Category: news

RAWR 2.0!

In the distance, you hear the rumbling of mechanical gears. The ground quivers as if from the stomping of hundreds of huge machines…Could it be? Are they back? You wait, breath held, and then—you see them.

The robot dinosaurs have awakened from slumber!

gif of dinosaurs roaring (from Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur)

Hi, friends, it’s been a chaotic few years, hasn’t it? (Holy fossil fuels, Dino-Bot, has it been two years?!)

Life has happened; plans changed; some dreams got put on the metaphorical back burner while more Life Stuff happens. It was my plan for ages to re-launch the Kickstarter for the ebook/print anthology. And I still want that to happen! (I also super appreciate all the folks who offered support and assistance and cheering for this. <3) But for now, it is a hiatus goal.

Things are uncertain and scary right now. You know what is not scary? ROBOT DINOSAURS! I had the privilege of purchasing a handful of stories intended for the anthology last year, and with these authors’ permissions, we are going to release the stories online instead.

One day, there will be a book-formed thing full of these excellent tales (and tails). Hugo-Nominated artist Grace P. Fong has made a stunning cover art! Isn’t it gorgeous?!

artwork by Grace P. Fong (c) 2019

One day, this amazing art will grace (*wink*) the cover of an honest-to-bones book-shaped thing. We all need futures to look forward to, and this project is one of my dreams. It’ll happen.

Until then, I hope you will join me in roaring for a newly hatched clutch of robot dinosaur stories!

Beginning Friday, March 20th and extending through April 2020 (and maybe beyond!), I am be honored to present you several new stories. They all spark joy.

Thank you for staying with us during this evolution of plans—now lift up your head and RWAR!!!

sinSAURrely,
—Merc Fenn Wolfmoor
Editor-In-Teeth

Announcing new ROBOT DINOSAURS! story selections

RAWR! Thank you to all the wonderful authors who submitted stories to us during the open window! We had a total of 205 submissions during the open reading period; Editorsaurus Merc Rustad sent out 35 hold notices, and accepted 6 stories in total for the anthology. It was a joy to read all your awesomesaurus words. <3

Now that submissions have closed and final selections have been made, we are thrilled to share the final selections for the ebook/print version of ROBOT DINOSAURS!

ACCEPTANCES

  • D.A. Xiaolin Spires “Caihong Juji”
  • Izzy Wasserstein “A Dinosaur Without Feathers Is No Dinosaur at All”
  • Aidan Doyle “The Tail of Genji”
  • Micheal M. Jones “Regarding the Regretful Repercussions of Replicating Robot Reptiles”
  • Jennifer Lee Rossman “The Mistakes of the White-Coats”
  • Beth Cato “Friends Who Roar Together”

About the Authors

 

Aidan Doyle
Aidan Doyle is an Australian writer and computer programmer. His short stories have been published in places such as Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Fireside. He has been shortlisted for the Aurealis, Ditmar, and XYZZY awards. He has visited more than 100 countries and his experiences include teaching English in Japan, interviewing ninjas in Bolivia, and going ten-pin bowling in North Korea.
Twitter: @aidan_doyle

Beth Cato
Nebula-nominated Beth Cato is the author of the Clockwork Dagger duology and the new Blood of Earth Trilogy from Harper Voyager. She’s a Hanford, California native transplanted to the Arizona desert, where she lives with her husband, son, and requisite cats. Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato.

D.A. Xiaolin Spires
D.A. Xiaolin Spires bridles and saddles her electronic dino before rushing to the grocery store. Besides ROBOT DINOSAURS, her work appears or is forthcoming in various publications such as Clarkesworld, Analog, Terraform, Nature: Futures, Fireside, Grievous Angel, Reckoning, Galaxy’s Edge, LONTAR, Andromeda Spaceways (selected for the Year’s Best issue), Mithila Review, Issues in Earth Science, Factor Four, StarShipSofa, Liquid Imagination, Star*Line, Liminality, Eye to the Telescope, Atlas Poetica, Outlook Springs, Gathering Storm Magazine, Little Blue Marble, Polu Texni and Story Seed Vault. Her fiction also appears in other anthologies of the strange and delightful, such as Deep Signal, Future Visions, Sharp & Sugar Tooth, Broad Knowledge, Battling in All Her Finery and Ride the Star Wind. You can find her on her website: daxiaolinspires.wordpress.com or on Twitter: @spireswriter.

Izzy Wasserstein
Izzy Wasserstein is a writer of poetry and fiction. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming from Clarkesworld, Apex, and Fireside Magazine, among others. Her most recent poetry collection is When Creation Falls (Meadowlark Books, 2018). She shares a home with the writer Nora E. Derrington and a variety of fury companions. Reports that she is, in fact, a cyborg fox remain unconfirmed.
Twitter: @wasserst

Jennifer Lee Rossman
Jennifer Lee Rossman is an incurable dinosaur nerd. Jurassic Park has been her favorite movie since she was four, and she was that annoying child who complained to waiters about the scientific inaccuracies on the dinosaur placemats. Her debut novel, Jack Jetstark’s Intergalactic Freakshow, will be published by World Weaver Press in December. Alas, there are no dinosaurs in it.
Twitter: @JenLRossman

Michael M. Jones
Michael M. Jones lives in southwest Virginia with too many books, just enough cats, and a wife who prefers her mad science to be of the social varieties. His stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, such as Clockwork Phoenix 3, Utter Fabrication, and E is for Evil. Daphne and Camille first appeared in “Saturday Night Science,” in the first issue of Broadswords & Blasters. Michael also edited the anthologies Scheherazade’s Facade, and Schoolbooks & Sorcery. For more, visit him at www.michaelmjones.com.
Twitter: @oneminutemonkey

What now?

