Welcome to The Lorelei Signal


The Lorelei Signal is a quarterly SF/Fantasy electronic magazine - one that will feature strong / complex female characters. This does not mean your female character has to be the main hero or villain in the story. What it does mean is no shrinking violets, or women who serve only to get into trouble so the male hero can rescue them.


Each issue I hope to publish:
7 short stories, 1 flash fiction piece and 2 poems
that meet the following guidelines:

My primary guideline is simple:
Write a good fantasy story with strong/complex characters.

What I am NOT looking for - erotica / slash / or other such stories.
Although well written love scenes that are IMPORTANT to the story will be considered on a story-by-story basis.

1) Stories should be no longer than 10,000 words.
However, tell the story - if it takes more than 10,000 words to tell the story properly so be it.
Just try to cut it down if possible - but remember the story is the important part.

2) Stories must feature 3 dimensional / complex characters.

3) I will accept reprints as long as it has been at least 1 year since the story was previously published,
rights have reverted back and you tell me where it previously appeared.
These will be limited to 2 per issue.

4) Please keep the graphic gore down to a minimum
(only what's needed for the story).

5) Please keep the obscene language to a bare minimum
(again, only what's needed for the story).

6) Simultaneous Submissions will be considered IF:
a) You tell me up front
b) You inform me immediately if the story has been accepted elsewhere
If I have too many occurrences of finding out a story was accepted somewhere else when I contact an author to tell them I would like to accept their story for The Lorelei Signal - I will no longer accept simultaneous submissions.

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7) Submit a max of 1 story or 5 poems during the submission period.

 

FORMATTING:

If you have a Fantasy story you think meets the theme of this magazine then send it to me via email as a .rtf attachment.
Please note: I use Word as my wording processing program - if you save your file in Works, I will not be able to open it.

I am no longer accepting stories in the body of an email, because too many stories are coming in without being properly formatted in plain text and then cut and pasted in the email - this has caused too many headaches in dealing with cleaning up stories.

Make sure your story meets these formatting guidelines:

1) Do not indent

2) Single spaced with an extra space between paragraphs.
Do not use the paragraph spacing option, use carriage returns
(hit the enter key twice between paragraphs)

3) Use _to indicate italics_
Please do not place an underscore around every word in a section you are indicating as being italicized.
Only place them at the beginning and end of the italicized section.

4) Make sure your contact information is on the manuscript.
I print the stories out to read them and it helps if I have your information on the manuscript
instead of trying to wade through the emails to match your manuscript to your email.

 

5) Please use double quotation marks "xx" to denote direct dialogue. (This is a house style request)

 

6) Please use xxx said not said xxx as the format for dialogue tags. (This is a house style request)

I don't want to have to reject a story because of formatting, but if I have problems reading it due to
formatting or will have to spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning it up, I will reject it.

Please note: stories that are badly formatted automatically go the bottom of the review pile and may not be
reviewed if I find enough acceptable stories that are properly formatted and readable


RESPONSE TIMES:

I normally wait until the end of each of the reading periods before reading the stories that have come in.
So, if you submit early in that period you will have to wait a few weeks before I start on the submissions.

Response times will depend on the number of submissions being received,
my personal time schedule as well as any writing deadline's I may have.
However, I do hope to keep response times down to less than 2 months.



RIGHTS:

Author's grant to The Lorelei Signal one-time rights to publish in electronic and print format.

Authors are encouraged to post a short excerpt on their own website with a link to the Lorelei Signal.

Please note if you are not sending a reprint this does constitute first rights for your story if it is accepted.


SUBMISSION:

Please title your email as LORELEI SUBMISSION: (the title of your story)
Please follow the formatting information listed above

Please include a short bio and author picture (if you have one)
and a 1-3 sentence synopsis of the story to be used on the TOC page of the magazine


Something to be aware of, stories used in magazines such as this, are a matter personal taste.
While I may not accept your story for the magazine, it does not constitute a personal rejection of you --
only that your story may not have met my personal vision for the zine.

To submit to The Lorelei Signal:

Send your submission as a .rtf attachment to submissions@loreleisignal.com

(Do not send as a link to a Google Doc - you must actually attach the file)

 

Authors you can check to see if your submission has been received by checking the submission status page

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EDITING

All stories will be edited prior to publication.

In most cases this will be light cleanup editing

In the event major edits are needed - the author will be contacted prior to publication.

PAYMENT:

Authors will receive
$15.00 for short stories
$5.00 for poems and flash (<1000 wds) fiction pieces.
$5.00 for reprints

All payments will be made via PayPal. If you do not want to obtain and maintain a PayPal account so you can receive payments, please do not submit to us. We are making no other forms of payment or reimbursement at this time.

Payment will be made before publication


SUBMISSION PERIODS:

The Lorelei Signal is a quarterly magazine
scheduled for publication during the following months:

January / April / July & October

Our reading periods for each issue will be

Jan 15th - Feb 15th (Jul - Sep Issue)
April 15th - May 15th (Oct - Dec Issue)
July 15th - Aug 15th (Jan - Mar Issue)
Oct 15th - Nov 15th (Apr - Jun Issue)

As I do not wish to end up with a backlog of stories waiting to be published,
each issue will be filled from the stories submitted during the noted submission period for that issue.


ADVERTISING:

For information on advertising in The Lorelei Signal, click here.


Thank you for your interest in the Lorelei Signal and I hope to hear from you -
even more I hope to receive a wonderful story from you.

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