Editor Interview: Curious Curls Publishing

Curious works.

Jokes Review and The Brooklyn Review.

J.D. Salinger and Mark Twain.

We are humble and direct. Our goals are also simple, with a focus on publishing work we like. The only way we want to change the world is by making it just a bit more curious every single day.

Even if you have not edited very well, at least make sure you have edited the first few pages very well. Keep us locked in.

It can't be put down and makes us put together ideas that surprise us on every page thereafter. Make us get excited for when a character wipes his nose or ties his shoe. An ideal submission makes us bask in every small happening.

Sending an incomplete manuscript. We need the whole thing, and we will most likely not be reaching out to you if we do not have it. If you are writing an illustrated children's book or a comic book, we would like to see the illustrations; that is a majority of the work.

Everything and nothing.

We can generally tell if we want to continue right away, but we give the work some extra time to marinate. We have specific minimum counts depending on the type of work, whether to a certain chapter, a certain number of short stories or poems, etc.

Just the simple one. Is it a product we can sell? We may love your forty-page play, but will anyone buy such a short play? Will there be anyone to perform it? While we try to be open to different types of works, we also want people to have interest in your work. If you have a forty-page play, think about adding another separate short play to it. If you have a jumbled poetry collection with no direct purpose, think about ways to reorganize and present it.

It's chaotic, but fun. Curious Curls is still small, so I take care of most duties. I do everything from designing and updating the website to reaching out to authors to marketing. Editing is actually a smaller part of the overall process than you might expect. I do try to get outside when I can, so when you are waiting to hear back from us, know that your work is probably being read in an expansive, flowering field and not being skimmed across in some fast-paced office.

The amount of editing depends on our workload and how much we like the piece. We would not accept a work we did not like or have faith in, but sometimes we have to turn down works that would take too much editing when our hands are full as a short staff. That being said, some works we have accepted needed an extra push to be fully realized, and we are willing to take on extensive editing if we have the resources to do it. We always let our authors know whether we plan to do minimal or large-scale edits. We also make sure that the author gets freedom to make their work how they want to, even if it takes some back and forth. We strongly belive in craft and sharing in the dreams of our authors.

Not yet, but we hope to very soon! We are still improving our marketing presence and plans. As we grow and get better, we hope to find a lot of rare opportunities for our writers and methodically take up every chance that we can get.