A few critical updates for writers and authors this week. Dry and fast like beef jerky.

First, novels. For those who are writing novels and I don’t mean for NaNoWriMo, Angry Robot Books is hosting an open door call starting now throughout the rest of the year. They’re looking for science fiction, fantasy and “WTF” which they define by the internet acronym. I suspect they mean “experimental.”

Second, after more than a year, and more than 3,000 submission, the Black Library has finally announced that they have finished with the submissions window. Anyone who has submitted work that interested them has already been contacted and there are no more hold out surprises. Better luck next time.

For more short story submission windows, check out Writing Market News on the Bolthole blog, a new series from Schevus Osbourne. Schev will be hacking through the internet to find news of new paying markets for short stories.

Finally, in an interesting turn of events, it appears that Fox Spirit Books has announced a unusual, translated book as part of their just-founded Vulpes series. This book contains the texts of Italian fencing master Nicoletto Giganti written in 1608. Credit for the translations goes to Piermarco Terminiello and Joshua Pendragon.

That’s all the news for today folks. If you are a struggling writer, or know anyone who is, lend a hand by retweeting or reposting this blog post to help circulate the news to those who need to know it.