SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR:
PSYCHO BOY/PSYCHO GIRL
Ah…romance. We all want it. We all want to find that special someone. Someone to share our hopes and dreams with, someone to confide in and just sit next to on a cold, rainy day. But finding that special someone usually means dating, which for lack of a better definition means a roller coaster ride into the minds of the insane. You may meet some nice people who just don’t fit with your qualifications, sure, we get that, but it seems more often than not you end up sitting across a restaurant table listening to Joe Blow’s reason for eating human flesh and Jane Blow’s explanation for setting her ex’s house on fire.
And those are the good dates. Oh yes, it can get much much worse.
We here at Rapier Press want to hear about the WORST DATE YOU’VE EVER HAD and we want you to spare no detail. We are looking for stories in the 1500-4000 word range (query for longer/shorter tales). These stories will be included in our first ever anthology: Psycho Boy/Psycho Girl: True Tales of the Worst Dates Imaginable.
Reading Period: February 1st to March 31st or until filled.
What we want: True stories of dates gone bad. Everything from the time you and your date ended up in jail to the time you found yourselves tied to a motel bed in Nicaragua. The crazier the story, the more chance it has of being accepted. We’re really looking for funny, exciting, and benignly nightmarish stuff. We are striving for an equal number of stories from both sexes.
What we don’t want: We don’t want full names. This is not about getting revenge on the girl or guy who broke your heart or stole your money. Any stories that come in with people’s full names will be immediately rejected. Stick to first names or some other kind of description (Mr. BuckTooth, Mrs. Crazy Eyes, etc). We also don’t want GRAPHIC sex. Stories of sex are fine, and you are welcome to include sex (this book is for adults after all) but try not to be gross about it. Look at it this way, we’d happily print a story like Cameron Diaz’s hair gel moment in Something About Mary—that’s funny—but a 5000 word story about deformed genitalia will likely be rejected. Also, this book is meant to be fun, so nothing depressing or involving people getting seriously hurt.
DO NOT MAKE UP YOUR STORIES. We are hoping to build some nice writer/publisher relationships here. Impress us once and we’re likely to offer invites to future books. If we find out you lied about your tale, you will never work with us again and your story will be cut from future runs of the book.
Payment: Authors will receive a flat payment of $15 via paypal and a contributor copy of the book. Yes, we realize that is a horrendously low payment and we should be flogged repeatedly for the insult, and rabid monkeys and venomous tarantulas should be set loose in our bedrooms, but this is our first book and we are paying for it ourselves. We will increase our rates for future books as sales go up. You’re welcome to sub elsewhere if you don’t agree with the rate. Or you can toilet paper our houses if you can find them.
Book Format and Accessibility: The book will be printed in POD format. This means it WILL be available through online retailers such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Borders.com, etc. We will do our best to get it in stores but brick and mortar stores often will not buy POD books until a certain sales figure has been reached online. It can be done and we hope to get there eventually, but chances are that won’t happen with this first book.
Submission guidelines: Email your manuscript as a WORD DOC or RTF attachment to rapierpress_AT_hotmail_DOT_com. Please use a 12-point readable font -- SINGLE SPACED. Yes, we repeat, single spaced. If we want to make liner notes later we will adjust the line spacing ourselves. Why single spaced? Because this email is attached to our Crackberrys, allowing us to read submissions whenever and wherever, and it’s way easier to read the stories if they’re single spaced. One more time: SINGLE SPACED.
Include your name and email on the cover page. Place the title of the story, page number, and your name in the header of each page. Please only submit one story at a time. No simultaneous submissions.
Return time: We will get back to you as quickly as we can.
