Bewildering Stories News

Behind the Scenes

What happens, exactly, after you send a submission to Bewildering Stories? Here — at least in theory — is how it works.

Jerry Wright checks the submission against our guidelines. If it doesn’t meet them or needs more work, Ye Editor gets back to you directly.

If the submission jumps through the preliminary hoops. Jerry then forwards it to Ye Copy Editor, i.e. me, who sends you a thank-you note and, in the case of new — or sometimes even old — contributors asks for a biographical sketch.

Okay, sometimes mail gets lost. You do not want to see Jerry’s mailbox! I open it, myself, only if I absolutely have to. If you don’t hear from Jerry or me within two weeks of submission, please send a follow-up query. We don’t mind; in fact, we’re grateful, because they help us track down any files that have gone astray. Occasionally we’re smitten by indecision; that will delay a response.

Now, what does Ye Copy Editor do? Here’s a guided tour of the sausage factory:

If your submission is in the body of an e-mail message, I copy-paste it into AppleWorks6 and reset the font and size to New York 12-point for readability.

If the paragraphs are indicated only by indentation, I have to insert the double line breaks manually — a chore. Then I replace them with tabs, remove the single line breaks with find-replace and restore the paragraphing by replacing the tabs with double line breaks again.

Then I proofread the text, double-check the paragraphing and the punctuation. Sometimes that calls for find-replacing “straight” quotes with “curly” quotes. If so, it takes six passes to complete.
Attachments sent in RTF (rich text format) are translated by Mariner Write, which usually leaves the punctuation more or less intact.
Attachments sent in document or plain text format often have some punctuation garbled in transmission, and that has to be sorted out.
Plain-text files in WordPerfect are highly idiosyncratic and can’t be opened at all; I’ll ask for a resend in RTF.

Finally, I add tags for paragraphs and italics, if any, and copy-paste the file into a PageSpinner template (prose, serial, letters or editorial), touch up the alignments, do a final proofreading, add the meta-tags (useful for Archive searches), and upload the file to the issue directory at Bewildering Stories. Whew.

Easy as pie. Any volunteers?