If you've just wandered in off the internet, hi and welcome. :) I do these posts every month, so if this post isn't dated in the same month you're in, click here to make sure you're seeing the most recent one. If you want to get an e-mail notification when the listing is posted, get the list a week early, or get a full listing of everything I've found (as opposed to the two months' worth I post here) a week early, you can support my Patreon.
Markets with specific deadlines are listed first, "Until Filled" markets (if any) are at the bottom. There are usually more details on the original site; always click through and read the full guidelines before submitting. Note that some publishers list multiple guidelines on one page, so after you click through you might have to scroll a bit.
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31 October 2017 -- This Side of the Divide -- ed. Baobab Press
Baobab Press and the University of Nevada, Reno MFA Program in Creative Writing are partnering to publish This Side of the Divide, an anthology of short fiction by emerging and established authors exploring the United States West.
This exciting project will speak to the West’s newness, vastness, sense of territoriality and transience, spanning from untouched wilderness to hyper-urban settings. We’re seeking fresh, original views of the western U.S. Our aim is to capture this region’s unique essence in all of its cultural and geographic diversity.
All submissions will be reviewed, and accepted works will be edited by a committee of readers from Baobab Press and the UNR MFA Program in Creative Writing. Selected writers will receive a complimentary copy of the book and a payment of $100. Submitted stories should be around 3,000 to 5,000 words, and will need to be submitted for review no later than October 31st, 2017. Please send us your story via Submittable.
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31 October 2017 -- Lost Films -- ed. Max Booth III
Attention, writers of horror fiction.
We’re currently seeking short stories for an upcoming anthology titled Lost Films. In 2016 we released Lost Signals, which has done very well for us. Think of Lost Films as its sequel.
We are looking for horror stories involving films, Hollywood, projectors & projectionists, home movies, webcams, television, documentaries, and other themes involving recorded visual disturbances. We want these stories to be weird and terrifying.
Some good examples of what we’re after: Cigarette Burns by John Carpenter, Starry Eyes by Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer, Experimental Film by Gemma Files, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, “Ardor” by Laird Barron, Videodrome by David Cronenberg, Angel of the Abyss by Ed Kurtz, and everything else discussed in this LitReactor article.
Deadline: October 31, 2017
Payment: $0.02 per word
Word count: 1,000-8,000
Reprints: No
Send all submissions to submit@perpetualpublishing.com with “LOST FILMS – [STORY] by [AUTHOR]” in the subject line. If you haven’t heard back from us by December 1st, feel free to query. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
***
1 November 2017 -- TROUBLE THE WATERS: Tales from the Deep Blue -- ed. Sheree Renée Thomas, Pan Morigan, and Troy L. Wiggins; Rosarium Publishing
She moves with deliberate grace.
Mami Wata, Momu Watu, La Sirene, Sedna, Coventina, Suijin, Mother of Waters
She is the water between us, the water within us, the water that slakes thirst, from which we were born. Water is the natural and the sacred, the functional and the necessary. All over the world, in cultures young and old, water is life and from this force, great adventures, quests, and legacies begin. And whether it is still, moves, rises, or falls, water fills us. Imagine what stories and strange tales can be told from the depths of its depths.
TROUBLE THE WATERS: Tales from the Deep Blue will be a new anthology of water-themed speculative short stories that explore all kinds of water lore and deities, ancient and new as well as unimagined tales. We want stories with memorable, engaging characters, great and small, epic tales and quieter stories of personal and communal growth. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, interstitial, and unclassifiable works are welcome. We are seeking original stories in English (2500 – 7000 words; pays 6 cents per word) from writers of all walks of life from this beautiful planet and will accept some select reprints (pays 2 cents per word). Deadline: November 1, 2017. Projected publication: November 2018, Rosarium Publishing, www.rosariumpublishing.com. Please send submissions as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file in standard mss formatting with your name, title, and word count to: TroubletheWaters2018@gmail.com.
Please note that we are unable to accept simultaneous submissions.
