Thursday, June 3, 2010

So Pleased ...

Hurray! My copies of Realms came in yesterday. They are more professional and attractive than I had hoped. A gorgeous format for any story.

I remember receiving a couple of magazines several years ago in which some of my poems appeared, and was gravely disappointed by the quality of the products. Regular paper, cheap inkjet covers, plastic spiral binding. They looked like a high school project. One of them even cost $15 !!! And that was nearly a decade ago. Needless to say, that particular magazine is no longer in existence.

Comparatively, Black Matrix Publishing, who puts out Realms and several other magazines devoted to other genres of spec fic, appears to have their stuff in order. Though they're relatively new, having only one or two issues of each magazine yet released, I hope that given time, they'll gain popularity and demand among readers and writers alike. Their product shows that they deserve it.

Now to dive into the reading. What company does my story keep among those pages, those portals to far-flung worlds?

Edit: Things change fast. It seems that from now on, all those other magazines Black Matrix puts out will now be absorbed into one large volume. Encounters seems to have won the popularity poll.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Purchased the .pdf version; looking forward to reading it this weekend!

Court Ellyn said...

Awesome! Hope you enjoy it.

Anonymous said...

Thats fantastic. I can't wait till my Necrotic Tissue issue comes out either. I won't be getting contributor copies of Unspeakable, but I will be ordering at least one (at half price) I really look forward to all the stories in that one.

How does it feel to hold your own printed words in your ink-stained little hands?

Also, love the new look for the blog.

Anonymous said...

Good work on "Bone Harp" -- poetic descriptions and metaphors, and I liked the magical/musical element towards the end. Jealousy can be a very ugly thing indeed, and that theme really came across well throughout the narrative.

Court Ellyn said...

So glad you found things you liked about it, Milo! I had a wonderful time interpreting one of my favorite ballads to write this piece.

Anonymous said...

Was it a Welsh ballad, perchance? The character names you chose reminded me of Lawhead's Albion trilogy...

Court Ellyn said...

Not sure where the ballad originated. There are many versions of it out there, some in English that is so old and lovely. I chose to set the story in Medieval Wales. I had studied the language and culture for a novel many years ago, so I was comfortable with it.