The Empire Strikes Back: The Editors of Flatmancrooked Speak
Last week, I posted about how Flatmancrooked is now offering expedited submissions, where they will read and respond to submissions within 14 business days, for a fee of $5. A pretty interesting discussion followed with a wide range of responses. Flatmancrooked Executive Editor Elijah Jenkins and Senior Editor Deena Drewis took some time to answer some of the questions about the program, the discussion here, and independent publishing.
Flatmancrooked has decided to offer Expedited Submissions where a senior editor will respond to such submissions in 14 days or fewer. The fee? $5. I understand the inclination, have definitely considered some sort of tiered submission structure, but remain uncomfortable with the idea of charging for submissions (and conversely, paying to submit). As a person who enjoys instant gratification, I like the idea of knowing the time frame within which my work will be considered. That privilege just might be worth $5 to me. Then again, I am increasingly less preoccupied with things like response times. And yet. And back and forth I go. Thoughts? Will you pay to play?
Blake Butler—
1. At Examiner, an interview with Vanessa Place on L.A., Stein, La Medusa, etc.
2. At Flatmancrooked, an interview with Brian Evenson on nihilism, Kafka, film, etc.
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A Hint Fiction Contest + A Flatmancrooked Launch
Last year the term “hint fiction” was introduced in the essay “Hint Fiction: When Flash Fiction Becomes Just Too Flashy” by Robert Swartwood, published at Flash Fiction Chronicles. To commemorate the occasion, a retrospective essay by the same author , “Hint Fiction: One Year Later” appears at FFC today. To celebrate Hint Fiction’s birthday, Robert is having another contest.
What is Hint Fiction? Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s infamous six-word story — “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” — Hint Fiction is a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story. These are complete stories that hint at a larger story, not a first sentence or random sentence plucked from a larger work thinly disguised as a story. To see examples, look at last year’s winners and finalists.
We’re Getting On: A Conversation With James Kaelan
James Kaelen’s We’re Getting On, a collection of interconnected stories following five people as they relocate to the Nevada desert intending to abandon technology, will be published by Flatmancrooked on July 2, 2010. The project is being billed as a Zero Emission book. In addition to sending his writing out into the world, Kaelen also plans on going on a West Coast bike tour without leaving a carbon footprint to promote the book and, in many ways, the ideology behind the book. He took some time from his busy schedule to talk with me about the book and the book/bicycle tour.
Blake Butler—
Cool idea here: Flatmancrooked’s LAUNCH program. Interested to see how this goes down. Emma Straub is nice.
Submissions Numbers: Flatmancrooked
Duotrope (which, frankly, I haven’t been checking out lately, so anyone with more current information, please send it along) offers percentage of acceptance in regard to journals, but only in regard to the numbers offered by Duotrope users. In this new series, I’ll be sharing information gathered regarding the volume of submissions received by a journal. After the jump, read Flatmancrooked‘s numbers. And thanks, Flatmancrooked (click here to get to them), for the information. It means a lot to the writers submitting:
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May 16th, 2009 / 10:10 pm
May 16th, 2009 / 10:10 pm
flatmanCrooked announces announcement, and other announcements INCLUDING SPECIAL RECESSION SALE
Okay, for those of you short on time and eager to spend some cash, first the bad news: You can only spend half as much cash as you’d hoped to, unless you buy two copies of fmC #1, because dudes are having a RECESSION SALE and slashed the price of copies of their 1,500 copy-limited, first edition run by 50%. They also said there would be a new fmC website up and running sometime in the next few days. So why don’t you go over to the site, buy a couple copies of the issue–which features new work by Ha Jin, as well as a Jorge Luis Borges story that is otherwise unavailable in English—and take a look at the old site before it is replaced by something several orders higher on the awesome scale.
Also, stay tuned for our long overdue and only maybe still forthcoming review of their first issue. They sent it to us and we loved it, then totally fucking flaked on telling you about it, because we were all too busy either blogging about Tao, picking fights with people who blogged about Tao, or checking out pr’s goods. So we’re still trying to get to that, but what I’m saying is that the world moves on, and you really shouldn’t wait on us. In fact, if you buy the magazine and have trenchant analysis to offer, email your remarks to me and I’ll post them here.
Full text of Editor Kaelan’s press release/facebook post after the jump.
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January 13th, 2009 / 8:51 pm
January 13th, 2009 / 8:51 pm