Niteblade

Archive for the ‘Announcement’ Category

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.

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 2013 and I’m super excited for this year at Niteblade 🙂 It may not seem like there’s very much going on here in between issues but everyone has been working super hard in the background and I think this is going to be our best year yet. I just wanted to take a couple moments to share some quick updates:

• Due to the recent changes at Duotrope we will no longer be offering our authors the option of donating their payment there. Now the choices for payment will be Paypal or a donation to Save The Chimps (for no deeper reason than it is a favourite cause of mine). Donations will be tracked and once they reach $75 I will match them and Niteblade will ‘Adopt a Chimp‘
• Alexandra (our poetry editor) has posted a blog about how to write a cover letter. Go. Read it. I’ll wait.
• All the fiction submissions in our queue have been read (as of 2:30 MST today). There are three I am holding for future consideration but I’ve left notes to their authors explaining that within the Submittable system.
• All the poetry submissions in our queue have been read and Alexandra is holding a few for further consideration.
• We have a new team of slush readers for this upcoming issue. Alexis, Megan and Samantha are all very actively reading your submissions and you ought to notice a speedier response time as a result.
• We will be holding our annual fundraiser in March this year, and I will begin organising that and releasing details very soon.

Thank you very much for your continued support.

It is my pleasure to nominate two stories from Niteblade for the 6th Annual Micro Award. The Micro Award is presented every year to stories that are no more than 1,000 words long. This year the Niteblade nominees are:

Dragons of Fire by Alexis Hunter, first published in June 2012

and

The Garden by Christopher DeWan, first published in December 2012

Good luck to the both of you 🙂

It is my pleasure and privilege to nominate three poems and three stories from Niteblade Magazine’s 2012 publications for the Pushcart Prize. My nominations are as follows:

The Silver Quarter by K.V. Taylor (March 2012)
Red Eye by Lisa M. Bradley (June 2012)
Seeds by Julia Rios (September 2012)
Where Dreams are Grown by Suzanne van Rooyen (September 2012)
The Second Law of Thermodynamics by Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman (September 2012)
The Garden by Christopher DeWan (December 2012)

Congratulations and good luck!

Congratulations to Jamie Wasserman whose poem, Rules for Playing Hide and Seek in a Cornfield, is a finalist for the 2012 Dwarf Stars award. Yay! Rules for Playing Hide and Seek in a Cornfield was published in our March 2011 issue.