of Rufus now is that I must have made a mistake when I filled out the paperwork to adopt him. The original certificate (which exists solely for bragging rights) listed me, personally, as the person who adopted Rufus (though I’d said in the papers that it was on behalf of Niteblade Magazine). I emailed Save the Chimps to see if they could provide me with a certificate that more accurately reflected reality but so far I haven’t heard back (no doubt since they are busy helping chimps). So what you see above is a copy of the certificate which I edited to give credit where it belonged.

Thank you to everyone who donated their payment to support Save the Chimps, and to everyone who voted to help us decide which chimp to adopt! It’s a small thing we’ve done, but because of you, Niteblade is changing lives and helping to make the world a better place, and how awesome is that?

Because of the phenomenal generosity of our authors Niteblade is going to support Save the Chimps by adopting a chimp!

I’m super excited. This is a cause that is close to my heart and it means more than I can say to have so many of our authors choose to donate their payment to support these chimps.

In reality all the chimps will benefit from our donation, but to make it more personal we get to choose which of twenty chimps we want to adopt.

Please pop over to the Adopt a Chimp page and take a look around. If you click on a chimp’s portrait their bio (and more photographs) will open up in a new window. When you’ve picked which one you’d like for us to adopt come back here and leave a comment with the name of the chimp you’d like to adopt. I already have my favourites, but I don’t want to bias you 😉

I will tally up the votes at the end of the month and come the beginning of October Niteblade will adopt a chimp.

Issue #25: Alice Underground gets its title from a phenomenal poem by Brittany Warman and sports one of my favourite covers of all time! We certainly aren’t growing complacent as we grow older here at Niteblade, this issue packs a hell of a wallop:

Lady Mary Speaks of Dreams by Sandi Leibowitz
With The Band by Carl Barker
Bitter Mnemosyne by Sara Norja
Jonesy by Evan Purcell
Alice Underground by Brittany Warman
Starry Night by David Luntz
Le Cirque by Jess Simms
the moon, so low by Dan Campbell
The Kiss of Legend by T.H. Lee
This man by Erik Amundsen
Empire of Ash by Cameron Johnston
Not Too Bold by Shira Lipkin

You can purchase your copy of our latest issue directly from the Niteblade Store, or Amazon (coming soon to Kobo).

In other exciting news, due to the generosity of our authors we have raised enough money to adopt a chimp from Save the Chimps. I will make a post about that next week and we will hold a vote to pick exactly which chimp we’ll be adopting.

June 2013 brings us issue #24 of Niteblade. This one is entitled, Forbidden Island, and it’s pretty fabulous. Check out this ToC:

Compassion, During and After the Fall by Cory Cone
Forbidden Island by J.A. Grier
The Imago by Carly Berg
The Travelling Dead by Keith Kennedy
The Peculiar Fruit of the Savage Chinchilla by Kate Duva
Where We Died by Shira Lipkin
Little Stitches by M. Shaw
An Unexpected Review by Michele Bannister
Shifting Sands of Blood by Rebecca Harwell

We seem to have ended up with a bit of a zombie theme for this one, but that is certainly not all you’ll find. We’ve also got exotic places, tiny people and bizarre pets. There’s something inside for every fantasy and horror lover. If you don’t believe me check out the teasers we’ve got waiting for you.

You can pick up a copy of this issue at our Store where you can purchase Forbidden Island in several formats (.pdf, .mobi or .epub). It will also be coming soon to the Amazon page for Kindle as well as to Kobo. If you’d rather read it online, you can make a donation (from the sidebar on almost every page on this site) and once we reach our sales/donation goal of $40 we will release the website version for free to everyone.

What’s more our generous authors have donated a total of $25 this issue, added to the $35 from our previous issue that brings our current total earmarked for Save the Chimps to $60. Once it reaches $75 I will match that donation and Niteblade will “Adopt a Chimp”. It looks like that will be a reality very soon.

We want your spooky stories about spectres, poltergeists, shades, shadows, spirits, spooks, wraiths and things that go bump in the night. In short, we’re looking for ghost stories (and poetry).

Our December issue this year is going to have a ghostly theme so we’re looking for your best ghostly fiction to fill our pages. Because it’s the December issue we’ll also be giving extra consideration to stories that take place in winter time.

All our submission guidelines, payout rates and such remain the same as for usual issues, just make sure you choose the correct category when you submit via our submissions form.

Submissions are open now and close on September 30th, 2013.

Would you like to know a secret?

When I set up our 2013 fundraiser on IndieGoGo this year I’d hoped to raise $300. I set the goal at $500 because, well, that was the minimum amount that Indiegogo would let me choose. Well, boy did you guys teach me a lesson. Not only did we raise more than $300 we raised more then $500. In the end we raised $604!

Let me say that again in case you missed it — Together we raised $604!

Now, for some presses that would barely put a dent in their budget. For Niteblade, however, that is freaking huge. Huge. And I can’t thank you enough.

Thank you for donating things for use to offer as perks and stretch goals. Thank you for spreading the word, telling your friends, family and followers about Niteblade and saying we’re a worthwhile destination for their hard earned dollars. And of course, thank you for your donations. Each dollar matters. It really and truly does. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I use the annual fundraiser when I’m doing budgets for the following year and, judging by how well this one went, I suspect this is going to be Niteblade’s best year yet.

Hang on tight, we’re going to be in for a hell of a ride.

I’m excited. I’m excited for a couple reasons. The first is that our IndieGoGo fundraiser has currently raised $179. That means we’ve already made more than we did last year (about $108) and there are still loads of awesome perks available 🙂

The second reason I am excited is because thanks to the efforts of M.B. Ryther Niteblade is now available for the Kindle. We started with the most recent issue but will be working backward to convert all the back issues we are able.*

Blodeuwedd – Niteblade #23 on Kindle

If you have read Blodeuwedd, we would really appreciate your review on Amazon… just sayin’ 😉

It’s exciting times around here, for sure 🙂

*Unfortunately we cannot do all our back issues because of differences in author agreements over the years.

It’s that time of year again. Our second annual fundraiser 🙂 This year we’re doing things a little differently and running the fundraiser on IndieGoGo:

Click here to check out our fundraising campaign!

One thing that is the same as last year is that our writers have been extremely generous in donating amazing things for us to use as perks. We have everything from art to cookies, handicrafts to critiques. We’ve raised $50 and a couple perks have already been claimed so be sure and hop on over and pick out what your dream perk is. And even if you can’t support us financially, pop over anyway. There are loads of sharing tools on our campaign page that will help you spread the word about our fundraiser, which is an awesome way to help without spending a dime 🙂

One perk that everyone gets to take advantage of is that since we’ve raised $50 already, we also released the web version of issue #23 today. Yay! Check that out… after the fundraiser 😉