From the Editor: Broadswords & Blasters

Broadswords & Blasters posted a list of what graced their last submissions pile--and what got rejected. Good lessons here in story and submission guidelines. While they are quick to point out that these guidelines are for their journal alone, their advice for potential writers for any publication is sound. Pick up an issue and read through it, and tailor your stories accordingly.

The Guidelines Are There For a Reason (Part I)

We have guidelines on our website. They detail, in what we hope is clear and concise language, what we are looking for. They can be broken down in two parts. The first is the genres we are looking for:

• sword and sorcery;
• westerns (Weird or otherwise);
• horror (Cosmic, Southern Gothic, visceral, and psychological);
• detective tales;
• two-fisted action;
• retro science fiction

If you can squint real hard and fit your story into one of those buckets, yeah, we’ll read it and give it due consideration. Mash-ups of the above are also great. Here’s what we see too much of:

1. Epic or high fantasy.
2. Fantasy that is a reskin of a Dungeons and Dragons game.
3. Engineering science-fiction where the hero can solve the problem with a calculator and wrench.
4. Stories where talking about the problem somehow solves the problem.
5. Slice of life stories that would fit better in a literary magazine. No speculative gloss at all which made both editors scratch their heads and ask “Why did they send this to us?”
6. Urban fantasy.
7. Allegories (religious or otherwise) where a solid chunk of the story relies on telling some sort of moral.

Read more at the link.