Happy New Year! Welcome to 2016 – may it improve on everything good from the year gone by and contain none of the rubbish bits!

We are very excited to leap straight into the new year (huh, which also happens to be a leap year!) with a brand new crowdfunding campaign for our forthcoming project, In Your Face.
With thanks to the group SpecFaction, who initially sparked off the project in the form of a financial grant intended for just one purpose, to produce an anthology showcasing Australian spec fic, we have been able to offer payment for original stories of 3 cents per word, and for reprints a flat rate of $50 per piece, for around 12-15 stories. This campaign is designed to expand the number of excellent stories we are able to include in the book by at least five stories.
As our goal is always to pay our contributors what their efforts deserve, while our initial target is quite low, our stretch goal once we reach our target will be to increase the amount we are able to pay per story – the aim is to pay pro-rates of 6 cents per word, as per the SWFA guidelines, but we would be pleased to be able to increase the pay rate by any amount.
Rewards include ebook and print editions of the anthology, as well as extra goodies in different bundles. And if you get in quick and support, there are super discounted prices for a limited number of earlybird backers!
I need to offer fair warning: the book will be made up of original and reprinted speculative fiction stories that deal with very provocative themes. The stories we have already accepted are challenging and/or confronting but with a firm purpose – they are pieces that will perhaps make readers uncomfortable because they are a bit too hard-hitting or close to the bone, but which interrogate these themes and ideas, and make a point about the world we live in. It won’t be an easy book to read, but it is a powerful one.
If this sounds like something that’s right up your reading alley, jump on in and pledge your support! We also appreciate every share on social media that spreads the word – our unending gratitude to every person who does so!