Submissions

Unsolicited submissions for our print series have now closed. Please check back for the next reading period. Submissions for our free series never close and can be directed here: freeseries@legumeman.com

Please don't hesitate to ask questions.

Please direct all other enquiries here: info@legumeman.com

General submission guidelines (print and free)

When submitting your work to LegumeMan Books, we ask you to abide by the following guidelines:

• In general, unless submitting to our free series, we are looking for novels and novellas. This isn't to say we'll ignore anything else but our emphasis is toward novels/novellas.
• Only submit completed stories. We’ll be far more likely to take you seriously if you present us with a fully formed piece of work.
• MS Word’s built in spell checker isn’t the be all and end all. Please go over your work carefully to minimise basic mistakes. We’re not expecting print ready material but spelling the subject line in your initial e-mail to us correctly will help you get beyond the sniggers that will unavoidably result.
• Where possible, please submit your work as a doc/docx file. Line spacing should be 1.5 with font size 12. All pages should be numbered with a header that includes the author’s name. We understand that not everyone uses Microsoft Word (more power to you) so we will also accept Open Office files. If all you have is notepad, we’ll accept it but the submission better be damn good!
• It helps to understand the styles we’re looking for. Primarily we aim our focus at underground fiction of an extreme or unusual nature. We want to be a home for the kind of stuff that gets largely ignored. We’re not going to tell you to buy our books to understand where we come from (although it would be nice) but at least glance at our titles before deciding whether your story is really appropriate.
• The LegumeMen have discussed this a great length and have decided we are not interested in zombie-related stories. We’re of the belief that zombies are inherently pathetic creatures with little fright factor. For further information regarding zombies, please see our rant down below.

Free series specifics
Our free series is intended to provide the world with interesting short fiction in an electronic format that can be downloaded freely. This means that we can’t offer financial incentive to you. What it does mean is we will layout and make your story available to anyone who happens across our site. The reason for this is because we want to support authors but don’t have the time to release as many physical books as we'd like. By focusing on regularly uploaded short stories, we give you a chance to gain some publicity, which in such a dense field, can’t be a bad thing.

As a general rule of thumb, stories submitted to the free series should be between 1,000 – 10,000 words.

All stories in our short series are published under a creative commons license. As the author, you retain all rights to your work and if something better comes along, we encourage you take your work and run.

For more information on Creative Commons, cast your browsers here:

http://www.creativecommons.org.au/

Our stance on zombies

Let me first begin by saying that if I saw a corpse walking about of its own volition, it would be a fairly disquieting experience. I won’t argue that seeing a zombie would instill some fright. Our issue with zombies is the relative lack of threat they would pose to humans. Our reasoning is thus:

• The key issue a zombie must overcome is speed. Nothing that you can amble away from (while stopping occasionally to take landscape photography) is threatening. The fact that a Zimmer frame-laden elderly lady could outrun a zombie should speak volumes.
• Zombies are classically portrayed as rigor mortis ridden and stiff jointed. What we don’t understand is why this affliction isn’t present within a zombie’s jaw and fingers. How is it that a zombie can claw so intricately and break skin with its teeth so easily? It is our assertion that the rigor mortis affecting the rest of their body would also affect their jaw and fingers. So, on the off chance a zombie did catch you, the fine motor control needed for chewing simply wouldn’t exist. Your skin would need to be composed of ripened banana in order for the zombie’s teeth to penetrate. This leads me to our next point…
• It is often said that the danger in the zombie lay in their large numbers. Sure, you could outrun one zombie but what happens if more zombies wait in every direction? Well for a start, zombies attain their numbers by infecting humans. Given that we believe zombies wouldn’t be able to physically catch or break the skin of a human, this limits the potential numbers needed for an effective zombie horde.
• Even without infecting other humans, there are a lot dead people in the ground. Don’t they already have the required numbers to form a satisfactory horde? I’m sure that’s a question some of you are thinking. I would suggest that the slightest poke from a long stick would be enough to topple a zombie. Without the motor control needed for intricate balance, how could they not fall? With this in mind, zombies could be easily knocked down, scooped up and placed in a large paddock where I doubt they’d possess the aptitude or fine movement needed to escape. The zombies could be kept in this paddock as a bit of a curio or disposed of in a cost-effective manner as dictated by the government.

So hopefully you see where we’re coming from. Pick a zombie-related situation and apply the above logic. Zombies may look frightening but they’re simply not dangerous. They’re the daddy long legs of the monster world. A zombie plague would be much preferred over pretty much any other epidemic you could think off. Even the swine flu is more dangerous.