Dear novella: we love you, even if none among us can actually say we definitively know what the hell you are. Never has an art form had so many brilliant examples that may or may not meet elusive criteria upon which no one even remotely agrees.

Seriously, what the fuck, novella?

What we do know is we think you’re nifty, albeit ill-defined. And while we’re all for the modern world of micro blogging and flash fiction, every once in while it’s nice to sit down with a wonderful piece of writing that’s distinctly longer than a short story, but significantly shorter than a novel.

In fact, we love it so much, we’re hereby declaring the First Annual JDP Novella Contest. The what-fors, when’s, and fine print are as follows.

1. The winner gets August. No, not a four-dimensional block of time and space, but the entire August issue of JDP (available online and in PDF format) all to him or herself. (Unless we find two novellas that we really like, in which case you’re an adult and you should be able to share.) And that, by the way, is all you win. We have no money to give you, but on the plus side, it doesn’t cost anything to enter either.

2. We’re defining a novella here as a story that’s at least 10,000 words and not more than 20,000 words. We know this isn’t everybody’s definition, but it’s ours. Fuck off.

3. Submissions open sometime around midnight on March 1st (East Coast time), via a special category on Submishmash that we’ll be setting up shortly. We wanted to give you a bit of a heads up, to polish up your manuscripts or start a new one. Submissions will be open for the duration of March and close around midnight on March 31st, but, seriously, don’t cut it that close. This isn’t college.

4. A definitive winner will be announced by June 1st, but possibly sooner. A runner-up (if there is one) will be announced at the same time.

5. Do not email us asking about the status of your story. If you haven’t received a rejection by April 15th, assume you’ve made the short list and we are desperately trying to decide between your novella and all the other worthy candidates we’ve received.

6. Do not send us something shorter than 10,000 words or longer than 20,000 words. That’ll just piss us off. Likewise, do not submit before March 1st.

7. Do not send previously published work. Since the novella gets so little love, we only want unpublished material. If you’ve already managed to get one novella published you’re doing much, much better than the rest of humanity. Don’t get greedy — at least not with the same manuscript anyway.

8. One submission per person. Pick your best shot. Even if you are rejected early on, you are not allowed to resubmit. Choose wisely.

9. Most importantly, unlike our regular submissions, the novella contest is only open to work with some sort of fantastical or otherwise unearthly component. We are not looking for straight literary novellas, even weird ones. We’ll accept hard scifi, straight horror, old-fashioned fantasy, and, of course, magical realism, even though we honestly don’t know what that is. If you blend any of the foregoing and add a healthy dose of humor, you probably have the best shot. Be sure to check out “Behind the Curtain” for JDP’s founding guidance and also check Mike’s Editorial Philosophy. Oh, and read the monthly magazine.

10. If you win the contest, you get pride of place in the August Issue of JDP and possibly the whole damned thing to yourself. You agree to allow us to archive the story online indefinitely. All other rights stick with you. You also get to tell your friends and loved ones that you won, resulting in them likely asking, “Jersey Devil What?”

11. If you come in second and we decide to publish your novella too, you get everything the winner gets, except the right to taunt others that you were better than everyone else. Also, your work will appear starting on something like page 38 or possibly 53 of the August Issue, not at the very beginning.

12. Do follow us on Twitter because sucking up never hurt.