What I Like: The Editor Opens his Head

This is a cheat sheet for all of you thinking about submitting to Sand: A Journal of Strange Tales .

I like weird and dark. Characters don't need to die, but they need to have some epiphany or moment of change. Irony is good... although the term "plot twist" has become a dirty word, and rightly so because a twist is rarely done well. Read I Am Legend, then you understand how a master manages to pull one off. Matheson was brilliant. Some stories to read: "House Taken Over" by Julio Cortázar, "The Book of Sand" by Jorge Luis Borges (from which Sand gets its name), "Assembly of the Dead" by Chet Williamson, works by Ramsey Campbell...grab a copy of 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories, a collection of horror, science-fiction, and fantasy with a darker side. Cheap and good reading.

Other tidbits: I feel that The Twilight Zone was the greatest show ever to grace television, closely followed by The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, and Ray Bradbury Theater.

Most of all, entertain without condescension. I don't want ray guns and explosions, but I don't want four pages of meandering conversation about the meaning of rain over coffee, either. Make the plot move, but make it move well. Grab a copy of Damon Knight's Creating Short Fiction. Great lessons.

Keep trying us, don't give up, and KEEP WRITING.

I hope this helps.

Little Ol' Me...

Blame this blog on Aaron Polson, my partner at Strange Publications. He figured I should have a "public face" on the web.

So...Ed Lupak is a high school social studies teacher, editor, and sometimes writer. He was last seen floating in a hot air balloon over north central Kansas with his trusty German Shepherd, Zeb. Ed enjoys a good zombie movie or Twilight Zone marathon. His short fiction can be found in a few dusty, well-worn places if you look hard enough.

I'll try to update this once in a while.