Okay, just like we promised — we’re looking for fiction and essays once again.

Submission Rules Are Simple This Time.

FICTION and ESSAY (we adore creative non-fiction!):

Think FLASH. 750 words. No more, but we will take less.

Follow these easy steps. Submit today through September 1, 2010, and you need to format your submission according to the instructions below:

In body of email, put:

• Your name, City / State of residence, email address
• Your Southern Legitimacy Statement * (250 words or less)
• Your FLASH fiction or Essay submission. 750 word limit. (Note: There are less than 875 words on this page.)

Now you’re ready. Hurry .. send it to submit.mule@gmail.com

The South contains all. Write about it. But remember, no Southern Legitimacy Statement, no chance of publication.

Thanks ya’ll,
Valerie MacEwan
Editor/Publisher

Dear writers, please note: All work sent to us in 2009 has been deleted from the INBOX of submit.mule. If you want to give acceptance another try, send it again under the current 750 word limitation.

POETS – POETRY SUBMISSIONS

Closed until January 1, 2011.

Please read and follow the guidelines specific to poetry submissions.
Helen Losse, Poetry Editor Supreme has specific requirements for your submissions.

Send between one and four poems with your SLS in one (1) e-mail message to:
deadmule.poetry @ gmail.com

*No visual poetry, we’re not a vispo site.

Be sure to include your Southern Legitimacy Statement. We want unpublished poems but are willing to consider poems that have appeared only on a personal blog — if the poet removes them before submitting and agrees that they will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. 

No simultaneous submissions with poetry. This means we are obligated and committed to answering your poetry queries as quickly as possible – thus allowing you to place your poetry elsewhere within a very reasonable amount of time.

Please put poems in the body of the e-mail and send all poems in one e-mail, not one poem PER email.

*Southern Legitimacy Statement

Listed below are the official made-up fun and lovely stereotypical Southern Legitimacy Idea Guidelines. The intent is to educate & illuminate our readers, or to obviate spam. Please construct your own SLS. We’re just giving you some ideas. Be original.

You can submit a valid SLS if any of the following applies to you or someone you know:

• 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.
• You bought Janis Owen’s “The Cracker Kitchen“

The South is not about ignorant people any more than it is about kudzu or grits. Oh, wait… yes …. 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.

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.

Note of interest to our submitting public:

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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If you’re still reading this –support us, read our blogs –

Helen Losse

Phoebe Kate Foster

Valerie MacEwan The Assemblagist

macewan helped too… his blog is amazing. And the ad revenue from it pays for the Mule.
That’s all.

EXCEPT

Buy some Mule Gear. See link in footer… right down there — see it? Click it …