Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Tales from the Guild, Volume I: Music to Your Ears

Publishing and Marketing
#1

Submissions are closed!

I would just like to thank everyone that submitted to this project once again. I can say that I personally have learned a TON from this project as a writer, and editor, a reviewer, and a project organizer. It’s my first time hosting (or even submitting to) an anthology. You’ve all been extremely supportive and lets hope that support continues for volume II!

Music
- If music be the food of love, sing on. A vibrant anthology of music and how it can mend the deepest wounds and bring together fierce tribes. Music is the universal language, what does it say to you?

To submit, please send your work to furwritersguild@anthroaquatic.com. When you send your story, please Do not post around that you have just submitted something. With the exception of myself, none of the other judges will know who has written what.

The judges for this project are:

  • Myself
  • Friday
  • Frank LeRenard

General submission guidelines (new things added):

  • We are looking for short stories, 3,000 - 10,000 words, no buffer. Target range is between 5,000 - 7,000 words.
  • Works must be anthropomorphic in nature. There may be human and alien characters, but your main character MUST be an anthropomorphic animal. Ferals are allowed as main characters, but they must show some ability to communicate. If you can pull off a non-verbal communication story without being monotone, then be my guest.
  • Submitted pieces must be unreleased, meaning we want first rights to work for this project. To qualify, no more than 10% of a story can have been posted publicly. Personally I’d prefer that stories don’t get posted publicly even after publishing (if we are able to do that), but it’s your story and you can post it how you choose. Though, 10% is more than enough for a teaser to get someone to want the story.
  • I’m looking for general to mature (not adult) stories. This means that there can be descriptive violence and there can be a small amount of sexual description as well. I do not want your stories to centralize on these, however. They should be used as elements to add to the main story and that is it. If 1,500 of your 5,000 words are used to describe the positions and motions of one character thrusting into another, your story will be rejected. If you spend 250 words talking about the bliss of their sex and how it affects them as characters/lovers, that is just fine.
  • The stories must have an obvious tie-in to the theme.
  • The deadline for submissions is March 15th. There will be no extensions for new submissions past this. I plan to release this even if it’s only novella length.

Other items of note:

  • Unlike some other venues, if your story gets rejected it is by far not the end for it. We will compile a list of some general fixes (not including minor technical issues that I will take care of upon acceptance) for you to make and why. It’ll be up to you to fix the items. After that, you may re-submit as long as there are spots still open. If your story has a LOT of fixing to do before we’d take it, we shall mention that to you. If we feel that the story itself isn’t going anywhere and you should probably attempt something different, we shall tell you. THIS IS THE ONLY TIME WE’LL ISSUE A TOTAL REJECTION FROM THE START. If you have a question about a comment that any of us have made, please send your questions to me. I will ask the question to the appropriate party.
  • We will begin judging as soon as each story is sent to us, and I shall email you with our judgment.
  • You may only have one piece accepted to this project. If you get something accepted and want to make edits/want to submit something different, feel free to do so.
  • I may have a publisher interested in this. That’s all I can say for now; details to come!
  • I can now offer payment! Any stories that get accepted will receive payment at 1/4 cent per word at the time that the project is wrapped up. That exact date is still to be announced, but I’m looking for that to be sometime around the end of March/beginning of April. I’d love to do more, but this will most likely be all I can manage for the first project. Future projects will hopefully receive more as all future royalty payments for this project will going into a pool to pay out authors in future projects.

If you have any general questions or comments, feel free to ask them here.

#2

General questions:

Do you have any format preferences? Such as: should stories be submitted as attached RTF files or DOC files, or should they be included in the e-mail itself? How about fonts: Courier New, Times Roman, 10 point, 12 point, or anything goes? Line spacing: double or single? Margins: one inch all around, or does it matter? And of course the eternal question: italics or underlining?

Mike, Asking

#3

Rtf, 12 pt and double spaces would be lovely. Really doesn’t matter, though. We will adjust the fonts however we want to read them.

#4

Quick question, mostly for me but it will presumably apply to others: what are the restrictions (if any) on language? In other words, how much swearing is allowed?
I intend to submit something, but my dialogue always ends up with a number of four-letter words.

#5

As the pieces are allowed to be mature without hitting into the full-fledged adult category, swearing is allowed. This includes derogatory language as well, though I’d say just don’t make this kind of language TOO abundant. If your character(s) is an uneducated, foul-mouthed pain-in-the-ass, then feel free to make sure the readers know that.

#6

Do we have a rough idea of when the deadline will be?

#7

The hopeful in me would say sometime around January. The realist in me says sometime decently past that.

Let’s go with the former.

#8

Capital, thank you.

#9

Looks like a fun project! I’ll have to keep trucking along with my submission. Thanks for the opportunity and I hope this grows into something much larger.

Good luck everyone!

Rot

#10

Updated with more items, including that everyone with a story in will officially get paid! Hurray!

#11

Another update:
Any story that we deem acceptable for the anthology with fixes, we will give you two weeks from the date I email you back with our thoughts to send in your fixes.

Also, apologies for the outstanding stories (for the sake of unbiased judging, please keep yourselves anonymous). Friday picked now to be bombarded with school work.

#12

Yes, I apologize. When I volunteered for judging I made it clear that there would be two times I’d be be too busy to handle judging duties, and that was the first two weeks of December… and now. Bear with me, I’m hoping to get through it this weekend. Until then, two tests and two major projects to handle.

#13

DEADLINE IS EXTENDED UNTIL MARCH 15th! This will be a strict deadline for new submissions. If you haven’t submitted it by 11:59pm EST on March 15th, it will not be accepted. This does not apply to those submitting fixes we have requested.

#14

I’ll try if I can get my other stuff done before then.

#15

Just wanted to post in here to thank everyone that submitted once again. Going to have a much better product then we originally feared we might with our 4 submission for the first, what, 2 months?

I’d also like to go out and say that I’ve reviewed everything. I’m the good judge. =)

#16

You win the ribbon! Muahaha. But seriously. Sounds like a it was a lot of reading, so I’m impressed. I’m excited to see what the anthology ends up looking like… :))

#17

I’m close to done. Learning a lot, both about writing and making anthologies. It’s a good experience and I can’t wait for you guys to see how it ends up nervous wiggling

#18

All I see is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLRtcm32Dp0

#19

Everyone that sent something should now be notified as to their story’s status.

I have some great news for everyone that has gotten a story accepted. While the payment still isn’t grand, I have managed to increase payment from a quarter of a cent per word to half a cent per word.

Thanks again to everyone that submitted. This has been my first anthology project (on any sides of the coin) and I’m happy to have gotten so many wonderful submissions. I know there were a LOT of complaints about the topic but you guys managed to pull out some REALLY unique stories.

Can’t wait until volume II!
Oh. I should probably finishing working on volume I. sticks a red pen in both hands and gets to work

#20

It sounded like you’d found a publisher to handle the anthology when it’s done. Can you say which publisher it is? Also, do you have any idea of a timeline for when the anthology will come out?