The new issue of Awen is now available to download.
This issue includes fiction from Neil K. Henderson, and poetry from Ed Chaberek, Stephanie Dewitt, Arthur C. Ford Sr., Jane Hutto, LindaAnn LoSchiavo, Celine Rose Mariotti, Ute Margaret Saine, DJ Tyrer, and Duane Vorhees.
Atlantean Publishing is closed to submissions during July and August.
You may still send news, adverts, letters of comment, and review copies, but no submissions.
This doesn‘t apply to View From Atlantis – to see if the webzine is open to submissions and what the theme is, click here.
Those of you who have been following Atlantean news will know that illness and lockdown have completely thrown the press’s plans and schedules out the window. Not much has been released and the backlog of submissions, which had begun to look manageable, has been growing again. So, I wanted to update you all on where things stand at the moment. (Of course, in the current situation, this could all change, but it represents the current state of play.)
A pdf exclusive, Cosmic Joke, is Atlantean Publishing’s latest release, but I can reveal that the third decadent poetry booklet, Carcass Literature, should be available next week, hopefully accompanied by a new issue of Bard. Later in May, new issues of A View From Atlantis and Awen should be online.
The press is still open to some submissions. However, given the current situation and the fact that it’s not clear how many releases there will be during 2020, we are closed to submissions for Monomyth, fiction anthologies (except The King In Yellow @125 and Franco-Prussian War booklets), Buxton and solo-author booklets.
We are primarily looking for are submissions to Awen, Bard and The Supplement, and solo-author selections of poetry, short fiction, silliness, etc, for Garbaj Presents…
The only booklets that remain open to submissions are The Dark Tower (poetry and flash fiction, open call), The King In Yellow @125 (fiction, deadline: end June 2020), and Franco-Prussian War (fiction and poetry, deadline: June 2020).
In addition, we will consider submissions for Yellow Leaves and Xothic Sathlattae, although the situation means that response times and publication may be substantially delayed.
Please clearly indicate in the email subject line or on the envelope where a submission is directed, otherwise it may be overlooked.
The press will be closing to submissions as usual in July and August.
I must apologise for the fact that submissions have gotten away from me, again. Recently, I’ve only been able to chip away ever-so-slightly at the inbox backlog and answer a few snail mail submissions, but I plan to dedicate some time over the next few days to tackling the backlog. I will primarily be focusing on poetry and short fiction suitable for Awen, as that is next on the release schedule and only partially filled, with Bard and The Supplement next on the list, but do hope to also tackle some older submissions and any queries.
I will be responding to submissions for A View From Atlantis after the deadline for the current call.
If you have submitted to Monomyth (although poetry and flash fiction directed there will be considered for Awen), booklets, or solo-publications, please be patient as I work my way through the backlog. If you have been waiting a long time for a response and need to withdraw a submission, I understand – please send an email with WITHDRAWAL in the subject line and the title of the submission(s), along with the submission date if known.
Please bear with me, and I hope to have more (and, more positive) news soon.
Issue 93 of The Supplement is now available to download, along with backissues of Awen and The Supplement, plus DJ Tyrer’s urban horror e-booklet, if you need something to read whilst stuck indoors, and all free.
And, should you want more, can we recommend the twenty-five issues of Tigershark ezine that are available free for download, along with an e-booklet of DJ Tyrer’s poetry.
Lastly, if you can bear to spend 99c, there is also DJ Tyrer’s comic horror e-novellette, A Trip to the Middle of the World, along with much more from the Infinite Realms Bookstore.
We are currently on hiatus. The only submissions we are open to at the moment are for The Supplement. Please do not send anything else until we reopen in September.
As many of you will know, we have had a backlog of submissions. This has now been cleared so that only submissions sent this year and in 2018 are waiting for responses (and will be looked at during the hiatus).
If you sent a submission in 2017 or earlier and you haven’t heard from us, it has been rejected. Unfortunately, in order to clear the backlog, responses had to be limited to acceptances only. Now that we are back on track, all submissions will be receiving a response, whether an acceptance or rejection.
We apologise for this and the delays, but hope to be able to respond promptly in future.
Following on from my last post, here are some thoughts on ‘derivative works’, that is, developing something new from an existing work (inspired by advice given here for a Beatles ‘What If’ anthology).
As noted previously, character names and the titles of stories and songs are fair game as far as copyright goes (trademarks and ‘passing off’ are a different issue). So, from a copyright point of view you could call your story “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” – where you would be in trouble is that the title is trademarked. Because trademarks cover specified fields (such as printed material or clothing), you may find that something is trademarked in one area and not another, allowing its use, but you would still need to be careful about ‘passing off’ your work as if it were officially licensed.
Characters as a whole sit in a sort of legal limbo. Obviously directly copying a character’s description would be copyright infringement, but, just as plots can’t be copyrighted, neither can a character as such. The problem is that not only can a character be distinctive enough that the elements can be considered copyright, but we return to passing off territory. Especially if you are using their name.
Which brings us to derivative works. While you could have a non-wizard character called Harry Potter or a parodic version of Harry, writing a story where Harry Potter is the Harry Potter (or, indeed, not the Harry, but another Harry in the same Wizarding World who is named after the hero) is a derivative and would require permission and most likely a fee. (Yes, fan fiction is derivative work, which means it’s technically illegal if you haven’t received express permission – some creators give blanket permission as long as you aren’t making money or presenting it as official material, some provide permission on a case-by-case basis, and some have blanket bans. Generally, as long as it isn’t being charged for, keeps a low profile and isn’t damaging to the brand, most property owners ignore it, but you may find yourself being ordered to take it down if you don’t have permission. Remember, you have the same right to object if someone is drawing from your creations.)
