If anyone is interested in submitting stories or articles for future issues of the Grantville Gazette, you are welcome to do so. But you must follow a certain procedure:
1) All stories and articles must first be posted in a conference in Baen's Bar set aside for the purpose, called "1632 Slush." Do not send them to me directly, because I won't read them. It's good idea to submit a sketch of your story to the conference first, since people there will likely spot any major problems that you overlooked. That can wind up saving you a lot of wasted work.
You can get to that conference by going to Baen Books' web site www.baen.com. Then select "Baen's Bar." If it's your first visit, you will need to register. (That's quick and easy.) Once you're in the Bar, the three conferences devoted to the 1632 universe are "1632 Slush," "1632 Slush Comments," and "1632 Tech Manual." You should post your sketch, outline or story in "1632 Slush." Any discussion of it should take place in "1632 Slush Comments." The "1632 Tech Manual" is for any general discussion not specifically related to a specific story.
2) Your story/article will then be subjected to discussion and commentary by participants in the 1632 discussion. In essence, it will get chewed on by what amounts to a very large, virtual writers' group.
You do not need to wait until you've finished the story to start posting it in "1632 Slush." In fact, it's a good idea not to wait, because you will often find that problems can be spotted early in the game, before you've put all the work into completing the piece.
3) While this is happening, the assistant editor of the Grantville Gazette, Paula Goodlett, will be keeping an eye on the discussion. She will alert me whenever a story or article seems to be gaining general approval from the participants in the discussion. There's also an editorial board to which Paula and I belong, which does much the same thing. The other members of the board are Karen Bergstralh, Rick Boatright, and Laura Runkle. In addition, authors who publish regularly in the 1632 setting participate on the board as ex officio members. My point is that plenty of people will be looking over the various stories being submitted, so you needn't worry that your story will just get lost in the shuffle.
4) At that point—and only at that point—do I take a look at a story or article.
I insist that people follow this procedure, for two reasons:
First, as I said, I'm very busy and I just don't have time to read everything submitted until I have some reason to think it's gotten past a certain preliminary screening.
Second, and even more important, the setting and "established canon" in this series is quite extensive by now. If anyone tries to write a story without first taking the time to become familiar with the setting, they will almost invariably write something which—even if it's otherwise well written—I simply can't accept.
In short, the procedure outlined above will save you a lot of wasted time and effort also.
One point in particular: I have gotten extrxemely hardnosed about the way in which people use American characters in their stories (so-called "up-timers"). That's because I began discovering that my small and realistically portrayed coal mining town of 3500 people was being willy-nilly transformed into a "town" with a population of something like 20,000 people—half of whom were Navy SEALs who just happened to be in town at the Ring of Fire, half of whom were rocket scientists (ibid), half of whom were brain surgeons (ibid), half of whom had a personal library the size of the Library of Congress, half of whom . . .
Not to mention the F-16s which "just happened" to be flying through the area, the Army convoys (ibid), the trains full of vital industrial supplies (ibid), the FBI agents in hot pursuit of master criminals (ibid), the . . .
NOT A CHANCE. If you want to use an up-time character, you must use one of the "authorized" characters. Those are the characters created by Virginia DeMarce using genealogical software and embodied in what is called "the grid."
You can obtain a copy of the grid from the web site which collects and presents the by-now voluminous material concerning the series, www.1632.org. Look on the right for the link to "Virginia's Uptimer Grid." While you're at it, you should also look further down at the links under the title "Authors' Manual."
You will be paid for any story or factual article which is published. The rates that we pay are six cents a word for any story or article up to fifteen thousand words. The rate for anything beyond fifteen thousand words drops to five cents a word. The drop is not retroactive—i.e., regardless of the length of the piece, the first fifteen thousand words will always be paid six cents a word. These pay rates are professional rates, as established by the Science Fictions & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. In the event a story or article is later selected for inclusion in a paper edition, you will get no further advance but will be entitled to a pro rata share of any royalties earned by the authors from that volume.