Hello Everyone,

As promised, here is the finale episode of my interview with Theodora Goss, and it's probably my favorite part. As you'll hear, we talk about Hungary as a fairyland, the politics of walls, Jane Austin as post apocalyptic required reading, and bears. But most important, we really get at Theodora's writer's journey, which is always personal, nuanced, and challenging for anybody who picks up the pen (keyboard? tablet? Smartphone?). Thank you, Theodora for your honesty, time, and of course your stories.

Everyone, go buy her book.
Also, look for me and the rest of BSFW at Readercon as we launch the Kickstarter for Season 2 of the Kaleidocast!  

-Rob Cameron 

Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. Her publications include the short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting (2006); Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format; and the poetry collection Songs for Ophelia (2014).  She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List.  Her short story “Singing of Mount Abora” won the World Fantasy Award. You can follow her on Twitter  @theodoragoss

Rob Cameron is an ENL teacher and dragon boat racer in Brooklyn. Besides acting as managing editor for the Kaleidocast, and a lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers, he is a sometimes curator for the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series, the Surreal Symphony of Zak Zyz, and a pie addict with neither regrets nor inclinations towards rehab.  He's published in Mike Allen's Clockwork
Phoenix 5. Follow him @cprwords  & Rob-Cameron.com

Although Readercon is modeled on "science fiction conventions," there is no art show, no costumes, no gaming, and almost no media. Instead, Readercon features a near-total focus on the written word. The program consists of panel discussions, author readings, and solo talks or discussion groups, plus kaffeeklatsches (intimate gatherings with an author) and autograph signings. There is a large bookshop full of new, used, and rare and collectible books and magazines.

The BSFW Daily Writing Challenge is an ongoing spreadsheet that serves only one purpose: to keep you writing every single day. And what do you get for that? Points, that's what! It's surprisingly motivating. It will only cost you 250 words per day.

The August tab is up and ready to go. If you're not already participating, you should be. To get on board, email Brad.

How would you like your stories to appear alongside podcast luminaries like Tim Pratt, Christina Yu and Jonathan Lethem? Well, you could if you submitted a story to the BSFW podcast, Kaleidocast.

We're looking for stories written by members of BSFW, flash fiction (1,500 words or less) and short stories (up to 7,000 words). If you have longer stories, feel free to submit, and we can break them into multiple episodes or do “giant” episodes. Flash and shorter stories will be grouped into episodes. 

Stories must have either been already published elsewhere, or have been through at least one round of critique in the group and edited based on the comments received.

PLEASE BE AWARE: when your story appears in ANY public media, including this podcast, it is considered published, so you will no longer be able to sell first north american serial rights to your story. This article explains it rather well. The best works for this podcast will be either already published, or written for this podcast. If you plan to self-publish later, this won’t matter, but if you’re planning to submit to magazines, agents or publishers, you need to know.

Stories will be protected under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license, which would only allow others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit the author, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

We'll leave the submission period open until we have enough stories for season 1. Details on how to submit are available in the Pages section of our Meetup page. We look forward to seeing your submissions!

Do you have a story that's ready to go out to publications? Looking for an appropriate market? Give The Grinder a try.

In spite of a rather clunky interface, the genre publication listings are extensive, and offer a number of novel filters, such as Story Subject and Market Qualification, which allows you to filter by SFWA Recognized and Nebula Winning, among other qualifiers.

Another useful feature is the user community's reporting of turnaroud times for story submissions. You can have a good idea ahead of time how long a publication is going to hold on to work before you send it. Give this new resource a try!