Aphelion

For anyone who missed Dan's note in the 'December' folder, Rob Wynne left for a couple weeks of vacation before Dan could ask him to set up a 'February' folder.<br><br>Dan has suggested that people post their comments in the 'December' folder for now, and Rob will move them when he gets back.<br><br>As new Short Stories editor, I really, really wanna know what people think of my first batch of selections. And the authors would like to know, too!<br><br>FYI, I actually rejected nearly as many stories from the October and November submissions as I accepted, so the ones you see should be The Good Ones, IMHOP (which is the nickname Imhotep used when text messaging).<br><br>Robert M.

Actually, he said to "comment in this thread", which I took to mean it had to be in the "The Feb. issue is online" folder & just change the subject line when you posted.<br><br>So, is that what we should do, or is it ok to make new folders in December? Is "December" the "thread" he meant??<br><br>Nate

Short Story Editor. If it's longer than 7,500 words, it's Jeff's territory. If it's set in or uses the Mare Inebrium or major Mare characters, it's Dan's. If it rhymes or is meant to be read as verses rather than paragraphs, it's Iain's.<br><br>This title, and about five bucks, will get me a latte at Starbucks.<br><br>Robert M.

shouldn't that have been "...a coffee at Hortons..." ?

oopss....I was NOT just editing an editor, honest R!!!

:-)

Jim

<br>Gee, and I was just getting to reading "The Assistant Assistant Port Keeper" ... anyway, we have Starbucks in Canada. We are civilizimized up heer, yu no.<br><br>Robert M.

So a Rhyming Epic Mare Inebrium Saga clocking in at exactly 7500 words sharp lands on whose desk? :)

"It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature!" - Legendary Comp. Joke.

<br><br>In the event of a tie, judges will perform a manual count of characters, punctuation marks, and spaces (using a complex prorating scheme for any special font usage (boldface, italics, underlines, sub- or super-scripts)), then divide by 2e (the average number of characters per word in a work rated at 6.3 on the Kramden-Norton scale). Then the scores recorded by the French and Russian judges will be discarded ...<br><br>Actually, so long as the Mare Inebrium factor is present, Dan would presumably have first claim.<br><br>For anything else, we'd probably take the word of the author on word count, run a utility like the MSWord Tools Word Count if the author claimed EXACTLY 7500 words, then reject the damn thing as a deliberate attempt to cause mischief if the recount still came out to the exact boundary value.<br><br>Of course, if I got my hands on it first, I'd be adding or deleting a word or two here and there, so the word count would change ... if I liked the story, I'd make sure it came it at 7499 or less; if I didn't like the story, I'd push it up to (say) 7513 so Jeff would have to do the dirty work (assuming that Jeff didn't like it more than I did.)<br><br>See? We have contingency plans for everything.<br><br>Robert M.

"There once was a joint called the Mare..."


Hmm....

<br><br>"Where xenobiologists went on safari"?<br>(okay, that one doesn't even come close to scanning...)<br><br>"Where aliens played old Atari"?<br><br>"Where thievery meant you'd be sorry"?<br><br>"The best bar past Alpha Centauri"?<br><br>etc., etc.<br><br>Robert M.