The Goings-on

Here Be Monsters, like any super villain empire, or league of super heroes, wants global domination. The power to shape the world to its every whim. It’s pretty simple. That sums it up. I guess I should “reassure” you that our whims are art heavy and involve speculative fiction. Whether that places us in the super villain or hero category is debatable. If this version of the future makes your brain itch then stop reading now, or please continue so we might win you over.

To enact our plans will take hard work. Dedication as seemingly intense as you can find here http://www.emcarroll.com/comic/ or here http://freakmutantmonster.blogspot.com/. These folks also seem hard at it http://www.brokenpencil.com/.

We’re impressed by the number of submissions we’ve received in support of our cause, currently issue 6. You have all been sending us so much, it’s amazing.

A couple of questions come up rather frequently. Many of you want to know about genre and length. Is x number of words too short? What kind of genre are you looking for, or similarly is a story about x where x happens at location x ok? These are the two most popular types of questions. We like both types of questions. So thanks! I’ll try to clarify somewhat here. They’re good questions.

First, when it comes to length we are allowing up to 10000 words. That is quite a lot for most anthologies from what I gather. It sets us apart (I like to think, it’s one of the many things). Of course, the shorter the stories the more writers we can include and the greater variety we can provide the readers.

Is it possible to have fiction that is too short? Yes. Is it determined by word count? My opinion: most often not… well within reason. There are some very entertaining stories that are spectacularly short. They can stir a thought, entertain us, or make us question ideas, or ideals. If they do this in 750 words or 1500, for example then they aren’t too short. A good length for me is determined by whether the story tells the story it has to tell in a way that makes me want to read it.

Second… genre… please don’t feel constrained by it. We all have our preferences, but they are just preferences. We can read stories from our preferred genres that we don’t like, just as we can read stories from genres we generally turn to last and be pleasantly surprized. So it may not be about genre, but we do enjoy strange. When in doubt, try us.