“As Fine” First Story Sale for August for Eggplant Productions

“Inspired by such fantasy libraries as those found in Robin McKinley’s Beauty and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, Eggplant Literary Productions presents  MISCELLANEA:  A TRANSDIMENSIONAL LIBRARY.  The shelves will be filled with books of the other:  books that have never existed and that haven’t been written yet.  What I am looking for are excerpts from such books.”  So begin the guidelines from Raechel Henderson of Eggplant Literary Productions for an unusual market for literary flash, “excerpts from fiction works, otherworldly recipes, snatches of poetry, faux reviews of imagined books, articles from cryptozoological texts, parapsychology manuals, works written in fairy languages, pictograms or mathematical equations, footnotes, even dedications are fair game.  Let’s get creative here.”

As it happens, I’m not a stranger to MISCELLANEA, having published a story fragment of something like 300 words (the maximum amount that will be accepted), “The Cage,” with them last year (cf. April 5 and February 25 2012).  It’s kind of neat too, accessed as if via an old-style library catalog file card.  So this spring when I found they’d opened for submissions again, I sent them a 75-word all-dialogue snatch from what might be a fairy tale, “As Fine As Frogs’ Hair.”  Or maybe a dialogue with a reporter from something like a Fairyland Newspaper trying to find out the facts behind what could become such a tale.

Be that as it may, word came back, with a contract, late Tuesday night:  “Thank you for your submission of ‘As Fine As Frogs’ Hair.’  I really like this piece and would like to publish it in MISCELLANEA:  A TRANSDIMENSIONAL LIBRARY.”

And for now, that’s all that’s been written.