Magazine notes
I was relieved this morning to see a submission come in; it's been over two days since the last legitimate new story was submitted. A couple of requested revisions came in over the weekend, along with a repeat submission for a story we rejected before, so I figured the submission email address was working; but it still seemed odd to me that we'd gone from about 6 a day last week suddenly down to zero for two days straight. But it must just have been one of those flukes of timing.
In other news, the magazine is experiencing another big traffic spike today, because Penny Arcade linked to us. Which is nice, but Penny Arcade is the site for a comic about computer games (the comic is nicely drawn, and popular, but unfortunately largely incomprehensible to someone like me who isn't familiar with the current state of computer gaming (which is fine; I'm definitely not their target audience)), and the phrasing of the mention of us suggests that SH is about all sorts of geek stuff ("the term Speculative Fiction . . . seems like a code-word catch-all for geek shit. Well, Strange Horizons is a weekly journal of that. . . ."), and I suspect that the majority of those who've followed the link have said, "What the hell is this? There's nothing here about computers, XBox, Internet privacy, or cool toys, and what's with this weird literary fiction?"
Oh, well, it's possible that some of the traffic will stick; I always hope that after a spike recedes, the average numbers will be a little higher than before the spike, and in general I think increased awareness of our existence can't hurt. (Traffic to our main page will likely end up being about five times its normal level for a Monday.)
Still, I think I was more tickled by the mention of "Bringweather and the Portal of Giving and Taking" on Garden Web last week, just 'cause it seemed more likely to be hitting a relevant (albeit much smaller) audience. (Not that gardeners are SH's target audience in general; rather, that composters might like that particular story even if they aren't into sf.)