Editor Interview: Hearth Stories

Slice of life fantasy

There are a few other cozy fantasy magazines out there that we like: Heartlines Spec, Wyngraf, and Tales & Feathers. We also really enjoy New Maps and Inner Worlds.

My favorite writers are Ray Bradbury, Richard Jefferies, Stephen King, James Fenimore Cooper, Haruki Murakami, Becky Chambers, and Michael Cunningham. Aside from Becky Chambers none of them really work in the specific space that we publish. Ray Bradbury comes close at times, especially in his fix-up novel Dandelion Wine.

We have a strict focus on no/low-technology settings with a preference for stories that take place out in nature. Our stories feature no combat, violence, etc. We really strive to be about connection: to each other, to the world/nature, to our communities.

Read the submission guidelines well. If anything in your story is on our "What not to send" section: do not send it.
Additionally, dragons are a hard sell as are stories that rely heavily on what could be termed non-vegan content (a lot of casually using or consuming animal products). Lastly, please do not send us stories where people are on cell phones, computers, etc. We would prefer stories with a technology leavel around the mid to late 1800s. As such, sci-fi is often harder to make work and fantasy is often easier.

This is hard to describe. It is more about the quality of the writing for us. Some things just speak to you and some don't. Checking a list of boxes can't make up for not having "the thing". I know that isn't great advice, as it is very unclear., but it is the reality.

They don't read the guidelines and send things that we would never actually consider, wasting both of our time.

I do like a cover letter. It should not contain a synopsis of the story. We read all stories that fit our word count and are submitted following our guidelines. As such a synopsis only serves to spoil the story for us.
Publication credits have never been a good sign for us of whether or not a story, or someone's writing, will be good for us. I have noticed a trend, though: authors that list things like "Over 200 stories published" are NEVER a good fit for us. We have never once had someone send us an e-mail listing a really large number of stories published. In many ways doing so is counterintuitive: if you have published 200, 500, whatever stories... why don't I know your name? Are these quality/reputable publications? We publish our two magazines to help support writers and to read and share great stories. It feels like someone with 500 credits isn't really who we are trying to help out and it definitely comes across as bragging and not very humble. So my advice is that if you are going to list credits, list your top 3-5 most impressive ones or most recent ones and leave it at that.

It depends on the piece. I try to give everything a bare minimum of two pages. Keep in mind that that is a bare minimum, and most things get more of a read, but if I encounter deal-breakers for us in those first few pages we stop reading and reject. Generally speaking, the stories we end up taking were so good that I just couldn't put them down. If my mind starts to wander in the middle, that isn't usually a good sign.

We have two "editors". I read all of the first round and get a short list together. My co-editor Elevens then reads them all and we argue back and forth to come to final decisions. Other than the two reading rounds we do not have anything standing in the way of acceptance. We do an edit round after acceptance, but by the time we get there the piece is good enough that we would take it as is and all changes are up to the author to accept or reject.

Half of it is reading, responding to, and logging (in a big spreadsheet) e-mails. The other half is reading. Hearth Stories generally gets between 350 and 500 submissions per reading period (so far), so there is a lot of reading to be done and a lot of e-mail to be answered.

Not very much. We do a pass for grammar, spelling, typos, etc. We also look for logical inconsistencies or bad references (wrong character name, etc). All changes get sent to the author to approve or not.

No. Not generally. Not because we don't believe in the work, but because we have not figured out how to do so. If anyone wants to reach out and give us advice in this regard please do so. Contact info is on our website.