Brian Lewis's picture
Brian Lewis from Sacramento, California, now living in Riverton, Utah is reading hundreds of submissions to "Spark: A Creative Anthology" November 17, 2012 - 2:10pm

Hi, I'm Brian.

I'm looking forward to using the Writers Workshop here, because I'm a writer, first and foremost.

But this year, I've done something new: I've taken my years of experience, combined with my love of literate, grammatically-correct, high-quality writing, and founded an anthology.

I'm not talking about a little "litmag website," I mean a full print-and-eBook quarterly publication, soliciting work from established authors and accepting submissions from new talent.

And I'm paying.

drea's picture
drea from Rural Alberta, Canada is reading between the lines November 17, 2012 - 3:50pm

Welcome to LitReactor! Mind the gap. 

JEFFREY GRANT BARR's picture
JEFFREY GRANT BARR from Central OR is reading Nothing but fucking Shakespeare, for the rest of my life November 17, 2012 - 3:56pm

Welcome to the LitReactor Brian! The workshop is a great place, a wide range of serious writers and readers. Please, no posting of pet pictures. 

I've actually submitted to your magazine, small world! Good luck with the magazine and your writing. 

Brian Lewis's picture
Brian Lewis from Sacramento, California, now living in Riverton, Utah is reading hundreds of submissions to "Spark: A Creative Anthology" November 17, 2012 - 5:33pm

Many thanks! I'm delighted to be here, and glad to know know that the referrer who sent me was right about the quality of the site. I won't publish my own writing, so I want to make sure it is top-notch and ready for sending out to other markets.

If any of you are participating in NaNoWriMo, note that we have some small offers for NaNoWrimo participants. Nothing groundbreaking, but we wanted to recognize the effort anyway.

Jeff, I'll be looking for your name when your submission makes it up the queue and to my desk! We've had about 265 submissions in the past 60 days and made decisions on 140 so far, so even though we're making great progress, I hope you'll be patient if it takes another week or two.

OtisTheBulldog's picture
OtisTheBulldog from Somerville, MA is reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz November 17, 2012 - 5:40pm

Hi Brian,

Welcome to the site. We have a Nano threat going too, a handful of us here are participating. Cool to see that you're waiving the fees.

Let me know if you want me to post a pet picture.

Jason

Sound's picture
Sound from Azusa, CA is reading Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt November 17, 2012 - 11:18pm

Brian, welcome! Hope you stick around and get the full benefits of the site. Ton of info here. I've actually submitted something just this week to your anthology. 

Dave's picture
Dave from a city near you is reading constantly November 17, 2012 - 11:29pm

Dwayne's picture
Dwayne from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updated November 18, 2012 - 3:46am

Welcome.

Liana's picture
Liana from Romania and Texas is reading Naked Lunch November 18, 2012 - 7:53am

I always misread something somewhere. Dave, I read "THE LIT - I'm allowing it."

Hi Brian, welcome here! You got me sifting through my stories to find something to submit!

 

Dino Parenti's picture
Dino Parenti from Los Angeles is reading Everything He Gets His Hands On November 18, 2012 - 5:11pm

Welcome Brian. I actually just submitted to Spark incidentally. Good luck here--the workshops really do rock and offer great help.

Brian Lewis's picture
Brian Lewis from Sacramento, California, now living in Riverton, Utah is reading hundreds of submissions to "Spark: A Creative Anthology" November 19, 2012 - 7:33am

Well, it's good to know the caliber of writing I have to look forward to! Just to set timeline expectations, we've received 270 submissions in the past 60 days, and we've made it through about 140. So five or six week response time, while perhaps longer than what we had hoped to accomplish, is realistic.

Also check out our Kickstarter project at http://SparkAnthology.org/support, which provides a way to preorder Volume I and enables us to pay Pro rates if successful.

Not that the cover art for Volume II was provided by one of your own. That's part of how I ended up here.

H.I.Marcuson's picture
H.I.Marcuson from Toulouse is reading a book on spelling November 19, 2012 - 8:47am

Welcome to the deep end, the waters warm.

JEFFREY GRANT BARR's picture
JEFFREY GRANT BARR from Central OR is reading Nothing but fucking Shakespeare, for the rest of my life November 19, 2012 - 11:08am

Who did the cover art?

Brian Lewis's picture
Brian Lewis from Sacramento, California, now living in Riverton, Utah is reading hundreds of submissions to "Spark: A Creative Anthology" November 19, 2012 - 6:15pm

Who did the cover art?

Charles provided the photograph for Volume II.

Rodney Artiles did the cover art for Volume III, and we're still accepting proposals for Volume I. (We've seen some good stuff, and we have a couple of proposals under review, but we're holding out for something perfect.)

Brian Lewis's picture
Brian Lewis from Sacramento, California, now living in Riverton, Utah is reading hundreds of submissions to "Spark: A Creative Anthology" November 20, 2012 - 4:39pm

WE HAVE VOLUME I COVER ART!

Artist/Illustrator Aaron John Gregory will be creating original cover art specifically for Spark.

We got in touch with each other through our respective Kickstarter projects. See Aaron's announcement here.

Next things to look at are the potential for interior art (which I've said I won't do, but I have many people trying to convince me otherwise) and art for the cover of Volume IV. Anything that's been submitted so far will also be considered for future volumes. (We got some pieces just yesterday that we liked, for example.)

bryanhowie's picture
bryanhowie from FW, ID is reading East of Eden. Steinbeck is FUCKING AMAZING. November 21, 2012 - 7:30am

How many submissions you up to since posting on Lit Reactor?  Did we flood your submittable enough?

Brian Lewis's picture
Brian Lewis from Sacramento, California, now living in Riverton, Utah is reading hundreds of submissions to "Spark: A Creative Anthology" November 21, 2012 - 9:35am

Bryan, we've just passed 300 total, and we've been averaging 7-8 submissions per day, so this pushed our average up a little, for sure. And I have seen that several submissions list Litreactor as the response to "Where did you hear about Spark?"

Cool. Glad this place is living up to its reputation.

I don't think we're going to have any problem now or in the future having enough good work to choose from while still maintaining our snobbishly-high standards, and we've also had some great response from solicited authors. The next big goal is to get that Kickstarter funded so we can pay pro rates for Volume I.

Charles's picture
Charles from Portland is reading Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones November 22, 2012 - 1:37am

I suffer from constant writer's block, but I have enough images that are printable that I could make a good living keeping Spark wrapped in photos on alternating issues for a long time.

Brian Lewis's picture
Brian Lewis from Sacramento, California, now living in Riverton, Utah is reading hundreds of submissions to "Spark: A Creative Anthology" November 23, 2012 - 7:13pm

I have enough images that are printable that I could make a good living keeping Spark wrapped in photos on alternating issues for a long time.

We'd probably have to reconsider our stance on interior art in that case, too, just so we could keep up. We'd have your photos inside and out.