BULL SPEC #2 is available for pre-order!

It's looking like July 6th at the earliest for the issue to be in my hands, but that's no reason to keep folks from reserving their copy. So, after a heck of a lot of hard work, and thanks to some great contributors, BULL SPEC #2 is now available to pre-order!

With cover art by the awesome Vladimir Krizan, stories from Melissa Mead, Uri Grey, Gwendolyn Clare, Paul Celmer, and Kaolin Fire; the continuation of the graphic story "Closed System" by Mike Gallagher; an excerpt of Richard Dansky's "North Carolina ghost story" Firefly Rain with an interview by J.M. McDermott; interviews of John Kessel (along with his essay "Imagining the Human Future"), Dexter Palmer (along with a review of his novel The Dream of Perpetual Motion, reviewed by Natania Barron), and Hope Larson; a review of Cherie Priest's novel Boneshaker, reviewed by Joseph Giddings; poetry from David M. Harris, Helen R. Peterson, Reggie Lutz, and J.P. Wickwire; art by Joey Jordan, Rebecca Camfield, and Aleksandr and Natalia Frolosov; it's an issue I hope you all enjoy. Thanks so much for your support of BULL SPEC, here's to kicking off a solid second issue and getting the work started on issue #3!

Books Received: June 2010

OK. The fun has apparently started, as I've started receiving some review copies at the Bull Spec PO Box. I've been pinging reviewers and so far having pretty good luck at finding homes for them, but please, publishers and authors: query first! I only carry 2-4 reviews per issue, and at least one of those will be a solicited book. That out of the way, books received, June 2010:

Some acceptances. OK, a lot of acceptances.

Not as much fanfare as I might like to give them, but I realized I: (1) didn't even feature here a few more acceptances from issue #1; (2) never mentioned here a pretty long list now of acceptances for issue #2 and further. So, without, ahem, further adieu:

Closed to non-local submissions until 10 July.

As I've just updated the status on the guidelines page to indicate, Bull Spec is now temporarily closed to non-local submissions until (at least) 10 July as I try to catch up on the backlog of submissions and take stock of the stories already accepted and the magazine's needs for future issues.

Things which BULL SPEC needs to do:

1. To send issue #2 to the printers. (Soon.)
2. See #1: finish edits on the reviews. Thank goodness interviews are locked and loaded, and final story edits are in my inbox! All art is locked in! Ads are almost locked in, one more to wait on. And:
3. To figure out how to communicate to real publishers when I want to excerpt a local author's novel. (See "#1: To send issue #2 to the printers" above.) I don't grok fax machines very well.
4. To get some story reading help. Seriously.
5. To get the interviews video podcast going. (Stop-gap: going to chop them up into 10 minute increments for YouTube soon.)
6. To get the story podcast going.
7. To finish up the first benefit story and get it posted in its various incarnations.
8. To add Amazon and Google payment options.
9. To figure out how to cheaply accept debit and credit cards at conventions by August.
10. To make the website not suck.
11. Get some e-mail notification lists going; I've squandered a lot of visits from folks without giving them a way for me to let them know that another issue is coming simply and easily via e-mail.
12. To update and test the website's handling of issue #2 orders.
13. To get an ePub version together for issue #1.
14. See #4: to stop doing a disservice to the 300 stories in my unread pile and the handful of stories I have in my "hold" pile. These weigh on me night and day and in between, and it's not how I would want to be treated. Making progress is good but I've got a pretty good mountain to climb, and spent tonight climbing it instead of working on #1...

This list is far from complete, but it's a fair little list for the top N things on my mind tonight as I hit the sheets.