***
1 December 2017 -- Tales from the Lake Volume 5 -- ed. Kenneth W. Cain; Crystal Lake Publishing
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR:
== We want stories that haunt the readers for months to come.
== We prefer quiet horror and dark fiction with a literary bent. Don’t use gore for the sake of grossing us out. Use it sparingly, and only to further the story.
== Stories should be no longer than 6000 words, but that doesn’t mean the story should use all 6000 words. Use the word count it takes to write YOUR story. The sweet spot will likely be closer to 4000 words.
== Ground your stories in the REAL world.
== Create believable, three-dimensional characters just as real as your friends and neighbors. The world these characters inhabit should be equally authentic, hitting all the senses.
== Originality is important—we don’t want your version of someone else’s story from yesteryear.
== Although our arms are wide open, we’re more interested in fiction that reflects the modern. Kelly Link, Karen Russell, Joe Hill, Damien Angelica Walters, and Mercedes M. Yardley are prime examples of current dark fiction writers encapsulating the above in their work.
== Quality of the work must be top notch! The authors mentioned above represent the high-water mark we’re looking for.
WHAT WE’RE NOT LOOKING FOR:
== Stories sent before or after the submission window. These will not be read.
== Rape stories or sexual abuse or any explicit abuse toward children or animals is expressly forbidden. This can be mentioned or remembered by your main character, but be subtle.
== Stories that are not short horror stories.
== Novels or novellas.
== Stories with flat worlds.
== Stories about serial killers.
== Stories about zombies, vampires, werewolves or ghosts need to bring something new to the table. You must have a unique premise.
== To avoid too many writers writing about lakes, please keep in mind this is a non-themed anthology.
PAYMENT:
For this anthology we are paying 3 cents (USD) per word up to 6000 words via PayPal.
REPRINTS:
We DO NOT accept reprints.
Simultaneous/multiple submissions:
We prefer you do not submit your story elsewhere while it’s being considered by us, especially if it’s been shortlisted. No multiple submissions, either. You get one shot. Make it count.
RESPONSE TIME:
For the most part, acceptances will not go out until some time after the deadline. Rejections and shortlisting notices will go out sooner. Feel free to query if longer than 3 months.
RIGHTS:
We are seeking FIRST world rights, both in print, electronic, and audio forms as well as film rights for an exclusive period of 1 year and then non-exclusive after that.
FORMATTING:
Submit your manuscript in Shunn Format (http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html) as a .doc or .docx attachment. Keep your cover letter brief, but relay any pertinent information. You should also include a short bio. Subject of your email should start with SUBMISSION and then the title of your story.
Please email your submission to: Lake5subs@gmail.com
***
15 December 2017 -- After the Orange -- B Cubed Press
B Cubed Press is accepting short story submissions for “After the Orange,” an original science fiction and fantasy anthology about the post-Trump world.
THE PREMISE:
The Trump Presidency has come and gone. Has this invoked the Trump Dynasty or has it spawned a return to core values, a hedonistic paradise or what? Truly, what does the future, the post Trump future hold?
WHAT WE WANT:
We are looking for near- or farther-future stories, society as it is AFTER 2032 – at least two presidential election cycles after Donald Trump’s last eligibility. Show us America or the world in a new era, or look at world politics changed by the actions of US policies and people. Or go beyond.
Stories may present an optimistic or pessimistic, utopian or apocalyptic visions of the future, with some clear connection to current events and the world as it is in 2017. Political shenanigans would be interesting, as well as romance, spooks, robots and evil overlords, satire or parodies. But remember, the world has moved on. The editors generally favor character- and/or plot-driven stories.
HOW TO SUBMIT:
Send submissions IN STANDARD MANUSCRIPT FORMAT to: m.j.frishberg@gmail.com in .doc., .docx, . or rtf.
Deadline -- 12/15/2017
Publication Date -- Spring/Summer 2018
Word Counts -- 500-5000 words
Pay US $0.02 cent a word paid on publication + shared royalties.
