Interview with Alex Shvartsman on Community Days

Welcome to another great Community Days interview!

My guest today is Alex Shvartsman, a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. He's sold nearly 50 short stories since late 2010, to such venues as The Journal of Nature, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, and Galaxy's Edge, among others. He's best-known for humorous short stories.

In 2012 Alex edited and published Unidentified Funny Objects -- an anthology of humorous SF/F which featured stories by Mike Resnick, Lavie Tidhar, Jody Lynn Nye, and Ken Liu, among others. It was well-received by readers and critics alike. Alex is running a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the second in what he hopes will become an annual anthology series: Unidentified Funny Objects.

Tell us a little bit about your inspiration for the Unidentified Funny Objects collection. How did it reflect your previous experience as a writer and editor?

Much of what I write is humorous science fiction and fantasy short stories. I submit them to what markets appreciate that sort of thing, but there are many established and well-respected magazines and anthologies that do not. So it cuts down the list of viable professional markets from over a dozen to just a handful. I always found this frustrating and wished that somebody would create a regular outlet for SF/F humor (I firmly believe there are plenty of readers interested in such stories). So you could say that I was inspired to create the market I always wanted to exist. And when I researched humor anthologies, I found that nothing similar to Unidentified Funny Objects had been published, at least not during the course of the last decade. I became even more convinced that there's a niche need that my project could fill.

Five Years Later... Time To Publish?

In February of 2008 I published my first blog post, in which I talked about getting ready to write my very first fantasy novel.

Five years, five (drafts of) novels, and several very long hiatuses later, I'm finally ready to come full circle. Yep, that's right - I'm going to self-publish for the first time, and officially get some of this written stash out into the world at large!

But wait, there's more! I've decided to use Kickstarter to fund the publication process. I'm committing fully to this endeavor, and I don't want to leave anything to chance. I'm raising money to hire an awesome editor, get some great visual talent on board, and really make as big of a deal of this as I'm able to.

Crowdfunding a novel is not an easy task, but luckily, I'm not going it alone. I'm already building the foundation for a great team, including some awesome people who are going to be helping me put on local events in New York and hosting me on their sites and blogs over the course of the project.

Interested in climbing on board? Head over to my website and drop me a line on my contact form.

As if that weren't enough fun news, yesterday I got "chucked" by the wonderful team at Knodes. You can read about it - and see me mugging for the camera in our office - here: Emma Gets Chucked :D

Stay tuned for lots of exciting stuff to come! And if you're in or near the NYC area, keep February 25 open on your calendars. I'll be posting info for the launch party here soon!