What we want

It’s simple. When we are done reading a story, we want to look up and idly wonder why our socks have flown off of our feet and embedded themselves in the opposite wall. We like it when people are bold and daring, we like literary high-wire acts, and we tend to like pyrotechnics. But we like quiet things, too, if they move us properly.

We cut our reading teeth on genre fiction, and though we try to keep our reading tastes broad, we tend to keep focusing on fantasy, science fiction, and occasionally horror. We like the freedom and vigor these genres seem to give to the best writers within them (including writers not normally associated with the genres, like Salman Rushdie, who, for some reason, is hardly ever properly identified as a fantasy writer). We tend to think that books winning something like the World Fantasy Award will be at least as deep and most likely way more fun than winners of the Pulitzer Prize.

We may accept stories from any genre, though. Basically, we’ll compose our acceptance letter to you as we are digging our socks out of the wall, no matter what genre you used. When deciding what to send us, keep in mind that one of our motives in starting this thing was to give an outlet to fiction that might have trouble getting picked up elsewhere. So send us your odd, your unusual, your risky. We’ll consider it. We promise.

We prefer unpublished stories, but you can try to talk us into republishing something if you want. When (not if! We're being optimistic!) we decide to publish your story, we'll send you a letter describing which rights we're purchasing and what not.

What we pay

Five Now TEN bucks. So if you get 5,000 2,500 stories placed with us (or similar publications) each year, you’ll be making okay (but not really good) money!

So we know the money we are offering will not make much of a difference in people’s lives, but we are offering it for these reasons (as you’ll see, we’re really fond of listing things):

1) It’s more than $1.
2) It gives you the chance to say you sold a story.
3) We’re poor, and we’re funding this ourselves.

When (if) this thing produces revenue we will pass some of it on to me (depending on the demands this puts on my time), and the rest will go to the writers whose work we accept in the form of bigger payments.

How to send

We use a mac with Word 2001 on it. We can read most documents created in Word, but we've recently decided we prefer .rtf submissions. So Word is okay, but put it in .rtf if you want to make my life easier. And we're sure that's what you want. E-mail all submissions to palefirepress@ameritech.net. Follow common manuscript guidelines well as you know how.

We do not currently feel like dealing with snail mail submissions. Sorry.

What we expect from you

1) We want to be surprised, amazed, or we want to see something different. We will not rule out any topics out of hand—a good story can be written about practically anything—but if you’re walking over well-trod ground stylistically, thematically, or (perhaps especially) plot-ally (?), you have a tougher hill to climb. Or row to hoe. So if you have a story about a dysfunctional family holiday reunion, or a tormented detective on the trail of a serial killer, or a middle-aged person looking back over their life with regret/nostalgia, go ahead and submit it—but it better be good.

2) Make an effort to have correct spelling and punctuation. I have some tolerance for typos—I make plenty of them—but if your story includes so many that they are distracting, your chances of acceptance will be hurt.

3) Patience. We created the writers’ update page to keep you informed, because we know how frustrating it is to be left hanging. In return, we ask you to use this page, assume that we keep it current, and not barrage us with distracting e-mails.

4) Courtesy. As we’ll discuss below in number six of what you can expect from us, we will treat all people equally, regardless of whom they think they are. But if you tick us off enough—through name calling, or not paying attention to what we may say in communiqués, or general rudeness—it is very possible that we may hold a grudge. But we promise you this—before we enter into any grudge against anyone, we will send you a note telling you your behavior has set you on the road to grudge-ville.

What you can expect from us

1) Rejection. I really hate to say that, but I’ve got to be honest. I’ve been participating in fiction workshops for about two years, reading lots and lots of short stories, and had they been submitted here, I would have rejected the vast majority of them. But before you get discouraged, read the three corollaries below:

1. We want to accept stories. Otherwise, there’s not much point to doing this. We are excited to find something good. We’re not in this because we like rejecting people. We’re not Dogbert.
2. If your story is close but not quite there, we will give you specific suggestions for improvement and encourage you to resubmit the story.
3. You will never get a generic rejection like: “Thank you for submitting your work, but we cannot accept it at this time” or “Your work does not meet our needs” or “Your story is not what we’re looking for right now.” The response may only be a single sentence but any rejection we send will contain some reason why we did not accept your story. You may think it’s unfair, or inaccurate, or that we did not pay your story close enough attention, but at least you’ll know what we were thinking.

2) We will try to remain open to anything. We cannot guarantee that we’ll be open to everything—who is?—but we’ll do out best. Send us your weird, your experimental, your offbeat, and we’ll try to see it for what it is.

3) We will be courteous, and may even enter into e-mail conversations with some of you, but we reserve the right to cut off any conversation when it is taking up too much time and not really producing much.

4) Stories by staff members will appear in the magazine. It’s our space, and we can write in it if we want to. However, in order to preserve the quality of the overall magazine, any work submitted by our staff will first be read by writers outside of our staff, and only those stories judged by those outsiders to be of sufficient quality will appear in the magazine.

5) We will maintain a web page that will keep writers updated about: a) which submissions of theirs we have received; b) whether we have started reading their submission or not; and c) whether we have sent them a response.

6) We will treat all submissions equally, regardless of who sends them. We will not give preferential treatment to friends or famous people (though staff will get some degree of preferential treatment—see number four above). Anyone has a chance of being published here—just be good enough.

7) Omniscience. Well, maybe not yet. But soon.

Writers we like

I’m going to list some of my favorite writers/books, but let me put a few caveats first: 1) You do not have to write like one of these names below for me to like you (I’m always looking for a new favorite); 2) This list is not complete—there are writers not listed here that I like a lot.

The names are: Vladimir Nabokov (surprise!), Mark Helprin, Salman Rushdie, A.S. Byatt, Gene Wolfe, China Miéville, Umberto Eco, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, George R. R. Martin, Richard Powers, Orson Scott Card, Theodore Sturgeon, Neil Gaiman, Robertson Davies, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead, Kazuo Ishiguro, T. C. Boyle (namely Riven Rock), Robert Penn Warren (namely All the King’s Men), Wallace Stegner (namely Angle of Repose), Mark Danielewski (namely House of Leaves, but I’d be open to liking anything else by him if he ever comes out with anything else), Mervyn Peake (namely the Gormenghast trilogy—duh), and Jane Wagner (namely The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe). We also have a special spot in our hearts for the graphic artwork of Dave McKean (see Arkham Asylum, Mr. Punch, and of course his Sandman covers).

And that Shakespeare guy was pretty okay.