Are you looking to submit a story to the “Friend”? Did you submit one before the coronavirus outbreak?
Let me tell you what’s happening with them.
As you may know, the “Friend” team is now working from home. We’ve posted an article on our website already about how we’re handling submissions, and we are asking our contributors to check back here regularly. As the situation changes, this is where you’ll find our most up-to-date information.
To reiterate: if you’re an author who has already had a story published in “The People’s Friend”, please email your assigned Editor first, before submitting your new story by email.
If you’re an author who has not yet been published in “The People’s Friend”, please continue to submit by post for now.
What about stories submitted before lockdown?
If you submitted a story before lockdown, don’t worry.
A couple of days beforehand, we asked our fantastic Admin Team to get hold of some box folders so we could get the stories home safely.
We took all stories submitted before lockdown home with us. We will read these in order as usual.
The only difference is that should your story be passed to Editor Angela for consideration, we’ll ask for the Microsoft Word document at this stage.
Unpublished authors
The day we left the office, I collected all the manuscripts from unpublished authors — unsolicited manuscripts, as we call them, or USMs.
These were delivered to the team and are now safely waiting their turn in the reading queue.
Our Marion lives near to our newest member of the Fiction team, and kindly dropped the manuscripts in via her trusty shopper!
Photograph by Marion McGivern.
Keep a copy
We’d ask all authors to please — as usual — keep a copy of anything you submit.
Also keep a note of the date of each submission, its title and word count.
Business as usual
We remain open to submissions, and payments are being processed in exactly the same way as they usually are.
We even welcomed a new author to the “Friend” family last week!
Thinking you might submit a story? Click here to read our submission guidelines.
For more from Fiction Ed Lucy, read her blog here.
Lucy Crichton Better known as “Fiction Editor Lucy”, I am always on the look-out for the very best short stories, poems and pocket novels. As well as sourcing enjoyable content, I enjoy working with our established contributors, encouraging new talent, and celebrating 155 years of “Friend” fiction!
