BC publishes its last issue

I'm currently working on the ninth issue of the magazine. Unfortunately, for the time being at least, this will be the last issue.

I have run this magazine for the last two years single-handedly, and it has been a pleasure. However, I now find myself with less time to dedicate to the magazine, and a half-hearted job isn’t fair on the readers, the writers or myself. When Blinking Cursor began, I was working just twelve hours a week. Now I work full-time, and it has been a tough decision to stop producing the magazine, but it is time for it to come to an end.

All books and copies of the magazine – both hard copies and free downloads – will still be available at www.lulu.com/spotlight/BlinkingCursor. As of May 2012, the website will no longer exist, but the Facebook and Twitter accounts will remain open. And you never know, maybe one day BC will reopen for submissions. But for now, this is goodbye. Thank you for reading, and thank you for submitting – the writers for Blinking Cursor have been a delight to deal with, and I wish you all every success in your publishing endeavours.

Doing away with the publishing schedule

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and are gearing up for some fun new year celebrations.

There's going to be a slight change at Blinking Cursor, but hopefully you'll agree it's a good one. In short, I'm doing away with the publishing schedule. We started off with publishing two issues per year - a summer issue and a winter issue - and this year I stepped it up to four issues per year, adding in autumn and spring. However, when these reading periods roll around, it's a lot for me to do all at once. Which didn't matter last year as I was working part time. But now I'm working full time, I'm actually acting like some sort of semi-adult, and I don't have as much time as I used to have, to do everything all in one go. So we're going to try this out - BC will be permanently open for submissions, and an issue will be completed once there are enough poems/stories in it, which is usually around 30. This will be good for:

• me, as my workload will be spread out a bit
• the authors, as you will get quicker responses. The idea is that I'll get your email, read it, and send you a decision there and then
• the reader, as this means that there will potentially be more issues overall

Sound good to everyone? Let's see how it goes, and get those submissions in! Meanwhile, I'm going to be working on the eighth issue, so stay tuned for news on that, and if you're not already signed up to our newsletter, email me at blinkingcursor@ymail.com Don't forget the anthology is also still accepting submissons until new year, so January should be a good month for BC!

Even More Blinking Cursor!

There's a lot going on at Blinking Cursor at the moment. Or rather, there's a lot going on in my head. Hopefully my ideas will translate into reality!

Issue five of Blinking Cursor was released in May, and I got so many great submissions that I could make two issues out of them, so issue six is already almost complete and will be published in July. To follow from that, another issue will come out in September as usual, and then again in December. This will start the trend for four issues per year instead of two - autumn, winter, spring and summer. So by the end of next year, there will have been twelve issues of the magazine published.

If that goes well, I would like to transition to being open for submissions all year round. I would do this straight away but I'm afraid that not giving a deadline for submissions will result in a drop, and obviously that would be no good because the magazine relies on its writers for content.

Speaking of authors, issue five saw the addition of "featured writer", and this will make a reappearance in issue six. This is a feature I really like - it's a short interview with a contributing writer, and it gives an insight into who the writer is, what they write, what inspires them, and so on. Over the course of the next few magazines, I think it's going to be really interesting to see a wide range of differences between writers and their work.

I'd also like to continue including book reviews. Issue four saw a review of Bone Silence by Peycho Kanev, and I'm happy to accept requests to review any other books, chapbooks, etc. And I'm happy to consider any Blinking Cursor contributors for the featured writer spot too, so if you're available for interviews, just let me know when you submit.

And finally, I would like to publish a book. Yep, an anthology, or journal, or something with some such name to be released next year and feature even more poetry and short stories. I'll be announcing that on the website with more details soon but it will essentially have the same guidelines as submitting to the magazine. This is the biggie, so I'll be giving plenty of time to submit to it - probably close to a year, in fact. Stay tuned for more information!

The future of Blinking Cursor

The fourth issue of Blinking Cursor Literary magazine has just been released and as always, it has been a joy to create. Thank you everyone for all of your submissions, and apologies as it has taken a little longer to be published this time around, for reasons beyond my control.

Because of how well things are going at the moment, I am considering releasing issues of BC more often - that is, four times a year rather than two. However, this might mean that the amount of time for submissions to get in would be shorter, and this might result in having less submissions per issue, and so a smaller magazine. Then again, that would leave a little more space for some other features of the magazine, for example, book reviews - issue four contains the first BC book review, a poetry collection by Peycho Kanev entitled Bone Silence. I would really like to have a book review every month, so if you have a chap book or poetry collection that you would like reviewed, send me a copy at blinkingcursor@ymail.com and I'll see what I can do. Future issues of the magazine might contain some other features as well, so stay tuned for some new additions, as I'm always looking for ways to improve the publication.

