Taking submissions now...

[troo]

Hurrah!

So, Coral. Where can I send people who may wish to purchase this delightful magazine? Would you like them to email you for details, or would you prefer they send a cheque, paypal, or sex slave right away?

[coral]

tell them to email me a sex slave with an open cheque!

I'll put up paypal buttons on the page later or tomorrow. I can't be arsed to set up a seperate website at the moment, my horrid baby has stressed me out so much that I'm barely clinging to sanity, let alone concentrating on anything new

The magazine page is at

www.myspace.com/womenwriters

I must say your story reads very well typed up, tease, tease, don't worry, it'll be with you before long.

I'll do blogs and announcements and such in a few days when the paypal buttons are up, and the contributors copies are all out.

I'm quite pleased with it actually, like everything I do, it has an old fashioned, erm, well, rustic, feel to it, and that's being kind, but the contents are absolutely cracking, it really does earn the "quality fiction" quote I put on the cover.

If some peeps on here want to see one, just pm the address to me. Wow, I said pm, cutting edge, me

[Calenture]

I shouldn't have been surprised at how good this magazine is, but behind that slightly misleading cover, inside these stapled-together pages, the stories are[glow=red,2,300]genuinely hot[/glow].

I'm not kidding. I can't 'review' a magazine that I've contributed to, and obviously I won't give anything away, but I can type a few thoughts out. Coral's told me that she was 'ruthless' when sifting through submissions, and looking at these, I believe her.

A story which opens with the protagonist being assaulted by an inflatable Shagging Sandie sex doll would leave some writers wondering how to follow that. You needn't worry when Troo Topham's on the case, in Stiff.

Head by Emily Jones is... a perfect horror story.

Cassandra by Anna Stephens is hot, erotic SF which reads as if it was written for misogynistic males brought up reading Stag and Mickey Spillane... so naturally I loved it.

Roswell Ivory's The Lady Medusa is a funny and very smart prose story which tells nothing but the truth about the snake-tressed lady.

Virginia Powell has some of her excellent verse in the present issue of FC; there's more verse from Bubo. Also present is another FC and Pantechnicon contributor, Caroline Callaghan with flash fiction, Transmat.

[coral]

Not competition, we complement each other perfectly

I'm absolutely pink with pleasure now. Somebody read my magazine and liked it.

Professional behaviour, sod that, WOOOOOOOOOOO, yay, hurrah,whoopeeeee.

aside, thanks Rog, your cake's in the post...

[carolinec]

Woo-hoo! My copy arrived in the post today. Thanks Coral! It looks terrific!

The great thing about this magazine, and Filthy Creations of course, is that they're put together by real enthusiasts who love the genre, and love the old-style magazines printed on real paper (as opposed to online). Great stuff!

I haven't had time to read it yet - just a quick scan through - but can I also say that only Troo could write a story about a killer sex toy!

Coral - could you let us know when you have that PayPal button sorted and I'll put some messages about it on the couple of other boards I frequent - Pantechnicon and the BFS one - unless Troo beats me to it, of course. Is it your "womenwriters" site I need to direct people to? I'm afraid that site doesn't display properly for me - probably due to my brower, I guess.

[benedictjjones]

^AGREED, think i've said it many many times before but i LOVE real magazines!

[dem bones]

Thanks Coral & Sean! Mine arrived today, bundled up in a jumbo fun-pack with Giant Albino Penguin demo's and a compilation disc - i'm dead thrilled! I'm hopeless at commenting on poetry and some of the other content doesn't lend itself to my v. limited approach to reviews but here goes ....

Trudi Topham - Stiff: A sinister black magic cult bent on destroying the world. Their leader, Lloyd, sics an animated blow up dolly on our narrator, Dave the taxi driver, a crusader against evil who's had that Madonna in the back of his cab and has saved the earth at least three times. But can he best the sadistic Shagging Sandie doll? Let's hope not! Something tells me Michel Parry would love this one.

Emily Jones - Head: A woman's, severed and decomposing fast in an oak tree outside the offices of Davidson & Cromley. Only new employee Mark seems to be aware of it. With each passing day the head gets less pleasing to the eye ....

Caroline Callaghan - Transmat: Future travel. London - San Francisco in just over three minutes. Accidents on the Transmat are rare but they can happen .....

Anna Stephens - Cassandra: Earth is visited by a plague of Cassandra sprites, beautiful, lust filled humanoid women and ".... her species enslaved human males in such numbers that humanity on this planet was in danger of dying out ....". For the narrator, every day is a search, shag and destroy mission, but he's no longer enjoying his work.

