Initial responses have now been sent on all the queries I received during the Dragon Moon Press open submissions period. If you have not received either a rejection or a request for a full manuscript, I did not receive your query. Make sure you check the address posted in the submission guidelines and try again.

For a relatively-unadvertised submission period during a month that’s usually hectic for everyone, the volume was encouraging without being overwhelming. It was a great experience and I’ll definitely be doing it again.

The useful stat breakdowns:

Full manuscripts were requested on just under 10% of submissions. Out of that 10%, I am making an offer to one (1) so far. (Yes, that one knows who they are.) I have not yet received or read all requested fulls.

About 25% of submissions did not comply with the posted submission guidelines, with deviations including (in order of frequency): submitting to the wrong address, lack of synopsis, lack of title (oops!), lack of sample pages and use of attachments.

No submissions were rejected for non-compliance. That is to say, I didn’t receive any queries that would have been accepted had they followed the guidelines more closely; the submissions that did not follow the guidelines had other issues which made them unsuitable.

Reasons for rejection, in descending order of frequency:

1. The writing simply wasn’t good enough – Mediocre writing or storytelling, wooden and uncompelling characters; consistently poor grammar and sentence structure, etc. Just not at a publishable level.

2. Major plot flaws too deep to change – The premise was deeply flawed, too predictable or overused without offering anything new or notable, wasn’t compelling, or went in a direction that I didn’t think worked.

3. Too slow to get started, or so heavy-handed at setting up a plot that it all just felt contrived and sloppy – These submissions had fifteen pages to get me hooked and make me care. If nothing happened in those first fifteen, I wasn’t interested enough to keep going, and a customer wouldn’t keep reading, either. There’s some overlap here with #1, but sometimes the story can still be flat and not go anywhere even if the quality of the writing is good.

4. Too similar to something already published. OR, used characters or worlds copyrighted or licensed to someone other than the author, or otherwise contained inherent rights issues – Don’t try to get your fanfic published, kids, unless you’re trying to get it published by whatever company officially licenses it.

5. Not a fit. Non-fiction, true crime, gratuitous torture, sexual torture, sexual slavery and gore, mainstream fiction, spy thrillers, mysteries, and bodice rippers.

6. Good, but not quite there yet. Show me the author’s next one.

The not-so-useful stat breakdowns:

(Trends that had no bearing on acceptance decisions, but are interesting to note)

* Genre breakdown:

54% fantasy / dark fantasy
26% urban fantasy
15% science fiction / speculative fiction
5% outside DMP’s range (non-fic, etc.)

* Gender breakdown: 40% female authors, 60% male.

* Manuscripts utilizing real historical figures as main or important characters: 5

* Manuscripts previously released as podcast fiction: 4

* Manuscripts that compared themselves to Twilight: 3

* Demons and angels were more popular than vampires by a margin of 4:1

* Manuscripts featuring gender-swapping or other body-swapping: 2

* Abrasive or insulting queries: 2

* Manuscripts with prologues: 20%

* Manuscripts submitted in languages other than English: 1

* Countries represented: 10 — a very respectable showing!

Thanks for participating, everyone, and keep writing.

Just as I was sitting down and going over my list of potential blog topics, @paul_e_cooley asked an interesting question over on Twitter and graciously gave me permission to reprint it here.

The Dragon Moon Press guidelines specify fantasy, science fiction, and ‘gentle horror’, so the question, “What’s gentle horror?” was probably inevitable.

While I have a soft spot for the phrase, I didn’t invent it. I wish I could say that I did, but it was already in the guidelines as I inherited them. What it means to me is something that I’ve adopted and adapted as I’ve worked at Dragon Moon and become more familiar with the “feel” of our somewhat eclectic catalog.

Sometimes requirements are vague on purpose. Instead of narrowing things down to a rigid box, phrases are open to interpretation specifically to invite you to bring your own personal definitions of them, and to invite you to be creative and push the boundaries.

Publishers, and this probably won’t surprise you, do like for authors to be creative!

By gentle horror, I don’t mean “Attack of the Killer Zombie Cottonballs”. It has nothing to do with Satin [sic] devouring your soul.

To me, what distinguishes gentle horror is the proportion of plot elements to horror elements. I’m open to manuscripts which have scary and suspenseful elements to them, not all-out frightfests or bloodbaths. I’m looking for horror within the contexts of sci-fi and fantasy, not mainstream thrillers.

I’d consider Weaveworld by Clive Barker (one of my favorite books) to be gentle horror. Contrast it with The Hellbound Heart (the book on which the movie Hellraiser was based). There are still plot elements, to be sure, but horror takes much more of a front seat.

Not that Weaveworld is for the weak of heart, either. Gentle horror doesn’t have to be gentle. Phil Rossi’s Crescent, for example, I consider gentle horror, even though it’s a gritty, harsh story with some explicit adult content and nastyness, and there’s very little that’s gentle about it. But contrast it with Jack Kilborn’s Afraid, which will have you covering your eyes with your own intestines before you even realize you’ve ripped them out.

The point is more that Crescent is a science fiction story with a horror element, not straight horror, not a straight psychological thriller, just like Weaveworld is a dark fantasy story with a strong horror element. Gentle horror doesn’t have to be gentle. It doesn’t have to be safe for children; it doesn’t even have to be safe for work. It just has to have horror as a spice, not as the (mystery)meat of the dish.