Editor Interview: Children, Churches and Daddies

poetry/prose/essays/art

Actually, most other small presses fall short in some capacity or another, which is why I started cc&d magazine. When it comes to poetry magazines or books, I am usually dissatisfied with the design of the writing on the page, and (probably like how most other writers feel when they read a collection of different writings) I usually only like a select few pieces in any collection. Liking only a fraction of writing in a collection probably comes with the territory for any poetry publication, but we try to put a variety of pieces together, and more often than not (hopefully) more will catch the reader's eye.

I would never under the sun state any currently accepted writers as "favorites". And truthfully, because so much of my time is taken reading submissions (I read hundreds of pages of submissions every week), at this point in the game I do not have the time to lazily pick up a book to peruse.
But yes, we do publish both fiction and poetry. Who do I like for fiction? Well, historically I liked the fiction (and non-fiction) of Ayn Rand, and maybe her descriptiveness and attention to detail in her fiction writing somehow relates to what we ask for in our guidelines: "Make us feel like you're living through the story, not just reading about it. Make the reader feel like they are there."

How are we different? First of all, versus many other magazines, we do not require first time publishing rights, or previously unpublished work. (Okay, some places agree with that.) But when we have been asked about rights for accepted writings, we make this clear: by submitting writing to us, you are giving us the right to broadcast your work. The accepted writing is always retained (rights-wise) by the writer, and the writer/artist can do whatever they want at any time with their work.
In 2007 through 2009, we printed (in addition to monthly saddle-stitch issues) perfect-bound collection books as collections of a number of issues (and chapbooks, which are supplement issues to he magazine). All accepted writing in any given year is also considered for a Scars Publications annual collection book as well.
Because of the format change in issues in 2010, where all issues are now monthly perfect-bound paperback books, we may not release a collection book of issues (only time will tell).
Since I mentioned chapbooks, when we accept chapbooks for publication, an electronic copy is released (as a PDF file), it gets the same ISSN number as regular issues, and is considered in any annual collection book release (which means it has another chance of bring published in another format). We also also take all of the writings from within the chapbook and include these writings in the writings section of http://scars.tv (probably the most frequently visited portion of our site), so people can see writings from chapbooks immediately onl ine with links to the chapbooks they were publihed in as well.
Oh, here I go, talking about rights accepted writers get, or how we publish in different formats - web pages, PDF files, perfect-bound print books, sometimes as CD releases or youtube video files with or without background music (which might not be what really sets us apart). What we put together might set us apart - the combination of poetry, then prose, all with interspersed artwork is unique. In the past we have had editorials at the beginning of issues (under the heading "the boss lady's editorial"), and we have listed performance art supplement sections to issues (with artwork and sometimes with live photography from the performance).
Check out past issues to see the eclectic mix in cc&d magazine, and you may see how unique it is too.

Read out guidelines, and look over past issues to see if your writing might fit on. And if you have something to say and feel strongly about it, it just might interest us.

The ideal submission... Of what, Poetry? Short stories? We cannot tell you what the writing should say, but when emailed, leave in the body of the email unless there are special character (like smart quotes/curly quotes, ellipses, long dashes, etc.) or bolds and italics that may be lost in the body of an email. With any special treatment of type, send it as a Microsoft ".doc" file (which we prefer to ".rtf" or "docx" files). If you have a bio and want it included on the Internet with any potentially accepted writing, include it.

A. They rhyme. we do NOT consider rhyme. It is the first thing, in bold, that it says in the guidelines.
B. there are tons of special indentations in varying lines of type - we are not keen on any form of concrete poetry (we do not even center poetry if it is submitted to us that way and we accept it for publication), specifically because we would have to reformat uniquely indented type for an Internet web page, which is difficult to accurately master.
C. Though we are getting used to converting them now, people still send us ".docx" files because they have a newer version of Microsoft Word (which us Macintosh users do not have, so cannot open) and do not bother to save it as a ".doc" file, which we explicitly ask for (which would save us a lot of time in converting their files).

Cover letters are quaint, but I don't need paragraphs on their history as a writer. Having SOMETHING for a cover letter (other than just sending the writing with no explanation... if I get that, I wonder: is this a submission? Tell us SOMETHING) is good, but a full page of details on your history is unnecessary.
It does not matter to cc&d if a writer has been previously published a billion times or never published (the main page at http://scars.tv even says that we are "the mother of all publishing ventures for new writers, so publishing history is irrelevant to us).

If it is poetry, we know in the first 5 lines if it would be rejected. Sometimes we have to read the whole piece before deciding, but with many pieces we can tell if stylistically it does not match with cc&d.
With prose, it takes the first page for us to decide if it is rejected. If we are interested enough to read the entire piece, it has a much better chance.

We correct typos, and format for the writings section of http://scars.tv and print and Internet (web page) issues of the magazine.

Reading and responding two thirds of the time, designing a third of the tme.