The February Issue is Here

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heartThe stories in this issue are by turns surreal, scary, funny, sad, puzzling, and sweet—just like love.

In “Raritan, New Jersey. 2012,” Jason Macias takes us galloping through equine dreams. Suzanne Samples introduces us to some mysterious (and slightly creepy) “Things That Float.” Next up is a thoughtful and intriguing flash piece by Daniel Thompson, “My Horns Hurt.” Charlie Brown’s narrator gets “A Bad Case” of a surprisingly lively and entertaining venereal disease. Robert Lowell Russell’s “Path of Stones” examines a well-known fairy tale from the perspective of a marginalized character who must weave through many stories before finishing his own. And when you think about it, isn’t that what we all have to do?

Read the full issue online or download the PDF. And don’t forget to check out the creepy yet adorable cover art by Daniel Langhans.

Show us your claws (and scales, fur, wings, tails, etc.)

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giant_crab

Now all we need is a gi-fuckin’-normous bowl of cocktail sauce. (Also, major props if you know and love this movie.)

Stories and poems have been pouring in for our Legendary Creatures issue, which is great. Keep ’em coming! Check out the full guidelines and submit.

We would love to see more submissions featuring ANIMALS rather than human or human-like beings. We’d also like to see more contemporary and local creatures of legend—a story about the Mutant Rat Monsters that live in your hometown garbage dump, or a poem about a giant squid who falls in love with a pirate. Also, we’re crazy about haiku! Especially when they follow Michael Dylan Welch’s list of tips for writing haiku from Haiku World (although you can substitute imagination for personal experience in this case).

Also, JDP’s founder and our friend Eirik still needs those lungs. Please help if you can, and thanks so much to those of you who are already spreading the word and/or making a contribution.

Submissions Are Open for Legendary Creatures Issue

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Mess with the cockatrice, and your ass is granite.

Mess with the cockatrice, and your ass is granite.

For this one, we are looking for fiction AND poetry. In order to be considered, your submission must feature a legendary creature, such as a mythical beast or a figure from cryptozoology—including the Jersey Devil, naturally, but not limited to him. Dinosaurs and other animals confined to past geological eras are also fair game, because the only place they currently exist as living beings is in our collective imagination. (Which totally bums us out if we think about it for too long. Cheer us up by writing something incredible and sending it to us.)

Short stories: Submit one story of up to 5000 words (this is a bit longer than our regular monthly magazine limit, which is still 4200 words).

Flash fiction: Submit one to three stories of up to 1000 words each in a single document.

Poetry: Submit up to a total of 100 lines of poetry in a single document. This can be one long poem or multiple short poems. We welcome formal verse and skillfully crafted free verse. If prose poetry is your thing, please submit it as flash fiction, and keep in mind that we are wary of huge blocks of text with no white space.

No reprints. Simultaneous submissions are fine; just withdraw your work if another magazine snatches it up first. (And if that magazine finds a bag of flaming chupacabra turds on its front porch the next morning, don’t look at us.) Include a brief third-person bio with your submission.

Deadline: June 1, 2014

We accept hard-copy submissions delivered by dragons. If your dragon is unreliable, you may use Submittable.

P. S. We are still open for regular fiction submissions. (They have their own guidelines.)