Writer Friendly

“Writer-Friendly”

From the start, Abyss & Apex Magazine has been a haven for new writers. We are kind in our rejections, helpful in instructing those who’ve never submitted to a publication before, and supportive of our authors.

This support takes many forms. For one thing, rather than insist on ready-to-publish works, we famously do rewrites on stories that are “almost perfect.” We work with fantasy authors to make certain they make the best use of tie-ins to various international legends and religions in their stories, make sure their magical systems are consistent, and warn them if they might be less than sensitive.

For science fiction stories we fact check the science, and work with them if their tale needs a tweak to be more in line with what’s possible. We check the math on hard sci-fi pieces and help with characterization on character-dry puzzle stories.

And for all the stories, we suggest things that will increase their storytelling quality: from circularity to simple tricks like setting an important line in its own paragraph, for emphasis. If you’ve never been a parent we gently suggest things for your characters we might have learned raising our own children. We make sure fight scenes and worldbuilding are believable, too.

I want to emphasize that we only do this with stories that are almost perfect. If you’re a very new writer we often send you to Odyssey or the Online Writing Workshop. But we never step on your dreams.

And we do all the same for our poets, too, including an occasional chapbook review.

Once an author or poet is published by A&A we try to enhance their careers by submitting as many of their works for various sorts of awards, honors, and other types of recognition. If they independently publish a novel we’ll at least take a look at it with a view toward possibly giving it a review. We try to pair our authors with well-known writers on the Table of Contents in our magazine and the TOCs of our Best of A&A anthologies: writers such as CJ Cherryh, Cat Rambo, Robert Silverberg, Michael Swanwick, Lucy A. Snyder, the late Jay Lake, and—this year we will have a wonderful piece by Ken Liu.

Abyss & Apex is where you’ll find new voices in Science Fiction and Fantasy because we want those voices to be heard.

– Wendy S. Delmater