No word limit/no content guidelines, within the broad categories I've established in my first post to this blogazine. See here if you've forgotten. Anything more than 8000 words would have to be done in serial form, I would think, and be exceptional too. Send me rural, funky, dirty stories about churchgoing women who never sin. I'd like to read that. What about the story I lived, the one where the kid moves away and goes to college and becomes a writer, and until he's thirty, his male relatives hitch their drawers and ask him when he's going to be out of school? Except don't write about writing. I don't care much, since I live it. I would love to see more stories about women, though. Get to the grit, get to the love, show me the scars, and take Harry Crews to heart: "Blood, bone, and nerve, that's fiction. Show me the stuff that cuts to the quick."
In case you're coming here cold, I've been editing other writers for nearly fifteen years now, and for the last six of these I've read hundreds and thousands of stories. Your Bukowski knockoffs are not going to make it, son. Sorry. Nor do nostalgic o-it-was-better-back-then stories stand much of a chance, unless they really, really transcend. If it all sounds good to you, hit me at rusty DOT barnes AT gmail DOT com with FCAC SUBMISSION in the the subject line. I'll be in touch soon.
The Payment:
If I publish your work here, I will send you a book from my personal collection. You get to choose, poetry or fiction. It might be a new book, it might be well-loved, it might have my notes in it. But you'll get a free book.
1 comment:
I can't believe I've never heard of Silas House before. Thank you. I just ordered his books after a sample on the Random House site. Spectacular.
Post a Comment