Well! I’m at WorldCon finally, after both travels and travails. On the first day of the con, we realized a logistical snag: I had new business cards made up early in the summer, before our new literary sf/f venture Ligature Works was more than a vague idea for the future. So we don’t have any kind of hand-out to give people re: that. In lieu of that, I’ll leave this post at the top of my main blog (which is referenced on the business cards).

So: Ligature Works is seeking original, never-before-published works of science fiction, fantasy, and otherwise speculative poetry and prose. We pay a flat rate of $25 for anything we publish. It’s a nominal fee, we realize. We are just starting out, but it’s important that we don’t ask other artists to create for nothing. Since we do not offer pro rates, we don’t require pro terms: our period of exclusivity lasts only until the end of the month following publication. So with our first issue set for the last day in September, the rights revert back on November 1, following the end of October.

Our submissions window for the first issue runs through all of August. There will be one for the next issue either last quarter of 2016 or first quarter of 2017, depending on how our post-mortem on our first issue goes. We’ll also need to talk with each other about whether we want a long window or a short window with a long reading period, or just take rolling submissions. So I can’t tell you when they’ll re-open or for how long, just that they will. This is all an experiment so far.

Detailed submission guidelines along with as good an idea of what we’re looking for as we can convey without a previous canon to reference may be found at http://www.ligatureworks.com/submissions. I know they’re long; Jack has promised to help me bullet point them for the next issue, but they are detailed for a reason. We seek to take the guesswork or element of “…am I doing this right?” away from new and easily startled authors by providing reasonably precise instructions.

We have not used the more fiddly bits as a scalpel to trim away the slush, but things having to do with the element of anonymity within your submission are ironclad. Apart from helping ensure we can screen against our own implicit biases, the world of speculative poetry is not a large one, so it’s good to be able to consider a poem without knowledge of the poet. If something in your experience is relevant to the work, feel free to tell us about it, as described in the submission guide.

One final caveat: The window is more than half over now and we have received enough works that gave us the immediate editorial grabby hands. It is very likely that we’ll close the month with more pieces than we have the budget to buy, especially as our first issue is entirely self-funded. If anyone wants to help fund more pieces, you can throw some money at me via PayPal. Just put in a note that it’s for Ligature Works. We’ll work out something more formal for future issues.