Here are the Sybil’s Garage submission statistics as of this morning: We have received 448 stories, 74 poems We have rejected 320 stories, 42 poems Average response time: 16 days for stories, 23 days for poems There are 16 stories under consideration (none accepted yet), and I have accepted 5 poems. A note about the submissions tracker and your position in the queue: Stories come into the editors in a round-robin fashion.  We have seven total readers, including myself, and we all receive an equal number of stories.  Since each of us read on differing schedules, …

A few years ago I was having terrible neck pains and needed an MRI.  My health insurance provider approved the procedure, I got the MRI, which revealed a herniated disc.   Several months later, I was forced to cancel the health insurance due to lack of funds.  A few weeks after that I receive a letter that my procedure, which had been pre-approved, would not be covered because I had told the doctor “I have had pain for at least a year,” which to the insurance company sounded like a pre-existing …

Yesterday I spent most of the day at the Lunacon convention in Rye Brook, New York.  I traveled up with Mercurio and Alaya Dawn Johnson; it’s not very far from New York City where we all live.  The con is held at the Rye Brook Hilton, a modest hotel much like the one for Readercon.  Last year, I remember seeing more familiar faces, but this year it felt like the usual New York crew was conspicuously absent.  I did have a nice conversation by the bar with Neil Clarke, however, …

I’ll be attending Lunacon this Saturday in Rye, New York and I will be on the following panels: Monsters of Modernity, Grand North, 1:00 – 2:00 PM What if a vampire bite isn’t just a vampire bite? From vampires and sexuality to Frankenstein and the Enlightenment, to The Thing and the AIDS epidemic, monsters have often stood in as allegory for modern issues. Gary Frank, Matthew Kressel, Jonathan Maberry, Kim Paffenroth [M] Year in Computing, Odelle, 4:00 – 5:00 PM What were this year’s awesome breakthroughs in computers? Seth Breidbart [M], Matthew Kressel, Robert Rosenberg From Ebooks …

Don’t forget that we close to submissions for Sybil’s Garage on April 12th.  Here are the stats to date: We have received 399 stories, 68 poems We have rejected 292 stories, 33 poems Average response time: 15 days for stories, 20 days for poems I’m holding 14 stories for consideration and I have accepted 3 poems.  I will not make any final decision on the held stories until after the submission period closes. Please send us your stories & poems soon!