Open for Submissions: Bring the Ink

Hey, everyone:

As I mentioned last Friday, some buddies of mine and myself are putting together an online lit mag, Bring the Ink, for the world to devour. Of course, the only way to truly have a good lit mag is to have truly good submissions. While we toil away on all the nitty-gritty details and site building, we want to be reading the best you have to offer. Here are our tentative guidelines (any and all of this info is subject to change.)

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see something from you soon.

What We're About:

Sardonakiss Rexakon is a mutant man-beast with a brain and a good eye for good writing/art. He is the four great travelers of the mind, Wayward Son, Comfortably Numb, Silent Lucidity, and Dr. Rover. Plucked from the corners of the great American continent and slammed together in the Middle of Nowhere, their powers combined to create the very emblem of the word awesome--Sardonakiss Rexakon. If you don't get that, then perhaps you don't belong here. If you don't get that and you want to, then do the following:

Listen to Anthrax: Sound of White Noise.

Read a book, read a book, read a mutha fuckin' book.

Don't forget not to take yourself too seriously.

Submit something.

Guidelines:

We like good writing; we like good genre fiction; we like good literary insights; we like comics; we like animated films; we like stupid films; we like many things. We just don’t like to be bored. Every story has been told before; we know this, but we want to forget that fact in your submission.

Send us whatever surprised you when you wrote it. Send us fantastic nonsense. Send us whatever comes as close to perfection as you can create.

All of us have created something that we have no idea what to do with it, the things that have no home. We want to be that home.

Please note: While we might be more forgiving than some, manuscripts with one too many gross errors will be rejected. So please, run spell check, re-read it (and again), have someone else read it. Nothing throws you out of a piece like a typo.

Prose:

As this is a place that’s all about no limits, it seems lame to put a cap on word counts and limit you—especially when all creations go for as long as they need. Since this is the case, we’ll do it like so:

For all fiction and non-fiction: From one word to 5,000, paste the entire piece into the body of an email; for lengths above and beyond that, please send us a query. (We do encourage shorter pieces, from one to 3,000 words, as reading online can be a bit hard on the eyes.)

For interviews and reviews: Please query us with what you want to review, or what amazing person you want to interview (your own hook-ups here). Please note, DO NOT limit yourself to writers. Filmmakers, musicians, and artists are, well, artists, too. And hey, if you just know someone who has a good story, but you don’t know how to take their words and shape them into an amazing story, then let us know, we’ll send the final word.

Poetry:

All good writing is poetry. You want to call it poetry? Call it poetry, and we'll look at it as such. You want to go all out, write us a sestina, do it. Please, just nothing epic, unless you query first.

Comics:

Again, lengths are never fun to impose on anyone or anything, but we can only do so much and have so much space to offer. At the moment, ten pages are about the limit—unless, again, you query first. (We'd be open to ongoing series, too.) These can be anything from a one-panel gag to a full blown space opera. Whatever you send us, make sure it is complete. We cannot supply artists or writers. (There are plenty of networking resources out there that can help you find one or the other.)

Send us links to your work, and we’ll contact you for 300dpi files for print.

Cover Art:

If we have a theme, try to go with it. If you have something awesome and it doesn’t fit the theme, send us the link. Again, no attachments, just the link, we’ll contact you for a larger file. (Also, as it might be used in print, please make sure it is, at least, 4” x 6”. This can be B/W or Color. Please note, too, that your work may be cropped for spacing/design.)

Payment:

At this time, we can't offer payment. Hopefully this will change. For the moment, though, as we are doing this for free--you, sadly, have to, too.

Things to Keep in Mind:

For all submissions, please email to the following address sardonakissrexakon(at)gmail(dot)com. Also, PLEASE, in the header of your email, put the following: Submission, "Title of Your Piece," and category, e. g. "Submission, 'I Like Pie,' Poetry." Also: If you're submitting to a future issue, please add that to the header, too. "Submission ... Spring 2010."

We accept simultaneous submissions, however, please let us know if we are in competition for your piece. Also, if it is accepted elsewhere, let us know AS SOON AS YOU CAN. (It helps if you include the date, title of your submission, and--of course--your name in this informative email.)

We DO NOT accept previously published material. Don't care if it was on your blog or the zine you put together last month, we don't want it unless it is so shiny and new we can still smell the shrinkwrap.

We publish with one-time first rights, with the option to collect your story in a best of anthology. (At the moment, there is no foreseeable payment, but we'd like to at least give you a contributor copy or two.) Otherwise, once your story is published with us, you are free to do with it what you will, we only ask that if it is reprinted elsewhere that you please give us credit for the piece's original appearance.

Response Times:

As we don't know how many submissions we will be getting, it's hard to give a good guestimate. For now, please give us, at least, eight weeks before bothering us. (And like the simultaneous submissions, it helps if you include the date, title of your piece, and--of course--your name in this informative email.)

Themes:

Fall: Issue 0 “Introducing SR” – Anything you think is cool, and we want to think it’s cool too. Deadline: ASAP.

Winter: Issue 1 “Connections” – Connections can be anything, from person to person, person to animal, audio cord to audio cord, pieces of a broken vase glued together again. Connections are made and broken all the time. Show us some. Deadline: September 11.