***
31 December 2017 -- 2019 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide -- ed. Corie and Sean Weaver; Dreaming Robot Press
We’re looking for stories that:
== Have a main character that a middle grade reader (ages 8-12) can identify with;
== Show a diverse set of real characters;
== Are well written, fun to read, and encourage a love of reading science fiction;
== Tell of adventure, space, science. Give us rockets, robots and alien encounters, and we’re pretty happy; Steampunk, time travel, weird west and alternate history are all fine;
== Are between 3,000 and 6,000 words.
To be super clear – we’re looking science fiction, in all its variants. While we love fantasy as well, please don’t submit fantasy stories for this anthology.
We’re especially looking for stories:
== Of adventure! We love a good dystopia as much as the next robot, but remember – this is the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide;
== Where the main character is of a population that has traditionally been under-represented in science fiction, e.g. girls, people of color, differently abled people;
== Where the main character has agency, exercises it, and isn’t just along for the ride.
We are strong supporters of both the #weneeddiversebooks and #ownvoices movements.
We’re not interested in:
== Stories where the female characters primarily exist to be rescued or as a prize for the males;
== Stories where the primary plot or subplot is romantic in nature;
== Stories with graphic violence or any form of sexual activity;
== Stories with any violence towards animals;
== Stories about the first girl to do X, surprising everyone;
== Stories that depict any ethnicity or gender as universally bad or stupid.
Please note: although we’re aware kids have a wide and varied vocabulary, we’d prefer not to have swearing in the stories. If your story has swearing, please rephrase before submitting.
Submission deadline, mechanics and planned schedule:
== Anthology will be open for submissions from July 1, 2017 – December 31, 2017, with a reading period of January and February 2018.
== While we prefer original stories, if you have something perfect that had a limited run elsewhere, query us and we’ll talk;
== Acceptance notices will be sent by March 30, 2018;
== In the summer we will launch a crowd-funding campaign to help with pre-publication costs. Regardless of results of crowd-funding campaign, we are committed to publishing the anthology. We’ve successfully funded the previous three anthologies this way, chances are favorable.
Rights and Payments:
== Authors will be provided with a complete Anthology Contract for review and consideration with the notice of accepted submissions.
== In keeping with SWFA’s guidelines, we pay $0.06/word on final edited word count for one-year exclusive worldwide English rights and nonexclusive right to republish, print, or reprint the complete anthology in any language or format after the first year, print and electronic, and two contributor copies. Payment upon final edit.
== If the crowd-funding fails, please note that we are still committed to this anthology, and will find other ways to fund the project. However, there may be delays. If authors feel the need to withdraw their submission due to delays, we understand.
== We will provide professional editing, primarily for issues of grammar and spelling.
== If authors have other questions about rights or payments, please contact us before submission. We want to make sure all concerns are addressed.
***
31 December 2017 -- A Midas Clutch: Tales of Opulent Horror -- ed. Steve Berman; Lethe Press
Avarice and a fealty to Mammon are elements of this forthcoming anthology slated for January of 2018. Lethe is seeking weird and eerie stories of people consumed by wealth. Each tale must be suffused with the trappings of the well-to-do. Decadence should be paramount. However, we do not want these tales to be moralistic; we're celebrating those who can buy the finest things in life...they just happen to be the leads in a horror story. The better stories will incorporate status and wealth as both character traits and elements of the plot. For an excellent example, we recommend "Dirty American"by Lara Elena Donnelly or "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" by Poppy Z. Brite. Our preference is for stories that are contemporary but we are willing to read and purchase a few historical tales. No vampire or zombie tales.
Stories should be from 4,000 to 14,000 in length. Original fiction is more important to us, but we will make an offer on exceptional reprints. Payment for reprints is 2 cents per word. Payment for original fiction is 5 cents a word. All payment is upon publication in Summer of 2018. We'll be doing a lovely, off-set, hardback edition of this book, perhaps a trade paperback, digital and audiobook versions.
Deadline is January of 2018. Please submit to Steve Berman at lethepress@aol.com with the Subject line of Midas Clutch Submission. Include an embedded copy letter with biographical details, if the story is original, and some sense of prior publications (if any).
