Sunday, October 5, 2008

Original free fiction feed now tracks 9 more sources (including several magazines)

Recount: Original free fiction bot is a piece of server software that automatically & continuously tracks (currently) 57 publishers of original free fiction on web, & delivers their stories, episodes & new issue notifications to inbox via feed.

During the 7 day period 28 September-4 October 2008, this feed picked up 53 unique short stories, 1 audio short story, 3 magazine new issue announcement (not counting magazines like Clarkesworld & Lone Star from where I can always reliably pick up individual stories), 9 episodes of serialized novels, & 11 comic strips. How many magazines will that average to - in the inbox every day?

New sources added to watch list this week.

  1. The Edge of Propinquity - a webzine publishing "a series of short stories from four different authors in four different universes exploring the world that lurks just beneath the surface of everyday life. It is the world of the unexplained, supernatural, magic, horror, duty, responsibility, black humor, conspiracy, unknown heritage and power." New stories "on the 15th of every month." 5 stories per issue (1 by a guest author). [via SF Scope]

    I'm picking up new issue announcements.
  2. Reflection's Edge magazine: Specializing in 'marginalized fiction - genre fiction which many "literary magazines" do not accept (i.e., sci-fi, fantasy, horror, mystery, the supernatural, westerns, adventure, magical realism, erotica [not pornography], fables - non-mainstream fiction).' 'published on a monthly basis, excepting the December/January and June/July issues.' [via QuasarDragon]

    I pick up only new issue announcements. And this month, they seem to have forgotten making the announcement at LiveJournal - so it hasn't appeared in my feed (though the new issue is up). But they usually put the announcement - so future issues will hopefully be caught!
  3. Daikaijuzine - a quarterly genre magazine - "science fiction, fantasy, horror, and even mainstream fiction if it tickles our fancy." 'Instead of quarterly "issues", Daikaijuzine will have quarterly "releases", numbered appropriately and with appropriate codewords. The first release is Release 1.0 (Godzilla). In addition, we’ll be updating the site with monthly release patches featuring reviews, classic stories, and other content. Our major releases will come out on the solstices and equinoxes: September 21, December 21, and so on.' [via QuasarDragon]

    Because I only pick up content posted during last 3 days at watched site, their content won't be picked up by feed till next issue. But their site has the last issue - a fortnight old.

    I pick up both new issue notifications, & stories. But for the moment, the only reliable content picked up is actual stories marked Fantasy or Horror. Identifying other things involves heuristics that might sometimes fail.
  4. XKCD: "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, & language." About 2 comic strips a week - each independent rather than part of a series. [via SF Signal]
  5. Phred Serenissima's Flash Fiction Fridays - Stories posted most Fridays. [via Futurismic]
  6. Gareth L Powell's Friday Flash Fiction. New story usually once a fortnight. [via Futurismic]
  7. Greg O'Byrne's Friday Flash Fiction. Unpredictable schedule, but usually at least one story a month. [via Futurismic]
  8. Paul Raven's Vecro City Tourist Board. Flash fiction. Currently dormant. Used to be a bit less than 1 story a month.
  9. Shaun CG - Friday Flash Fiction. Irregular - may be once a month. [via Gareth D Jones]

Moved to reprints feed this week.

Tracking of the following serialized novels are moved to reprints feed, because I now know they are reprints rather than originals:
  1. Zeashan Haider Zaidi's serialized novel "Taboot" (in Hindi).

Bugfixes this week.

  1. Posts of Lilith Saintcrow's serialized novel "Selene" are now marked "[18+].
  2. Tor original short stories & comics are now correctly identified & labeled. Till now, I was picking up both, but was labeling both as "[ss]". This required special handling of each new comic strip - leaving me always chasing a moving target & some mislabeled posts in my feed.
  3. Stories from 365tomorrows are now marked "[scifi]". Of the more than a dozen I've read, there is not one that is not clearly science fiction.
  4. Terra Incognita magazine first added & then removed from watch list. Removal is temporary. This is a new Portuguese/English bilingual magazine of Brazilian origin - first issue was only Portuguese; next in December will be all English. Bug was in my watch code - it was picking up stuff other than new issue announcements too. By the time I realized the problem, first announcement had vanished from their feed - so I can no longer test. Will hopefully restore watch when I see next issue.
  5. Tales of Zombie War: I was picking up non-story posts too.
  6. Farrago's Wainscot/Behind the Wainscot magazine: Till now, I was only picking up their new issue announcements via SF Scope. I now pick it up from their sites too. So notifications are now both timely, & more reliable.

Known bugs.

  1. Subterranean stories appear to be getting inconsistently picked up. Can hopefully fix when next story shows up - there is currently no story post in their feed for me to test.

Other related news.

  1. Two issues old Darwin's Evolutions magazine seems to be in trouble.

2 comments:

tomlopy said...

Check out NewFiction.com. They have 6 new titles they are offering for free.

Anonymous said...

Thanks tomlopy. Which label on your block selects posts referring to stories that are science fiction or related genres? I'm not able to figure out.

I need this to include them in my feed.