Not without butterflies, I have agreed to guest-edit a bonus issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
There will be a submission window: the month of March 2015. Submissions will be by email: (lcrw33submissions (at) gmail.com). Payment and terms will be as-normal for LCRW. There will be a theme: humanity’s relationship with the earth. I hope we can squeeze some optimism in there, a little practicality. Aesthetic and tone will otherwise cleave as closely to that of a regular LCRW issue as I know how to make them. There will be short fiction, there will be poetry, there will nonfiction. If I’m very lucky there may be black and white artwork or even a comic. When you’re done reading, maybe you’ll be able to bury it, add water and grow perennial vegetables. Or a magic beanstalk. Who knows.
Lady Churchill’s Roseate Weathervane, we’ll call it. Maybe. Further details to follow (or, feel encouraged to ask questions below). In the meantime, take a few months and try to come up with something, won’t you?
Need inspiration? Try one of these: Grist, Next Nature, Modern Farmer, Low Tech Magazine, Engine Summer, Swamplandia!, Changes in the Land, Sherwood Nation, Men of Maize, The Farmer’s Almanac, Silent Spring, Max D. Standley, Earth A New Wild, etc, etc, more tk.
Who am I, to edit an LCRW issue, you might well ask. I’m Michael J. DeLuca, cis white male descendant of Pilgrims and Italian immigrants. I volunteered for 6 years at Small Beer Press, I help run Weightless Books, I homebrew, I garden, I write short fiction. I just got solar panels on my house, the worms are composting away in the basement, I’ve begun the long process of permaculturing over my lawn, and now I feel strongly motivated to blow even more time and savings on seed paper and vegetable inks and beautiful, compelling fiction.
Who are you? I mean, who do I hope you are? Someone with a voice and a set of life experiences different from my own. Any set. The world is brimming with people, cultures and ways of living I have yet to encounter and want to read about.
What a fantastic theme. Plus electric submissions! I’m excited. Do you have an expected time frame in which you plan on turning around submissions? In general LCRW tends to be on the slower end of the response time, but with electronic submissions, this issue seems very different.
Good question. Yes! I hesitate to quote a time frame before I know what kind of volume to expect, but it shall have to be under two months.
Yay! E-subs!
I like this theme, too. 🙂
For short fiction submissions, what range of word count are you considering?
How short is the “short fiction”? Ie. what’s the word limit? I’m interested, but I don’t do very short fiction very often or very well.
SK
Word limits: Zero to let’s say 10,000?
I will very much enjoy it if somebody can figure out how to write a zero word story. 🙂
Manga?
Sure, why not. But black and white only, please.
LOL. 5 words? I think I might manage that… 😉
Up to 10Kis great, thank U. Most of mine, alas, come out around 7-8K, too long for a lot of markets.
Solar panels, wicking beds, bokhashi buckets, organic seeds and non-lethal insect stoppers … Maybe this is too close to your experiences, hmmmmmmn.
If to be title/theme to issue, wd. help with the coagulating, er, concocting of a tale here. For some reason my creative crew work better with a specific image or whatever to start the yeast. If U are gonna use “Roseate Weathervane,” fine, but if not, I will need to hold off the process in case we end up with something very weathervane specific, heh.
Ohh, this is very great. I love this theme!
Does a reading period of March mean that submissions are due by February 28th?
Good question, no! It means submissions are due by March 31st.
Thanks!
For poetry, is there a line limit? How many poems are allowed per submission?
Good question! I love an epic poem. Let’s say the poetry upper limit is 2000 lines (at which length I’ll be able to buy exactly one poem). Poems per submission: 5.
Would you be willing to review both poetry subs and a short fiction sub from the same author?
I would be willing. Though it’s very unlikely I’d buy both. 🙂 Thank you for asking.
Works for me. Thanks!
And simultaneous submissions are not allowed? I have stories that fit the theme well but they have been submitted elsewhere
David
Neither simultaneous nor multiple submissions are normally allowed by LCRW–but I don’t mind either. I want to read everything.
awesome
For multiple submissions: would you like a separate email for each? or all together?
Either way is fine, thanks!
Since submissions are to be emailed, do you want any particular format? PDF? .docx? Are submissions meant to be blind, or with names in the headers? Thanks!
Standard manuscript format, please. And .docx is fine, thanks.