Special Story for International Human Rights Day

December 10th is International Human Rights Day and we’re publishing a special standalone story in its honor.

No, Jersey Devil Press has not gone overtly political. (And hopefully never will)

So why are we publishing this story? Three reasons.

First, one of our missions at JDP is to publish stuff that deserves to be published that a lot of other people won’t touch. We like being the indie lit community’s Isle of Misfit Toys. Sometimes that means publishing a novella about poo-eating aliens. Sometimes it’s a story about peeing on a magical unicorn. And sometimes, it’s something a lot, lot darker.

Second, we think we have a thoughtful readership that can handle this story, that can see why we had to publish this incredibly dark piece of satire once it was submitted to us.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, we’re publishing this because it’s about something truly awful that actually happened to a real person. As we weighed the pros and cons of publishing this, that’s the thing that kept coming up: the chance to give a voice – even a satirical one – to a woman who died young and horribly.

And that’s why we decided to publish this story even though it violates many of our guidelines and particularly the one about rape. (We probably should say TRIGGER WARNING, by way of preface.)

It’s not an easy read, by any means, but we do think it’s a worthwhile one.

With all that said, we present Robert Buswell’s “How I Upstaged Anne Frank.”

2012 Pushcart Nominees

We submitted JDP’s 2012 Pushcart nominees this past Friday and they were:

“We Left Him with the Dragging Man,” Graham Tugwell
“About the Hiding of Buried Treasure,” Kimberly Lojewski
“Murmuration,” Ryan Werner
“Paper Heart,” Ally Malinenko
“For Kylie,” Matthew Burnside
“How I Upstaged Anne Frank,” Robert Buswell – forthcoming this week.

Congratulations to everyone who was nominated and thanks to all the great writers who share their work with Jersey Devil Press.

Write Lovecraft Like Neil Gaiman

"My Little Cthulhu" figure designed by John Kovalic.

Yeah, we spent two months thinking about it, but still couldn’t come up with a better title than that.

We know you’re busy setting pen to paper crafting devious, speculative (possibly metrical) verse for our recently unveiled Poetry Issue, but we also wanted to give you the what-for’s and how-to’s on the second of three special editions JDP will be publishing in 2013.

Simply put, we’ve always wanted to do a Lovecraft issue. But not just the standard collection of pastiches, because there are lots of other people around doing that and doing it well. So…inspired by Gaiman stories like “A Study in Emerald” and “I Cthulhu,” we’re looking for something special…a mash-up of one literary style or theme with ol’ Howard Phillips to create something new, ideally something dark and ferocious, very possibly with a healthy dose of humor. In short, write Lovecraft like Neil Gaiman!

Guidelines

1. No copyright infringement. We’d love to see Batman fist-fight Nyarlahotep as much as the next quirky lit mag, but we can’t publish characters that belong to someone else. So whatever you’re going to mash-up with Lovecraft, make sure that either a) you created it or b) it’s in the public space. Related: since Neil already went to town with Sherlock Holmes and won a Hugo for his troubles, you might want to scratch that character off your list.

2. No trunk stories. Look, we love Innsmouth Free Press and things like the Cthulhurotica anthologies by Dagan Books, but if they’ve already rejected you, we’re probably not interested. (Unless they said, “Wow, this is something like Neil Gaiman would write!” But they probably would’ve accepted it if that was the case.) Bottom line: conjure something fresh from depths of outer space for us. We want a new indescribable color not the same old ones. (Heh, get it, “Old ones?”)

3. Neil Gaiman is not allowed to enter. That just doesn’t seem fair and possibly could create some universe-ripping paradox. (So get to work on the script for Stardust 2, pretty boy.)

4. Read back issues of JDP. It’s generally sound advice in and of itself, but it’ll also give you an idea of the stuff we like to publish.

5. Though with time we’ve grown to love and respect flash as an art form, we’re going to pass on it for this issue only. We’re looking for solid short stories, a tale of 3,000 to 7.000 words. The best three to five will make the final issue, to be published in July.

6. Deadline for submissions is May 1st at approximately 11:47 pm, East Coast time, give or take fifteen minutes. But, seriously, don’t cut it that close.

7. Submit your story here and good luck.

Finally, if this proves to be a success, we will consider a special issue devoted to “Write a Duran Duran Biography Like Neil Gaiman.”