Lorelei Signal - Guidelines

THE LORELEI SIGNAL

Submission Guidelines

Welcome to The Lorelei Signal

The Lorelei Signal will be a quarterly Fantasy electronic magazine - one that will feature strong 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 "print"; 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 a strong female character as one of the main characters.

What I am NOT looking for - erotica / slash / or other such stories.
Although well written love scenes that are IMPORTANT to the story may 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 a strong female character.

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.

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) I will also consider Science Fiction.

7) Humor similar to what has appeared in the "Chicks in Chain Mail" series of Anthologies will also be considered.

8) 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.

All stories received will be considered first for The Lorelei Signal and also for Sorcerous Signals.
Please do not submit to both e-zines

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 formated 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 formating guidelines:

1) Do not indent

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

I will not respond to submissions deleted for failing to properly follow the guidelines.
I don't want to have to reject a story because of formating,
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 acceptable stories that are properly formatted and
readable

RESPONSE TIMES:

I plan on waiting 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.
I will make every effort to respond to each story with something other than a form letter.

RIGHTS:

Author's grant to The Lorelei Signal one-time rights to publish in electronic and print format.
We request 6 months exclusivity, after which they are free to market the story elsewhere.
Authors are also 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.

The Lorelei Signal also requests non-exclusive print anthology rights for possible inclusion in an end of year
Anthology issue.
If an author's story is selected for this anthology they will receive $10.00.
If an author's story is not selected for the Anthology covering the year their story appeared, The Lorelei Signal no
longer has any claim to the anthology rights without the permission of the author.

SUBMISSION:

Please provide the following information in a "cover letter" at the beginning of your submission:
Your name (pen name if desired) / e-mail address and web-site if you have one.

Please title your email as LORELEI SUBMISSION: (the title of your story)

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 an .rtf attachment to submissions@loreleisignal.com

PAYMENT:

Authors will receive $5.00 for short stories and $2.00 for poems and flash (<1000 wds) fiction pieces.

All payments will be made through PayPal.

READING PERIODS:

The Lorelei Signal is currently 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 reading 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.

PRINT ISSUES

WolfSinger Publications also produces a print magazine - Mystic Signals - which will
include the stories published in both Sorcerous Signals and The Lorelei Signal.

For each issue of Mystic Signals, I will be selecting a story to appear exclusively in the print issue, with only a
brief teaser online - if you do NOT want your story to be considered as the print issue only story for that
quarter, please let me know with your submission.

E-mail the Editor

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