Writing Contest: The Last Line

Congratulations to the winners of this week’s writing contest! They are listed below. But first, a bit about our contest series. Every week we are going to have a contest on our Facebook Page. The contests will change from week to week, but the winners will always be published in the magazine. The contest winner…

Arcadia Publishing: Open to Book Proposals

Updated November 6th, 2025: In July Arcadia sold content to an AI company but did allow authors to opt out of it. You can learn more here. sold access to the books they published to an AI developer for scraping Arcadia Publishing is an unusual kind of publishing company. In fact, the first thing that…

Writing Prompt: Groundhog Hour

Groundhog Day is a movie about a TV weatherman played by Bill Murray. His character relives the same day over and over again for almost the entirety of the movie. Only he knows that he is reliving the day over and over again; everyone else around him resets, and they do not know they are…

The Ten Word Poem Contest

Congratulations to the winners of this week’s writing contest! They are listed below. But first, a bit about our contest series. Every week we are going to have a contest on our Facebook Page. The contests will change from week to week, but the winners will always be published in the magazine. The contest winner…

The “Best Memoir Title” Contest

Congratulations to the winners of this week’s writing contest! They are listed below. But first, a bit about our contest series. Every week we are going to have a contest on our Facebook Page. The contests will change from week to week, but the winners will always be published in the magazine. The contest winner…

Shotgun Honey

Shotgun Honey is an online literary journal that has very specific content. They publish only fiction that is under 700 words in length and is in the genre of crime fiction. Within that genre, they like hard-boiled and noir fiction the best. Think of authors like Hammet and Chandler. Although they will accept general crime…

Red Flags: A Guide to Avoiding the Wrong Publishers

Updated February 20th, 2016 This article is all about how to avoid signing a book contract with the wrong publisher. It is hard to find good publishers, and it involves a lot of research just to find a legitimate publisher that accepts work if you do not have an agent. However, there are great options…

Beachwalk Press: Closed

UPDATED MARCH 30th, 2021: No web presence online. Consider defunct. Beachwalk Press is an independent publisher that was started in 2011 by Pamela Tyner. They largely publish romantic eBooks, but some of their books have been released in print as well. Most of the books they publish are on the sensual side. They are open…

Writing Prompt: Mad Scientist

Mad Scientists are an established stereotype now and they appear in movies, in TV shows, and books. It is usually hard to take them seriously. Still, they manage to be an enticing theme and many people play with the audience’s expectations. In the TV show Fringe, one of the main characters, Walter, was a mad scientist….

Writing Prompt: Road Trip

I have not been on very many road trips. However I am a big fan of road trip movies. Although I must admit my favorites are all deeply unconventional. They include Wristcutters: A Love Story, Dead Man, and Paris Texas. To give you a better feel for what I mean, Dead Man is the tale…

The One Sentence Pitch Contest

Congratulations to the winners of this week’s writing contest! They are listed below. But first, a bit about our contest series. Every week we are going to have a contest on our Facebook Page. The contests will change from week to week but the winners will always be published in the magazine. The contest winner…

Gemma Media: Open to Query Letters

Updated March 13th, 2020 GemmaMedia is an independent publisher that has managed to get a fair amount of distribution. GemmaMedia focuses on niche markets. They publish “cultural memoir for young people and adults, literary fiction from beloved Irish authors, and current affairs publishing with diversity at the heart of the story”. They are not interested…

Quote of the Week

Quote of the Week

Writing Prompt: A Thousand Years

In Schild’s Ladder, a science fiction novel by Greg Egan, most of the characters live far longer than normal human lifespans. They are immortal, more or less. Some are incorporeal and others have bodies but not necessarily the same ones they were born with. Most of the characters in the book are scientists of some…