Niteblade

Archive for January, 2012

It’s time to announce to poetry content for our March 2012 Issue:

The Wake of March by Dan Campbell

The Woman in the World by Patrice Wilson

A Hellbound Tragicomedy by Stephanie Smith

Lycanthropist by J.S. Watts

The Coast Guard by Sonya Taaffe

Looking forward to this yet? Good. Spread the word.

As of right now, our March Issue is full in terms of poetry (ToC for poetry will be posted here in a bit). We have a small backlog of all of two poems, so chances are good that you should have heard from me (if not, please check your submission’s status in Submishmash before querying).

At any rate, as of now, I will be primarily looking for vampire themed poems for the June issue, anything non-vamp will be automatically considered for the September or December issues. Yes, a Niteblade Vampire Poetry Special, I kid you not.

It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: the vampire topic is well-worn, to say the least, so make sure you send me something with a fresh take on things, ‘kay?

Now, keep a weather eye out for that Poetry ToC.

This is one of these hard to write posts, so I’ll just try to be succinct:

In July of 2011, Niteblade received a poetry submission: “Foretelling” was the poem’s title.

After a few edits, I accepted the poem for publication. Then I came across another poem, this one already published back in 2007. To my shock, “Foretelling” was almost identical to that other poem, not just a few words or even a few lines, but word for word, line for line; sure, that other poem had been cut significantly, and there were a few minor changes, some new line breaks, but it was the same poem.

I informed the original author about the incident; I informed the author who had sent the submission that Niteblade would no longer publish anything by them because “Foretelling” was not theirs, and that this author was no longer welcome to submit to any of the venues I edit for.

A response from the original author told me that the author submitting “Foretelling” to us had tried this before: they had submitted “their” poem to Liquid Imagination where the editor immediately found that it was not originally theirs.

For editors, this is perhaps a cautionary tale. For all concerned, it’s really just sad.