Bad math

I played around with my calculator and came up with these Word Riot submission stats for April 2008:

Submissions: 195
Rejected: 144
Accepted: 25
Pending/Withdrawn/Jackie’s bad math: 26

—

I updated a bunch of pages on this site, including Articles/Interviews, Now (which existed in a state of suspended animation for like a year), Readings, Reviews/Blurbs and Writing.

Also, all posted news on The Suburban Swindle has been tagged and has it’s own page here.

Interviews! News! Etc.!

I did a couple interviews that recently got posted:

1. Pilcrow Lit Fest blog
2. Absolute Write

Also, I went to the KGB Bar on Friday night and caught the tail end of this reading. I met Tony O’Neill, Lee Rourke, Mikael Covey and Mark Edmund Doten for the first time. There were drinks. There was writer talk. There was Mars Bar. Covey did a write up of the evening over at Lit Up Magazine.

Everybody go to Pilcrow

The Pilcrow Lit Fest takes over Chicago from May 22 - May 25. I haven’t been this excited for a lit festival since the 215 Festival, circa 2003.

I think Amy Guth is some sorta marketing genius (in addition to being a fantastic writer). The list of attendees is a who’s-who of the small press world. Pilcrow is probably going to grow up into some mega festival in years to come, so I decided I have to be there when it all goes down in ‘08. (I’m going to be on a couple panels at Pilcrow, so drop by if you’re in Chicago.)

There are so many writers and publishers I can’t wait to meet. A lot of us know each other through email, Facebook, web sites or whatever but haven’t gotten a chance to meet face to face yet. I’m really looking forward to that.

Donate to Pilcrow:

—

While in Chicago, I’m going to be doing a reading with Kevin Sampsell (Future Tense Publishing) and James Stegall (So New Publishing) at Quimby’s. Check it out.

Sampsell, Stegall & Corley Read at Quimby’s
We’re not just publishers. We actually write stuff too.
Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008
Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Quimby’s Bookstore
Street: 1854 W. North Ave.
City/Town: Chicago, IL

storySouth Million Writers Award

Word Riot has four stories shortlisted in this year’s storySouth Million Writers Award:

• “The Mystery of Advertising and the Monkey of God” by Ravsten Cottle
  http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1099
• “This Is Me American Style” by Maria Deira
  http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1340
• “Another’s Table” by Nicholas Hayes
  http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1368
• “Too Much Asia to Wipe Off” by Tom Sheehan
  http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1369

The Million Writers Award is probably the best-known online writing award out there. I got to be one of the judges for the second year in a row. Rockin.

The list of notable stories will be whittled down to 10 and then go up for a poll vote.

But can I get a coffee mug?

Columbia College Chicago has this pretty impressive Publishing Lab to help their students get a feel for fiction and poetry markets, both print and online.

Students research the lit mags and write up market sheets rating them. If you’re new to the writing/publishing game, it’s an invaluable resource.

Book cover

Summer 2008

So New Media

New blurb

Ian Spiegelman gave me an awesome blurb for my forthcoming short story collection, The Suburban Swindle (So New Media):

“Finally a 20-something author who is neither precious nor coddled. Finally a young writer who writes about life as it actually is instead of some trust fund prick’s fantasy of America. Jackie Corley is almost completely alone among the new set of writers in that she is actually telling stories about real humans. And she is telling them well, with the kind of immediacy that most young writers have had beaten out of them in MFA factories. Corley is original and unforgiving. I cannot say enough about Jackie Corley. She doesn’t flinch. Read this book.”
-Ian Spiegelman, author Welcome to Yesterday and Everyone’s Burning

Word Riot gets Wiki’ed

Somebody created a Wikipedia entry for Word Riot. I find it bizarre and yet totally cool that somebody other than me would bother to put together an entry. Let’s see if the Wiki masters deem it worthy enough to stay up.

Alexa rankings for lit mags

Every couple months I’ll poke around Alexa.org to check out the traffic rankings for Word Riot and other lit mags. Here’s some that I found:

McSweeney’s
60,392

Failbetter.com
537,359

3:AM Magazine
597,692

Identity Theory
597,767

Word Riot
872,701

Eyeshot.net
1,161,889

Pindeldyboz
1,318,959

Opium Magazine
1,523,411

Narrative Magazine
2,055,259

StorySouth
2,205,310

SmokeLong Quarterly
2,469,063

Hobart
2,869,260

Blurby

Kevin Sampsell gave me a great blurb for my short story collection:

“I am tempted to compare Jackie Corley’s writing to a strong cup of coffee. It wakes you up, it gets you addicted, and sometimes it’s burning hot. Or I could say it’s like whiskey–it’s strong, it blurs your vision, and gives you the guts to face the hard truths and bitter pains of life. But forget about those liquid comparisons, because Corley’s work is solid! The Suburban Swindle unleashes a new, bold, American voice that you’d be foolish to ignore.”
–Kevin Sampsell, author of Creamy Bullets