ignite the books discussion

Here's a place for those of us pitching to agents/editors/publishers/websites to complain, commiserate, and swap resources. Links to agencies, news of pitch slams like Pitmad, tips for crafting a query letter or email...let's get this business done.

(this on the heels of my first official rejection email--from an agent, anyway, I've been rejected plenty for essays and short stories. joining the cool kids club, all right)

So, not strictly pitch-related, but lately I've been interested in doing something with some of the short stories I've been amassing. To that end, I looked up some options for publishing short fiction collections:

Rose Metal Press - flash fiction chapbook contest

Black Lawrence - chapbook contest, St Lawrence Book Award (short fiction collection)

Gertrude Press - short stories/novel excerpt chapbook

The next #pitmad is June 4! Plenty of time to prepare 140-character pitches.


And, a few magazines that have open submissions pretty much
all the time. Most of these are some brand of speculative fiction:

Nightmare

Apex

Crossed Genres

#PitMad has some new rules!

I was casually participating in last week's PitMad and one of my pitches was faved by a P.S. Literary agent. Sent off my query, so fingers crossed! Was not expecting that.

Anyone else have stories out and about for querying or submissions?

The Book Smugglers are looking for superhero-themed short stories, and are also launching a novella publishing initiative!

Super hero themed short stories is so much my jam but

short stories are hard

I like writing short stories but I've never been able to do straight superheroics. Every time I've tried to write a superhero story it's been like, street-level Marvel heroes+Constantine rip-off.

I super struggle with short stories because i super struggle with keeping anything short. I once tried to write a Hades/Persephone short story. It is 18,000 words long.

So Hannah...wanna write a superhero story together...

....i would be down for this a lot

There's a Harry Potter-themed Pitch Slam coming up next week!

Dear Lucky Agent is also currently going on!

The last PitMad of the year is coming up on Dec. 4!

What is PitMad?

It's a Twitter manuscript pitch thing! The gist is you tweet a 140-character pitch for your project with assorted hashtags (#YA #PitMad, for example) and then agents and editors keep an eye on the tag. They fave pitches that catch their eye. If your pitch gets faved, you hop over to that agent's submission guidelines and send them your stuff.

It's pretty fun and can be good practice for boiling your idea down to a sound-bite.

There's a really good website for contests and submission options here, updated monthly.