Open Call for Writing to be Featured
in the January - December 2008 Issues of the Mule –
No deadlines.

Once your writing appears on the Mule, you may take it anywhere it wants to go — blogs, splogs, or NC bogs (even pocosins).

Read on:

1.
Okay, send us your fiction. And your essays. If it is creative non-fiction, say so. But don’t send us a blog post, ok?

Poets? We are ready for you.
Please read and follow the guidelines specific to poetry.
Which are: Please send between one and four poems to deadmule.poetry @ gmail.com  for possible publication..  We accept all kinds of verse, but please note: All poems will be left justified with no extra spaces within lines.  No exceptions.  If your poetry is formatted contrary to this, we cannot publish it. Be sure to include your Southern Legitimacy Statement with your poems. We want unpublished poems but are willing to consider poems that have appeared only on a personal blog, if the poet removes them before submitting and agrees that they will remain off the blog until at least one full month after publication.  Chapbooks are by invitation only.  Being mulish and headstrong, the editors will make exceptions, if and when they so desire.
Creative non-fiction is not an essay — at least according to mule guidelines.

2.
You must include a Southern Legitimacy Statement*.
Read the Mule and get a feel for what a Southern Legitimacy Statement is.

3.
Send you fiction, essays,  & creative non-fiction to:
submit.mule at gmail dot com

Subject line must be the type of submission and the title [ex: fiction, The Concrete Rooster Murders Again]

Body of Email must contain your real life name, city and state, and email address at the beginning.

Then, in that same body, put your Southern Legitimacy Statement

Lastly, copy your submission and paste it in the email. If it doesn’t look right to you in there, it won’t look right to us, so check your work.

And off you go, hit SEND. We’re waiting.

Word limit: 2,000 words
Flash Fiction really trips our trigger.

Note of interest to our submitting public:
No reading fees and no contests because getting published in the Dead Mule is not a lottery. It’s about your sending us quality writing and us accepting it. Pure and simple. You’re paying us a compliment by thinking enough of The Mule that you would send us your work.

Submission to and acceptance by Dead Mule grants us first electronic and indefinite archive rights. All other rights revert to the author upon publication. Please credit Dead Mule as the first publisher if you reprint elsewhere; we like seeing our name in print, too.
[thanks to HalfDrunkMuse.com for an inspirational original message.]
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Extra fluh about the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature submissions. You can, in most cases, ignore it. Unless you want to humor us/me with your undivided attention.

We most certainly always require a Southern Legitimacy Statement from all our writers and we explain that to ya’ll in the rest of this document.

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature wants stories. Good ones. Your writing? Hmmmmm.
Write about sweat-dripping, Bible-thumping, pick-up driving, beer drinking rednecks.
Chauvinistic, Mama-loving, hounddog-owning porch sitters — stereotypes we love to hate or hate to love.
Heroes who drink sweet tea, eat Moon Pies, grits, and collards, frying in lard… lard pie, lard eggs, lard sandwiches. Lard.
Mule skinners and mud runners.
The esoteric, the strange, the truly captivating story will make it onto our pages.
Be it about folks who are uncouth, semi-literate, tobacco chewing adolescents, or PhDs, Scholars, Scientists, Artists, Inventors, and Entrepreneurs.
Write about brilliant, kind, thoughtful folks who will help you in your time of need or spit on your grandma. The South contains them all.

There’s no New South, there is only The South.

No graphic violence or sex and no soft-porn. Please don’t waste our bandwidth.

Essays and stories about inventors, entrepreneurs, scholars, and selfless contributors to the public good. Or rascals, southern-type. Carpetbagging opportunists? Sure, why not.

Geniuses with outhouses and high speed DSL.

Do you have what it takes?
Enroll the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, become an instructor of The South.

Southern Legitimacy Statement Information:

Listed below are the stereotypical Southern Legitimacy Idea Guidelines, please construct your own SLS. We’re just giving you some ideas. Despite the humor listed below, you’ll get extra points if your sweet tea, yard dog, and pick up truck references. Be more original than that. And magnolias are so cliche’ they’re awful. Write your SLS on your terms. Remember, a large group of us do not pay good money to hear Jeff Foxworthy or the get-it-done sweaty fat repulsive guy.

We love the South. All its quirks and faults. If our beloved below the Mason-Dixon Line geographical uniqueness gives way to the influences of a status quo quasi-correct geo-political diatribe which requires all people to be one, to walk in lock-step with all others — we cease to be The South. Let us celebrate the individual. The South revels in individuality. Freedom and the right to be southern. It’s not a curse-word, or a curse. It’s just little old us. Not one race, not one religion, and certainly not just one cause… the South contains all sides of all arguments. Help The South stay as it is and do not seek to destroy a unique culture. Remember, please, we are not a bunch of back-ass mother f’ers. We are — quite simply — the last bastion of individuality left in the US.

You can submit a valid SLS if:
you live in The South.
you used to live in The South.
your submission is about The South or if you ever thought about the South at some point in your life.
you know where the Mason-Dixon Line is. If, on a map, you can point to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia or any part of The South without first using Google Maps.
you have a large extended family and they all eat at MaMaw’s house at Thanksgiving. No matter what! And no one gets to bring PIE because Aunt Fanny always makes the pies. And you can’t bring biscuits, or sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and pecans on top because some Aunt or Grandmother or whatever always makes said items. And Mamaw’s sister, your Great Aunt Betts alway ALWAYS brings a congealed salad and some of her special home-made sweet pickle relish. And you damn sure better take some of it on your plate and then tell her how good it tastes. Always say “Better than last years!”
your submission is about a Mule (any geographic area acceptable, alive or dead mules)
your personal food pyramid contains at least three of the following: grits, collards, chittlins, fried pies, sweet potato or cheese biscuits, possum, sweet tea. pig pickin’ pork.

The South is not about ignorant people anymore than it is about kudzu or grits. Oh, wait… it is about Grits.
Get your creativity engines tuned up, change your keyboard spark plugs and get your fiction oil changed. Let the homeless guy with a Windex bottle and a roll of Bounty on Old 2nd St. clean the laptop windshield and don’t forget to give the guy a $2 tip. Rotate your poetic tires.

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If you’re still reading this –support us, read our blogs –
Helen Losse
Phoebe Kate Foster
Valerie MacEwan (theothermac)
We work our asses off on the Mule — but it doe not reflect in the size of our pants. Damn. PhoebeKate and I work in between episodes of Doctor Who.
macewan helped too… his blog is amazing. And the ad revenue from it pays for the Mule.
That’s all.