And now you need to know how to get it to us.

No problem.

First thing to know is we don’t require a cover letter, a synopsis, or begging of permission. Just send your story to the following email address:
RacPressSubmissions{at}gmail{dot}com

Use the following format:

One of our rules at Raconteur Press is: “The story must be entertaining. All else is negotiable.” That goes within reason — our upper limit for short stories is usually 8,000 words, but if you go over to 10,000 and it’s an entertaining story, we’re ok with that. If you head off into novelette or novella territory, we’re probably going to suggest that you publish on your own and keep all the money for yourself.

You’re going to need a free account at PubShare. Since we use PubShare to pay our authors, do the tax stuff and the accounting; this is a requirement. Be sure when you sign up with your free PubShare account that you specify whether you want to be paid via paper cheque each quarter, or PayPal disbursement each month.

Part of the publishing process is that each author has to sign off in PubShare on the volume their story is in, and we can’t proceed until everyone has signed off on their story. When we’re at that stage, PubShare will email a notice to you that you need to authorise your inclusion. If you take more than a couple of days to do this, Jonna will start raising her eyebrow at you.

There are several times in 2024 when we’re working on a compressed two-week timetable, and an author taking a week to log-in and authorise their story will throw a considerable amount of sand into the gears of a well-oiled machine (with a great big sign saying ‘DO NOT OIL’ on the side). Authorise your story.

If you have any questions our emails are on this blog, and we hang out on the Raconteur Press Facebook page, and the North Texas Troublemakers Facebook group.

Come write for us. Have fun. Get paid.

LawDog

Woof.

So, Raconteur will be releasing 24 anthologies in 2024 — one every two weeks or so.

A .pdf file with dates is here: Raconteur Press 2024 Open Calls

I would take it as a kindness if you’d let any and all of your writer acquaintances know about this, and feel free to distribute that video and that .pdf file anywhere you think it would do some good.

Ok. We got this.

LawDog 

… start with a single stumble.

We had scheduled ‘Your Honor, I Can Explain’ to be launched today, but yesterday I got to hear the dulcet tones of our Production Manager, “What do you mean we’ve already sold a copy of ‘Your Honor'” It’s not … live … yet.”

Long pause. “Huh.”

It seems that Amazon — in a habit shared by District Attorney’s offices — decided that their schedule was the only one that mattered, and launched ‘Your Honor, I Can Explain’ a day early.

Sort of. Both the Kindle version and the dead tree edition were live, but … they weren’t connected. And if you were looking at one version, you couldn’t see the other version, at all.

Well, things is sorted out, and I’m proud to introduce “Your Honor, I Can Explain”, book #1 in The Chronicles of Andrew Spurgle:

Direct link to Amazon here.

For those who may not yet be in on the joke, “Andrew Spurgle” is something we made up to introduce some whimsy, levity, and/or chaos into a subject that tends to run fairly dry.

The rules are that “Andrew Spurgle” must be:
1) Incompetent, inept, bungling and/or cack-handed; and
2) Otherwise a creation of the individual author’s fiendish little minds.

He can be the main character; or a supporting one; or even just a brief walk-through a scene, but he must be in each story.

Our authors took this concept, and ran with it. Boy, howdy, did they run with it.

(Note: I should probably be worried that a couple of lawyers, and one retired judge, heard about this and promptly yelped, “I know the exact story I’m going to write!” Yeesh.)

We received enough stories that this first volume in The Spurgle Chronicles will be a two-parter, with #2 (‘What, You Again?’) to be published in Q1 of 2024.

Meanwhile, The Spurgle Chronicles will continue with ‘You See What Happened Was’ later this year, and will be a collection of stories where someone has to explain An Unfortunate Event Which Has Just Occurred. Andrew, of course, must appear somewhere.

This will be followed by the 3rd book in The Chronicles, which is titled ‘He Was Dead When I Got Here’, and will be stories set in a  hotel/ motel/ BnB/ et al. With the now-famous Spurgle making some kind of appearance, of course.

Mr Spurgle is becoming somewhat famous among writers, a bit like Baen’s poor Joe Buckley. As a for instance, listen to the mid-show advert here.

Here. We. GO!

LawDog

So.

A brand-new literary convention in the Metromess decided to be a little different:

I’m given to understand that Kelly and I will be doing the charity auction, y’all probably don’t want to miss that.

Come see us at P-Con!

LawDog

Take:

1 Rotisserie Chicken (Lemon-Pepper)
1 16oz block of Velveeta
1 stick of Philadelphia cream cheese
1/2 stick of butter
2 cans cream of chicken and mushroom soup
1 can mild Rotel
4 oz chicken stock
Champagne’s seasoning
Mediterranean seasoning
16 oz Pasta

Go by your big-box chain store and snag a rotisserie from the deli.  When you get home, fire up your crock-pot on ‘High’, strip every bit of meat off the chicken, and toss into the pot. If you don’t fancy the Lemon-Pepper version, grab any other option except for BBQ.

Cut the block of Velveeta into easy-to-melt chunks, along with the cream cheese, and they go in there, too.

Go ahead and just pitch the butter in there, no need to chunk it up, followed by both cans of soup and the Rotel. Don’t drain the Rotel.

In goes the chicken stock, followed by a good shake of Champagne’s, and about that much Mediterranean spice.

Cover, and let it go for an hour, stirring occasionally, until it’s all nice and creamy.

Cook your choice of pasta according to directions, drain, and stir it into the goodness in the crock-pot.

Voila! Slow Cooker Chicken Spaghetti.

LawDog 

Cedar Sanderson — our very own in-house Graphic Designer — has been nominated for a Dragon Award for her cover of ‘But Not Broken‘.

Well done, Cedar!

LawDog