Monday, December 30, 2013

Year End Round Up - The Not so Good News

It's that time of year when I go back through the posts and do a year end round up of markets that have come and gone during the past year.  For this I stick basically to the crime genre because, well, that's where this blog got started.  While I post other markets this is primarily a spot for crime fiction writers to find markets.

Here's the markets that I consider dead or have announced that they're closed:

Powder Burn Flash, Darkest Before the Dawn, and Fire on the Plains haven't posted any new stories in over a year.

Thrillers, Killers, and Chillers closed their doors.

Burnt Bridge and Blood and Tacos have decided to focus on novellas instead of short stories.

After two years The Malfeasance Occasional finally published their first issue "Girl Trouble", but haven't reopened to submissions.

Out of the Gutter online opened last year for fiction.  They're still accepting flash but have closed down the Bare Knuckles Pulp section of their submissions.

The Case Files, The Hard-Boiled Dimension, and The Garrote all placed a call for submissions to their new zines, but never opened.  The Hard-Boiled Dimension was the only one good enough to announce they were shutting down.

On the iffy side is White Cat Publications.  This year they announced six new zines, called for submissions, but none of them seems to have made it to the publisher.  I've heard several complaints from writers that they've never received responses to their submissions.

Also iffy is Grift.  They're still posting a few non-fiction pieces online, but the print magazine and the online flash fiction aren't being published.

Also in the sketching column are quarterly ezines Plots With Guns and Mysterical E, both of which only published two issues this year.

Comets and Criminals didn't publish anything for a year and then announced this fall that they were open for reprints but I'm still not seeing any signs of life.

4 comments:

Loren Eaton said...

Let me just say, Sandra, that I'm so glad you're doing this. It saves a bunch of us a ton of time.

A great New Year to you and yours.

sandra seamans said...

Happy New Year to you also, Loren!

Johnny Shaw said...

Once I get everything figured out, Blood & Tacos will continue to do short stories along with a new series of novellas. I'm still trying to figure out how to meet the deadlines for my own writing, while maintaining some kind of consistency for B&T. To maintain quality it requires a certain amount of time that I'm trying to manufacture. Probably should lobby for a 30-hour day. But we'll be back soon and Blood & Tacos will always be a paying market.

sandra seamans said...

Thanks for the update, Mr. Shaw. There never seems to be enough time for the things we want to do.