A grey area is when you take someone’s ‘intellectual property’ and recast it in a very different form that remains reliant upon the original to make sense (without it being parodic or satirical). Making Harry Potter an alien with psychic powers wouldn’t necessarily save you from being sued for infringement of the property (and, once again, by calling the character Harry Potter, you would probably be accused of passing your work off as officially licenced).
That doesn’t stop you from running with ideas inspired by an existing property, but the key word here is inspired. An urban fantasy where wizards operate out of sight in their own society isn’t a derivative work, but if you borrow too closely from the Harry Potter books, unless from the same sources that JK Rowling borrowed from, you could well be in infringement.
Of course, if you have a great idea for a derivative work, nothing is stopping you from contacting the owner and seeking permission, and many franchises have opportunites for fans to write for spin-offs (such as the Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventures). Or, if the franchise is the right sort, you might be able to write something that is clearly intended to be linked, but doesn’t actually infringe on any trademarks, nor risks being accused of passing itself as official (in Doctor Who fan productions, there migth be a passing reference to a minor planet, or ‘some guy who called himself the Dentist, or something like that’, enough to hint at a link without making it concrete and, thus, actionable).
If work is out-of-copyright, you are on safe ground – but, again, there can be risks. Sometimes things that should be out of copyright aren’t (because it was transferred to another owner by the original creator), sometimes things can be out of copyright but elements remain trademarked, putting you at risk of trademark violation or passing off (the early Mickey Mouse cartoons, for example, are out of copyright, but Mickey is still owned by Disney), sometimes the copyright was established early in a creator’s career and they lived a long time afterwards (remember, copyright extends for seventy years from the creator’s death, not its inception), and sometimes the popular version of a work includes elements added later (for example, King Louis wasn’t in the original Jungle Book, but was introduced by Disney).
And, even if something is safely out-of-copyright and free from trademark issues, or you’ve carefully skirted any that exist, publishers may still refuse to accept it to avoid any potential headaches. (After all, if someone claims to own a copyright or have a trademark that they don’t, or they object to your clearly parodic work, you can still find yourself in court defending your legitimate use. Too often, money is more important than actual right and wrong in these cases – unless you or your publisher have deep pockets, it may just be best not to risk it.)
So, do your research and think carefully. If you do, you should be fine.
March is usually a quiet month as it’s the time of year I have to deal with things like deferring my student loan, but this year it was especially unproductive. I did respond to submissions (although not as many as planned) and dispatched orders, as well as making some headway on Nomads of the Timestreams (expect to see that soon!), but the press didn’t actually release anything last month. Unfortunately, not only did I have the usual drains on my time, with every one seeming to involve some issue that required far more time than really necessary, but I have also been distracted by family illness.
However, the good news is, the press should be returning to life this month! A new issue of View From Atlantis should be online by the end of this week and a new issue of The Supplement will be available to download soon. In print (in addition to that issue of The Supplement) there will be a new issue of Bard and, hopefully, of Monomyth before the month is out. In addition, Nomads of the Timestreams and The Roseate Mythos booklets should be out soon. Hopefully, the momentum will continue with the new poetry booklets (the humorous and nonsense verse, and the decadent, symbolist and aesthetic verse booklets both close at the end of this month).
I think you’ll find the wait was worth it!
Wordprocessing is a wonderful boon for writers, but also the source of the four most common errors in manuscripts. As you’ll see…
The first, as you may guess, is the curse of auto-correction and auto-completion, where the computer decides that it knows what you intended to type and makes a ridiculous error. If you don’t pay attendance, it is very easy to allow silly mistakes through for this reason.
The second is an over-reliance on the spellchecker, whether it fails to notice that a word is wrong (mistaking their for there, say) or tells you that a correct ward is an error. Never blindly go with what the spellchecker is telling you if you have the slightest doubt – double check!
These two joined forces in one of my stories to provide a melodious, rather than malodorous, sewer that managed to go unspotted through about three read throughs I made, one by a friend who usually spots such errors with an eagle eye, and at least two editors who provided feedback with their rejections.
The third most common error is to hit ‘replace all’ without thought. Yes, it’s an incredibly convenient way to change a character’s name, but, depending upon how it’s set up (whether it’s case sensitive or you’ve included spaces) changing, say, Ben to Steve, could see a bend in the road become a Steved and a benevolent monarch might transform into a Steveevolent one.
The fourth is the easy way in which you can rewite a sentence. But, too often you can find yourself messing up to delete everything, leaving echoes of the your previous sentence to cause confusion.
This is why it’s always vital to read your work aloud, and print off a copy if you find it easier to spot mistakes that way than on screen. And, all errors in this post are deliberate, even the ones I didn’t mean to make.
Yes, there’s been another (third) series of The Worst Witch on BBC iPlayer, and it introduces a new contender for the title of ‘worst witch’ in the form of Indigo Moon.
This series is just as good as the previous two, full of fun adventures and amusing moments. Mildred begins the series at the peak of her popularity, but manages to throw it all away in the very first episode, starting a series of events that threaten her place at Cackles, as well as the existence of the academy and even the entire magical world itself!
Sybil and her friends have more of a role to play this reason, taking on substantial secondary plots that interweave with Mildred’s adventures, and we have a new character who has never appeared in the books. While there is a risk in introducing such an original character, I have to say that not only did Indie fit perfectly into the storyline, but she is a great character played by an excellent actress, and I hope she’ll return if there is a series four.
This series has a lot of other upheavals, including a wedding, the revelation of Miss Hardbroom’s dark secret, and major changes at the academy, and the excitement never flags. If you enjoyed the first two series, I can wholeheartedly recommend this one, too. Indeed, it may be the best of all!
atlanteanpublishing 