Format: We'll accept your submission in the form of an *odt, *rtf, or *doc email attachment, sent to editors@fantastique-unfettered.com . Please follow standard manuscript format. Truthfully, we're not too picky, but plenty of markets ARE. Why not take this opportunity to practice good form? There is also the thought: so many of your peers don't take the time to format their work according to these standards and when you do, you further distinguish yourself.
Recommendation: The bulk of our editorial staff and slush readers are products of writer workshops. We suggest it is a fundamental part of the process of producing great fiction. Has your work been revised and/or edited based on feedback from a couple skilled critters? OWW, (Online Writer Workshop) allows you to participate before committing. Now's a good time to join!
Sim/Multi Subs/etc.: We are OK with Sim Subs, but do let us know if your story is accepted elsewhere. Except for poems, no multiple submissions. If you receive a rejection, please wait a week before sending us something new. Don't send new subs in as replies to a prior rejection: that thread has already been tagged as 'rejected'.
Response Time: We will reply to most subs within 30 days. Expect a form rejection when we do not accept your story. If you want feedback, let us know: we will do so if we have something useful to offer. Those stories that make it to 'round two' could be held for a maximum of three month, but you will hear from us well before that and know the general status of your story. If you've not heard from us after 6 weeks, do check with us.
Rights & Licensing: We buy First World English Rights and publish your story under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. Click over to the Attribution and Licensing tab to find out more (and that's not an idle suggestion: you are endeavoring to 'copyleft' your story and set it free to the world).
The Big Idea: Your story's Original Incarnation, will appear in a print edition of Fantastique Unfettered, along with various electronic versions. After the publication of the subsequent issue, your story will be added to the Fantastique Factory, our online library of CC-BY-SA fiction. We are representing this as an idea factory for other media, and any paydays that follow will belong to the writer of each tale. Fantastique Unfettered is merely a facilitator. Of course the little guys can take those stories, read them, print them on tee-shirts, etc. We don't think it's a problem. If we are wrong, this will have been a noble experiment. If we are right, it could turn out to be a great method for writers to share their work and get interested eyes pointed back at their continued output. Come along: let's see if we can do something revolutionary.
Length: We are primarily looking for stories in the 4-6k range, but accept short stories from 4k to 10k. Our pay rate has been updated with rates for flash fiction from 750-1500 words per story.
Pay rate: We will pay a flat rate of $33.00 per story for work that is 4k words or more. We prefer work in the 4-6k range. We will pay a flat rate of $15.00 per story for flash fiction from 750 to 1500 words. We are not interested in stories shorter than 750 words. We will provide a pdf version of the magazine to contributors (that are published in the specific issue) (we may have other electronic versions in the future as well).
Pay Rate Exception: If you are a "name author" who is interested in publishing with FU but require a higher rate of pay, please contact us. If we can accommodate you we will. This may seem unfair, folks, but the truth is you benefit from being published alongside someone who can demand a higher rate, so if it happens, it's a good thing for you too.
Method of Payment:
We deal exclusively through Paypal. Your ability to receive payment via Paypal is a condition of publication.
Poetry Specific: UPDATED... Submit up to five poems at a time to poetry@fantastique-unfettered.com We'll pay .03 a word for poems, with a minimum payment of $5.00 and a max of $10.00 per poem. You need not wait seven days to submit new poems once you hear back from us. We are unlikely to publish poetry more than one or two pages in length. As to content, we prefer The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to Jabberwocky or The Raven.
The Subjective:
We are a part of M-Brane Press, so overt stories of science fiction should go to M-Brane SF. For example, that would include the story in which the dangers of cloning are explored, or the hero saves the day through his understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. That said, there's going to be some overlap in terms of genre content. A literary Vance-ish tale is a very possible sell with me, as is the kind of thoughtful and difficult to classify work that Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany, and William Burroughs often created.
New Weird, Old Weird, Magic Realism, Slipstream, Alt Western, Planetary Romance, Surrealism, Mystery, Urban Fantasy, Literary Horror, Post Lovecraft, Aether Age, Interstitial, Steampunk... it is all welcome. We do not want Fantastique Unfettered to become a magazine that typically features a certain subgenre, but rather a source for great stories from all of the above and more.
Well written work is important. And while we will publish mainstream, plotless stories if they seem to fit, the bulk of what we publish will fall into a genre of the fantastic and those stories, successfully told, tend to have plots that grow from character. Give us characters that we care about. Successful plots grow from the needs of the characters and are fueled by rising and/or foreshadowed conflict. See Lajos Egris' The Art of Dramatic Writing for in-depth guidance on these points.
Bottom line, we'll publish stories that touch our hearts. That might sound sappy, but if they don't move us, there's just no point. So don't play it safe: you know the story you've been meaning to write. The one that's going to hurt coming out. That's the story that belongs with FU.
Is there anything we don't want? We're hesitant to limit anyone...
Strange Horizon's list of common plots is a good thing to read over. And we'll just add, we're gonna side with Clive Barker's "Okay, maybe there ARE some limits." and note that we'll not publish anything that glorifies or revels in violence, rape, or abuse. Violence is a constant in genre fiction, and we'd have it no other way. AND, there is well-handled and there is exploitation. Not sure how to define it, but we know it when we see it, and it has no place here.
Anything we want?
If you are writing in an existing American (as in the continents) tradition, point that out to us. We'd like to encourage such work (magic realism is an obvious example). Alt. Westerns of the sort exemplified by King's Dark Tower series and K.J. Bishop's The Etched City are nice. Aether Age stories need not be early timeline, but once you read the anthology you'll probably be able to divide up the stories into ones that would work in M-Brane and those that would fit here. If I think your AeA story is good but too SFnal for us, I'll refer it over to M-Brane, so pretty hard to go wrong.
Contact Information:
For inquiries: editors@fantastique-unfettered.com
For submissions: editors@fantastique-unfettered.com
Website: http://www.fantastique-unfettered.com
