Bewildering Stories discusses...
Production
with David Rudd
Dear Donald Webb
It was good to see Loco Pete’s Leap in Issue 964. Many thanks for your detailed comments pre-publication, and for the Welcome page. It is very gratifying to write for such a caring magazine! I don’t know how you manage to produce such a magazine each week. It’s an incredible achievement.
It’s a very small thing, but I did find that the link from the Welcome page to my bio comes up with an error message (though the bio page is accessible elsewhere).
I’ll certainly be submitting material to you again.
Best wishes,
David Rudd
And thank you, David, for the kind words! We receive such compliments weekly, even from contributors to whom we’ve had to send “sorry” notices. Not only do we prize the friendship, the messages tell us we’re on the right track and doing the right thing.
I’ve corrected the bio page link in your welcome message. Thanks for the nudge; I ask contributors to check their links, which are easy to overlook in the routine of formatting a page, and many contributors may not know to locate and verify them.
How is Bewildering Stories produced each week? Hang on: it’s all done by hand. And not only my hand, by any means. We have more Associate Editors — review readers — and other editors than I can count. And special credit is due to our ace proofreader, Charlie Cole. Altogether, they determine what BwS is and shall be.
At my end, the only things that are “automated” are the macros in two word processors: Mariner Write and Optima PageSpinner. And they’re activated manually when needed.
Add to them, though, a library of templates developed over the years with one purpose in mind: How can we make Bewildering Stories more reader-friendly and help keep the readers on the page with our authors? It’s a process that ranges from page design, to literary critiques, to proofreading. The result has been the formation of a living, on-line community that’s been my favourite in more than thirty years on the Internet.
Looking forward to more stories from you,
Don Webb
Managing Editor
