Submissions SUBMISSIONS What We’re About Long story short, we’re here to do something different. Yes, our efforts are rooted in pulp fiction, but the appeal of that, for us, is that pulp fiction represents the literary wild west. Survival, not propriety, is the measure of success. And for pulp fiction, survival doesn’t mean adherence to particular conventions or invocation of particular tropes. It means nothing more than that a reader was provoked into engaging with and reacting to a work. The man behind Vigilante is Matthew Louis, founding editor of the legendary crime and pulp journal Out of the Gutter, and author of the gritty crime novels The Wrong Man, Roots Down to Hell, and the upcoming The Meanest of Times. Inasmuch as that signifies our mission, expect a bit of anarchy in terms of subject matter and themes, combined with craft-conscious readability. Submission Guidelines First rule: Go light on the tropes unless you can use them in fresh and self-aware ways. We don’t know if there’s a great market for gumshoes in fedoras and dames with legs up to here, but as indicated above, our goal is to revitalize, not retread, pulp fiction. Modern-world relevance is a good starting point. Nostalgia seekers already have the classics, and before the classics became classics they represented authors trying to excite and incite their contemporaries. Genre Preferences We’re crime fiction nuts—because crime fiction is a place where the aforementioned anarchic spirit intersects with the aforementioned craft-conscious readability—but provided you have something equating to a fresh angle, work in other genres, such as western and sci-fi, will be considered. Practical Matters The preferred length is 40,000 to 70,000 words. Anything less and you don’t quite have a book; anything more and your book risks getting out of the high-impact pulp-fiction zone. Inquiries or submissions can be sent to editor [at] vigilantecrime.com. When submitting: Please send a synopsis, at least one sample chapter, and anything else you think we may find stimulating. Files should be sent as .DOCX (Word). Please only submit one work at a time. Submission Response and Acceptance Editors are perpetually overwhelmed and the decision to publish a work entails a great deal of prep and planning. Everything submitted will be carefully examined but due to volume and workload it is sometimes unrealistic to craft responses. To save you the form-letter ritual: If you have not heard back within four weeks, please know that we greatly appreciate your interest and effort, and aspects of the submitted work doubtlessly excited us, but we were unable to proceed with it.