***
31 December 2017 -- The Razor's Edge; Guilds & Glaives; Second Round: A Return to the Urbar -- Zombies Need Brains LLC
Zombies Need Brains LLC is accepting submissions to its three science fiction and fantasy anthologies THE RAZOR’S EDGE, GUILDS & GLAIVES, and SECOND ROUND: A RETURN TO THE URBAR. Stories must be submitted in electronic form as an attachment with the title of the story as the file name in .doc or .docx format. The header of the email should include the name of the anthology the submission is for along with the title of the submission (for example: WERE-: WereJellyfish Gone Wild!). The content of the email should also include which anthology the manuscript is intended for. Please send multiple manuscripts in separate emails. Manuscripts should be in manuscript format, meaning double-spaced, 12pt font, standard margins on top, bottom and sides, and pages numbered. Please use New Times Roman font. The first page should include the Title of the story, Author’s name, address, and email, and Pseudonym if different from the author’s real name. Italics and bold should be in italics and bold.
Stories for this anthology must be original (no reprints or previously published material), no more than 7,500 words in length, and must satisfy the theme of the anthology.
THE RAZOR’S EDGE is to feature science fiction or fantasy stories that explore the fine line between a rebel and an insurgent. It is a military science fiction and fantasy anthology. We are attempting to fill half of the anthology with science fiction stories, and half with fantasy stories. Stories featuring more interesting settings and twists on the typical themes will receive more attention than those that use standard tropes. In other words, we don’t want to see 100 stories dealing with the general fighting insurgents who joins their cause at the end. If we do, it’s likely that only one, at most, would be selected for the anthology. So be creative, choose something different, and use it in an unusual and unexpected way. We are looking for a range of tones, from humorous all the way up to dark.
GUILDS & GLAIVES is to feature sword & sorcery stories where a guild is featured somewhere in the story. So thieves, assassins, and dark magic, but with a guild or guilds incorporated into the story somehow. Obviously most such stories will be fantasy, but we are interested in science fiction takes on this theme. Stories featuring more interesting takes on the guilds, and twists on how they are integrated into the story, will receive more attention than those with the standard thieves guild or assassins guild. So be creative and use your guild in an unusual and unexpected way. We are looking for a range of tones, from humorous all the way up to dark.
SECOND ROUND: A RETURN TO THE URBAR is to feature stories where the time-traveling Urbar, first used in the anthology AFTER HOURS: TALES FROM THE URBAR, is a central part of the plot. The story may start in the bar, end in the bar, or be in the bar somewhere in the middle, but at some point a significant plot point must involve the Urbar. Stories featuring more interesting historical settings for the bar, and twists on how the bar is integrated into the story, will receive more attention than those with more standard uses of the bar, or where the bar is only incidental to the rest of the story. So be creative and use bar in an unusual and unexpected way, preferably in an unusual or unexpected era of history. In particular, you cannot use the same time period used in the anthology AFTER HOURS or that will be used by an anchor author of the current anthology (see the end of the post for time periods that are off limits). We are looking for a range of tones, from humorous all the way up to dark.
The deadline for submissions is December 31st, 2017. Decisions on stories should be completed by the end of February 2018. Please send submissions to contact@zombiesneedbrains.com. You will receive a receipt email within a few days of receiving the submission and having it filed for consideration. Notices about decisions on the stories will be sent out no later than the end of March 2018.
If your story is selected for use in the anthology, you should expect a revision letter by the end of April 2018. Revisions and the final draft of the story will be expected no later than the end of May 2018. These dates may change due to the editors’ work schedules. Zombies Need Brains LLC is seeking non-exclusive world anthology rights (including electronic rights) in all languages for the duration of one year after publication/release of the anthology. Your story cannot appear elsewhere during that year. Pay rate will be an advance of a minimum of 6 cents per word for the short stories. For each additional $10,000 raised above the Kickstarter minimum of $20,000, we will increase this advance pay rate by 1 cent per word. The anthology will be published as an ebook and an exclusive mass market paperback edition, distributed to the Kickstarter backers. The book would be available after that to the general public in ebook and trade paperback formats. Advances would be immediately earned out by the success of the Kickstarter. Royalties on additional sales beyond the Kickstarter will be 25% of ebook cover price and 10% of trade paperback cover price, both split evenly (not by word count) between the authors in the anthology and the editors of the anthology.
