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Editor Interview: HelloHorror

This interview is provided for archival purposes. The listing is not currently active.

Q: Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.

A: Psychological horror

Q: What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

A: Anyone who is putting in the time and effort required by publishing, no matter how polished, or even unrefined, deserves the admiration of all of their peers in this industry. Even if you personally dislike their subject matter, the fruits of their labor are enriching the lives of others, and these publishers often see little to no financial gain from providing this service to the masses. It's not a selfless industry, by far, there's a lot of reward in it, but it's a hard job. We should all try to spread the love, rather than focusing on a limited scope.

Q: If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?

A: HelloHorror has several repeat offenders who we are always happy to have return to our pages. Poets Holly Day and Lyn Lifshin, horror noir author Gary Clifton, novelist Chris Castle, and one of our latest newcomers who I intend to pester until we get another amazing short story from her, Joanna Koch. We have many more recurring authors beyond this list. We recognize great work when we see it and we try to be as minimal as possible when it comes to suggesting changes to submissions that we have accepted, and I think authors really appreciate that.

Q: What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?

A: Put simply, we try to avoid gore. Fear originates in the mind, not the body, and we believe gore is, frankly, played out, and not as effective as alternative means of eliciting fear. We try to look for authors who understand this and use the psychological, the surreal or the unknown to draw on the fears of their readers. We try to only allow explicit gore in a story if it's serving that aforementioned purpose.

Q: What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

A: 1.) Read at least a couple of pieces from the latest issue that are in your intended format. As in, if you are planning on submitting a short story, read a couple of short stories. Same goes for poems, micros, etc.
2.) Proofread your work before submission. I sometimes receive as many as fifty submissions per day and recognizing that an author expects me to do all of the work when it comes to grammar, punctuation, and spelling is an easy, easy, easy excuse to reject the work, no matter how good it might otherwise be.
3.) Read the submissions guidelines completely and follow them. It's only a page of data, which is probably a lot less than you're expecting me to read.
4.) We are not a literary critique service. If your story is rejected and you want to know why; you are certainly welcome to ask. If you decide then that you'd like to debate the reasons, we will not reply and we will block your address.

Q: Describe the ideal submission.

A: The ideal submission would be emailed to us as a word/doc/txt file, be appropriate to the genre (Horror, if you haven't guessed), be reasonably free of grammatical errors, and succeed at either creeping us out, leaving us spooked, or giving us the heebie-jeebies. Other possibly desirable responses would be feeling unnerved, unsettled or discombobulated. Extra bonus points if little to no gore is used to achieve these effects, and extra extra bonus points if the effects are achieved instead by using psychological and surreal elements.

Q: What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

A: Asking a litany of questions rather than reading the submissions guidelines.
Pasting their work into the body of the email and then attaching their bio as a file. Per our guidelines, we prefer the file, so if you can use the file for everything, do that, please.
Arguing with us or attempting to insult us in response to a rejection. We do not accept any future submissions from such individuals, and there are many instances of authors being rejected initially and then going on to have future submissions accepted.

Q: How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

A: None of this matters to us. We need a third person bio to be published with your work if we decide to go that route, but we don't even read that until we've made a decision about your submission. We read the work and we decide based on the work. That's all. The less we have to sift through to get to your work, the better. All we want is a short bio so that we don't have to ask for it later if your work is accepted.

Q: If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?

A: I do not read every piece to the end. Some submissions are just so obviously not a right fit that a full read-through isn't necessary.

Q: What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?

A: We will check for plagiarism and use the same tools to ensure that the work hasn't been previously published elsewhere. If the former is the case, we will reject the work and we will accept no further submissions from the 'author'. If the latter is the case, we will give the author an opportunity to take the work down from whatever site it's currently published to (often this is facebook or a blog).

Q: What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

A: It's nothing fancy. I have a Gmail folder dedicated to unread submissions. I read through them from oldest to newest. If there's no reason to reject the story outright (excessive gore, extremely offensive subject matter, not at all horror), I mark my decision and forward the work to my other editors (usually two, sometimes three), and they will read the submission and let me know their decision. Our submission wait time is generally long (can be as long as six months at times) and this is why. We count the votes and that's what decides who is accepted into the journal. My vote is sometimes the tiebreaker, but, more often than not, we're working with three editors so there isn't any need for that.

Q: How important do you feel it is for publishers to embrace modern technologies?

A: Our entire process; submission, publication, and promotion, is electronic. Period. Twitter has been a godsend for finding new readers and keeping a large number of people interested in our journal between issues. I don't think it's important for publishers to remain traditional unless that's what they want. What's most important is that publishers remain in existence. For me, that means making everything as easy, streamlined and waste-free as possible.

Q: How much do you edit an accepted piece prior to publication?

A: As little as possible. Authors are nearly always consulted before publication if we intend to make any major changes.

Q: Do you nominate work you've published for any national or international awards?

A: Not usually, but if a writer requests such a nomination, we are happy to oblige. We don't publish anything that we would second guess.