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Update about Alliteration Ink

TL;DR: Everyone will get backer rewards. It may take a while.

What’s going on.

I have been silent for months about Kickstarters and publishing and so on… because I’ve been trying to find some way to avoid writing this.

As of this week, I have officially declared bankruptcy.

The deep sense of shame surrounding this is why I have been silent. Every step of dealing with this came with crippling anxiety, admitting it makes it worse. Even now, I am writing this with the aid of my emergency anxiety meds.

This announcement is a surprise to all but a handful of people; the responsibility for this silence is mine.

How I Got Here

Well, honestly, it doesn’t matter for this venue. I’m going to write about it more for my personal blog, and more about why it’s been such a hard thing for me to talk about.

The key point is that Alliteration Ink is a sole proprietorship, and the finances are tied to my own. That means its gains (and losses) are tied to my gains (and losses).

I anticipated the possibility of Alliteration Ink taking money from my personal finances. I never expected the opposite to happen.

What This Means

My attempts to pay bills and honor commitments – as well as the legal obligations of the bankruptcy – has drained all my accounts, including money from the Kickstarters.

DO NOT PANIC YET; KEEP READING.

I released the eBook of Steampunk Universe to backers a few months ago; you might remember that I promised that it would be released to backers before it was available for the general public. Therefore the eBook version will be available to the general public later this week.

Luckily, I do have a day job that pays well, and after the crushing debt is gone from my life, I will have a greater ability to make things right.

I will first ensure that authors have gotten paid for everything that I owe them, and continue to be paid properly and promptly from this point forward. Second, I will fulfill the physical book rewards (and other backer rewards) as my budget allows until they are all fulfilled. PERIOD. Only once all backers have their backer rewards will I release the print version of Steampunk Universe to the public.

This process will be the same for Devils Field.

Once the above is completed - and only once that is completed - will I determine what to do, whether Alliteration Ink will pursue new works. Other current events – including possible tax changes – will play a part.

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Want a Free Copy of No Shit, There I Was?

No crap, there's a giveaway to get a FREE copy of No Shit, There I Was from Goodreads! You can enter at http://bit.ly/2lZLCtO

The giveaway only goes until the 15th, so enter today!

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Free stories, poems, and a Rhysling nomination!

The Rhysling award

We are thrilled to announce that one of the poems in recompose has been nominated for a Rhysling award. "Portrait of the Captain with Small Waiting Objects" by R. D. Walker has been nominated for this award. The Rhysling Awards are named for the blind poet Rhysling in Robert A. Heinlein’s short story “The Green Hills of Earth.” Rhysling’s skills were said to rival Rudyard Kipling’s. In real life, Apollo 15 astronauts named a crater near their landing site “Rhysling,” which has since become its official name. Nominees for each year's Rhysling Awards are selected by the membership of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

Free Stories and Poems

Additionally, the third issue of recompose, entitled "Maurauding Samba" is currently available at our webstore, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. As with prior issues, you can read approximately half of it for free, including "Half Price Souls" by Tamlyn Dreaver, "With bright instruments and vast humming machines" by Jenny Blackford, and "My Mother, in 2075" by Erika Price. The full digital issue is only $1.50, and all sales of recompose go to the next series of issues. The first annual of recompose is in production, where you'll be able to get the entire first year in print as well. Stay tuned for it!

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Status of recompose (and don’t pay to submit anywhere!)

A bit of a quick message here, prompted by a series of tweets by Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award winning author Ann Leckie: Do not pay to submit to a publication.  Period.

Alliteration Ink (including our periodical recompose) will not ask you to pay to submit, nor will we provide special treatment to those who have paid. This is in keeping with our crowdfunding policy.

Issue #3 of recompose will drop in the next day or two, followed closely by the annual. After that we will announce our plans for next year. Those plans will include pro rates for short fiction and poetry.  And they will NOT include any hint of pay-to-play.

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Committed to Delivering On Projects

Right now, Alliteration Ink has four projects that have not completed fulfillment, and all of them are behind schedule.  There are a variety of reasons for this, but ultimately the responsibility lies with me.

* I am committed to completing the already outstanding projects (Devils' Field, NSTIW, Steampunk Universe, and the latest issue of recompose)

* I am committed to continuing to publish the projects that are already finished. No change is being made to existing publications or contracts.

