October 2016
I have recently come across The Emma Press ('small press, big dreams'). What is different about them is that rather than charge a submission fee for entry to their competitions, you just join the Emma Press Club. Membership is easy: just buy one book from The Emma Press's catalogue and this allows free entry for a year. I chose Rivers Wanted by Rachel Piercey, one of the editors. Should you be lucky enough to have anything accepted and published by them, then you get life membership, and can submit for evermore! Well, the current theme is Kings and Queens, so I wrote a poem especially.... especially early, in fact, as I had received notification that this theme was coming up before it was officially announced. I'm not sure I have entirely met the brief; my poem was about a fictional king and queen, but I think they actually wanted poetry about historical figures. Never mind. It was refreshing to be allowed a line count of 60.
I saved a few links from Facebook, one of which was a competition for Spine-Chilling Fiction prompted by a photograph. I wrote a 1000-word story especially, entitled 'Broken Angels'.
For a long time, I'd been meaning to submit a few stories to Alfie Dog Fiction and finally I did it. I sent off four different stories to editor Rosemary Kind.
Finally, this month, I wrote a 100-word piece of flash fiction ready for Hallowe'en and submitted it to Debz Hobbs-Wyatt at CafeLit. I'll let you know how I get on...
Update: Well, here I am a couple of hours later to say that that was the quickest submission to turn around process that I have ever encountered! The new editor is Gill James. My piece is now up on the CafeLit website. You can read it here.
Did I say 'Finally...'?
Well, it didn't end there. I had previously submitted a handful of children's poems to The Caterpillar, a wonderful magazine for children, offspring of The Moth. I had a lovely email from the editor telling me that although what I had sent wasn't quite the right fit for the magazine, he would like me to send more. So I did.
Update: A poem entitled 'Wind' is going to be published in the winter edition of The Caterpillar.
I saw the The Emma Press was calling for submissions again, this time for animal poetry, so I submitted to them for the second time this month.
And, finally (surely), on the last day of October, the closing date for submissions to the Bare Fiction writing competitions, I submitted a short story and a poem. Results are out in January.