Questions regarding these submission guidelines should be sent to contact@zombiesneedbrains.com. Thank you.
***************************
The following time periods were used in the AFTER HOURS anthology and are off limits for SECOND ROUND's open call:
“An Alewife In Kish” by Benjamin Tate - Ancient Sumeria, circa 2000 BC
“Why the Vikings Had No Bars” by SC Butler - Viking Daneland, circa 9th century AD (reign of King Harald Fairhair)
“The Emperor’s New God” by Jennifer Dunne - Bar is in Venice, Italy, 1001 AD, story covers 1001-1002 AD
“The Tale That Wagged the Dog” by Barbara Ashford - Scotland, 14th century
“Sake and Other Spirits” by Maria V. Snyder - Feudal Japan, a fishing village near Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. 15th-16th century.
“The Fortune-Teller Makes Her Will” by Kari Sperring - Paris, 1675-1680 (affaire des poisons time period)
“The Tavern Fire” by DB Jackson - Boston, Mass 1760
“Last Call” by Patricia Bray - Time period spans Georgian/Regency England and Europe, the Ur-Bar is in Switzerland, in 1816
“The Alchemy of Alcohol” by Seanan McGuire -- San Francisco, CA, 1899
“The Grand Tour” by Juliet E McKenna - Austria, 1910
“Paris 24” by Laura Anne Gilman - Paris, France 1924 (Olympics)
“Steady Hands and a Heart of Oak” by Ian Tregillis - London, England, 1940 (Blitz)
“Forbidden” by Avery Shade - New York City, late 1980s
“Where We Are Is Hell” by Jackie Kessler - Present day(ish), location not specified but somewhere U.S., possibly near NYC
“Izdu-Bar” by Anton Strout- Near future, post-zombie apocalypse, somewhere near Albany, NY
The following time periods have been claimed by the anchor authors of SECOND ROUND and are off limits for the open call:
Jacey Bedford (June 30th, 1916, France, Battle of Somme, WWI)
Gini Koch (Old West)
Juliet E. McKenna (Mars, near future)
C.E. Murphy (undetermined)
Kristine Smith (Present day-ish, New York City)
Kari Sperring (Wales, 1400-1415)
Jean Marie Ward (1420s Nanjing, China)
Monday, October 16, 2017
Monday, October 2, 2017
Delousing the Computer
Or, Explaining How I Was Recently An Idiot
So, I'm going along, minding my own online business, when I get a pop-up saying that Firefox urgently needs to update. Sure, whatever. I hate updating -- too often, something I like breaks, or crap I hate appears, or occasionally they'll reset everything to default which means I have to waste however much time trying to remember which options and customizations and whatever-the-bleep-else I need to go digging into to get things back the way I like them. So I blew it off.
It appeared again a while later, though. I wasn't as busy and figured they'd keep bugging me (as they always do) so I figured, bleep it, and let it update.
Except this "update" opened a DOS window and code started scrolling up.
I've never seen a Firefox update that looked like that. Not being completely stupid (although clearly I'm at least a little stupid, since I let this happen) I CTRL-ALT-DELed it's ass and stopped the process. Enough had installed, though, that I started to get the occasional credit card commercial playing on my computer. Audio only. There was no credit card commercial running in any of my browser windows, so clearly I'd let something nasty onto my computer. [sigh]
I Googled the "urgent Firefox update" thing, and saw that something had infected my computer earlier to make that appear. Which is weird. This is a new laptop, I haven't loaded much stuff onto it, or done much random browsing -- mostly I go to the same batch of websites on a regular basis. But I caught a bug somewhere.