* I am going to pause new projects and publications until all outstanding projects have reached fulfillment.

I will also be using this time to further reflect on what I can do to be more efficient and on time.

I am doing this because I, as the publisher, have an obligation to you to deliver what you backed. I am committed to that obligation.

Thank you for your continued patience and support.

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Acceptances & Rejections For recompose #3 are delayed

Between illnesses of various types among the editorial staff (I’ve been sick THREE times in the last month myself) and other factors, we are experiencing a significant delay with getting rejections and acceptances out for this issue.

We anticipate starting to send out notices in the next 10-14 days.  Our apologies for the delay, and thanks for your ongoing patience.

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Lyndsay Gilbert, one of the authors in Steampunk Universe, made this video.

“And it's positive getting an anthology out there where all the characters are aneurotypical or disabled, y'know, whether or not all the writers are or not. Because if - if it's out there, it will enourage people with disorders to come - writers with disorders to feel brave enough to write about it.  Which is what it's done for me.”

http://steampunkuniverse.alliterationink.com

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Lyndsay Gilbert, one of the authors in Steampunk Universe, made this video. “I don't know actually if I really will release this video that I'm making right now, because the stigma I'm describing to you is so strong that I am ashamed - even though I know I shouldn't be ashamed - but I am ashamed that I suffer with this disorder, and I fear that people will think differently of me when they hear that I have this disorder, which sometimes happens, which has happened, even with professionals who are supposed to be trained to help me.” http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/borderline-personality-disorder-bpd

http://steampunkuniverse.alliterationink.com

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If you have some bucks you don’t know how to use, this Kickstarter project is worth your while!

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Introducing Steampunk Universe - Now Live on Kickstarter

Steampunk Universe: A diverse steampunk anthology featuring aneurotypical and disabled characters.

We keep getting told that steampunk is not diverse.

We want to keep proving them wrong.

Two and a half years ago, we brought you the award-winning anthology Steampunk World, a diverse collection of steampunk fiction. Since then, there have been a number of other prominent anthologies and works of diverse steampunk fiction. That is exactly what we hoped would happen.

But it is not enough.

We want to see even more diversity. We want to see characters like all our friends and all the members of our families. We want fully developed characters in steampunk - and all fiction - who are disabled or aneurotypical. We want more than "token" characters, and clichéd plots.

We were told it was too hard - especially in a genre like steampunk.

We are going to prove them wrong again...and we want you to join us.

Join editor Sarah Hans, our cover artist James Ng, and contributors Ken Liu, Jody Lynn Nye, Maurice Broaddus, Malon Edwards, Emily Cataneo, Pip Ballantine, Victor Ocampo, Suna Dasi, Lyndsay E. Gilbert, Kate Coe, Liam Hogan, Zach Chapman, Andrew Knighton, Matthew Bright, Candida Spillard, and Diana Pho today.

Steampunk can be diverse. And if steampunk can be diverse, it can be done anywhere.

Join us at http://steampunkuniverse.alliterationink.com

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For a magazine of flash fiction and poetry, we have a lot of content

I just counted up the number of pages of the three issues of recompose so far (including #0), and we’ve almost got 80 pages of flash fiction, poetry, and non-fiction walking the line between genre and literary sensibilities. You can check out a preview of each issue at recompose.press, or you can find the full issues at your favorite online retailer: Issue #0 - Indescribable Ossuary: Amazon: http://amzn.to/2dBW6K8 Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/2dnBXrq Play: http://bit.ly/2diWuld Issue #1 - Tropospheric Scofflaw: Amazon: http://amzn.to/2dBXht0 Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/2diXmWR Play: http://bit.ly/2dnBiXe Issue #2 - Ritualistic Pompadour: Amazon: http://amzn.to/2dcUre5 Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/2diWjGC Play: http://bit.ly/2dnBJRi

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The second issue of Kickstarter-funded literary speculative fiction magazine recompose is up, featuring Alasdair Stuart, Andrea Corbin, T.D. Walker, Samantha Murray, Chloe N. Clark, Kurt Newton, Leigh M. Lane, Donald Illich, Phillip Brian Hall, and Lyndsey Silveira with art by Courtney Vice. Check out the free preview at http://recompose.press, or get the full issue at online retailers including Amazon, Google, and the Alliteration Ink store.

