Rat Bag Lit Gold Star Program Gold Star

Themed Drabbles: Haunted Technology

This month we are looking for drabbles that explore abandoned and haunted tech:

The old Red Box's screen is dark, whispering secrets of the movies it once held. On the side of a road, an old phone book waits empty, haunted by the memory of a dial tone. Broken cassette tapes stream over the floor of a run-down car. An AOL CD suncatcher reflects the day's last light through the broken window of a video rental store.

Is it your nostalgia or these abandoned technologies haunting you?

Exactly 100 words, pays a penny a word for originals, half-rate for reprints.

You can send us two, as two individual submissions.

Reprints okay for this one. Please include the date and original publisher's name with your submission.

If your submission is declined and we are still open, you are welcome to send another.

Open September 1 - 7.

Submit

Your paid submission will include at least a sentence or two of constructive critique with your response. Your submission fees help us pay our authors and we thank you!

1000 words up to a maximum of 7500 words.

Please remember we are a weird lit publication -- please be sure to read our guidelines for your best chance of success.

Simultaneous submissions are always okay. Just let us know if the status of your submission changes.

We pay via PayPal only.

Digital publication as a standalone e-book available for sale on our website / substack.

Pays a penny a word, up to $20 + royalties*.

We will do our best to respond to your submission within 60 days, but pieces that are held for further consideration will take longer.

(*Royalties are never guaranteed to payout. This is a new thing we're trying.)

[We offer a limited number of free submissions for short stories each month. If free submissions are closed and paying a submission fee presents a hardship to you, you may email us for a no questions asked fee waiver.]

Submit

Don't want to wait for your response? With our "Skip the Line" paid option, your story will be the next one read by our Short Story editor. Everything else is the same between this and our $5 paid submission, you'll just get a guaranteed faster response.

(Note: We are already pretty fast. Submission fees from the "Skip the Line" category helps us pay our authors and our editors. Paying to submit does not increase your chances of publication success, though we do appreciate your support!)

We'll do our best to respond within three business days. (Please note that if we decide to hold your piece for further consideration, you will have a longer wait time, which we will communicate to you with a hold notice.)

Your paid submission will include at least a sentence or two of constructive critique with your response.

1000 words up to a maximum of 7500 words.

Please remember we are a weird lit publication -- please be sure to read our guidelines for your best chance of success.

We pay via PayPal only.

Digital publication as a standalone e-book available for sale on our website / substack.

Pays a penny a word, up to $20 + royalties*.

We will do our best to respond to your submission within 60 days, but pieces that are held for further consideration will take longer.

(*Royalties are never guaranteed to payout. This is a new thing we're trying.)

Submit

Rat Feedback -- The Unhinged Edition

You've been loving our rat feedback. Now you can guarantee you'll get your own. Plus, you'll have the happy feeling that you've supported our weird little lit mag. You might be published, too. All "unhinged rejection" submissions are considered for print and/or digital publication.

(In that case, you'd get an unhinged acceptance letter, which might be even more fun than our rat-jections.)

You can send a short story, a poem, a play or even a short chapbook, a comic, a ransom note, a brand new rat meme, a recipe, your grocery list, a picture of your mom, a sketch you doodled while on a zoom call... whatever you'd like, up to a maximum of 2500 words, as 1 file or 1 image.

(For you rule breakers, If you send a longer story, we will either stop reading at 2500 words or read the whole thing and give overview feedback instead of detailed comments, our choice.)

In response, you will receive rat-themed madness in the form of:

• An unhinged story from Ratty (either directly or translated by one of our rat editors), usually all about Ratty's colorful life and background. Ratty will tell you more than you've ever wanted to know about rat life, all inspired directly by your story. Ratty's been known to share crazy family escapades, tales of relationships gone wrong, never before known urban legends, and stories about life in the alleys of the world. Basically, you'll receive rat-themed madness and even we don't know what Ratty's gonna say next.
• Professional written feedback from one of our human editors aimed at helping you improve your story. We all love stories and want to see you succeed, even if it's not in our publication.
• Optional* in-line comments / suggestions (fiction only) direct from our human editor(s) in a google docs** file created from your story. We transfer ownership to you, the author, once we have made our decision.

Our goal is to make sure your rat-jection includes at least a nugget of useful constructive critique that will help you in your revisions. But what do we know? We're rats.

We pay a penny a word (USD) up to a maximum of $20. Pay for art and images will vary -- we'll make you an offer you can definitely refuse, up to a maximum of $20, probably way less. (Which means you'd need to get your mom to sign a model release, but she won't mind. She's so proud of her sweet little weirdo.)

Work accepted in this category might be published online or in print -- honestly, we won't know until we see what you send.

For art, we prefer black&white photography or line art, but we'll happily respond to whatever you send.

For comics, we are legit seeking a graphic artist and would be thrilled to work with you -- we'd love to see your portfolio.

Note: Ratty-written unhinged stories may be published for our paid subscribers on Substack. We'll never publish your written feedback, only the story inspired by your submission. This story may reference your story via character names, situations, or themes, but will not include any identifying info such as your name or story title. (But we'd love if you tag yourself if we do share the unhinged story inspired by your work!)

We'd also be happy to link to your website and/or socials if we decide to publish the unhinged Ratty story written in your response to your story -- if you'd like us to do that, please include a note stating so in your cover letter, along with the relevant links.

* Don't want in-line comments / edits? You can opt out by stating so in your cover letter. Please note that we only do in-line comments for fiction submissions (and, occasionally, poetry).

** Re: Google Docs - we don't like the AI stuff either. We're exploring Ellipsus as an option, but we aren't sure the program fully meets our needs. If you'd like us to try using Ellipsus for your in-line comments, please include a note with your submission. We're happy to give it a whirl.

We consider the Unhinged Feedback to be a fundraiser for the magazine and a way to pay our editors who transcribe Ratty's feedback and critique your stories. We thank you for submitting to Rat Bag Lit!

Submit