Okay, so a web site that talked about the Firefox update malware gave instructions on how to deal with it. Go here, look there, search for these files or anything else that looks squirrely and delete them. Except there wasn't anything at all on my computer that looked weird. Like I said, not much there at all at this point. I sorted the file list by install date, and nothing -- everything looked legit.
Next advice was to install something called Malwarebytes. I Googled Malwarebytes just in case, and it had good comments and reviews on various industry sites, so okay, I grabbed the free copy, downloaded, installed... except it didn't seem to be completely there. :/ The web site giving instructions said it'd do this, do that, download, open up and ask you to do X and confirm Y and then it'd ask if you wanted it to do a scan and you should say yes... but it didn't do any of that. It seemed to download and install okay, but it never opened. Doubleclicking on it didn't open it. There was a Malwarebytes icon in my systray, and doubleclicking on that didn't open it either.
I finally figured out I could have it do a scan by right-clicking on the desktop icon. Nothing seemed to happen, but a few minutes later, a box popped up to say everything was fine.
:/
From that point on, Malwarebytes would periodically open a window (sometimes two or three or six in a row) to tell me that it'd blocked my OS from sending data to a website.
So much for Nothing Bad On Your System. :P
At this point, I got my husband, a retired IT pro, involved. He confirmed that Malwarebytes is well known and highly regarded. Okay, good. He/we worked on my laptop for the rest of the day, but he couldn't find anything either. He said the next step was doing a complete reset -- basically reformatting the hard drive, reinstalling software and starting over.
[headdesk]
I really hate doing that. I just got this damn machine set up the way I want it, figuring out which options and customizations and whatever-the-bleep-else I need to go digging into, in every freaking program I use, plus the OS, to get things back the way I like them. Sorry, I griped about that before. :( But you know? So I let it go for the rest of the evening, just closing the Malwarebytes notification windows whenever they popped up.
Until, late last night, I got a message saying that Malwarebytes couldn't run anymore, and Windows would let me know when that changed, closing now bye.
O_O
Ever since I installed Malwarebytes and couldn't get it to open, I'd been wondering whether the virus was defending itself. I had that happen before, when the laptop I was using some years back caught a bug after I spent a couple of hours on the free wifi at B&N. That particular bug wouldn't let us go to the Microsoft web site where my husband wanted to download a patch or whatever to solve the problem; no matter what browser he tried -- and I have three of them on each computer -- it just would not let him go to microsoft.com. My Googling had shown me that this Urgent Firefox Update thing has been around for about a year and a half, so I was wondering whether the version I got was designed to block Malwarebytes. And maybe they'd been battling all evening :P and the virus had finally won?
Whatever was going on, my only shield was gone. I did a quick backup of my Firefox bookmarks, and my writing folder -- everything else was still as it was on the backup I'd made when I moved to this laptop less than a month ago.
My husband spent the rest of the night reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling the OS and basic programs. I've spent several hours up to basically now re-customizing and -optioning everything [mutter] and getting backups replaced, hanging curtains and making sure the furniture is where I want it and all the books and files on on shelves and in cabinets. I'm sure I'll be stomping spiders and discovering missing nicknacks for weeks or months, but for right now I'm basically moved back in.
Major suck. On the one hand, having to do the re-install, re-customize, re-copy thing twice in less than a month is seriously aggravating. On the other hand, it would've been worse if it'd happened a year from now, after I had a bunch more stuff downloaded and installed and messed with to be replaced.
Be careful out there! :P
Angie
So, I'm going along, minding my own online business, when I get a pop-up saying that Firefox urgently needs to update. Sure, whatever. I hate updating -- too often, something I like breaks, or crap I hate appears, or occasionally they'll reset everything to default which means I have to waste however much time trying to remember which options and customizations and whatever-the-bleep-else I need to go digging into to get things back the way I like them. So I blew it off.
It appeared again a while later, though. I wasn't as busy and figured they'd keep bugging me (as they always do) so I figured, bleep it, and let it update.
Except this "update" opened a DOS window and code started scrolling up.
