Orca Literary Journal January 2025 Newsletter
Planning Your Novel with Elizabeth George
Happy New Year to all our followers!
Elizabeth George is Our Guest for the Next Craft Call—Planning Your Novel
Well-known novelist Elizabeth George will participate our January Craft Call. We’ll be talking about planning your novel, something she knows a lot about. Elizabeth has written dozens of them, including the Inspector Lynley series, which was made into a BBC program that also aired in the states on PBS. She has also written several books on the craft of writing.
The Zoom session will be held on Saturday, January 11, at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Craft Calls are open to our paid subscribers.
Subscribers get access to all of Orca’s back issues. They also get free submissions anytime, even when the free submission portal is closed. Paid subscriptions are $50 per year, and the revenue goes toward our goal of raising the amount we are able to pay contributors.
Submissions Open for the Next Speculative and Literary Issues
The deadline is April 15. Send us your best short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
No-Fee Submissions Open Again
The no-fee submission portals are open again. Please remember that we have 100 free submissions each month, and they usually fill up very quickly. You can also submit anytime for the standard $3, which may give a less fortunate writer a free slot. We’re open for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Eleventh Hour Literary… It’s About Perseverance
As writers we sometimes create work that we find very difficult to place. We may submit a story to literary journals dozens of times without getting it published. We know it’s not typical for one literary journal to promote another, but we want to give a shout out to a new publication called Eleventh Hour Literary. It’s produced out of SUNY Binghamton, and it specializes in publishing work that has been rejected at least 10 times by other journals. It’s a great concept, and one that is definitely appreciated. It doesn’t hurt that our senior editor, Joe Ponepinto, recently had a story accepted by them. It was a piece he had been working on since 2008, but he never stopped believing in it. It’s nice to know someone else now does as well.
Really Shockingly Bad Things and Other Stories
Sam Asher’s collection of short stories is out today from our book publishing arm, 55 Fathoms. Those of you who follow our literary journal may recognize Sam as one of our best-loved writers. Here’s what writers are saying about it:
Creepily and beautifully strange, Asher’s stories disturb, amaze, and move you with vivid characters across shifting realities; Kate Maruyama, author of The Collective, Bleak Houses, and Harrowgate.
I laughed, I basked, I wept. With blade-honed wit and the biggest heart imaginable, Sam Asher conjures beauty out of dystopia, grace out of grimness. This book will scoop out your insides and set them on fire; Jenny Williams, author of The Atlas of Forgotten Places.
These tales were something like the world’s most lovingly crafted hammer: heavy, shining, beautiful, and hitting right between the eyes; Cynthia Gómez, author of The Nightmare Box and Other Stories.
This Week’s Pet Peeve
Cover letters that say something like, “Thank you for your kind words about my prior submission.” When we see statements like that we try to remember the author and what they may have sent us previously. Often we can’t. Sometimes we look it up and find that we never sent kind words or that the author has never even submitted to us previously. In fact, we’ve taken to thinking this is more of a submitter’s trick, trying to get editors to think the writer has been close to publication in the past and that they deserve more serious consideration. But it’s a moot point. We consider every submission based on its own merit, not what the writer has published or come close with previously. Same goes for phony credits. When we see publishing credits that include some top tier journals, sometimes we try to find what the author has published in those venues. Sometimes we can, and sometimes we can’t. Frankly, if we find you’ve lied to us in the cover letter we read your work already predisposed to decline.
This Month’s Blog: Is Your Fiction an Affirmation or an Exploration?
There’s a huge difference between stories that have a predictable plot and conclusion, and those which are more open ended, inviting readers to explore an issue along with it. Read it here.
Quick Reminders:
Want feedback for your submission? We have two tiers of feedback for short fiction and nonfiction at Orca. Both are reasonably priced. Find out more here.
Reader Centered Writing, by Orca senior editor Joe Ponepinto, is a collection of essays and blogs with a different perspective on creative writing. As the title indicates, understanding how readers perceive your work is critical to getting published. The book is available in print and Kindle on Amazon.
Support Orca by purchasing a PDF copy (a mere $4) or a print issue ($11.99).