Issue 3 Editorial
Welcome to Issue 3.
The New Year has well and truly arrived, bringing with it a bunch of changes here at Scape HQ. All of them are good. Promise!
In 2012, we’ll continue publishing four or five amazing YA spec fic stories each quarter, along with beautiful illustrations. But you’ll also notice a few new additions around the website as the months roll by. These include regular postings of flash fiction, along with our foray into poetry publishing, which begins this issue with compelling and beautiful work from the very talented Ken Liu.
Authors will also be happy to note that we’ve increased our pay rates, albeit only slightly. We now pay one cent per word (U.S.) with no upper limit (it used to be capped at $25), with a minimum payment of $10, regardless of word length. We’ve also upped our poetry rate from $15 to $25 (U.S.) per poem. This places Scape squarely in the semi-professional range for poetry. Poetry Editor Emma Osborne and I are serious – send us your best.
There are some staff changes, too, both immediate and imminent. This issue we welcome Jasmine Stairs as our resident book reviewer. Jasmine has an insatiable appetite for YA and the perfect balance of sweetness and snark when forming her opinion about new books. I’m sure you’ll be both entertained and informed by her reviews, kicking off with her take on the 2012 release Cinder by Marissa Meyer.
In other staff news, I’m happy to announce that Morgan Dempsey will soon take on the position of Assistant Editor. Morgan has been a slush reader for Scape since just after the founding of the zine. She’s passionate about spec fic and YA and will ensure operations continue to run smoothly, both as we bring in new initiatives and while I dedicate more time this year to finishing off my PhD. You know that saying about something being a monkey on your shoulders? Well, my thesis is an angry silverback that is no longer taking ‘tomorrow’ or ‘next week’ for an answer.
Thanks to Morgan and our other amazing slush readers Erika and Mif, we’re now back on track with reasonable response times to submissions after our glitch in the second half of 2011. That being said, we’re receiving more and more subs each day so we’re looking to expand the reading team. If you’re interested in reading slush for Scape, please check out the About page for more information on how to apply.
And now, at last, we get down to the most important bit – this issue’s stories.
In Double Dutch, Lauren Dixon gives us a bizarre but poignant tale of how the mother-daughter bond stretches over time, to breaking point in some cases. I hazard to guess the striking images and emotional core of this piece, so brilliantly captured in Galen Dara’s illustration, will be seared onto your mind for some time to come.
Next, take the plunge with AshleyRose Sullivan into Mortimer’s Fish Bowl in the middle of a dusty circus shrouded in melancholy and mystery. Then immerse yourself in the gentle love story of S.K.Eries’s The Empress and the Comic, set in a richly imagined steampunk-esque alternate imperial China. Finally, feel the tug at your heartstrings as Dylan faces the prospect of leaving the person he loves most in Annie Bellet’s No Spaceships Go. Originally published in Daily Science Fiction, we’re reprinting this story as a powerful example of a YA character who finds a way to exercise agency despite the social structures of his world stacking overwhelmingly against him.
As always, thanks for your interest in Scape. I hope you enjoy this issue and the other awesomeness we have in store for you during 2012.
Best,
Peta Freestone
Editor in Chief
