Raphael's Village

Contributor's guidelines

Thank you for considering Raphael’s Village as the home for your writing. We welcome writers of all faiths, nationalities and persuasions, but ask that you please follow our guidelines.

We are a site dedicated to improving the worldwide village one person at a time. As such, Raphael’s Village was developed to help our community heal by maximizing our relationships with each other and with our readers.

Please only submit work that belongs to you. All you have to do is register and the editors can look at your submission. Please look over our existing pages to get a feeling for what we like, but keep in mind if you don’t see something like you write here, it may mean you just haven’t submitted yet.

We will not accept hate speech, pornography, violence for the sake of shock, or anything else deemed hurtful instead of helpful. This doesn’t mean you can’t submit a hard-hitting piece -- it means filling said piece with needless obscenities and cruelty makes it less likely to be accepted.

If you’d like to, once your piece has been accepted, you may provide us with a short (2-5 sentences, max) bio that will reside on Our Contributors page.

Contributors under age 12 are encouraged to submit to Nicholas’ Corner. Contributors between the ages of 12-18 are encouraged to submit to The Mystic Grotto for the Young Adults. Feel free to let us know how old you are in your bio. Nicholas’ Corner is for children and by children, and The Mystic Grotto for the Young Adults is by and for young adults -- if you feel your piece is more adult, feel free to submit it to one of our other forums. NO adult themes will be accepted for Nicholas’ Corner or on The Mystic Grotto for the Young Adults.

Payment: We are unable to pay for contributions at this time. But hope is the thing with feathers and we do hope to be able to fly in the future.

General contributions can be made to all forums other than the following:

Healing with Humor
The NEW New Curiosity Shoppe
Quiet Contemplations

For these three forums, please follow these specific guidelines.

Healing with Humor -- Make it funny. No, really. Humor is subjective and we’re open to much of it, but gentle humor will have a better chance of acceptance than negative humor. Humor that doesn’t make any of us laugh will, sadly, probably not be accepted. While we will occasionally post something in public domain from some of the legends of humor, please don’t do so. We want your original humor, so that we can help you become one of the next humor legends.

The NEW New Curiosity Shoppe -- The home for all the fiction we love that doesn’t fit in anywhere else. Your story is being rejected because it ‘isn’t quite right for us’? Try Raphael’s Village -- if we love it, it’s in, regardless whether it’s literary, fantasy, anything in between, or impossible to categorize. We are also looking for spiritually-based fiction of any kind for this forum.

Quiet Contemplations -- Poetry can soothe the soul and cleanse the spirit. It can also make us laugh, cry and think. Please send us yours. Epic poems need to adhere to our word count and should, perhaps, go to the NEW New Curiosity Shoppe.

Length -- We prefer stories under 3,000 words, 5,000 words max. Since we’re an internet publication, shorter pieces will have a better chance of acceptance than longer. If you feel you have a longer story that is a perfect fit for us, please query our Fiction Editor at fictioneditor@raphaelsvillage.com with a short outline/synopsis and word count. Many longer pieces that are accepted will be serialized.

What We Want -- While all submissions will be considered, what we really want are humor, poetry, spiritual fiction, and fiction that doesn’t seem to ‘fit’ elsewhere. This means that in addition to literary fiction, we are open to genre fiction, with some caveats listed below.

What We Don’t Want -- There are a variety of excellent publications dealing with dark horror, dark fantasy, dark anything and everything. We are not one of those. The same goes for blood and guts, true crime, noir, most mysteries, and most romance. This is not to say that you shouldn’t submit your genre pieces -- we’re saying that if your piece truly fits the definition of ‘dark’ or there are already many markets serving your genre, we’re probably going to pass and suggest you try one of them instead. At this point, the publishers at Raphael’s Village have not set up a website for these genres. Stay tuned, we may decide that would work as well - just not currently. Also, pieces suggesting your religion is the only one out there that’s worth anything are probably not going to find a home here.

Rights -- Upon acceptance, you grant us first internet rights for six months, and the right to keep your work in our archives indefinitely. After six months from publication date, we are willing to take your piece down if you request it in writing. Six months from publication date you are also free to submit your work to another internet market, post on a blog, etc. You agree to allow us to use your work in a Raphael’s Village collection. You are free to submit to a print market at any time, but you must advise them that Raphael’s Village has first internet rights. We will consider reprints, but please make sure you advise when and where your submission was previously published.

How to Submit

All contributors will need to have a log in and password.

On the left side of the website there is a menu block with the heading User Functions. Click the link titled New User and you will be taken to a New User registration page.

Fill out all of the information provided and click the Register Now! button. Once you click this button your registration will be sent to our site moderators for approval. When your registration is approved, you will receive an email with your password to login to the site.

To reduce the potential for abuse, some of the Raphael's Village features available are only accessible to registered visitors. These features include the forum, event submissions, commenting on stories, emailing articles to friends and so on. To get the most out of this website, you must register for a User ID and password. On the left side of the website there is a menu block with the heading User Functions. Click the link titled Contribute and you will be taken to a Contribution page. Your contribution will be held in a draft form accessible only by the editors.

We strive for a fast turnaround -- you should hear from us within 4 weeks of submitting, faster if at all possible. If, after 4 weeks from submission, you have not heard from us, feel free to send an email to verify receipt. If accepted, we will advise you via email, confirm your work, request edits if needed, and confirm your publication date.

If not accepted, you will receive an email with a brief explanation of reasons for rejection. Rejection of current work does not mean rejection of all contributions. You are always welcome to revise current work and resubmit or submit other work for review.

Last Updated Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 03:01 PM MST; 4,153 Hits