Always Have a Plan B

Plan B Magazine debuted in 2013, the brainchild of Darusha Wehm, as a way to showcase short crime fiction. She envisioned it as a free-to-readers publication they can read and/or listen to online and also in portable, affordable DRM-free ebooks. Wehm also was determined to pay authors (which is getting rarer in the world of fiction and nonfiction publications), with hopes of attracting top notch authors and original stories. In its short history, Plan B has published a story by Mike Miner, “The Little Outlaw,” that was shortlisted for a Derringer Award, and several other Plan B authors are Derringer winners, including Patti Abbott, Nick Andreychuk, Stephen D. Rogers and yours truly.

To help keep this publication going for a third year, Wehm organized an Indigogo campaign to raise funds for the project. You can help support Plan B in levels as low as $1 (less than a cup of coffee these days), going on up to $100 to sponsor a story or be immortalized in a story by Nick Andreychuk. If you pledge in the $75 category, you can get a story critique from Wehm or Aislinn Batstone. I rather like the $40 category, where you can fill your e-reader with books from Plan B authors (including my own novel Played to Death and story collection, False Shadows).

In the past several years, we have seen the demise of crime zines including Crime and Suspense, Future Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Great Mystery and Suspense, Hardluck Stories, Midnight Screaming, Mouth Full of Bullets, Murdaland, Necrotic Tissue, Nefarious, Nossa Morte, Pear Noir, Powder Burn Flash, Pulp Modern, Pulp Pusher, Shred of Evidence, and Sniplits, among others. If you enjoy short crime fiction and mysteries, want to see them continue, and want to help out a fledgling publication, head on over to the Plan B Indiegogo page and make a contribution.

You can also check out some of the "How I Came to Write This Story" blog posts featuring Plan B fiction that Patti Abbott has been featuring over at her blog. As PEN winner George Saunders notes, “When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you.”

Comments

[Patti Abbott]

Amen!