Contributor Guidelines for Triangulation: End of the Rainbow

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Contributor Guidelines for Triangulation: End of the Rainbow

Triangulation is an annual 125-150+ page short fiction anthology that publishes science fiction, fantasy, horror, and any other speculative fiction that caught the editors' fancy. Every year we have a theme: 2010's theme is "End of the Rainbow". We pay semi-pro rates and are available online at places like Amazon.com. We're a small outfit but we work hard to produce a quality product; Asimov's Science Fiction said we were "equal to any issue of your favorite prozine."

No, we don't get tired of mentioning that Asimov's said nice things about us.

We define "short fiction" as "up to about 5,000 words or so." We have no reason to impose hard arbitrary word limits, but we are interested in publishing a wide variety of entertaining and literate stories, so the more space a story would take, the more it will need to impress us. If you have an awesome story that exceeds 5K then by all means send it; but be warned that we have yet to accept anything for publication much longer than 5000 words.

We dig flash; there is no minimum word count.

We have no interest in getting more specific about the term "speculative fiction." Science fiction, horror, fantasy, magic realism, alternate history, whatever -- if there's a speculative element vital to your story, we'll gladly give it a read.

We love creative interpretations of our theme, "End of the Rainbow". Don't ask us what it means -- tell us what it means with a story that convinces us you're right.

We publish both new and established writers; the level of experience for the authors gracing our pages has ranged from "first time in print" to "Hugo winner." The majority of our stories usually wind up being from American authors, but we've had a number of international contributions; we're happy to consider work from anywhere in the world, just as long as it's written in English.

We will run mature content if we like the story. So make sure there's an actual story in that mature content.

We will gladly consider reprints. If the story ran someplace obscure, then it's probably new to our readers; and if it ran someplace high-profile, it's probably really good. Either way, we win!

We do not publish poetry. Sorry.

No fanfic, even if it's fanfic of a fictional universe that has passed into public domain.

No thinly-disguised transcripts of roleplaying sessions, no settings obviously based on D&D or other such games. Don't get us wrong, we love to game ourselves -- which means our imaginations are probably too cluttered with elves and dwarves and orcs and the like as it is.

The submission period is December 1, 2009 through March 31, 2010. All electronic submits must be sent within that period, all snail mail submits must be postmarked by the deadline.

Compensation:

We pay two cents per word (USA funds, rounded to the nearest 100 words, US$10 minimum payment) on publication and one contributor's copy. The anthology will be published in late July of 2010. We purchase North American Serial Rights, and Electronic Rights for the PDF downloadable version; since we're cool with reprints, we really don't care whether we have firsties. All subsidiary rights released upon publication. Contributors will also have the option of purchasing additional copies of the anthology at-cost, exact price TBD.

How To Submit:

Electronic submissions make our lives easier. Please send your story to editor@parsecink.org. Please put your subject line in the format of "SUBMISSION: Story Title" so we can tell you apart from the spam.

We'll consider stories ONLY in the following formats:

.odt (OpenDocument Text -- format used by the OpenOffice.org suite) -- preferred format
.rtf (Rich Text Format -- generic document format that most word processors can create)
.doc or .docx (MS Word -- we're not crazy about it, but let's face it, it's the one most people actually use)

Please use industry standard manuscript format. There's disagreement on some of the exact details of the "standard". We're not testing you to see if you can follow each and every niggling detail, we just want a manuscript that is easy for us to read.

If you absolutely positively can't use email, please send the manuscript (with either a SASE or a return email address) to:

Triangulation 2010
1222 Love St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15218

No hand-written manuscripts. We gotta draw the line somewhere.

No multiple submissions; only send us one story at a time. No simultaneous submissions, don't send it to us if someone else is already considering it.

Response:

Expect to hear back from us within two months. Feel free to start sending us nagging emails if you haven't heard from us after two months.

Please please please include your name, phone number, postal address, and email address in your manuscript header. (See "standard manuscript format" above.) If that's not feasible for whatever reason, please include an alternate email address or other way to contact you. As much as we love email, it's not the most reliable technology in the world, and if something goes awry with your address, we're both going to wind up frustrated. (We've responded to every story we've ever received, but we know for a fact that at least a few of those responses got eaten by gremlins lurking in the Internet's many tubes.)

Eligibility:

All writers, including those who are known or even related to the editorial staff, are permitted to submit to the Triangulation anthology. That doesn't mean we'll automatically publish them; just that we're willing to look at their work. (We're not worried about nepotism; we tell our friends that their writing sucks all the time.)

Please note that most of the editorial staff attends the Write or Die (WorD) critique group which meets every other Tuesday in Monroeville, PA. Also note that WorD is an open workshop. If you live in or near the Pittsburgh region and have ever wanted to force a market's editorial staff to give you detailed feedback on a story, this is your chance.

Who We Are:

Triangulation is an annual anthology produced by PARSEC Ink, the publishing wing of the PARSEC science-fiction association in Pittsburgh, PA. A new edition of Triangulation has been published every year since 2003 (save for a brief hiatus in 2006 when we changed over to an international format).

Triangulation shares an informal relationship with PARSEC's annual short story contest, and in past years Triangulation editors have been recruited as mid-round judges. Authors who do well in the contest may be offered publication in Triangulation solely at the discretion of Triangulation's editors. Note, though, that the PARSEC contest and Triangulation Anthology are two completely different publications; you can submit to one or the other or even both, but be aware that because they are different publications, they have different requirements and submission guidelines, including eligibility and word length.

Thank you for considering Triangulation: End of the Rainbow as a market for your work; we look forward to reading it.

-- Bill Moran, Editor, Triangulation: End of the Rainbow

Working the editorial staff:

Many markets advise you to buy a back-issue or two so you can better understand what the editor is looking for. If you want to research Triangulation that way, please feel free -- I'll never object to selling more copies.

But the truth is, these guidelines contain everything you need to know to get your story accepted. (If they didn't, they'd be some suck-ass guidelines, wouldn't they.) Don't buy "End of Time", "Taking Flight", or "Dark Glass" just to get some insight into submitting a story to me; buy them because you like good fiction.

Overall, we're looking for well-written stories where the anthology's theme is integral to the plot. We want to see believable characters and interesting plots with a speculative element that is inseperable from the story.

We understand that our theme probably brings images of tornadoes and leprechauns to mind, but we do not intend to fill the anthology with storys of only those two topics. As a result, you'll have a much better chance of being accepted if you can come up with a more creative interpretation of the theme than reusing those tropes.

If you want to understand more about what we're looking for and the selection process, I recommend you follow the blogs of the editorial staff:

Last Updated Sunday, December 13 2009 @ 08:28 PM GMT|