We hope this month was restorative for you, that as we move into the first part of the year, you're feeling optimistic about your days. We've got a quieter month ahead, perfect for the late winter--time to catch up on reading, writing, or resting.
Issue 142
Issue 142 continues to release
on the website. Cover art by Adrian Borda, original fiction by Delilah S. Dawson, Nadia Bongo, KT Bryski, and Elisabeth Ring, flash by Nadia Radovich and Kanishk Tantia, essays by Somer Canon and John Wiswell, Marissa van Uden's interview with author Elisabeth Ring, and reprints from M.M. Olivas and Eugen Bacon. A.C. Wise continues the wonderful Words for Thought short fiction review column. This is a dark, unsettling issue, perfect for the dark quiet months at the start of the year.
Snap Judgment Episode 9 with Special Guest Brent Lambert
Apex Magazine is excited to present
SNAP JUDGMENT Episode 9 of our rapid-fire, live-streaming critique series.
Every quarter, industry professionals Lesley Conner, Rebecca E Treasure, and a special guest offer live feedback on the first page (up to 250 words) of genre short stories or novels. These first pages are read aloud by our talented host and narrator, Aly Grauer.
We are pleased to announce that our special guest editor for this event is author and editor Brent Lambert!
Brent Lambert is a Black, queer man who heavily believes in the transformative power of speculative fiction across media formats. As a founding member of FIYAH Literary Magazine, he turned that belief into action and became part of a Hugo Award winning team. He resides in San Diego but spent a lot of time moving around as a military brat. His family roots are in the Cajun country of Louisiana. Currently, he has a novella A NECESSARY CHAOS out from Neon Hemlock and is part of the cyberpunk/solarpunk anthology FIGHTING FOR THE FUTURE and Black horror anthology ALL THESE SUNKEN SOULS. Ask him his favorite members of the X-Men and you’ll get different answers every time. He can be found on Twitter @brentclambert talking about the weird and the fantastic.
Winter Sale from Apex Book Company
We're having a huge winter sale! 30% off all our inventory site wide, as well as surprise swag for early orders over $25! Surprise Swag will go on a random, first-come first-served basis to orders over $25 placed between 1/15 and 1/31.
Your discount is automatically applied at checkout!
We have 3 limited edition bookplates of the award nominated book
Plague Birds by Jason Sanford, a stack of out of print books from our archives - titles like
Aetherchrist and
Kentucky Kaiju. Perhaps most exciting we have an incredible piece of Apex history - a limited number of the
Apex Digest print magazine - from Summer 2005! All of these surprise swag items will be randomly dropped in to orders over $25 placed between January 15 and January 31 while supplies last.
Strange Locations: An Anthology of Dark Travel Guides
As part of our successful
Map of Lost Places Kickstarter, we are excited for the upcoming
Strange Locations microfiction anthology, the third in the brilliant series of microanthologies edited by Marissa van Uden. Submissions are open until February 15.
We are looking for speculative microfiction in the form of tourist brochures, travel blogs, and travel guides to the strangest, darkest places you can imagine.
Tell us a story while guiding the reader down hidden trails into eerie landscapes, weird biotech gardens, creepy scifi cities, surreal forests, or secret magical places. We’re looking for pieces that reveal intimate stories of loss, horror, or yearning in the voice of the fictional travel writer, or that use specific setting details to show whole new worlds between the lines.
We love dark fantasy, science fiction, horror, eco-horror, clifi, Weird fiction, folk horror, and body horror. Don’t be afraid to mix genres and experiment!
Writing Classes with Apex
The
Reach Your Apex initiative is our way of making the knowledge and skills of publishing professionals available to those individuals who are seeking to improve their literary craft. While a majority of our offerings target the craft of writing, we will intersperse our curriculum with workshops/webinars covering various topics about the art of editing and the business side of publishing. We launched a
website dedicated to our classes and workshops, including on-demand recordings!
You can find our current list of classes
here. We also now offer pre-recorded
on demand classes as well as
critiques and query feedback!
Apex Flash Fiction
The Flash Fiction Contest for January 7-31—themed
The Last Death—will close on December 31. The theme for February 7-29 will be announced and will open to the public on February 7th for
flash fiction submissions. Themes are chosen by Patrons at the end of the month and announced to Patrons on the 1st of each month. Submissions will be open to the public on the 7th of each month. Submissions close on the last day of the month at midnight (US Central Time).
The winner will be paid $0.08/word or $10, whichever is more. The winning story will appear on our Patreon as an exclusive and will be included in a forthcoming issue of
Apex Magazine.
Discord Happenings
As always, we have fun community on our Discord, offering critique swaps, co-writing opportunities, and general community support for writers. (Rejectomancy, anyone?)
Patreon Exclusives
On our Patreon, we have an exciting lineup of exclusives for our Patrons from the Authors of Issue 142. We'll have our usual interviews, critique opportunities, a recipe or two, and some story insights. Keep an eye on our Patreon!
Not a Patron? Join us for as little as $3/month to get access to these exclusives and the magazine in your inbox!
