Editor Interview: Freedom Fiction Journal

Fiction Short Stories

Ellery Queen Mystery magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, Savage Kick magazine, Apex magazine, Clarkesworld magazine, Strange Horizons, Bikernet.com,

Haruki Murakami, Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S Thompson, Alistair MacLean, Michael Chabon, Chuck Palahniuk, James Ellroy, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Donald Hamilton, Mark SaFranko, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C Clarke, Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe series), Clive Barker, Frank Miller, Alan Moore,Frederick Forsyth, Robert Ludlum, Orson Scott Card, Tom Clancy, Ian Rankin, Anne Rice, Ursula K LeGuin, John Grisham, Dan Brown, Jeffrey Archer, Michael Crichton, Dean Koontz, Clive Cussler, Michael Connely, Kevin J Anderson, David Baldacci, James Patterson, Eric Van Lustbader, James Rollins, Patricia Cornwell, Barry Eisler, Ken MacLeod,...

We solicit all genres of fiction in short story format.
We give edited manuscript, feedback and personalized replies to all who submit is fiction or artwork - irrespective of the story/art being accepted or rejected.
We pay when we can, such as the annual anthology (compilation).
All readers can read all the stories for free without requiring to login/ register.
We send nominations to Pushcart Prize to support our authors.
We celebrate our fiction and authors and artists by posting any promotional material they would like us to post at our FFJ website.
We always introduce our authors with a short bio and then their story follows.
Simple PDF downloads which can be printed and shared under Creative Commons non-derivative non-commercial license.
We are open to multiple submissions and reprinting of published works.
We survive because our readers and writers care just as much as we care for their work.

Please be patient as FFJ is an activity undertaken as a voluntary setup, so we too have day jobs and daily life problems.
We will give a thorough reading and editing instead of some standard drafted reply.
This takes time, but I am sure you all will prefer such delays over standard rejection slips.
Personalized attention, equal attention to all, an editorial feedback - its different and it cares about you.

An ideal submission would be RTF or Word DOC file with no special formatting. We accept email submissions and hence don't need double-spacing and the likes. State author name, contact details and follow the simple instructions.

They send docX or MS Works files. Open Office and others offer Save As RTF/ DOC options. If such doubts are there, simply pasting it in the body of the email is also accepted. Yet, people just attach anything and post it just like that. If nothing else send us a TXT file, but don't send us such odd file types which ruin the formatting when converted to RTF.

As much as they wish to share. We have an "About the author" section before every short story published. The author sends us a true or funny or strange bio - a chance for them to be creative and yet share something about them to our readers (and us). I have readers who have sent me photos of theirs, or personal experiences. Its beautiful that I can reach out to talent and that talent share their life/ creations with us at FFJ.

I read the whole thing. As said earlier, irrespective of rejection or acceptance, FFJ provides feedback and/or edited manuscript back as our concept is of being a community resource and not just another magazine.

We check for any plagiarism or offensive language.
We confirm with the author on any editorial changes.
We use a standard contract. We let them know again that we are a non-paying market.
We allow reprint rights to be with the author/ artist - so we tell them that they would earn less if their story gets accepted later for reprint by some other magazine.

Time. Always watching the clock and trying to fit in one more story, one more email reply into my schedule.
The day job keeps me employed, this FFJ moonlighting keeps me engaged, enthralled, enthusiastic.