Iconic Publishing

While our Winding Road imprint concentrates on literary fiction and poetry, and Red Lizard focuses on young adult (13+), and Iconic encompasses speculative fiction, there are always projects that interest our editors and that we’d like to explore through themed anthologies. Due to the nature of anthologies, we are always seeking submissions for these particular projects with the hope of publishing a new anthology every year.  The projects were thought of with delight and intended to be as much fun for the writer as for the reader, and the guidelines are general allowing each author to make a story almost completely their own.

The Projects: The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Pulp and Adventure, Myths, Collaborative

The Brothers Grimm: Ever since the Brothers Grimm first collection of folklore and fairy tales in 1812, children and adults alike have been entertained and their imaginations stirred. The tales taught lessons and warned against strangers and naivety, and created strong iconic characters that are still with us today. Some of the stories into award winning box-office dominating animated films. Recently, Red Riding Hood found light on the big screen and then as an adapted novel. In 2011, television gave us two series, Once Upon A Time and Grimm, that find their origins in the folklore collected by the brothers. And recently, authors have re-envisioned the classic tales, making them their own and bringing the tales to a new modern audience. We know we’ll see the best-known tales, but hope to see the lesser ones too.

• The Challenge: Take the Brothers Grimm as inspiration and retell a story through your eyes and imagination.  Change it to fit your needs, you are the author.  Use the examples mentioned above and guidelines below as limits of how far you can go.

• Guidelines:

1. Short stories approximately 2,500 – 12,500 words.
2. Utilizes, but not limited to, characters found in the tales of the Brothers Grimm.
3. Should be loosely related to or based upon the events of the original tales.
4. Must be the author’s original work.
5. Please put “The Brothers Grimm” in the submission Subject line.
6. Deadline: August 31.

Submissions@iconicpublishing.com

Hans Christian Andersen: No man ever so loved fairy tales and storytelling as Hans Christian Andersen.  His over 150 stories have entertained children around the world for almost 200 years and have stayed in print since they were first published.  The tales usually taught a moral lesson and often contained autobiographical elements, they did not all end happily, and it is in part due to this authenticity that they have endured.  They have been turned into ballets and symphonies, movies and animated features, and and even a theme-park in Shanghai.

• The Challenge: Reinvent Andersen’s stories and fairy tales.  Change them to take your imagination wherever it leads you.  There are few boundaries or limits as to how far you can go.

• Guidelines:

1. Short stories approximately 1,250 – 7,500 words.
2. Utilizes, but not limited to, characters found in Hans Christian Andersen’s stories and fairy tales.
3. Should be loosely related to or based upon the events of the original stories.
4. Must be the author’s original work.
5. Please put “Andersen” in the submission Subject line.
6. Deadline: August 31.

Submissions@iconicpublishing.com

Pulp and Adventure: Pulp stories claim their origins in the Penny Dreadfuls of the Victorian Era. They were called pulps because they used the cheapest cast-off paper from paper mills, the paper made from the pulp. In the Victorian era and into the 20th century, pulps appeared primarily as serialized short stories in magazines. The pulp mag would carry four or five stories, and then the next issue would carry the next chapter of the story. After a few chapters were printed, or the entire story chapter by chapter, some would be collected into a book containing the complete tale. This is true of Sherlock Holmes and his contemporaries.

While the first publication of the first non-serialized full-length pulp novel is unknown, certainly one of the earliest and and most enduring are the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who gave us Tarzan, Pellucidar, and John Carter of Mars.
Pulp survived and flourished into the 30s and 40s and some still enjoy almost continuous publication to the present day. But the heyday of pulp passed with the coming of World War II. Some made the transition to radio and Saturday serials at the movies during the Depression and post-Depression era. Today, pulp is enjoying a resurgence in comic books and in non- or semi-illustrated formats. Electronic books have also become a very popular format.

Pulp stories are fast-paced heavily plot driven narratives. The characters are usually larger-than-life two-dimensional heroes and anti-heroes with witty one-line quips and catch phrases. Dialogue is minimal, and long descriptive sentences provide the narrative and adventure. More often than not, the protagonists were mystery men and women who who hide their public identity in order to fight crime and injustice concealed behind a mask.

New Pulp, as it is called, stays true to its roots, but dialogue and fleshing out the story instead of just following a plotline has helped flesh out the characters and make them less cardboard and more rounded. As such, the stories are longer and more substantial, blending the best of the modern novel with the best of yesteryear pulp. Like the originals, the new stories take almost any genre from historical fiction to science fiction to the contemporary spy and even superheroes. Pulp is a style and a great way to tell an adventure.

• The Challenge: Find a pulp character in the public domain, or better yet create your own and begin writing. We would love to make the good ones available on our website and collect the best ones into an annual anthology. IF we have enough that could be serialized in the true tradition of pulp, Iconic would love to create a quarterly anthology. If a story is long enough and worthy, a pulp novel would be a welcome addition to our catalog.

• Guidelines:

1. Write.
2. Characters must be drawn from the public domain, open-source, or original creations.
3. Must be the author’s original work.
4. Please put “Pulp” in the submission Subject line.
5. Deadline: Open.

Submissions@iconicpublishing.com

Myths: Every culture has had their myths. They explain the natural world, human nature, natural disasters, etc. The western world, or at least all of us here at Iconic, are most familiar with the Greek and Roman tales. Writers have recently brought these tales back to the forefront, usually as a YA novel.

• Challenge: Take a myth, collection of myths, and rewrite them. The stories are rich to begin with, but it isn’t necessary to simply rewrite the myth, make them the springboard to write your own story. Tell any mth or groups of myths, not just the Greek or Roman.

• Guidelines:

1. Should be connected in some manner to the original myths from which inspiration is drawn.
2. Must be the author’s original work.
3. Please put “Myth” in the submission Subject line.

Submissions@iconicpublishing.com

Collaborative: There have been a number of very successful collaborative novels in recent history.  The collaborative novel is written by multiple authors to tell a single story or where related stories are written in a common setting.  Generally, one of the authors or an outside editor serves to keep everything on track and together.  Collaborative novels are often published as anthologies or as straight our novels.  One such series has run twelve novels and is one of my favorites, the Wild Cards series edited by George R. R. Martin.

• Challenge: It is pretty simple. Collaborate with a group of writers and create a collaborative novel. The genre can be almost anything, though we do not publish Romance or Erotica.  Sometimes, our fellow authors make great sounding boards and inspire ideas we may not have otherwise discovered.

• Guidelines:

1. Write.
2. A collaborative work usually has three or more authors.
3. Must be the original work.
4. Please put “Collaborative” in the submission Subject line.
5. Deadline: Open.

Submissions@iconicpublishing.com