Dear Readers,
The end of 2015 has been both rocky and exciting for us — technical disasters and the total loss of our submissions database gave way to a unique and exciting wrap-up to our year with a special December Invitational series of stories. I hope you all enjoyed the return of some voices from our history, as well as December-themed pieces from regular contributors and community members, and the unprecedented appearance of stories by current editorial staff.
For me, it was immensely touching to hear from so many people that Every Day Fiction is worth saving and continuing.
I hadn’t fully realized how many writers have had their first and/or very early publications with us. As rising authors move on to semi-pro and pro-paying markets, book deals with traditional publishers and/or indie publishing success, they often move beyond token-paying free-to-read magazines, so I’d hesitated a bit before approaching authors whom I knew were now moving in grander circles, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. And I was pleasantly, even wonderfully surprised: I lost count of those who said “EDF will never be too small a market for me.” Not one person said they wouldn’t write something, and only a few regretfully couldn’t, be it from time constraints or lack of inspiration.
We (and I mean you, readers and writers, and my past and present editorial staff, and friends and — well, all of us, my EDF family) have built something fairly special. We are, I think, that first low diving board one tries out and learns on before climbing the tower to the scary ones. Some people will never climb to higher diving boards. Some will do fantastic flips and arcs right here. There’s great happiness for me in knowing that our friends who are diving from the bigger boards now will occasionally come back to play or test out a technique on the springboard we’ve built together. How’s that for metaphor?
The bad news is that our old submissions database is completely dead. We will not be able to recover any existing submissions from it. My apologies to anyone who was waiting for a decision from us on an existing submission.
The current news is that our new submission system is still a couple of weeks from being ready, but I’ve had a first look and I’m excited to see it launch. I believe you’ll find it’s worth the wait — we’re being extra cautious and not rushing it out untested because the last thing we want is another disaster. Please watch our Facebook page, Roundtable group, and/or Twitter for an announcement when it opens for submissions, and we’ll also post an update here on the site.
Finally, starting on Monday, January 4th, we’ll be publishing the stories we had already accepted before the crash. We knew we had acceptances out there and wanted to honour them, so working from our email history, we’ve been getting in touch with the authors to re-send us those already-accepted stories by email so we can go ahead and publish them. We’re still waiting to hear back from a few authors, so if you had an acceptance outstanding at EDF and haven’t already been in touch with us about it, please contact us.
I am hopeful that by the time we’ve published a couple weeks’ worth of those stories, we’ll have the submission system up and will be able to proceed with business as usual.
Thank you so much for sticking with us, everyone! And some special gratitude is owed to our friends and supporters whose Patreon support allows us to continue our mission and has in fact funded all of our recovery and the nice features and everything we’re putting back together and adding.
Have a lovely long weekend, and we’ll see you back here on Monday with new stories to start off what I trust will be a great year for all.
Happy New Year!
Sincerely,
Camille Gooderham Campbell
Managing Editor