"Look at all those dead guns!"

 

That was what a freind of mine told me while pointing out an image on the internet of a nice big pile of guns that were confiscated in some foreign country.  I want to say it was Great Britain or Australia but either way it was one BIG pile of guns.   Weapons caches have been discovered the world over and usually end up being destroyed by various means.  China prefers to layout their captured illegal weapons and running them over with tracked vehicles or burning them; Uganda prefers to set them up on poles or upright platforms and set fire to them; in the UK, illegal weapons are torched or cut into peices, melted down and made into manhole covers; some US law Enforcement agencies and military prefer to just blow up their pile of siezed weapons or cut them into scrap.  Most of these weapons caches are linked to drug smugglers, terrorist organizations or other underworld criminal elements.  Every country in the world has their way of destroying these illegal weapons.

 

Some guns though have significant historical value.  Some of these are ocassionally encountered in these gun piles and saved as museum peices for people to admire.  Even sometimes as recent, guns from WW 2 are recovered either singularly or in a collection from known areas of battle the world over.  Most of these guns can never be used for anything else other than historical value related to those battles waged.      

 

Either way, the term my freind used, 'dead guns' always stuck with me for years.  It wasn't until 2013 that I decided to make a website filled with stories and other things that I pondered a name for this website.  Dead Guns always came back to me and it fit well enough.  

 

Here's what we like.  We like the old stuff, old pulp era stuff that set the standard for today's genres of crime fiction, detective, horror and science fiction, but we realize that every year that goes by, we lose some of those fantastic writers of yesteryear.  We currently live and write in a new pulp era and there are plenty of writers out there applying their trade in this new generation of writing.  We like Science Fiction, Crime Fiction, old time Hardboiled noir, horror if theres a story and not the splatterpunk stuff,  war stories and a host of the strange and bizarre.  Send us your best stuff and check out our guidlines below.

I'm looking for the stories that hit hard to the gut and just about bust the jaw with a hard right.  I like my stories to have that opening paragraph that will suck me in and keep my interest there all the way to the bitter last line.  

 

I'm looking for stories of crime, hardboiled noir, science fiction, apocalypse, wierd westerns and horror...or a combination of any genres.   I'm not looking for blood splattering tales that are just for shock value.  Anyone can draft a blood and guts story but to craft a story with a point and purpose is the essential key.  No stories with graphic depictions of children being murdered or God knows what else.   I got grand children okay?   Make your stories run as tight as a well tuned and modified '67 Mustang GT that is ready to run down the bad guys like in Steve McQueens 'Bullit'.

 

On formatting - no headers, no footers, no images, no page numbers and no eyeball-busting fonts.  If it has either of these items, you might as well consider your submission rejected or I might request a cleaned up manuscript.  This is especially and primarily true for the print anthologies and 'Showcase Selections' line.  Lord knows it's a pain in the butt to get the formatting correct for print and having to deal with headers, footers, images and page numbers only complicates the process.  

  

I prefer 12 Times New Roman or Georgia fonts.  Paragraph indents - you can beat the hell out of your space bar five times or just hit the tab.  Double space after each sentence.  It's alright.  I'm old fashioned and prefer the old typewriter style.  I like the words to breathe and not looked cramped in print.    Scene breaks should have '***' in between the end and begining of scenes.

 

If you believe your story is ready and well edited for our viewing, send it in either .DOC or .RTF formats as an attachment to your email.  In the subject line of your e-mail, state: "Submissions/ Author Name/ Story Name".  If anything else, it might end up being deleted.  Expect a couple of weeks to hear back on your submission.   Poetry - We do look at poetry.  Submit up to five poems within the body of your e-mail.

 

With your submission - please specify if your story is for an anthology, the ezine or Showcase Selections in your e-mail.

 

Ezine stories and poetry - 500 to 2500 words, give or take a few.   We will publish one to two times weekly.   This pays in recognition only.

 

Anthologies - When open, the usual word counts will vary but the average story word count is between 1500 to 6000.  This pays in single contributors copies only.

 

***NEW*** - Showcase Selctions Line:  This one pays royalty and two contributors copies.  Royalties depend on sales but the average sale of each book is two bucks per print edition for the author/writer fortunate enough to be selected for Showcase Selections.  Only 2 to 4 book titles will be published each year for Showcase.  For this line we will be looking for short story collections, novellas and novelettes.  The genres we're looking for are: crime fiction, noir, apocalypse, western noir, sci-fi and horror.  The catch here is that your stories have to be top-notch, well told and well edited.  My biggest thing is having a strong opening paragraph, strong characters that we all can relate to and a nice finished ending that leaves me thinking on it for the rest of the week.  I don't want stories involving discriptive language in hurting kids (I got grandkids okay?), political/personal points of view involving racial bigotry or sexuality.  Average word count is 25,000 to 45,000 give or take a few.   Submit your best manuscripts in either .doc or .rtf.   

 

With your submission you can also send along an authors photo (not required but it would be nice) and a short 50-75 word bio to add at the end of your story.

 

Pay - We discussed this above but we'll recap again.  Dead Guns Press is a new market with hopes of growing large and believes in recognizing the writers efforts.  The e-zine pays nothing but recognition and a free beer if we meet in some bar somewhere.  The print anthologies will pay in contributors copies only.  'Showcase Selections' pays in royalties and contributors copies.

 

Send your submissions to:  JThompson612@aol.com or Jack0Lantern86@yahoo.com