I know, I know. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted something. I’m still writing and still submitting stories to various publications. It’s a long, slow process that often ends with me shelving a story and moving on. I’m sitting in my little corner with my laptop, hammering out stuff when I can… when life (day job, chores, existential dread, etc) hasn’t drained everything out of me.
Bear with me. With all the AI slop getting slung around, being a writer is even harder than ever. The number of submissions to publications has skyrocketed because anyone with access to an LLM can “write” something. Writers are being told to try not to write like LLMs, but LLMs write like us because they were trained on what we wrote without our permission. We’re being told we may have to verify that we wrote our own stories (Prove you’re a real writer! Keep all your notes and drawings for when we interrogate, uh, question you about your process!). AI slop is getting published on purpose in some places and in others, by accident, which means there’s too much crap to wade through to get to something amazing and human-made. It’s exhausting, and it makes it all seem kind of pointless. Like trying to hold back a tsunami with your bare hands.
That’s why we need human-made content more than ever. Stories made by real, living, breathing people. Something that carries a little piece of their soul in it (trust me, our stories are our babies). Find the publications that only publish human-made work and support them in any way you can (reading, donating, subscribing, shouting their names to the world for all to hear). Follow your favorite authors on social media and recommend their stories/books to friends, family, strangers on the bus, that one neighbor you don’t really like. Proudly hold up that physical book you’re reading at the airport, dentist, beach, jury duty. Every little bit counts. Choose the messy weirdness created by a lumpy mass of tissue floating inside the head of a real person instead of the cold, soulless imitations created by machines.
Here is a short list of some of my favorite ezines/small publishers in no particular order. Please read their stuff and help support the human writers, editors, and artists who make such amazingness possible:
Uncanny Magazine (scifi/fantasy/horror)
Apex Magazine (scifi/fantasy/horror)
Clarkesworld (scifi/fantasy)
Nightmare Magazine (horror/dark fantasy)
The Dark (horror/dark fantasy)
Tenebrous Press (horror/weird fiction)
Neon Hemlock (queer scifi/fantasy/horror)
Beneath Ceaseless Skies (adventure fantasy)
Pseudopod (audio scifi/fantasy/horror)
Cosmic Horror Monthly (horror/weird fiction)
Locus Magazine (speculative fiction news/reviews/interviews – great resource for writers)