Award-Winning Futures Magazine is Beating the Odds

Is the short story dead? An emphatic no is stated by publisher and readers of Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine. New and established writers find a home for their mystery, literary, speculative and romance fiction. Artists, cartoonists, commentators and reviewers join together to create a 120 plus- page print publication that has readers enthralled.

Award-Winning "Futures Magazine" Is Beating the Odds

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the demise of the short story have been greatly
exaggerated.

This is not to say that there havent been some accurate updates of its ailing health. Readers
bemoan the end of beloved periodicals like STORY and "Amazing Stories" and warily watch
others -- "Weird Tales" for one -- as they turn to sending letters begging subscribers to re-up.

The precarious state of the short story has also been fodder for various writers conferences.
Panels of writers have discussed where the short story is headed, if anywhere, at Trinoc
Conference on speculative fiction, the World Science Fiction Convention and Boskone, the New
England Science Fiction Association Convention.

Esteemed novelist and short story afficionado, Stephen King, wrote in the introduction to
"Everythings Eventual," "Yet for me, there are few pleasure so excellent as sitting in my favorite
chair on a cold night, with a hot cup of tea, listening to the wind outside and reading a good story
which I can complete in one sitting."
               
One of the magazines on the market today that continues to pay new and established authors and
artists is Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine (FMAM). Its growing success is credited to the
indefatigable efforts of its publisher, Barb Lakey. The magazine, based in Minnesota, has over
120 pages in each issue, and features over 40 writers and artists. While the majority of the
magazines stories are mystery shorts, it includes speculative, romance and literary stories as
well.

It was when Ms. Lakey was a part of a new writers group of Sisters in Crime that she began to
understand the struggle writers go through to get published. Her motivation today is to help other
writers to make their dreams come true, "We can help one another make our collective dreams
come true far easier than we can do it alone."

Futures is invited each year to nominate its best stories for the Pushcart Prize, and in 2001 Ms.
Lakey won a Derringer, given by the Short Mystery Fiction Society, for support of the art of the
short mystery. Daniel Blackstone of SFReader.com reviewed FMAM recently saying, "At a hefty
120-pages, happily devoted to fiction, poetry, mini-editorials, interviews, cartoons and classy
illustrations, "Futures" is a readers paradise."

The October/November/December issue of Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine is now on sale.

Futures is now available at Borders and Barnes and Noble, and at
http://www.futuresforstorylovers.com .

Contacts:
Pamela White, Promotion and Marketing Director
315-232-3085
pwhite05@twcny.rr.com

Barb Lakey
Publisher, Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine
babs@suspenseunlimited.net