Of course, the future doesn't just depend on me; it depends on you. Not only are your submissions what keeps the magazine going, but your thoughts on the magazine are very important. So tell me what you think, what you would like to see in the future, or what you think doesn't quite work. I want to know what you think - it makes it much easier to improve if I get some feedback. So drop me a line, and don't forget that BC is on Facebook and Twitter so you can follow it there, and keep checking back on the website for more updates.

Submissions

So, it's that time again, and as we near the deadline for the Winter 2010 issue (31st October), I thought I'd write up a list of - not hard and fast rules, exactly, but suggestions. So here goes.

Things to do to make the editor happy:

• Read the submission guidelines. Read them twice. Then, read them again.
• Only send the maximum of three poems and two short stories. Unless you want to annoy the editor. Then again, if you do send more than requested, the editor will only read the first three poems and two stories you send and ignore everything else, so it's only your own time that you're wasting. If everyone decided to send ten poems, the decision-making process would take a very long time.
• Don't exceed the maximum word count for stories. It's only a small magazine and the more pages that are added, the more expensive it becomes, and the longer the stories are, the fewer stories and poems can be in the magazine.
• Only send one email. Not a biggie, it's just easier.
• Write some sort of covering letter. Even if it's just "dear editor, please find enclosed my three poems. Yours sincerely, Joe Bloggs."
• Keep it PG-13.

And that about covers it! Happy submitting!

First post!

Hello! So I thought it would be a nice idea to write a blog every once in a while about what's going on with Blinking Cursor.

If anyone has stumbled upon this blog without knowing what Blinking Cursor is, it's a submissions-based literary magazine. Or at least, that's the way it started. I'm hoping to release more publications in the future, such as writing guides and anthologies. But we'll get into that a bit later!

So a bit about me. My name's Samantha, or Sam, I'm 22 (at time of writing) and I live in England. I've always been interested in writing; I started with short stories, then when I was fourteen or fifteen I would write song lyrics, often to vent my teen angst. Those were the days of, well, pretty bad writing, really! Lyrics aren't particularly my thing, and I haven't gone back to writing them since then. Now I write a lot of poetry, and I'm also currently working on a novel. I have a degree in Business Information Systems, which I graduated from last year, so I'm also very much into computers. That's what makes Blinking Cursor fun for me - it's not just about writing, it's about working on the website as well and the online presence. Creating and editing the website entirely with HTML in Notepad is great fun. I'm also very into music, mostly rock. But enough about me!

Blinking Cursor began in June 2009. I can't really pinpoint how the idea came about, but I think that the inspiration came partly from the fact that I had been published in a few anthologies myself, and also that the Young Writers Society, an online forum with some awesome people, (www.youngwriterssociety.com) had published an anthology using Lulu.com. So when I got the idea, I immediately knew how I was going to get it printed. I started off with a Wordpress blog as a website, and a tentative deadline date, but with not much advertising, I didn't receive many submissions. I pushed the date back and that time I got enough submissions to make the first issue of the magazine.

I kind of look back on the first issue as a beta. There were a couple of things wrong with it that I don't mind pointing out now, because I know not to make those mistakes again. For some reason that I can't actually remember anymore, I needed to revise the copy of the magazine, which meant uploading a new version to Lulu.com. What I didn't realise was that this would drive the price up a bit. I also charged for the downloadable version as well as the hard copy, which people weren't very receptive to. Well, you live and learn. Plus, when I received my copy of the magazine, I realised that I had put the page numbers on the same sides instead of alternative left and right corners, so the numbers on the right hand page were on the inside instead of the outside of the book. Plus, there was a misplaced apostrophe in the blurb! But, as any changes would drive the price up further, and that issue wasn't as cheap as I had hoped anyway, it's going to have to stay that way. But being a one-man-band, I can just about forgive myself for the occasional mistake.

The second issue was released in Winter 2009 and went much more smoothly. I got more submissions, didn't misplace any apostrophes, and found out how to do the page numbers properly in Word. The third issue (Spring 2010) received even more submissions! With the Facebook page, the Twitter account, and now this blog and the page on the Young Writers Society, as well as listings in online directories such as ralan.com and Duotrope's Digest, Blinking Cursor is all over the internet! The next blog I'll write will be about what I hope to see in Blinking Cursor's future, but I think I've rambled on long enough for now! Until next time. :)