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In this update, we find out a little bit more about what makes William Ledbetter and Anne Gibson’s stories tick...

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Chesya Burke on Safety At Conventions

It should be assumed that by posting this, I agree with it.

Reposted with permission from Chesya Burke’s Facebook:

I’m going to say something, and it’s probably going to piss some people off. But, hey, when has that stopped me?

It seems that some people are just now realizing that genre conventions and some publications are not, and have not been, safe or welcoming spaces for certain people. Whereas SF and fantasy has been dealing with these issues for a few years, the horror community, it seems, is lagging behind yet again. Of late (as in 2016) there have actually been people who have compared being minority to being a vampire in order to justify not liking/publishing some types of people and stories those types of people tell in response to a White Supremacist being placed as a juror for one of the only awards in the genre, and more recently it has come to light that an attempted rape was covered up for years by a man who physically assaulted another woman.

For those counting at home, that’s two assaults, blatant racist behavior and those condoning it because, you know, vampires are people, my friend.  

But, a few incidences is not enough. Let me just outline some more so you understand why this is important to me. And should be important to you.

I have been followed around more conferences than I can count (to the point that my longtime friend, Maurice Broaddus, watches me, waiting for me to make eye contact just in case….), I have been offered money for sex, and called “Aunt Jemima” in front a group of white male writers in order to put me in my place.  I have seen and/or know of a woman writer being touched and rubbed by a big name writer without her permission, a trans woman being openly mocked and practically laughed out of the genre, a man who was arrested for molesting children at a conference, and well, Ed Kramer, who many writers (in this fucking genre) still defend to this day.

In other words, these are not isolated incidents. I can guarantee you that they happen at every single convention that you have been to, every single one, every single year. Just because you have not heard about them, or done any of these things yourself, does not mean that they don’t happen. It does not mean that the people who must deal with these types of micro and outright aggressions should hide away, and does not mean that they are lying if you didn’t personally see them.

It means that you need to pull your head out of your own ass and fucking believe that different people have different experiences than you. It means that you, as a person who is relatively safe in these spaces, have not done all that you can to help those who are not as privileged as you are.

Instead of acknowledging this, some argue that if you’re too scared to simply be around other people (as if this is the argument), then maybe you shouldn’t go to conventions.

First off, this is dismissive as fuck. Really? If predators have been given space to prey and oppress others within our genre, we should not seek to eliminate them, but to chastise those who want to stop them? Get the fuck outta here with that bullshit. Every single person should feel just as safe as you do entering that space (and not safe by your standards, but their own), and if they don’t, it’s not their problem, it’s our problem as a community. We done fucked up.

Moreover, some argue that “common sense” and “logic” dictate that we are over reacting by having harassment policies and creating safe spaces because they see conventions as some of the safest public gatherings anyone can attend. Anyone not believing this, of course, is inciting hysteria.

Because if conventions are safe for them, they must be safe for everyone in equal measures. In other words, you know, women are hysterical and men are the calm, logical ones. Right….

But what’s the end game here? We create an environment that women aren’t raped, molested or attacked? That racial minorities, gay and trans people aren’t humiliated and oppressed? That everyone is safe and comfortable in the spaces that we all inhabit? So…. This is good, right?

I’m going to be very blunt here. The only reason that I see anyone as having a problem with this is if you are a rapist, racist, sexist, homophobe or some kinda combination of these.  

If you are, cool! You have every right to be some or all of these things.

Just don’t expect the rest of us to play along as if you aren’t actively harming us.

For those who support us, thanks! We need and value you. For those who don’t, move the fuck aside, we’re moving on. This gets tiring, and there are way too many diverse stories to tell to continue living in a past that is not welcoming for us. Or in a present that some want to keep that way.

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A Trifecta of Improbable Updates: 250 Backers, More Rewards, and A Gestalt's Behind The Story!

This is a heck of an update, folks; you’ll want to check it out for the new rewards and Baker & Dovey’s “behind the story” essay! You can find it at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stevensaus/no-sht-there-i-was-an-anthology-of-improbable-tale/posts/1557644