General Guidelines:

Moon Drenched Fables is a fantasy webzine focusing on short fiction, flash fiction, poetry, and MDF author spotlights. Contemporary settings, historical time periods, fairy tale worlds, all are equally welcome so long as fantastical elements are central to the plot.  We do not, however, want to see submissions containing explicit sex, profanity, or gratuitous violence.  All works should be suitable for a PG audience.  We do not accept reprints. Submissions should be sent via email, with the work pasted into the body of the message.  We do not open attachments. 

In your email, please include a brief description of the work and feel free to list previous publishing credits, if any.  As we understand most writers submitting to webzines are looking for a place to hone their craft, past experience or lack of it, does not strongly influence our decision when considering a particular piece.  This doesn’t mean we want to see untidy work.  All submissions should follow typical manuscript format and should be typed, double spaced, in a readable font like Courier or Times New Roman.

Please note that short fiction, poetry, flash fiction, and author spotlight submissions should be sent to separate email addresses, as they have different editors.  Study the individual guidelines below for more information about how to submit to each category.

Short Fiction:  Short fiction should be between 1,000 and 5,000 words in length.  Note: longer works may be considered, but should be queried first.  Send short fiction submissions to Carol, short fiction editor, at fablefictionsubmissions@yahoo.com with SUBMISSION/SHORT/ and your story title in the subject line.

Poetry: There is no word limit on poetry submissions.  Send poetry submissions to Sarah, poetry editor, at fablepoetryflashsubmissions@yahoo.com with SUBMISSION/POETRY/and your poem title in the subject line.

Flash Fiction: Flash fiction should range between 500 and 1,000 words in length.  Send flash fiction submissions to Sarah at the poetry address listed above. Put the words SUBMISSION/FLASH/and your story title in the subject line.

MDF Author Spotlights!: If you have been published in Moon Drenched Fables, or are under contract with us for future publication, feel free to send in the title of your published (or forthcoming!) book/chapbook/ebook, a brief description-no more than three or four sentences-a cover image, and a buying link/link to your website. We will happily showcase the provided info on our Author Spotlights page!

Send your author spotlight info to the poetry/flash fiction editor, Sarah, at fableauthorspotlights@yahoo.com.

The length of time your spotlight remains on the page will depend on how many spotlights we receive, and how crowded the page becomes, but we hope to leave them up a significant amount of time.

Note: because MDF wishes to remain a family friendly publication, we will not spotlight erotica and retain the right to turn down any spotlight for reasons of conscience. Thank you!

What happens next?  If we accept your work we’ll send you a contract and request a one paragraph bio to be run alongside your piece.  Here you will be allowed to include one link to a personal website (no ads please).  We will try to respond to all submissions in a timely manner, but, depending on the number of submissions we receive, response times may vary.  If you haven’t heard back from us after three months, feel free to query about the status of your submission.

Rights:  We ask for one time electronic rights to any piece of work we accept.  Once your prose is no longer featured in the current issue of Moon Drenched Fables, all rights revert to you, the author, and you are free to sell the work elsewhere as a reprint.  Note that we reserve the right to edit the spelling and grammar of any work before it appears in an issue.   

Payment:  Moon Drenched Fables is not at present a paying market.  Perhaps some day this will change, but for the time being the only pay we offer is exposure—with the exception of Best of the Issue winners.  For more info on that, see below.

Best of the Issue:  Beginning December ’09 we will be trying something new.  We will ask our readers to vote on their favorite work.  There will be one winner out of every issue.  Sometimes the chosen work may be a piece of poetry, other times it might be a short story, a piece of flash fiction, or even non-fiction. Look for the voting form on the Best of the Issue page to cast your vote. The winner will receive a prize of $10 and their name will be listed on our Best of the Issue page.  Winners will be notified by email.

Publishing Schedule:  Our first issue débuted September 15, 2008.  We are a quarterly webzine, with new issues released every March, June, September, and December.  Issues are tentatively set to come out on the 15th of each of these months.