Submissions Closing Soon!
This is your last chance to get your story submitted for Volume Two of Dirty Magick Magazine! The submission window closes Monday, June 30th. Unfortunately, due to the large amounts of submissions, this will be a hard deadline. Every on-time submission gets read and reviewed, so you still have a chance to be picked. Go here to read the guidelines: https://dirtymagickmagazine.com/submission-guidelines/ And please go to Weightless Books, Patreon, or Substack to subscribe and keep us going.
Issue Ten Available
Issue Ten has been delivered to the wild. Stories by Vincent O’Neil, L.D. Blevins, and Rina Song. Dusty Lens covers the ’90s cyberpunk thriller Strange Days. Get issues here: On Weightless Books On Patreon On Substack
Submissions are open!
Dirty Magick Magazine is proud to announce that we are open for submissions. We’re very excited to start our second year of publication by finding the best stories out there. Remember to please read the guidelines. Also read the follow-up Tales From The Slush Pile. Key points: no science fiction no poetry tell a complete story word count from 2,000-12,500 We’re going to push to four stories per issue in our second volume, so make sure and subscribe.
Dirty Magick Issue Eight
Issue Eight is now available! Please subscribe or buy at the following outlets: Subscribe at Weightless Books! Individual issues, six months or full year subscriptions. Subscribe at Substack. Individual stories are e-mailed directly to you. Subscribe or buy individual issues at Patreon. Read all the stories online!
Back Issues: Issues Four to Six available
Sorry for the delay, but life keeps happening. Here are Issues 4-6 and they are available in the following places: Weightless Books Subscriptions are also available through Weightless, which offers 6 and 12 month offerings. Patreon Substack
Dirty Magick Issue Three Available
Issue Three is now available. You can buy the individual issue on Patreon or you can subscribe at Substack or Patreon to get access: Buy/Subscribe on Patreon here Subscribe on Substack here Stories by B.F. Vega, Mark Mellon, D.J. Thiess The Dusty Lens reviews the Vincent Price movie “Theater of Blood”
Issue Two Available!
Thanks to a new Patreon feature, I can now bundle individual issues for sale. I’m working toward getting these issues on Amazon, but if you want to see what our magazine is all about, you can get Issue Two right now: Click here to buy on Patreon And while you’re there, please subscribe! For the price of a cup of coffee, you can get three new fantasy stories plus my column about forgotten films, The Dusty Lens. Once we get to 100 subscribers, I’ll add a fourth story to the mix. If you prefer Substack for digital delivery, you can subscribe here. Please continue to support independent publishing and fun fantasy fiction.
Tales From the Slush Pile
As I start Dirty Magick Magazine, I thought I would, in the spirit of openness, reveal some of the process that goes into a new publication. As I wrote the Submission Guidelines, I was trying to be as clear as possible as to what I wanted compared to what the writers wanted to sell me. But as I was told at Balticon by a longtime publisher, “You’re going to get science fiction.” And I did. And I rejected it. I felt a little put out by that because of the numbers. I have 36 initial slots funded. I can’t go over that because I wouldn’t be a paying market. That’s a compromise I won’t make. So when I received over 250 submissions, I still had to read those which were never going to be accepted-science fiction, psychological horror, and genre misfits. The latter I’m okay with as I accepted a few stories which would fall into the “experimental” category. But if I saw the word “aliens,” I could close the story without any worry. But that was only a few stories. Overall, the submissions were within the guidelines. Some were not ready, some were damn close, and a few were heartbreaking because I had to choose with such slim margins. I decided to write this as an addendum to the Submission Guidelines. These are not formal rules, but general vibes that will make a story more acceptable. As always, these are personal to me and other editors may want something completely different. One: Embrace the tropes I got a lot of stories where it was a normal story for three-quarters of its length and then, near the end, the fantastical elements were revealed. While I don’t read a lot of horror, this structure seems to work best in that genre-the evil creeping in on the sides until it takes over. I didn’t take many stories like that. When I say gothic horror, I mean the big three-vampires, werewolves, ghosts. Cthulhu and his kind can sneak in, too. But, frankly, those stories are third on the list of what I want. I’d rather be thrown directly into a world unlike our own with the fantasy up front and emphasized. From that splashdown, I’m ready for the characters and story to entertain me. Two: Complete the story I was into mainstream fiction in the ‘90s when writers like Raymond Carver and his many disciples embraced minimalism. I wrote a few stories where it concluded before the actual end, leaving the reader to fill in the details. But now it’s 2024 and I want to see the ending played out. Because of digital publishing, I’m not tied to small word counts. I set the 12,500 word limit for a reason: take the story to its logical end. Don’t forego the climatic scenes because you think the story is too long. I’d rather invest in a story that gives me a full beginning-middle-end than one which feels short-circuited. Three: Balance plot, character, and style This is mostly about overwriting. I love beautiful writing but overdoing it at the expense of the plot gets me fidgety. I will be direct as possible: this magazine is for adventure fiction. Whether sword and sorcery, noir, or gothic, I want to be swept away. I want to open the story and feel the pull of an exciting yarn. But, and this can be sticky, I also want to follow someone who impresses me. I told this to my screenwriting students and I will continue to preach this: your main character doesn’t have to be likeable, but they must have charisma. The character must be someone who demands us to listen to their story. This can vary from the morally righteous like Frodo Baggins to the charming rogues like Conan to the psychokiller/sheriff in Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. No matter their level of good or evil, I need to want to spend time with them. Four: Don’t be generic Continuing from the point above, this means your people, places, and MacGuffins must be specific. Work out a few details so the reader can picture in their head what’s on the page. The reason so many fantasy authors invest in world building is so they can make the world come alive to the reader. While one short story can’t have the depth of Game of Thrones, the writer can still take a bit of time to fill in the details beforehand so it seems real and, most importantly, visual. While I hope to expand the number of slots for Volume Two, I still expect to see as many submissions if not more. And while these personal rules might not help you get published in Dirty Magick, I do think they can help build better tales that lead to publication.
