Alien Dimensions Issue 15

Alien Dimensions features stories by authors both new and experienced, exploring aliens and the future.

Issue 15 is the most recent edition, and I’m sure you’ll find the stories interesting.

This issue is a bit different in style to those issues that came before, in that I’ve also included some excerpts from previous authors’ novels, as well as some shorter length stories.

It’s also now available from more providers –

Issue 16 will be back to normal with longer stories, reduced promotional pages, and no excerpts, at this stage.

If you’ve loved Alien Dimensions so far, and wish to submit a story for the next issue, please read my guidelines here: Alien Dimensions Submission Guidelines. They’re quite restrictive! I’d rather you knew ahead of time what I’m looking for, rather than having to send out hundreds of rejection notices every day.

Having gone through most of the stories again that I’ve rejected over the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that there seems to be some kind of correlation between inventiveness and substance, and whether it has been written in the third person or not. As it has turned out, many of the stories I had to reject had been written in the first person.

First Person Storytelling

Why do you think that could be?

Is it because a first person story ends up being a stream of consciousness story where barely anything ends up happening?

Is it because there are so many published writers writing second-rate first person stories, and new writers attempt to emulate them, thinking this is how to write?

Or is it because first person story writing means the story gets bogged down in emotions and angst and reminiscences and circumspection, and everything else is described through how that one character perceives the world?

I’m not completely against first person storytelling, but I’d much prefer multiple characters and lots of head jumping, rather than a single first person view from beginning to end.

So, sadly, I’ve had to add ‘Written in the third person’ to the list of requirements. I realize this will probably reduce the amount of submissions to just one a month, but I think it will be for the best.

What do you think?

Previous Projects Post Three. The End Result

The Learning Curve

In 1992, I organised a writers’ club that met at my parent’s home in Sydney. Two of the writers, Elaine McCarthy and David Clancy, were interested in working with me on a way to release our stories for others to read. With the internet still in its infancy, we decided a photocopied version was the best way to start.

We ended up publishing a science fiction anthology together in 1993. It was called The END Result (Elaine, Neil, David) and featured a few of our stories. We sold a few copies through Galaxy Bookshop in Sydney, which was very exciting.

The black and white cover was of the planet Jupiter, with the beginnings of an explosion about to rush across its surface. (Poorly drawn by yours truly!) I’d heard about Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 at the time, and that it was due to break up in Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1994, so thought I’d predict a more dramatic outcome in 1993. Sadly, Jupiter ended up with just a few spots for a short while, rather than a new star. At the time, I hadn’t had any concept as to how tiny the comet truly was.

I have since re-released one of the stories from The End Result Issue One. You can find it here: The Learning Curve

Unfortunately, the sales weren’t worth the hours of typing, photocopying, collating, then traveling to the city to sell it. Basically, it wasn’t possible to break even with it.

And so, only one issue was released, and no copies were kept.

Still, I thought it was worth doing because it gave us that added incentive to keep working at our writing.

David has produced a number of works since then, some of which can be found on Amazon. (Check out Trees of Bone)

Alien Dimensions

As magazine sales were dropping world wide, but digital magazines hadn’t yet made mainstream (apart from scans of magazines via Napster) I decided to wait until there was a platform that was sufficiently developed that could deal with one.

While I had known of the electronic publishing service through Amazon since 2008, I had focused on using it for my other books and stories. I had not considered it to be an ideal platform for a regular anthology series. When I finally got around to it, I found there were already more than 10 different publications available.

Somehow I had missed the train. I quickly got on the next one!

And so, in 2016, Alien Dimensions was born.

Best Seller

Alien Dimensions issue 2 became a bestseller on Amazon for a few weeks.

The following images are of screen shots taken from Amazon’s lists in late January 2017 and are now out of date. Please visit Amazon for the latest lists here: Amazon Best Sellers: Science Fiction & Fantasy

It also put my name on the top 100 science fiction authors list for a short while.

This is an outdated author rank picture. The latest list is here: Amazon Author Rank

After buying the stories, paying commissions, advertising, expenses, fees, bank fees, conversion fees, sales were enough to cover costs. Sales were also enough to cover the costs of 8 subsequent issues as well! Unfortunately, no other issue has come close to that, so when the budget ran out in late 2017, I reduced the issues released.

The ones that came after issue 2 had more stories and less mistakes, so I’m not sure why that issue reached those heady heights. Even so, I enjoyed making it, and hope to continue to produce issues. I have a pile of new stories that I’ve recently received from writers, and I will start reading through them next week.

Hopefully, I’ll have Issue 16 out later this year.

You can find out more about the series here: Alien Dimensions