Submissions for Dirty Noir's Debut e-quarterly are OPEN!

Head over to www.dirtynoir.com for all the deets.

I'll post our general guidelines here, followed by the quarterly-specific guidelines.

Get dark, get dirty, get involved.

We want tight and concise noir fiction. But you can go ahead and chuck out any ideas you think you have about what "noir" is, because this isn't noir--it's dirty noir. A friend of ours, Chris Deal, said it perfectly: "Dirty Noir is like porn; you know it when you see it."

We've had a gut-full of cookie-cutter crap. Noir isn't a time or place and it's definitely not an archetypical character. It's a tone that comes from the hopelessness that lingers, haunting the characters, ready to fuck everything up as soon as that little bit of beauty shows it's pretty little head. The darkness can manifest itself in a number of ways.

Ideally, we're after well-written Dirty Noir. The kind of fiction that teeters between genre and lit. It can lean a little more to either side, but the prose should sing and ALL stories should have a criminal streak to them. This is a crime rag, after all. How you interpret crime is up to you. It doesn't necessarily mean murder and hold-ups, I will say that much.

All types of noir are welcome: Classic, Neo, Sci-fiction, Western, Urban Fantasy and so on.

We encourage you to play with the genre. Do something different. Show us something new. Experiment a little. With form, with characters, with situations. We'd love to see more stories that push the boundaries of how a story can be told.
We've got a big ol' soft spot for the underdogs, the anti-heros. We love the real, flawed characters: the outcasts and creeps, the losers and lost souls. We’ve got a thing for everyday guys and girls that've hit rock bottom and have nothing left to lose.

We want to see desperate people doing desperate things, so sex and violence are obviously encouraged. What we don’t want is rape fantasy, misogyny, torture and blood that has no purpose. Sometimes a knife in the pocket is more terrifying than a chainsaw across the face. Feel free to use a chainsaw, just make sure it says more about the character using it than the limbs it takes off.

Above all: Make it dark, make it dirty.

DOLLAR DREADFULS'
DIRTY NOIR QUARTERLY

We are now taking submissions for our debut quarterly e-issue. General guidelines remain, except where stated.
The e-issues will be themed in the future but for this first issue we're leaving it open, non-themed. So go nuts. The only must is that you give us some damn good Dirty Noir.

• Submissions should be no more than 10,000 words and no less than 500. However, we will consider submissions of 10,000-40,000 words for serialisation, which will span the course of the four issues that make up Vol. 1 of Dirty Noir.
• Simultaneous submissions are fine, just let us know if it gets snatched up so we can high-five you.
• But multiple submissions are a no-go. Send one at a time. If you didn't quite make it and there's still time, we'll ask you for something else.
• Unfortunately we can't pay you in cash money at this stage. Instead, we'll swing you a couple of copies of the e-book. Cool?
• Do us a favour, and DON'T report these submissions to DUOTROPE just yet. We need to set-up a separate listing for the quarterlies, as response times will be vary.
• That said, please allow up to 8 weeks to hear back from us before rapping at our door.
• Submissions close on September 15 or when the issue is full.