Comments on: Calls for Slush Readers

By: Bill Ward

Bill Ward — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:14:24 +0000

Some editors will promise anything to secure a slush shoveler or two.

By: Jaym Gates

Jaym Gates — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:11:13 +0000

Dammit, you mean that’s not one of the perks that comes with this job? I WAS LIED TO!

By: Bill Ward

Bill Ward — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:57:38 +0000

I think that’s only really a risk if you have sex with the submitters, which is a bit outside the purview of the slush reader position for most magazines.

By: Jaym Gates

Jaym Gates — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:08:50 +0000

See, those are horrifically funny.

Then again, bad writing may well have ruined sex for me forever. Mostly because fits of the giggles tend to be inappropriately timed. I gave up asking where my forum members find some of these pieces, and WHY they find them.

Then again, as you said, stories to tell the grandkids some day. “Back in my day, we had this dude who…!”

By: Bill Ward

Bill Ward — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:04:55 +0000

But you will always have something to talk about with other editors, like the guy that responds to a call for fantasy novellas with his book-length autobiography, or the one that took pictures of each page of his printed manuscript and sent that in, or the one that tells you her fantasy stories depict real events in a world that she is in psychic contact with, or the guy who used babelfish to . . . .

Well, you get the idea.

By: Jaym Gates

Jaym Gates — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:42:09 +0000

As someone who works with Fantasy and is one of the slush readers… Yeah, it’s kind of useful. Ok, really useful.

But beware. You may never stop the nightmares that some of those stories will bring. The depths… Oh gods the depths…