In July 2013, I served as the “editor-in-residence” for the Codex Writing Group, which meant basically I was asking a month-long AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) interview. With Codex’s permission, I’m re-posting the Q&As here on my blog. The questions were all provided by members of Codex.

***

What turns you off as an editor or what do you see too much of? Especially as it relates to Nightmare submissions.

I don’t like to point to specifics like that because although I may GENERALLY dislike a particular trope or whatever, I might like the BEST EXAMPLE of that kind of thing. And I don’t want to say something in an interview, or on my guidelines page, that I don’t like X, and then have the writer who wrote the best example of X not submit it to me because they read that.

With Nightmare, I will admit that I’ve been close a couple of times to adding something to our guidelines about how we’re not interested in rape fantasies, because boy howdy do we see a lot of those.

Case in point, though: I also contemplated saying something about “torture porn.” But at least one person referred to a story I published called “Chop Shop” as torture porn, so if I had put in my guidelines that I’m not interested in torture porn, would I have missed out on that story? (I don’t happen to agree that it’s torture porn, but that’s beside the point.)

***

From October 1 – October 31, I’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign for a new project called HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!, an anthology of improbable, futuristic, magical, & alternate-world crowdfunding projects. Please check it out, consider backing it, and, if you’re so inclined, spread the word!