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1. What we are looking for: Flash fiction (stories under 1500 words) and short stories under 3000 words (although we might consider longer works-but please send an inquiry first) We like sci-fi, fantasy, and mild horror. ( a wide range of speculative fiction) Character driven stories with strong plots are a must.
What we don't want: Graphic violence, sexually explicit material, and bad language: While we feel that an occasional cuss word may be in line with certain themes, foul language (esp. excessive use of expletives) will cause us to reject your story! If you believe you can't convey your story in clean language, this isn't the place for you to submit. Avoid sending us zombie stories...we get way too many of those and they aren't all that original. The way to get a quick rejection is to send us something we tell you we don't want!
Not sure what we like? Read a few of the stories online to get an idea. Normal response time 2-4 weeks. If you have not heard from us in 4 weeks- send an inquiry. We do get busy and sometimes forget. Or the sub might not have made it to us.
Don't forget to proofread carefully. Have someone else look at it too,we all miss
stuff at times and a second or third opinion and set of eyes is helpful.
2. Include your (real) name, byline (if different) mailing address, word count, email address and a short bio with every submission. Put the title and your byline at the beginning of the story. Copy and paste all this material into our submission form and then hit the submit button. We occasionally still accept stories pasted into the body of the email- but we will not open any attachments. Inquires are welcome- but unless you put something into the subject line to indicate your request- it most likely will end up deleted.
We get too much junk mail to sift through all the 'hellos' or 'this is urgent, please reply'. A good way to get ignored or deleted is to not follow our guidelines. Single space between lines, double space between paragraphs. 12 pt. Times New Romans font. Use italics, not _symbols_ or **special** markings when you want them. A brief synopsis is nice, but not necessary. (at present our form does not support italics- so use symbols or email us and paste the story in the body of the text.) If your story has a lot of special markings, DO NOT USE THE SUBMISSION FORM- instead send it to us in the body of an email...not as an attachment! Put SUBMISSION in the subject line or you will be deleted --UNREAD.
Always include your email in all correspondence.
3. Send only one story per submission. (no multiple submissions, unless it's poetry - then you can send two or three at the most) Please- no simultaneous submissions. We would hate to get a story we like only to hear that you've already sold it. Wait until you hear from us (or from someone else) before sending it out again. This is standard with nearly every magazine out there...if you can't wait to hear back from us...dont' send it to us.
You may submit more than one story, but never in the same submission.
No attachments.
4. What we pay.... Poetry earns a byline only (no cash) Stories in print earn a contributor copy with no cash payment, or pdf copy with cash payment (authors outside the continental US will receive only a pdf copy- ) We hold two writing contests per year- and pay cash prizes. No entry fees. (but they are always theme related) We are revising our Pay Scale....each writer will be offered a fair price --minimum $3.00- stories under 500 words, and $5.00 for stories under 1500 words...reprints no more than $5.00 , $10.00 for stories 2K-4K words and $15.00 for 4k to 6K. Please check your contract for details. We do offer discounts for authors appearing in the print issue, so if you opt to buy extra issues of the magazine your story appears in you will save about half the cost off the regular price.
No more than $20.00 at this time, regardless of length accepted.
Our copy editor will make the decision of final word counts- and stories with too many and, buts, yets, or other unnecessary words (he said, she said) will be edited...if you send in 1,050 words and use too many adjectives or ands and buts and yets, and other such stretchers- we will cut out the excess verbiage.
At the present time we are only accepting Flash Fiction and Stories 3K or under! All stories are for our Online Issue ONLY. Our Print Issue is on hiatus until the end of the year. (2012)
5. New authors are welcome! Always proofread your story carefully. Have someone else look it over for you. If you deliberately misspell a word- tell us! Our copy editor goes over almost every story and corrects as much as she can (grammar, excessive use of commas and speech tags)- but we like to keep her intake of caffeine and Xanax to a minimum. All stories accepted may have some minor editing done. (starting every other paragraph off with But, And or He.....don't do it!) We are working on a page to help out beginners, remind already published writers, and even refresh our old memories. When it's done, we will add a quick link to it here.
Our submission form does not allow for the use of italics at this time- so _please_ use these symbols for _letting_ us know where to place them...Thanks
Proofread carefully. Include all requested information. If you don't hear back from
us within 4 weeks, we may have missed your submission or we may be backlogged.
Don't be shy...remind us. If you haven't heard back from us you may be one of the
few writers who failed to send in an email address.
Do not send stories based on anyone else's work! No Harry Potter, NO Star Wars, No rewrites of Fairy Tales, No story even remotely connected to material that another writer has out...NO MATTER WHAT! I'm not going to consider stories based on anything previously published, nor will I accept material that in any way resembles anything that is already out there! I don't care if it's Adam and Eve from the Bible, or Winnie the Pooh, it's off limits here!
No longer will we accept stories written in conjunction with another writer. Single author stories only.
It is the author's responsibility to determine if material is copyrighted or not. Not ours. Make sure before you submit to us that you have sent original material that is not under copyright. If you send it in, you are claiming the rights to the story. Read your contract carefully. If you don't agree, let us know and we won't publish your work.
Do NOT send a revision after your story has been accepted.
Do not sent another submission until you hear back from us.
Do not send in material if you don't want any editing done. It is our decision to do minor editing, and stories are not changed by fixing a few grammatical errors or excessive buts, ands, and other such items. If you are too attached to the story you send us and feel offended by minor editing, save us both a headache and send it elsewhere.
We are fair, open to suggestions, and make every effort to make our authors happy. If you don't trust our site, feel free to look elsewhere for your publishing needs.