The rest of the online-scheduled fiction will be published as planned! We’ve commissioned artwork for all the new hatchling stories, and the plan is to send the ebook/print book of ROBOT DINOSAURS! to the printers by October 1st, 2018. This means you should be getting your claws on the finished product by December—just in time for gift-giving and curling up in a warm nest to read on the snowy days to come!

How about 2019?

Editor Merc Rustad has this to say:

“Yes, there will be a volume 2 of ROBOT DINOSAURS! Plans are in the works. This has just been so much fun, and I loved so many stories I saw in the slush—I couldn’t say yes to all of them right now, but let’s just say I have asked to hold on to several stories for next year’s season of robot dinosaur fiction! And yes, there will be another open submissions period early next year, and I will be soliciting more authors for the second volume. RAWR!”

 

Open Submissions Period Announced for ROBOT DINOSAURS!

RAWR! Do you like robot dinosaurs and want to join our amazing line-up? 😀

Well, have we got awesomsaurus news for you! August 1st thru 15th, 2018, we will be open to general fiction submissions! 

(Please do not send any stories before the open submissions period, as they will not be read.)

Want a sneak peak at the guidelines? Read on!

WHAT IS THIS? An open call for ROBOT DINOSAURS! stories (we will be accepting between 3 to 4). These stories will be ebook/print anthology exclusive—they will not be immediately available online, though you are welcome to sell reprint rights after a three-month exclusivity period of the anthology’s publication in ebook and print.

RIGHTS: three-month exclusivity upon publication, and non-exclusive archival rights for the anthology (ebook and print) thereafter. All other rights (audio, film, etc) are yours. We will ask to use excerpt from your story as promotional material on the website (usually a few paragraphs at most).

DETAILS:

  • Payment is $60 USD (payable via PayPal, preferably, and check if in the US).
  • Story must feature a robot dinosaur of some kind.
  • Stories must be written in English, original, and unpublished.
  • Story must be between 750 and 1,200 words long. (You may query for longer works, but the flat fee remains the same. We will not consider anything over 2k.)
  • Strong language, sexual content, and violence are fine–please no erotica. We prefer PG-13 stories to match the general tone of the project.
  • Story must be original and not use copyrighted or franchised characters or settings.
  • Simultaneous and multiple submissions: yes! Sim subs (sending the story to ROBOT DINOSAURS and another market at the same time) are fine, so long as you let us know if the story is accepted elsewhere as soon as possible. Multiple submissions (up to three per author) are also fine, but please send each in a separate email.

 

INCLUSIVITY:

  • The submissions call is open to anywhere in the world!
  • If you are under 18 years of age, you will need a legal guardian to sign the contract; that said, we are more than happy to consider stories from persons of any age!
  • We welcome stories from people of any ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, religion, age, neurotype, socio-economic status, etc. We would especially like to see stories from people of marginalized identities!

RESPONSE TIMES: We will have all final responses sent out by the end of August 2018. Initial responses (rejection or hold notices) will be sent on a rolling basis, dependent on how fast we can read subs (and the volume of material we get).

HOW TO SUBMIT?

When the open submissions window opens, the email address for subs will be posted on the guidelines page!

July/August Artwork by Toe Keen

Greetings, mighty dino friends! We’re delighted to present artist Toe Keen‘s stunning banner-style art for the July and August issues of ROBOT DINOSAURS! It is inspired by our first story in July, “Even to the Teeth” by Karen Osborne.

Behold!

artwork by Toe Keen

You can check out more of the artist’s work at his website:  www.atoekeneffort.weebly.com or on Facebook!

The Kickstarter Is Alive!

What is good in life? ROBOT DINOSAURS!

Behold, the official launch of the Kickstarter!

Robot_Dino_Kickstarter

So what is this project?

Robot Dinosaur Fiction! is a virtual anthology: each Friday from May through August, 2018, a new flash fiction story will be published right here, free to read. When the summer wraps up, all the stories will be collected in an anthology, with an exclusive bonus story by Vina Jie-Min Prasad!

So far we have an all-star lineup of authors and artists! LOOK AT THEM ALL. How cool is this?!

If we hit stretch goals on the Kickstarter, we will also be opening to general submissions for September and October (and maybe beyond)! 😀

There are all sorts of cool rewards for backers: e-book and print book copies of the anthology, postcards with awesome ROBOT DINOSAURS! artwork, exclusive bundles of books, hand-made plushies, and more.

SUPPORT SCIENCE! Roar with us! Fund your local robot dinosaur initiative. 

Thank you for believing in ROBOT DINOSAURS!