Penumbra Launches!

Penumbra has long been a dream of mine.

When I started submitting my own short fiction as a woefully ill-prepared college student, this wasn't something I would ever have thought possible.  Who could have known back in those days where that newfangled computer stuff was going to take us?  And then, about six years ago when I realized that short fiction wasn't something I could write but was darn tootin' good at editing, the jobs in speculative fiction editing seemed so out of reach. In my mind's eye I had an image of spec fic editors being bearded, venerable men wearing ascots and smoking pipes, flipping through a stack of submissions and applying a red-inked stamp that said REJECTED without even reading a word of each story.

Go on--admit it.  You have a similar version of that image in your head.

So when we started Musa, I was fairly insistent on going big or going home. Opening a pro-rate paying e-magazine was a huge risk. Let's be honest here: a fledgling press has no business starting out at the top with a periodical.  A smart publisher would have started much smaller...maybe two cents a word.  That doesn't sound like a huge difference; heck, what's three cents? When you start looking at three or four thousand word stories, those three cents add up fast.

But for my vision for Penumbra, I knew that pro-rates would lead to two very important things.  First off, authors of extremely high caliber would consider submitting to us. Second off, if we did everything right, we'd gain credibility with the writers' guilds--particularly SFWA.

I figured it would take a while to take off submissions-wise.  I was disabused of that notion immediately.  We posted our first submissions call at Duotrope and Ralan's to start out.  When I opened my email the next day, I had over fifty submissions.

Welcome to the big leagues, kid.

From that point on, it was like Christmas every day.  Every day, I woke up to wonderful, amazing stories.  There's something inherently satisfying about putting together an issue of a magazine.  You get to play with the stories, the layout--determining the best flow so the reader can derive the greatest enjoyment. In some ways, it's like a literary blackjack table. Will I stand? Will the bank hit me? Will I go bust? Or, will I get a natural blackjack and rake it all in?

Gods, I love my job.

Penumbra Vol. I, Iss 1 is now available for sale at an online store near you--including ours.  You can order your copy here.  Oh, and there's some other things that are really cool. You can write and leave your review of Issue 1 on the same page. Or drop me a line. Either way, I want to hear what you have to say.

Our featured Rising Talent of the month is Anatoly Belilovsky.  You can read his story "A Literary Offense" and his essay about writing the story for free on the Penumbra website.  Each month we'll feature a different new author from the slushpile for that issue of Penumbra.

And finally, there's the art contest.  I can't determine a kid's fingerpainted place mats from a legitimate Picasso, so thankfully the art is adjudicated by Kelly Shorten, the art director.  Every month, we'll put the best entries into Penumbra and you, the reader, can vote for your favorite.  That way, you'll see more work from that artist, because the winners will be commissioned to do more art for Penumbra.

Musa Publishing and Penumbra are dedicated to creating a fun, engaging speculative fiction eMag every month.  I am extremely proud to present to you our inaugural issue.