The closing dates of the open anthologies have been extended. Please see the Open Anthologies page for more information.

A note from the editors of the Magic in Trafficking/Trafficking in Magic anthology:

The submissions period for the Trafficking in Magic/Magicking in Traffic anthology is coming into the home stretch. We’ve had some amazing submissions already, but we need quite a few more to make a book. Another editor has told us that, based on what we’ve seen already, we’re going to be deluged on February 28th, when the new deadline comes. I hope he’s right.

In the meantime, I imagine there are writers out there with stories that are almost ready to send, some with stories still in progress, some barely started, and some who haven’t come up with an idea. It is at that last group that this post is directed.

I’m hesitant to write this at all, because Murphy’s law tells me that somewhere there’s an absolutely brilliant urban fantasy story in a film noir style about a teenage vampire detective who drives a Hummer and is in love with a mortal girl who’s attending a school for magicians while working a night job in the morgue but doesn’t realize she’s the chosen one until she takes a job at a strip club, where an old gypsy notices the sword-shaped birthmark on her left breast that marks her as The Chosen One–and inevitably that author will read this post and decide to send something else that doesn’t work as well, or perhaps nothing at all.

So, if you have a story that’s almost ready to send, don’t read this post. If you tend to get jammed up about what other people want, don’t read this post. If you have a brilliant story but are concerned that one or two of the items in the list above hits close to home, go ahead and read it but take it with a grain of salt. But if you’ve got a few things that just might fit, but you can’t decide, or if you’re looking for an inspiration or a pointer on which way to go, or if you just want to find a way to game the system, this post is for you.

Things we want more of:

Other genres: Don’t get me wrong, I love urban fantasy, and we’re open to more of it. But we’ve seen a lot of that, and not enough of slipstream, surrealism, magical realism, high fantasy, low fantasy, buddy comedies, college road-trip stories, present-tense second-person narratives, or other genres we haven’t thought of yet. OK, I don’t know if we really need a buddy comedy, but we would like to see more variety, and more stories that push the boundaries.

Other traffic: As with urban fantasy, we also are happy to have more stories about roads and cars, but we don’t have nearly enough stories about planes, trains, boats, hot air balloons, bikes, rickshaws, rollerblades, elevators, foot traffic, office traffic, starships, velocipedes, ornithopters, dirigibles, skateboards, wagon trains, pneumatic tubes, wind riders, subways, submarines, tornadoes, teleportation, taxicabs, umbrellas. If it gets you from point A to point B in a way that we haven’t already thought of, we want to see it.

Other magic: We’ve gotten some amazing Faustian bargains–stories where someone makes a deal that he or she probably shouldn’t make, and gains some power. And we’re open to more. But we want a spectrum. Show us sacred magic, natural magic, random magic, overtapped magic, practical magic, silly magic, grand magic, petty magic, magic that ought to work but doesn’t, magic that shouldn’t work but does. If it isn’t on this list, we want to see it too.

Poetry: We may regret mentioning this, but we want to see more poetry. So far we’ve received around 40 short stories and only a handful of poems (of which we will be accepting one and rejecting the others). We don’t need a lot of poetry, and it’s got to be good, but we would like some really amazing poems to round this book out.

What we want less of:

Faux noir: Film noir was never my favorite genre, but the beauty of the form was the exquisite camerawork with a limited palette. If your narrator talks like Humphrey Bogart, then we want something to balance it out–either a subtle beauty to balance the point of view, or a grittiness so pervasive that we can actually feel the sweat. If your noir-style story is as good as Casablanca, we’re going to accept it, but if it’s only as good as The Postman Always Rings Twice, then you may have better luck elsewhere.

Self-conscious good and evil: What makes evil truly sinister is often that it doesn’t see itself as evil. What makes good truly compelling is when an imperfect person struggles without clear signposts. Think about Huck Finn deciding to help Jim escape not because it was the right thing to do but because his heart told him to do it even though he thought it was wrong. Or Oskar Schindler breaking down at the end of Schindler’s List, distraught about how many more people he could have saved. I cannot stress this enough–what makes a compelling story is doubt, and hard choices. Think Firefly or House, rather than Charmed.

Hummers. Yes, they waste gas. Yes, they could probably drive through a storm of bowling balls. Yes, they overcompensate so bad they’re even named for a sexual act. My only qualm here is that we’ve already accepted two stories involving Hummers. There’s room for more, but eventually there won’t be. So if your story needs to include a character driving a hummer, that’s OK, but if another gas guzzler or paramilitary vehicle will do the job, please try that instead.

Of course, if you’ve been getting ready to submit something that doesn’t match these suggestions, we’d still like to see it. I once submitted a story along with a cover letter that enumerated the ways it skirted the journal’s list of things not to send (“See, the cats don’t actually talk, and the evisceration takes place off-scene…”). But if you’re still writing and looking for what to do, or if you’re deciding between two things that might fit the bill, then I hope these thoughts will help.

Hope to hear from you soon!