Category Archives: Contributors

What we’re working on

March 23, 2018 onspecmag

The next issue of On Spec (Vol. 28 No 4, for those of you who are keeping track) is currently at the printer, and we should be sending them out within the next 2 weeks. We’ll have new fiction by Hayden Trenholm, Chelsea Vowel, Susan Forest, Jordan Taylor, Robert Luke Wilkins, Sally McBride and C.J. Lavigne. Plus artist and author interviews by our own Roberta Laurie, and Cat McDonald, an editorial by Virginia O’Dine, Can-Con 2017 report by Diane Walton, poetry from Josh Pearce and a beautiful tribute in verse for the late Ursula Le Guin, written by Sarah Tolmie.

Meanwhile, there is another exciting project happening, and we will let the project leader describe it in his own words:

Hello! My name is Teddy Edwards and I’m helping to produce an exciting new project with On Spec Magazine. It’s called On Spec Sound Ideas.

Plainly, it’s a podcast comprised of fully dramatized radio-plays of stories On Spec has published in the past. We have a full cast of actors together, standing around a microphone and reciting lines just like the golden age of radio. On Spec has always had a knack for printing excellent character stories that beg to be brought to other media, and sound play/ radio drama/ theater of the mind would be my first choice. Even if I had the budget for a movie or web series. They find a magical line between immersive and engaging, like reading a movie.

Something fairly exciting about this project, (I think,) is that you don’t need to be a subscriber or a Patreon supporter to enjoy it! It is a free piece of On Spec that can be downloaded and enjoyed by anybody. We only ask that if you enjoy it, to share it with someone else you think might enjoy it.

The first episode is based on “Space Monkeys”, a story by Ryan M. Williams, and looks to be finished up around mid to late March. This fine story is part of our Teacher Toolkit, and will be freely available for middle and secondary school educators to access and use with their classes.

I’m very excited about this, and I hope you are too!

-Teddy-

(The cast of “Space Monkeys” hard at work in the studio. From left to right: Josie Cole, Griffin Cork and Lindsay Christopher)

Sound Ideas cast at work

Contributors

Fiction submission window opening soon

February 14, 2018 onspecmag

We will be open to new submissions of short fiction as of March 1, 2018. The window will close six weeks after that, and no emailed manuscripts will be accepted.

As usual, we cannot promise a quick turnaround, although we have some new slush readers who have joined us to help with the massive volume of work we receive in that time period. Once a story is short-listed, it will be read, evaluated and discussed by several of the editors before we make the final decisions.

So, on March 1, authors will be offered a Fiction link to our Submittable page, along with the ongoing links for Poetry and Art. Just follow the instructions to register and upload your story.

Contributors

Gallery Walk

March 30, 2015 Brent

It’s finally here, gentle readers: the On Spec Contributor Gallery! Take a walk through the gallery and see all the wonderful writers, artists, and poets who have contributed to our twenty-five year history, as well as current contributors.

As well as the gallery, every week we’ll pick a contributor at random to feature here in the blog. We’ll give you a little more detailed look at what they’re up to, maybe even a short interview. So stay tuned for that.

If you are a past or present contributor to On Spec, please send us a picture of yourself, preferably holding your issue(s) of On Spec, along with a short bit about what you’re up to now. Include a link to your site if you have one. Pics and bios can be sent to onspec@onspec.ca.

Contributors

Calling All Contributors!

August 29, 2014 Brent

As you can see by looking around, we have a new website under construction. We’re in the midst of building frenzy at the moment, always looking for the next thing to add to the site. One of the features we’d love to add is a Contributor’s Gallery, a visual history of the many wonderfully talented writers, poets, and artists On Spec has had the honour to feature over the years.

So this is our call to all past contributors: Send a photo of yourself, holding a copy of On Spec Magazine (preferably the copy or copies you were in), along with about 50-75 words telling us what you’re up to these days (including a link to your current site), to onspec@onspec.ca. Please title the email ‘Contributor Gallery’. With your permission, we’ll post your picture and blurb in the Gallery, so everyone can marvel at the many people who have helped On Spec become one of Canada’s finest SF magazines.

To show you how easy it is, Cory Doctorow sent us this little beauty: