Greetings from the beautiful Pacific Northwest, where the air is just starting to smell like fall!
The truth is, we've been struggling to fill the coming issue with the beautiful fiction you've come to anticipate from Bracken. This challenge is not new to us. From our very conception, I knew that trying to stay as close as possible to magic realism would be a hard road. But I love the genre. And I think you do too, as you keep coming back.
To keep the fiction of Bracken alive, we need beautiful, well-written, emotionally true stories to fill our slush pile. So, in hopes of bringing up the quality of our submissions, we've decided to increase our rates from $0.02/word to $0.04/word, with a minimum of $50/fiction piece.
If you like bullet lists (and who doesn't)...
Here is what we want:
- Magic realism (read this great piece on fantasy vs. magic realism)
- Natural setting (like in "Passing Through" by Stephen Thom)
- Emotional truth (like in "Wild Ones" by Vanessa Fogg)
- Darkness (and some light) (like in "Her Hands Like Ice" by KT Bryski)
- Lyrical prose (like in "Through Earth and Sky" by Gwendolyn Kiste)
- Well-crafted prose (like in "Just When You Think You Know Everything" by Jenifer Lawrence)
What we don't want:
- Science fiction
- Straight fantasy
- Horror
- Urban fantasy
- Swords/wands/zombies/aliens
Now send us your greatest work, work that you want to see last indefinitely as part of the body of early 21st Century literature!