Editor Interview: Havok

Bite-sized fiction

We're both a contest and a publication. We select stories that are entertaining and well told and edit them to have the best chance at charming our readers. Our members can comment and rate stories, and the best ones make it to our paid anthology. We also try to provide feedback to as many submissions as we can because we know what it's like to submit something and not understand why it wasn't selected.

Follow the submission guidelines! We acquire 5 different genres and each month has its own theme. Make sure that you format your submission correctly so that it has a chance to get to our editors.

I love a story that is well-written, clever, creative, and entertaining. If you can surprise me, even better!

They don't pay attention to the monthly themes or the genres we accept. Sometimes we get a great story in but we can't use it because it doesn't fit anywhere.

We don't read cover letters and previous publications credits don't matter to us. The only thing that matters is your story. If you can write a great story, we wan't to read it!

Since we publish flash fiction (<1,000 words), we read the whole thing.

We have 4-5 slots per month for each of the 5 genres that we acquire, so we keep our submissions open until we can fill those slots. If we get a bunch of stories in, then we'll pick the best 4-5 from each genre for that month's theme. The stronger the story, the more likely it is to be accepted.

I generally check our submissions daily. I'll read the stories and decide if they have potential and provide some comments/editing. Then stories get filed until we make our final selections. At that point, the fun begins because we get to work with the author to polish their story until it shines. Each editor wants their stories to be the best of the month!

It depends on the piece. Some stories require little, if any, editing. For some pieces, we may go back and forth with the author a few times. If the story shows promise but doesn't quite fit a theme or genre, we might send comments to the author with a request to revise and resubmit.

We haven't yet, but if we can find a place to nominate our stories, we certainly will.