I created Splickety Magazine for two reasons: First, I saw a need, a void in publishing that Splickety seeks to fill. That’s the need for flash fiction. That void isn’t necessarily just a “publishing” void, but also a void in our reader’s lives. Splickety is designed for on-the-go readers with busy lives who wish they had time to read more but can’t. It’s also for folks who enjoy (or even don’t enjoy) reading because they can’t seem to stay focused on a novel for long enough. They can get an issue of Splickety and consume their fiction in smaller bites.

Splickety is on course to put out four magazines this year. We’ve already launched two, our third will launch in September, and we’re hosting the HIS Writers Novel Crafting Seminar Flash Fiction Contest for our November issue (more info here: http://www.hiswriters.acfwcolorado.com/flashfiction_2012.php). Four issues per year is great, but I’d like to get up to six or possibly even eight issues per year within the next five years.

In addition to that, we are in hot pursuit of subscribers for both our digital and print versions of Splickety. My Book Therapy (www.mybooktherapy.com) is running a promotion right now where if you subscribe to the MBT blog, you get our newest issue for free. The second part of that promo is that if you buy an annual subscription to Splickety ($7.50 -digital, $24.95 – print, $29.95 – both) then we will send you the latest digital issues of our three other magazines: Harpstring, Other Sheep, and Starsongs.

The best way to describe what I’m looking for from authors is to point you to what we’ve already published. Read the first issue (which you can download for free any time at http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/324163), and read our second issue (http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/411510) and definitely read our submission guidelines as well (http://inthefray1.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/splickety-magazine-submission-guidelines/)

In short, we need quick, clean, poignant stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They have to have developed characters and conflict. If you can mesh all of that together in a cohesive way, you’ve got a good shot at being published by Splickety.

Splickety operates with much more efficiency now that we are three people instead of two. Previously I had recruited Arpit Mehta (www.arpitmehta.com) as our Art Director well before we ever put out our first issue. He lives in California, recently got engaged (congrats, buddy!) and just re-designed our second issue AND our logo. He’s incredibly skilled and I’m blesses to have him helping me with the layout and design.

Andrew Winch is a recent friend who seems more like an old one, even though we met not even a year ago at the ACFW Conference in St. Louis. After editing two issues myself, I realized that I needed help and that, frankly, it was taking too much of my time. I need all the time I can get these days, so I asked Andrew to serve as our Senior Editor. He handles all acquisitions, editing, proofreading (which I help with), and rejections. That’s easily 1/3 of what we do at Splickety, so it’s a relief that he does those things so I can focus on growing our readership.

As for me, well, I’m 26 and I live in Wisconsin just north of Milwaukee. I’m married to my beautiful wife Ashley, I have a new baby named Liam (who is sooo cute), and when I’m not Splicketeering I’m sword-fighting, shooting guns (at the range), playing church-league sports, and writing. I have a full-time day job, a burgeoning writing career, a family, and a church youth group to juggle, so life is always interesting and rarely not busy. That’s just the way I like it, though.

If you’ve made it this far into our interview, you will have already seen two links where you can purchase hard copies of Splickety, as well as a link to My Book Therapy where you can subscribe to their blog for a free issue and where you can get info on subscribing to Splickety to get those three extra free issues of our other mags.  To purchase an e-version of the new issue, just email me at subscribe.to.splickety@gmail.com and I’ll make sure we get you set up with a way to do that. Actually, emailing me there with any subscription/purchasing questions is a good idea.