Include all requested information- or we can not reply...some of you seem to have forgotten to do this! Please follow instructions..Our sub form does not contain your email address, it only contains the address of our web server and we have no way to contact you if you do not include your email address with your submission!
All stories submitted are for our ONLINE Site ONLY. Our Print Issue is on hiatus for the next 6-12 months. Please be aware that we want stories under 3000 words or less. Anything longer is not needed at this time. Our online winter issue will be out on January 7th with all new stories. We will be accepting longer subs beginning September 21st, 2012.
Familiarize yourself with the wide variety of stories we like and buy a pdf copy. Stories here are different from the online version of the issue.
To our potential Authors.....All of us at Golden Visions have one common goal...to put out the best issue each quarter that we possibly can. We are able to do that because we get a wide variety of well written, character oriented, unique stories from so many gifted writers.
But we are also deeply committed to helping new writers get their stories out there as well...partially because we feel that it's tough enough getting published, but also because many markets don't tell you why your story wasn't accepted. We try to offer some sort of constructive advice when we turn down a story, but sometimes we can't. There are times when we get a lot of submissions that for one reason or another just don't work for us....here are the major reasons your story might have been rejected:
1. Poorly written. That covers an assortment of things- everything from too many grammar mistakes (that includes spelling folks, as well as basic grammar issues) to story structure problems. lack of or weak story plot, uninteresting or underdeveloped characters, along with a myriad of minute details that can't be covered in a basic description. Practice, time, and working with other writers in a critique group is one way to learn how to improve your writing.
2. Bad Language. We are quite clear in our guidelines about the use of certain types of language. We understand that certain styles of stories might warrant the use of more colorful and descriptive words, but there are many other ways to show this than to layer your story with excessive cursing. There are lots of other sites that relish the use of these words over the value of using your brain and coming up with other ways to express yourself...we are not one of those sites. We want the stories we present to be ones that readers of every age, creed, belief, and gender would feel comfortable reading. We are aware that there are times that a story can be made 'stronger' by the use of certain types of language, and that is taken into consideration...we have published stories with an occasional curse word or two, but if you feel you can not convey your meaning any other way than by repetitious use of foul language this is not the place for you to submit your work to. It will be rejected.
3. Missing Information. Believe it or not there are still some people out there that don't bother to send more than the story and their name. No email address, no mailing address, nothing. If we can't contact you then we can't accept or reject your submission. Every single site or magazine must have this information with each and every sub, We get your stories through a form that does not give us direct access to your email address at this time, and the only way we have to contact you is from the information you send us.
We include the required data list at the beginning of the form- please utilize it Once we have received the submission from the site, we read the story and make a decision on whether or not it meets our present needs and reply as promptly as we can.
4. We can't read it! For some reason certain programs don't copy and paste well into the form...it doesn't happen often, but it does happen. If that occurs we try to contact you and let you know, but normally most folks can see how the story looks before they send it. We do accept subs sent directly to us, so if you see that the story turned out 'wrong', send it directly to us and put "Submission" in the subject line to prevent us from mistaking it as junk mail...because we delete a lot of stuff that tends to clog up our mailbox.
Please double check your submission once it is in the form...most likely that is how it will look to us. We don't ask for much, but following simple directions is key to our being able to read and make a determination about whether or not the story or poem that you sent us is one that will fit into our magazine. If you can't read it clearly, most likely neither can we. Contact us to determine what course of action to follow if you don't want to send it directly to us. Do not send an attachment. We will not open it unless we requested it.
5. Other Things... You might have a good story...but maybe we got ten other stories with the same theme or idea and just can't use it. If it's extremely well written we might accept it for a later issue, or maybe we've just been saturated with the subject matter you sent us and don't feel the desire to publish twenty stories about Killer Bees (that was just an example)...but once a theme is beaten to death it just doesn't interest us anymore. If you can shine a new light upon an overused theme we may change our minds, but I doubt it.
Poor flow.....what does that mean? Well, if the story skips around so much that we can't follow along (that basically falls into the poorly written category) or if there seems to be missing chunks of the story, we can't use it.
Occasionally we may send a note back telling you certain things that would easily fix a story when little things are either wrong or missing, but when we get a lot of stories sent our way we may not have the time to do this. If you had strong characters or a style that appealed to our rather dry sense of humor, then we try to work with you...but we can't do that with everyone. We don't have the time, the staff, or the desire to spend all our time working on other people's stuff.....we wish we did...but we don't.
Not what we publish....We publish speculative fiction, which covers a lot of different things. Read our guidelines carefully and you should get a clear picture of what we like and don't like. Basically you are trying to appeal to our personal tastes, which are varied. Your story might work better for another site, so don't take any rejection personally. Our comments are not intended to personally attack you as a person or writer...but let's face it, when you send something out, you are trying to capture the interest of the editor. We have only 2-3 people who read and judge the stories, so you do have a better chance to get your story accepted if the right person reads it. Don't give up just because a couple of places turned you down....however, if more than three people tell you the same thing about a story, it may be time to do a little more work on it.
Feel free to send comments or questions our way. editorgvm@hotmail.com
Jeannie Patrick has accepted the additional duties of Assistant Editor and will be reading and selecting stories for our future issues. You may contact her at jeanniejoie@gmail.com if you have any questions for her.
Please read guidelines prior to submitting,
then use the form provided at the bottom of the page to send your story in. Thank You....
Please indicate the following along with your sub:
If this is a reprint-
tell us where and when the story was originally published. (Make sure to check your contract to ensure you have rights to resell at this time
Include in your bio any websites or links that you want readers to know about.... You must include this information in EVERY SUBMISSION.
Please Read this next Section
if this is your first time submitting to us.....
then scroll down to the form at the bottom.
