OK, credit where it's due: it was a day later than some got it, but Titan emailed me the digital supplement today, unprompted! That means they actually sent me the physical magazine and the digital supplement for issue 6 without me needing to contact them. I can't remember the last time that happened! May it be the start of a trend!
I hope this is okay to post in this thread. Does anyone know of anywhere to download the old Star Trek: The Magazine which ran from 1999 to 2003? Has anyone scanned them in and archived them? Volume 03 Issues 05 to 12 are up on archive.org, but I can't seem to find any other digitised issues. It seems a shame since these were incredibly produced magazines featuring content not really seen anywhere else.
Back when this thread was still on page 2, I was able to acquire all of the issues of the run for well below cover price on eBay. I'm guessing that is still the case. I don't know of any digital/download sources for the 1999-2003 magazine.
Yeah I have had a good search and it seems no one has scanned them. I suppose the legality of it is questionable.. though since they are no longer for sale would it come under share use? Something to think about..
In my case, I reached out to the fiction editor, whose name was listed on the masthead. He was familiar with my past STAR TREK work and gave me an assignment.
Good news! I have finally received issue five! From the shape of it, it appears to have been delivered by a horde of drunken squirrels, but at this point, I’m just happy to have it at all!
The collective noun for squirrels is a "scurry," so I guess a horde of drunken squirrels would be a... slurry?
A third Trek story pitch has been approved. At this point, it looks like I'll have stories in issues 7, 8, and 9. More details on the other two once they're written and approved.l
Congratulations to Keith and Greg that's great news about you having new stories in future issues of the magazine.
Thanks. By my count, this is the fifth story I've sold them: two TOS stories, two TNG stores, and a VOY story.
Depends. Sometimes I'm specifically assigned a general topic. "We need a Borg story for the special Borg issue." "We need a TNG story for a TNG-themed issue." "We could use a Pulaski story." Other times I've just pitched an idea on my own initiative. "How about a new Khan story?"
All of my pitches were my own, though one was more complicated than that (I'll explain more about that once the story's done and approved). I've pitched about a dozen stories, of which only three have been taken so far. The biggest problem with my other ones is that they were too plot-heavy for the word count, which is only 2000-2500 words, which is very short.
Indeed, telling a Trek story in roughly 2K words is a real challenge. Even your average short story in an anthology is about twice that length. I'm finding what works is about three scenes and maybe an epilogue, depending. And keeping the cast down to a minimum. In my Pulaski story, she's the only one who beams down to the planet -- for reasons. That gave me more room to flesh out the guest-aliens without having to find something for Riker and Geordi and the others to do.
If you don't have to sweat location description (someplace spare or already well known), or if your characters don't speechify too much, that helps.
Or any story, really. I just recently sold my first "flash" story under 1500 words (available for free here), and it was a challenge to explain the worldbuilding behind the story's universe (or rather, multiverse) in as few words as possible. Ironically, it came out in the same month as the longest piece of non-Trek short fiction I've ever sold, "Aleyara's Descent" in this month's Analog -- also my first magazine story to get cover art, which is my new avatar).