Well, we finally got a website up and running. While we work on getting ready to accept submissions, I thought I would repost our original form letter.
God Bless.
Thomas Greninger
Publisher | Incarnation
J.M.J
AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM
Commemoration of St. Alexius the Confessor
26 May, 2023
Feast of St. Philip Neri
To Whom It May Concern:
We are two recent graduates of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and would like to take a moment of your time to explain a literary initiative that we hope to start in the coming year.
As we are sure you realize, our world is in need of good literature, perhaps now more than ever. It is easy to think that the “Golden Age of Literature” has passed away with the likes of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, G.K. Chesterton, Robert Hugh Benson, Flannery O’ Conner, and the myriad other authors who contributed to English letters from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. And perhaps it has, but we believe there is not so much a lack of talent, in our present day, as a lack of outlet for that talent. Today, if a currently unrecognized author wants to publish so much as a short story, it is almost imperative to have an “in” with a publisher, or else to settle for the mediocrity and lack of publicity that are the usual result of self-publishing. There is an abundance of online and printed journals offering to publish short fiction, but almost universally they are looking for stories of a specific genre or written in a particular style. And this is only the plight of the short story. The serial story, in which form so many great English novels were first produced, has practically gone out of existence altogether.
In short, we see that there is a need for a different sort of literary journal, dedicated almost exclusively to the publication of short fiction and the serialization of longer fiction. It is this sort of journal that, with your help, we propose to start. We hope to establish a journal in which as-yet unrecognized authors, Catholic or otherwise, can get their start in the literary world. We do not want to become a publishing house, and we do not propose to take away the rights of any authors to their own stories. We hope that this journal will be a help, not a hindrance, to new authors looking to have their work read. Pursuant of this goal, we aim to offer constructive criticism on all submissions we receive, with the possibility of revision and resubmission for those that do not initially make the cut.
In regards to the type of story we are looking for; we will accept practically anything, provided it is grounded in a solid moral principle. We will not accept stories that are gratuitously violent, explicit, blasphemous, morally ambiguous, or promote the demonic or the occult; but within this framework, we will happily consider stories in the genres of history, fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, children’s literature, romance, and almost anything else. We do not at present have a restriction on length, though if a story is longer than around five thousand words we may work with the author on serializing it in subsequent issues.
We hope to begin the journal as an online publication, probably issued monthly, with a subscription paywall of five dollars per issue. The five dollars will eventually allow us to offer our contributors some financial remuneration, and to pay a small stipend to our editors. In the event that we gain a significant readership, we hope to offer a print publication in years to come.
This message is meant to gauge interest in such a project, as it will be a while before we can be fully operational. Please share this message with anyone you know who writes or enjoys reading good fiction, whether they be Catholic or otherwise.
If you would be interested in reading or supporting this initiative, please send an email to tgreninger2023@gmail.com with “INTEREST IN LITERATURE JOURNAL” in the subject line. We do not have a website at this time, but those who express interest will be notified as soon as it is up and running.
If you would be interested in writing for the journal, please send a proposal to the same address as soon as possible (please don’t send a full story at this time as we are not ready to accept them yet); this will help us gauge whether or not we will have enough potential content to put out a first issue in August or September.
Thank you for your patience and your interest in this initiative. We hope and pray that it will bear much fruit for the revitalization of our culture.
Respectfully Yours,
Thomas Greninger & Lydia Smith