Maybe some more if I can get my head around the prose poems but I really enjoyed this winning mix of sci-horror and erotica. I'd have liked an editorial and, I know not all you don't go in for them but maybe some thumbnail sketches of the contributors - something to consider for issue 2?

[coral]

Ever so thank you mr Demonik, your input is much appreciated. I did intend to include mini bio's but then I flapped and thought they would make the pages go wrong. Next time I will type them out first to ensure they fit in properly. Doing this first issue has been a major learning curve, but now I've mastered the basics I will try to make it a bit more swish next time. It should be a bit bigger next time, so I will do contents and related stuff, maybe page numbers if I'm feeling particularly brave.
If anybody else here would be prepared to read it and give me their opinions I would be extremely grateful, no point joining a board full of talented folk then not taking advantage of their wisdom, hee hee.
Oh, and Caroline, if you give people the www.myspace.com/womenwriters address it should work, most folks computers can load that, and there is a paypal button and info up there. I am working on a website, but I've been delayed while Hal 9000 went to hospital for an operation! He's all well again now

[Craig Herbertson]

I'm usually willing to read erotic science fiction Coral. Some of us have to take the burden on . Problem is I am really pushed at the moment and couldn't guarantee making any constructive comments for a long while.

[carolinec]

Jun 30, 2008 21:58:46 GMT coral said:

Oh, and Caroline, if you give people the www.myspace.com/womenwriters address it should work, most folks computers can load that, and there is a paypal button and info up there.

Will do, Coral! ;D

[coral]

Thanks anyway for considering it Craig, but it's not reviews I'm after, I've already had some of those. I wanted some personal opinions and maybe a spot of advice, for learning purposes. I'm surrounded by people who know their onions here, whereas I only know my shallots as yet.

[troo]

Do I get the feeling, Coral, that you re-typed these stories yourself, perhaps out of some crazy self-loathing?

I notice a couple of typos / word repetitions slipped into Stiff, so perhaps the magic of a word processor is the way forward?

[coral]

I did, yes! And mostly in the middle of the night when I was tired and ill, so I appologise if I included any spelling mistakes, they were purely down to a very unprofessional lack of ability to concentrate properly. I intend to be a bit more "like everything else" next time, although I will still be typing it up myself, I would have hand written the whole thing if I had tidy enough hand writing. I find it easier to tweak a story for a smoother read if I know it well, and you get to know them well by typing them!!! Which words did I repeat twice, please?

[troo]

Just re-reading now, so I'll pop in typos as I come across them.

Page 1: There are a couple of instances of both a full stop and an exclamation mark ending a sentence. Also a double space between "face" and "held".

Page 2: Sentence beginning with a lower-case letter: "her job was done". Typo: "all well and could" instead of "all well and good".

Page 3: Rogue capitalisation and apostrophe in the word "impossible" - "I'm-possible".

Page 4: Dave and Leroy's dialogue shares a paragraph. "All in good time" should be a new paragraph.

Page 5: "When it did, I noticed" should've been on a new line. "yesterdays" is missing an apostrophe. Double space between "and" and "miles".

Page 6: "fro" instead of "from". "over night" instead of "overnight". "perhaps" instead of "Perhaps" at the beginning of a sentence. "has to be a system" instead of "had to be a system". Extra space after "receipts" and before the comma.

Page 7: "it was like" instead of "It was like" at the beginning of a sentence.

Page 8: "i'd" instead of "I'd". "relavent" instead of "relevant." Additional space after "feet" and before the comma.

Page 9: Lloyd and Dave's dialogue in the same paragraph. "Hnnhhh!" should be a new para, as should "Soon be fixed" and "I already popped Shandie." In the next paragraph, Dave's and the demon's dialogue / dialogue attribution is also sharing a paragraph.

Page 10: "Wrong" should be a new para. Extra space after "me" and before the comma.

So, no word repetition

[coral]

Good Christ!!!
Most of them are capital letters, I have a problem with them on this keyboard. There were far too many paragraphs so it was necessary to squash the dialogue. A fresh paragraph for every line of conversation is not necessary.
The others didn't come out as badly typed as yours, I don't know why that is, I can only appologise.
Still, that's the marvellous thing about a publication like this, you still own Stiff and you can now have it published somewhere proper.
It's very rude of you to take the piss out of my first effort in public like that, so perhaps you would now list the improvements I made?