Introduction: Bear With Us
As we launch this title, you might find a few broken links and things that don’t work. We are working hard to put all this together and deliver a great magazine. Thank you for your patience.
Sample Story: An Eye For An Eye by Terry Mixon
(originally published in Dirty Magick: Los Angeles) An Eye For An Eye by Terry Mixon If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? Shylock – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, act 3, scene 1 And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Deuteronomy 19:21 – King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.) Justice is a poor man’s revenge. Never let someone else settle your scores. Al Blake, blood mage assassin Al Blake tugged his light coat closer against the wind and shouldered his way through the crowd toward the courthouse steps. The afternoon would warm up, but the morning chill still had a bite. He’d need the umbrella, though. L.A. might not have real winters, but it did rain a bit. He checked his pocket watch. He had a few minutes before the target put in an appearance, but being early never hurt. The client wanted to send a message. Killing the district attorney on the courthouse steps in the middle of a speech about cracking down on organized crime would do just that. The specific requirements of the job had intrigued him. Blood magic required getting close to his target for the kill—no more than a few dozen feet—despite how the dime store novels made it seem. Yes, a less invasive spell to track someone might work from all the way across the city for a powerful mage, but Al couldn’t drop someone from his living room. Nor would he want to. Al was a professional, an independent contractor. Not some mob thug. He insisted his jobs be done right, and that meant he had to be there to tweak the spell, if necessary. Or abort if something went south. The press, predictably enough, covered the lower steps. Several photographers stood up front to catch Marcus Parker’s good side for the afternoon edition. With all the hoopla surrounding the most recent bootlegging crackdown, his farts got a headline above the fold. Al could pretty much guarantee he’d get a picture with a full page spread today. He pulled out a press pass and stuck it in his hatband. The cops probably wouldn’t even look at it. He’d attended the last press conference just to be sure. Once the D.A. dropped dead, Al would have a minute or two to make his getaway before they locked down the plaza. He had a ”borrowed” car parked at the curb to speed his getaway. He wondered who wanted the man dead with such public spectacle. If it were the mob, they’d stir up a hornet’s nest. If it wasn’t, then perhaps the client wanted it to look like the mob was behind the killing. Someone close to the target had to be in on it, or they couldn’t have gotten the blood-stained handkerchief he’d received with his money. People who made enemies like Parker had were careful about leaving their blood, hair, and fingernail clippings lying about. For obvious reasons. He gave a mental shrug. He didn’t need to know the backstory. Too much curiosity made for a fatal character flaw in a contract killer. Parker finally came out of the building with his staff at his heels. He looked like a shark with his hair slicked back, his eyes cold as he scanned the reporters from the podium. A well-dressed shark, since that subdued charcoal grey suit had to have cost a pretty penny. Al ignored the man’s opening statement. Blah, blah, blah. Crime, arrests, booze. He’d heard it all before. The jerk probably had his fingers in all the pies up to his elbow. Instead, Al took a few minutes to admire the well-endowed blonde to the DA’s left. She had a sexy little mole over her upper lip that gave her face a lot of character. She also wore a peach sweater that did absolutely nothing to hide her generous figure. Neither did the skirt she wore. Hemlines had inched upwards for most of the ‘20s and if they kept going, the decade would go out with a loud whistle, a trend Al heartily approved of. With more than a hint of genuine regret at getting back to business, he reached into his pocket and found the handkerchief he’d brought. He’d taken the precaution of wrapping it in raw silk to be sure the blood spots on it weren’t contaminated. He didn’t want mistakes. He closed his eyes for a moment and invoked his talent. Immediately, he felt the tenuous connection with his target. He allowed his senses to sink into a meditative state. It sped the process and made failure unlikely. No mage ever courted a botched spell if he could help it. When the mental jigsaw snapped into place, he opened his eyes and invoked the spell. The man kept jabbering along, unaware of his impending demise. Al knew the man’s blood pressure would spike in a few seconds and keep going until he had a stroke. Without immediate intervention from a gifted healing mage, he’d die on the steps. The woman sneezed and stared at her hand. Al saw the blood on it and more on her upper lip. It streamed down her face and onto the peach sweater. The lurid red shocked him. He killed the spell. The backlash staggered him. Pain blossomed between his eyes and his vision wavered. He heard more than saw the woman collapse. The crowd came to life with cries of alarm and shouted questions, mixed in with the pop of flash bulbs. Well, this certainly would make the headlines, but for all the wrong reasons. He used the confused jostling of the crowd to make his escape. Once away from the press of people, he slid into his getaway car, a sleek A-Model Ford. Black, of course. His