Editor Interview: Pink Narcissus Press

Eclectic spec fic

Out of all the major publishers of fantasy, my vote goes to Tor. Pyr and Orbit are safe bets for quality fantasy, as well. For something offbeat: Small Beer Press, City Lights, Exact Change, Semiotext(e), and Raw Dog Screaming Press. And for gay spec fic, naturally we admire Blind Eye Books and Lethe Press.

We are not the only publisher with this policy, but we do not discriminate based on race, gender, religious beliefs or sexuality, and our publications often reflect this.

Read our submission guidelines page. Also, I recommend being familiar with the sort of fiction we publish: recent and upcoming works include literary fantasy, urban fantasy, feminist sci-fi, gay speculative fiction, and magic realism.

One of our goals when we started was to publish work which had received great feedback from larger publishing houses, but who opted not to accept the work because it wasn’t “commercial” or “marketable” enough. We know a lot of talented writers who have had this very experience. Although their work is exceptionally good, they still can’t find a home for it. This is our ideal submission.
In more concrete terms, we like writing which blends genres, stories that are hard to categorize neatly, but which do contain strong elements of speculative fiction, whether that means fantasy, sci-fi, horror, steampunk, or all of the above. Also, it should be an entertaining read.

We often receive work that is just inappropriate, whether it is someone’s memoirs (we don’t publish non-fiction) or erotica (we don’t publish porn). When that happens, it's pretty clear that these folk haven’t bothered to learn anything about our press, much less take a few minutes to check our submission guidelines.

We are only interested in the quality of the writing, so we don’t require a cover letter with our submissions, or a synopsis, or an author bio (although those things are fine to send if you already have them). We have published several first time writers, as well as more seasoned writers with several award-winning novels behind them, so publication credits really don’t influence our decision. The bottom line is that the work has to stand on its own.

Short fiction we generally read all the way to the end. In truth, I can usually tell by the end of the first paragraph (if not the first line!) whether or not I’d be willing to publish a longer work. However, I do commit myself to reading the first 30 pages no matter what. There's always the chance that the writing will improve. I don’t want to dismiss someone’s work just because their beginning is shaky. A bad beginning can be fixed.