Editor Interview: Mocha Memoirs Press

dynamic, dramatic stories

I admire small presses like Beautiful Trouble Publishing and LooseId. I also admire independent publishers like Steamy Tails and others who publish short fiction.

My favorite fiction authors are Sherrilyn Kennyon, Stephen King, Octavia Butler, Robert B. Parker, and Shakespeare. Additionally, I enjoy Eoin Colfer, Ursula LeGuin, Neil Gaiman, and J.K.Rowling. My list of authors is long and windy, but these are the ones I read repeatedly.

One of the differences between Mocha Memoirs and other small presses that publish similar content is our dedication to publishing speculative works with people of color as protagonists. While this is not our main focus, we love a good story above all else, we do seek to promote those works that may not receive publication from more traditional or mainstream publishers. Another distiction is our continued promotion and acceptance of smaller works. We accept short stories and novellas for electronic publication.

For people seeking to publication, my best advice is to read our guidelines. Everything we're looking for is on our guidelines page. If they have questions, they should query before sending something inappropriate.

Our ideal submissions is one that adheres to the guidelines, tells a great story, is proofread and edited, and falls within our genre guidelines.

Most often when submitters send in their manuscripts, they ignore our word count policy, or tell us up front they have no intentions of promoting their titles. The biggests error resides in the submitter not reading our guidelines and sending in stories that are inappropriate or not for our publication.

We do like to have a brief biography and abbrevated list of previous publications. We do like cover letters, but they do not have to be separate from the emailed submission. The cover letter can be within the body of the email.

The amount of a piece I read before I reject it varies.If the manuscript is riddled with grammatical errors early on or shifts between point-of-view without proper structure, I will reject it without reading more. If a story doesn't capture my interest, I may reject it outright without completely reading the entire story. Most often I read through to the end. If I am on the fence about the piece, I'll select another editor to read it and we discuss whether the story's short comings are fixable and if we want to invest in those fixes or return it to the author.

We read the story and if it is a good one, we publish it.