WIP: Teaser From "In My Brain Were Stored a Thousand Pictures"

I’ve been following the controversy with Galaktika with particular interest because there are a number of SFWA members involved. My thanks to A. G. Carpenter for graciously sharing what they found out. In the process of talking to people, I dropped Istvan Burger a mail because I had these questions:

1. Would all writers be paid, preferably without their having to contact Galaktika?
2. Would all translators be paid? (my understanding was that the same lack of payment has happened with them.)
3. For any online stories, would authors be able to request that the story be taken down?
4. Would a process be put in place to ensure this never happens again?

Here’s the reply:

Dear Cat,
I’m writing on behalf of Istvan Burger, editor in chief of Galaktika.

We’d like to ask authors to contact us directly to agree on compensation methods. You can give my email address to the members. mund.katalin@gmail.com

The short stories were published in a monthly magazine, which was sold for two months, so these prints are not available any more. So Authors don’t need to withdraw their works. As we wrote in our statement, there is no problem with novels, as all the rights of novels were paid by us in time.

Also let me emphasise again that all the translators were paid all the time!

You can quote my reply. Thank you for your help!

Best regards,
Katalin Mund,
Manager of Galaktika Magazine

Next week SFWA will be sending Galaktika a list of affected SFWA members who need to be compensated. If you’re a member whose work was published in Galaktika and want to make sure you’re on the list, please drop me an e-mail, message me, or leave a comment here.

Later addendum: I requested clarification about the magazine not being available for longer than two months since there seem to be digital editions for sale on the website, which would seem to contradict that statement. I was told that authors will be able to withdraw their stories from the electronic editions if they so desire.

I was just at ArmadilloCon over the weekend, and had a fabulous time of it. There’s an account of that, with sundry photos, on my Google+ page.

For me it was a pretty productive con – I connected with a few people that I definitely wanted to meet or see, I got a chance to hang out with some favorite peeps, I got a little writing done, and I did some career/work stuff that I wanted to get done. And I got the photo of Howard Waldrop with my brother and Gene Ha’s Project Superman.

Beforehand I did some stuff – I made a list of what I wanted to get accomplished, wrote to a couple people who I wanted to make sure to spend time with, and I went through the con program to identify some of the panels/features that I really didn’t want to miss. I also blocked in plenty of time for hanging at the bar, which I consider a crucial part of any con. I didn’t plan out every waking minute, to be sure, but I did make sure I knew what I wanted to do. I volunteered for programming and set up an individual reading as well as being part of the Broad Universe Rapidfire Reading.

This is, I think, the sort of thing you need to do if you’re going to cons and justifying the expenditure as work/career related rather than fun. Otherwise you end up sitting in your hotel room thinking that you should be doing something or being somewhere but not quite sure what.

Absolutely, cons are about friendships, that’s one of the more enjoyable aspects. But some you know a lot of folks at and others you have to push yourself a bit. I tend to retreat when around people I don’t know, but I’ve found that if I push myself out of my comfort zone some, I end up having a much better time.

If I’d been more diligent, I would have done the following:

• Found the con organizers and thanked them. The con was well run and trouble free, and the panels were a nice mix.
• Organized some sort of Broad Universe coffee or lunch meet-up, as well as something with the Codex peeps.
• Gone through the dealers room and introduced myself, making sure book dealers had the card for my collection. I know no one had my book for sale, which was a little dampening, but I don’t know the best way to prevent that. Do folks write to dealers ahead of time in order to make sure they know where to get the books?

How do y’all prep for conventions? Or do you even bother about this sort of thing?