Alison Barrow of Transworld in the UK is quoted in an article about Dan Brown in The Times Online, saying:

“There is never any clause from publisher to a novelist that they have to deliver at a certain time. We would not impose such a thing on a contract.”

Allowing that this is Dan Brown and that she probably is only referring to bestsellers like Brown, has anyone ever heard of a contract with a publisher that doesn’t specify a delivery date?

to Cory and Alice on their very fine news.

I’ve had a couple very nice and polite queries (which were both perfectly reasonable and welcome) that make me think it’s probably a good idea to clarify something about the Eclipse Two guidelines. The guidelines are the guidelines, and there are no exceptions.  The submission period is 1 February 2008 to 29 February 2008 (Perth, Western Australia time).  The length of story is 2,500 to 10,000 words.  The stories must be original, not previously published in any way, and not be under simultaneous submission. They must be science fiction or fantasy, and clearly genre. They also must be submitted by email in .rtf format.  I want to see as many submissions as possible, but in order to be fair to everyone I think I need to apply the guidelines uniformly.

I should probably also add that these guidelines don’t apply to the writers who were directly invited to contribute stories to the book by me.  If I invited you, and you were kind enough to say yes or maybe or perhaps (you know who you are!), then the original guidelines that I specified in my letter of invitation apply.

If anyone has any queries about the conditions around Eclipse Two, please do not  hesitate to contact me.

I don’t usually do this, and I don’t know if I should. A bit of linkage. First, via David Yeates, The West Australian reports on Shaun Tan winning a major French prize, the possibility of his book The Arrival being turned into a motion picture (which I’m not sure about), and the Mexican government purchasing 30,000 copies of the book to distribute to schools and libraries. Second, the New York Times talks about Starbucks hitting a bump in the corporate road. Turns out automating the coffee experience isn’t working, and they need to get back to core values. Having spent time in a Starbucks in the past year I can only agree. Thirdly, Justien mentions a review of the anthology First Kiss (Then Tell), which contains a story of hers that she read at Books of Wonder (the best kids bookstore in the world) last November when we were there for a signing. Her story rocks, is very disgusting, and very funny. You should go check that book out, and she should write more short stories (hint, hint).  More soon…

Over in the comments, Pam mentions having some trouble getting through to my email address. Just to confirm, submissions for E2 should be sent to jstrahan(at)iinet(dot)net(dot)au. If that doesn’t work, you can try jonathan(dot)strahan(at)gmail(dot)com.  If that doesn’t work, you can post a comment here and I’ll do what I can to make things work.

As a quick postscript to the guidelines for E2, I should have mentioned that I’m not accepting simultaneous or multiple submissions.