Call for Submissions: Happy Endings

Now What?

Now what?

We know it’s not “cool” or “literary,” but we’re suckers for a happy ending. (Not that kind, pervert.) While we appreciate a good bloodbath finale or gothic tale of woe as much as the next forest-dwelling cryptid, this particular issue will feature stories that leave us feeling as warm and fuzzy as this melted butterscotch we just found in the pocket of our sweatpants.

Anything goes in terms of genre for this one, including narrative poetry, if that’s your thing. Science fiction, horror, and other genres where happy endings are comparatively rare would really schmear the sesame bagel of our heart—and it can be done; see Seanan McGuire’s “Each to Each” or Joe Hill’s “20th Century Ghost.” Really, though, we just want to be delighted. The details are up to you.

Remember, a dark story can have a happy ending (but please avoid the items on our “nope” list). And not all happy endings are hugs and smoochies and riding off into the sunset; conclusions involving death, destruction, or giant spiders could be considered happy, depending on the circumstances. That being said, we’re looking for more than schadenfreude here, so give us at least one character we can root for.

There are a lot of terrible things happening in the world, right now and always. Remind us that good things happen, too. Drain the vinegar of despair from our soul and fill it with the rainbow sprinkles of joy.

Length: Up to 4200 words for stories; up to 100 lines total for poetry. Flash fiction is welcome.

Deadline: Midnight on March 1, 2018. Final decisions will be made by March 14 (most submitters can expect to hear from us much sooner). Accepted Happy Endings stories and poems will be published in April 2018 as our 100th issue.

Ready? Head on over to Submittable!

Submissions Are Open for Legendary Creatures Issue

Mess with the cockatrice, and your ass is granite.

Mess with the cockatrice, and your ass is granite.

For this one, we are looking for fiction AND poetry. In order to be considered, your submission must feature a legendary creature, such as a mythical beast or a figure from cryptozoology—including the Jersey Devil, naturally, but not limited to him. Dinosaurs and other animals confined to past geological eras are also fair game, because the only place they currently exist as living beings is in our collective imagination. (Which totally bums us out if we think about it for too long. Cheer us up by writing something incredible and sending it to us.)

Short stories: Submit one story of up to 5000 words (this is a bit longer than our regular monthly magazine limit, which is still 4200 words).

Flash fiction: Submit one to three stories of up to 1000 words each in a single document.

Poetry: Submit up to a total of 100 lines of poetry in a single document. This can be one long poem or multiple short poems. We welcome formal verse and skillfully crafted free verse. If prose poetry is your thing, please submit it as flash fiction, and keep in mind that we are wary of huge blocks of text with no white space.

No reprints. Simultaneous submissions are fine; just withdraw your work if another magazine snatches it up first. (And if that magazine finds a bag of flaming chupacabra turds on its front porch the next morning, don’t look at us.) Include a brief third-person bio with your submission.

Deadline: June 1, 2014

We accept hard-copy submissions delivered by dragons. If your dragon is unreliable, you may use Submittable.

P. S. We are still open for regular fiction submissions. (They have their own guidelines.)

Submissions Now Open

All right, let’s do this. Submissions to Jersey Devil Press are now open. You know the rules — and if you don’t, they’re right here — so get writing. Monica, Steve, and I are waiting with bated breath.

Also, and this is kind of important, we are now using Submishmash to handle submissions. It’s free, shiny and it makes our lives easier. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

To get a feel for what we want, check out our newest issue or our archives. We’d like to think you’re already reading JDP, but, if you’re not, lie to us.

P.S. To the handful of you who submitted stories while we were closed — despite our telling you, in bold print, not to — feel free to try again. As much as we’d like to hold a grudge, we deleted the e-mails and we don’t remember your names. At the very least, please update your Duotrope stats. You’re kind of making us look bad.

As always, thank you to everyone who makes their way here, even accidentally. Whether you read us regularly, submit to us occasionally, follow the rules or don’t, we appreciate that of the eight billion web pages available to you, you stuck around for at least a few clicks.