Editor Interview: Grimdark Magazine

Grimdark F/SF

I'm a massive fan of long form grimdark. Ragnarok, Grim Oak Press, Gollancz, Black Library, Bantam and Orbit are all doing really great things. I meet anything the authors under those flags release with shouts of 'SHUT UP AND TANKE MY MONEY'.

This is a long list. A very difficult list, as there is so much out there that I haven't read yet. A pile some 50-60 high of books at home, a Book Depository wish list in the triple figures, and a constant stream of new and talented authors bursting onto the scene. So, I'm going to go with a top ten: Joe Abercrombie, George RR Martin, Mark Lawrence, R Scott Bakker, Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss, Richard K Morgan, Brent Weeks, Graham McNeill and Daniel Abraham. Authors I'm addicted to but didn't make the top ten include, but is no way limited to: Dan Abnett, Brandon Sanderson, Stephen King, Steven Erikson and Anthony Ryan. Authors on my list that I haven't read yet include Kameron Hurley, Aliette De Bodard, Richard Ford, Luke Scull, Rob J Hayes, Peter V Brett... man these lists could just keep going, going and going.

What sets us apart (at the time I wrote this) is that there are no other current grimdark ezine publications paying authors pro rates.

Grimdark, as in most genres, is all about the characters. I want characters that are unique, different, relatable, and definitely morally questionable working their way through grim story arcs in worlds that are dark. Get that right with some professional writing, a good voice, an awesome twist and you're half way there.

What submitters get wrong most often is trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. I'm a writer who submits to publications as well, so I know that authors generally get a rejection from one publication then login in to Duotrope to find the next most likely home. That's fair enough and common practice. However, grimdark is a subgenre. Our readers are very specific about what they want. It's blatantly obvious when somebody submits a high or heroic fantasy (for example) story without checking what kind of work we actually publish.
Secondly, our word limits are rock solid for unsolicited submissions.

Cover letters give the team and I a chance to chat to the lifeblood of the industry, but they aren't mandatory. An author with a thousand publication credits receives no special treatment in comparison to a new author submitting their first ever short story.

The team's first readers like to read through the whole piece so that they can provide feed back to authors, but sometimes it becomes really obvious in the first few pages that we can't publish a piece and they may choose to stop reading it.

We use a three stage process to find publishable pieces. A first reader will push through a piece they like to our second readers, who go over the work with a microscope before putting it on hold if they believe it should be published. I then pick out the ones I feel best fit into an issue. Being the only grimdark publication paying pro rates, we have a really high rejection rate based on our current per-issue budgets, and there are times when sending that final rejection to an author whose work I really like but can't afford is almost soul destroying.

Funnily enough, and rather sadly, very little reading of submissions. It's mostly emailing solicited authors, cover artists, publishers (eg. getting and ARC or permission to publish an excerpt), working with unsolicited authors, learning to use programs like Calibre, running the website and social media, brainstorming cover designs and advertising space with our designer, communicating with our 8 strong team, coming up with better processes and improving efficiency, coming up with marketing plans, developing contracts, accounting, etc, etc. Not really what I thought it would be when I kicked this venture off! However, it is a great deal of fun - all made possible by the awesome volunteers who jumped on board this ship before they knew if it was going to float or not.