Welcome!
About Us
Honestly, we’d rather roll in broken glass than write a set of Writer’s Guidelines. But, because we’d rather accept your work than send you another form rejection (which, if you’re submitting to us, you have a trunk full of already—because you’ve been at this for a while, right?), we thought it necessary. First, of course, are the givens. It’s a given, for example, that you’ve read widely and know something about weird fiction. I mean, if you haven’t, and are still submitting to us, well, that’d be nuts, wouldn’t it? Pure hubris. It’s also a given that you’ve spent some time honing your craft and know your way around a manuscript—again, because why else would you be submitting to us?—and, also, that you understand some basic Word mechanics (how to use paragraph styles, for example), so that, should we accept your work, it will be easy for us to publish. Those are the givens.
What isn’t a given is, well, everything else. What isn’t a given is how you handle language and time and make us want to continue reading even though we have a bus to catch at 4 o’clock in the morning. What isn’t a given is your use of atmosphere and place and nuance to give us a sense of dread and/or anticipation; or the way you are able to keep things moving along and not get too mired in detail or ephemera; or that you don’t need to use excessive sex, violence, or language to get the job done—but aren’t afraid to, either, if the story demands it. What isn’t a given is that, beyond the basics, there are no givens; and that anything and everything is possible if you just make us believe. If you just tell us a good story and do it with some measure of finesse.
That’s it, in a nutshell. That’s the girl, the gold watch, everything.
We ask for non-exclusive, one-time, worldwide rights to publish your work in print and digital formats, and then to archive it indefinitely. Alas, we are not a paying market at this time.
Send work to shadowsinthegarden@gmail.com.
Please query if you have received no response after three months.
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