TRIANGULATION: Dark Glass

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: 2009's theme is "Dark Glass". We pay semi-pro rates and are available online at places like Amazon.com. We use Lulu.com as our printer, so if the publish-on-demand thing leaves a foul taste in your mouth, avoid us. 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 and fast 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 if you're closer to 10,000 words, it will probably need to have the editorial staff cheering and high-fiving each other so much that the senior editor's roommate's poodle runs into the room to see what all the commotion is about. And that dog likes his naps.

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, "Dark Glass". 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!

No poetry. Sorry.

No fanfic, even if it's fanfic of a fictional universe that has passed into public domain. Cthulhu Mythos, I'm looking in your direction.

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.

Submission deadline is March 31, 2009. All electronic submits must be sent by that time, all snail mail submits must be postmarked by that date.

Compensation:

We pay two cents per word (USA funds, rounded to the nearest 100 words, US$10 minimum payment) on publication and a single contributor's copy. The anthology will be published in late July of 2009. 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 (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 cool with that. We're not testing you to see if you can follow each and every niggling detail, we just want a manuscript that looks professional.

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

Triangulation 2008
134 Orchard Dr.
Penn Hills, PA 15235

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

Please, no multiple submissions; only send us one story at a time. We'll get back to you promptly, we promise.

Response:

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

Please please please include a phone number in your manuscript header. (See "standard manuscript format" above.) If that's not feasible for whatever reason, please include an alternate email address. 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:

The senior editor's policy is that, in order for the Triangulation anthology to run a story written by somebody listed in the credits page, the story must be so awesome that the thought of not running it gives him night sweats. Otherwise, writers who personally know or are related to the editorial staff should feel free to submit. 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. However, contest entrants are encouraged to also submit their work separately to the anthology. We see the contest stories very late in the process, so if we find a "near miss" that we could see running if the author fixed a few problems, there might not be enough time left for the author to fix them.