I've never seen a Firefox update that looked like that. Not being completely stupid (although clearly I'm at least a little stupid, since I let this happen) I CTRL-ALT-DELed it's ass and stopped the process. Enough had installed, though, that I started to get the occasional credit card commercial playing on my computer. Audio only. There was no credit card commercial running in any of my browser windows, so clearly I'd let something nasty onto my computer. [sigh]
I Googled the "urgent Firefox update" thing, and saw that something had infected my computer earlier to make that appear. Which is weird. This is a new laptop, I haven't loaded much stuff onto it, or done much random browsing -- mostly I go to the same batch of websites on a regular basis. But I caught a bug somewhere.
Okay, so a web site that talked about the Firefox update malware gave instructions on how to deal with it. Go here, look there, search for these files or anything else that looks squirrely and delete them. Except there wasn't anything at all on my computer that looked weird. Like I said, not much there at all at this point. I sorted the file list by install date, and nothing -- everything looked legit.
Next advice was to install something called Malwarebytes. I Googled Malwarebytes just in case, and it had good comments and reviews on various industry sites, so okay, I grabbed the free copy, downloaded, installed... except it didn't seem to be completely there. :/ The web site giving instructions said it'd do this, do that, download, open up and ask you to do X and confirm Y and then it'd ask if you wanted it to do a scan and you should say yes... but it didn't do any of that. It seemed to download and install okay, but it never opened. Doubleclicking on it didn't open it. There was a Malwarebytes icon in my systray, and doubleclicking on that didn't open it either.
I finally figured out I could have it do a scan by right-clicking on the desktop icon. Nothing seemed to happen, but a few minutes later, a box popped up to say everything was fine.
:/
From that point on, Malwarebytes would periodically open a window (sometimes two or three or six in a row) to tell me that it'd blocked my OS from sending data to a website.
So much for Nothing Bad On Your System. :P
At this point, I got my husband, a retired IT pro, involved. He confirmed that Malwarebytes is well known and highly regarded. Okay, good. He/we worked on my laptop for the rest of the day, but he couldn't find anything either. He said the next step was doing a complete reset -- basically reformatting the hard drive, reinstalling software and starting over.
[headdesk]
I really hate doing that. I just got this damn machine set up the way I want it, figuring out which options and customizations and whatever-the-bleep-else I need to go digging into, in every freaking program I use, plus the OS, to get things back the way I like them. Sorry, I griped about that before. :( But you know? So I let it go for the rest of the evening, just closing the Malwarebytes notification windows whenever they popped up.
Until, late last night, I got a message saying that Malwarebytes couldn't run anymore, and Windows would let me know when that changed, closing now bye.
O_O
Ever since I installed Malwarebytes and couldn't get it to open, I'd been wondering whether the virus was defending itself. I had that happen before, when the laptop I was using some years back caught a bug after I spent a couple of hours on the free wifi at B&N. That particular bug wouldn't let us go to the Microsoft web site where my husband wanted to download a patch or whatever to solve the problem; no matter what browser he tried -- and I have three of them on each computer -- it just would not let him go to microsoft.com. My Googling had shown me that this Urgent Firefox Update thing has been around for about a year and a half, so I was wondering whether the version I got was designed to block Malwarebytes. And maybe they'd been battling all evening :P and the virus had finally won?
Whatever was going on, my only shield was gone. I did a quick backup of my Firefox bookmarks, and my writing folder -- everything else was still as it was on the backup I'd made when I moved to this laptop less than a month ago.
My husband spent the rest of the night reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling the OS and basic programs. I've spent several hours up to basically now re-customizing and -optioning everything [mutter] and getting backups replaced, hanging curtains and making sure the furniture is where I want it and all the books and files on on shelves and in cabinets. I'm sure I'll be stomping spiders and discovering missing nicknacks for weeks or months, but for right now I'm basically moved back in.
Major suck. On the one hand, having to do the re-install, re-customize, re-copy thing twice in less than a month is seriously aggravating. On the other hand, it would've been worse if it'd happened a year from now, after I had a bunch more stuff downloaded and installed and messed with to be replaced.
Be careful out there! :P
Angie
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