Submissions to RFM are Now Open

Rural Fiction Magazine (RFM) is seeking high-quality short stories and poetry that explores the beauty and drama of rural life. RFM is willing to look at any genre (mainstream, literary, horror, fantasy, noir, mystery, thriller, adventure, etc.) so long as it has a rural setting and addresses topics or themes of interest to people in rural areas or with connections to rural areas. As someone once said, all stories are ultimately about people, genre is secondary. Submissions can be stories involving hunting, fishing, farming, wildlife, farm animals, camping, small town politics, working in the outdoors, or anything that would interest people in a rural community, but ultimately the stories will be about people.

Use ruralfictionmagazine@gmail.com to query and to submit. Everything must be submitted by e-mail either in the body of the e-mail or a Word document (.doc or .docx) preferably in standard manuscript format.

Although RFM expects the vast majority of submissions to be set in the US, I would love to receive works set in rural areas of other nations. This is going out over the Internet. People all over the world will be able to read the stories published here, be they from Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, India, Taiwan, Germany, Thailand, Japan, Ireland, Ukraine, or wherever. A sampling of rural cultures worldwide would be terrific.

For the foreseeable future, RFM will publish submissions on an individual basis as they are accepted.

Generally, stories and poems will be published about two weeks after acceptance. The author will be notified of its publication date upon acceptance so that the story can be publicized.

RFM is also accepting examples of oral storytelling. Go to the Storytelling page for more details. Submissions of oral stories should follow the same guidelines as for other stories.

Please note: there is no pay for any submission at this time. Maybe this will change sometime in the hopefully not too distant future, but for now, RFM does not pay.

However, the writer retains all rights to his/her work. Once it’s published here, you can reprint it wherever you like, whenever you like, as often as you like.

Details:

Please put the word count in the upper right corner of your submission.

Poems can be up to 40 lines (more or less) per poem.

The upper word limit for a short story is 7,500.

Stories of 300 words or less are usually considered micro fiction. RFM considers anything of 300-101 words to be micro fiction, which (for various reasons) will be published on a separate page.

RFM won’t print anything of 100 words or less. RFM doesn’t have anything against stories of 100 words or less. Creating a true story in less than 100 words is a daunting challenge and an art in itself. The problem is one of time management for the publisher/editor: do I want to take the time to create a post for each six-word (or thereabouts) story, should a dozen six-word stories be submitted at once? The answer is no. Although I enjoy my work, I do have other matters (like eating, sleeping, and walking my dog) that demand my time and attention. There are other magazines, such as Microfiction Monday Magazine, that specialize in stories of 100 words or less.

It helps if you put RFM or RFM Submission in the subject line of your e-mail. I get a lot of email. Some of my email is personal; some is for The Chamber Magazine; some is for RFM; some is for…whatever. Having “RFM” in the subject line helps me sort my inbox quickly.

Please keep profanity to a minimum. RFM is trying to reach the widest audience possible. Obscenities will turn away many people. Remember the old adage that for every obscenity a writer uses, he/she loses a !@#$%^ reader 🙂

Please use Standard Manuscript Format. This makes it a lot easier for me, the editor, to read your work, and the easier you make my life for me, the better the chance you have of being published. I won’t be holding to this religiously, but if you turn in an experimental piece that I have to figure out what is going on…well…which would be easier: to burn up my time trying to decipher some arcane format or to simply reject it and go with a story whose format I can easily read and understand?

You can also use the web variant, which is the same as the Shunn but with no indents while paragraphs are separated by a return (the sometimes inscrutable WordPress often automatically converts Shunn into this anyway). Please do not mix the two together (e.g. indented paragraphs separated by a return).

There is no submission fee or submission period. RFM accepts submissions 24/7/365 from the US or from any corner of the globe.

Please attach a short bio of 50 words or less. It may include your website, twitter handle, or any other social media identification you like. If you haven’t written one before, look at the author’s bios in any of the other RFM stories. Another good place to start is at The Chamber Magazine.

Please submit only one story or up to five poems at a time. Once you have submitted, please wait until you have heard about that submission before submitting more.

I will take simultaneous submissions but be professional and withdraw your work if it has been accepted elsewhere before being published here.

I reserve the editorial rights necessary to make minor changes needed for clarity (such as obvious typos and misspellings). I will never make revisions or major edits. It’s much simpler and easier to just reject the work or ask for a rewrite (if the work is particularly good). The less editing or formatting I must do, the more likely you are to be accepted. Be professional.

I will try to respond to submissions as quickly as possible, but please allow a couple of weeks before querying about your article/story. This will depend on the backlog of submissions and other factors.

Gratuitous sex, extreme violence, violence to children, rape, and anything else that offends my personal sensibilities or anything that skirts the boundaries of the law will not be published.

Pseudonyms are fine, but please state them as the byline and include your actual name and contact info in the top left of the first page of the submission per standard manuscript format.

Do not send fan fiction.

Always re-check the guidelines before submitting. I may change them without prior notice.

Remember: send questions, queries, and submissions to ruralfictionmagazine@gmail.com.