I found another interesting writing opportunity today, this time via Duotrope’s Digest. This one is another anthology, with the theme being “Books Gone Bad”. The publisher seeking submissions is Dead Letter Press and here in their own words is what they mean by “Books Gone Bad”:
Stories should be about books that do not belong in a sane person’s library; books that wreck havoc in the lives of their owners; books that are no damn good! The “bad” book in your story should be central to the plot. The book should exert an emotional, or a physical, or a supernatural effect on the characters, or on reality, or time, or space. The book should be the villain of your story. Perhaps a sympathetic villain, or an unwitting accomplice to evil—but nevertheless, the book should be a “character” in your story, play a major role, and be “on stage” for a good part of the tale. You can think of this as “the secret lives and evil times of diabolical books.” In fact, that’s the tag line.
Here is the full post stating their submission guidelines. They prefer submissions between 4000 and 12,000 words in length and are paying 1 cent per word, which for the math challenged is $40 for the minimum word count.
Anyhow, this idea intrigues me and I am thinking this could be my next project after the Machine of Death. We’ll see.
That is a very cool theme. Of course I won’t be participating, what with my fiction writing strike and all. But that is a very cool theme nonetheless.
I imagine that a lot of kid stories that parents hate but kids love will show up on the list. Lyle the Crocodile jumps to mind.