Michael: This month’s interview features Valerie Rejectme MacEwan; editor of the Dead Mule School. So Valerie, your magazine features Southern literature. With a middle name like that, you GOTTA be from the south. How did your parents come up with a name like that?
Valerie: The name comes from generations of rejected family members. My great-grandpappy, Altus Beauregard Legree Woolard, wasn't allowed to join the VMI marching band because he could only move the left side of his body. Of course, he also played the harp and, to be honest, it's hard to stay in formation carrying a harp. My mother, Frances May Woolard Linotipe, tried to get the French government to fund her efforts to swim the English Channel underwater, sans scuba gear. The rejection preceded her complete mental collapse in 1964. (She's completely recovered, btw, so don't worry. She lives here with us and is 88.) My Aunt Ophelia rejected all suitors and became an old maid after her true love, Lindsey Badmuth Farquart, died in a tragic tractor collision. A field hand, Isiah, sowed poor Lindsey along with the cotton seed. And then there was my sister... ahhhhh.... so many more rejections, so little HTML.
Michael: I can now understand why you're in therapy. So where did the name of the magazine come from?
Valerie: From an article Jerry Leath Mills wrote, back in 1995, titled (I think) "Equine Gothic: The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature of the Twentieth Century." The essay was republished UNC Press's Southern Cultures in the Winter 2000 issue as "The Dead Mule Rides Again". Oddly enough, a few years after we chose the Mule's name, Mr. Mills moved from Chapel Hill to less than 3 blocks from my house. He's never mentioned The Dead Mule to me, though.
Michael: I had a lot of fun with that clever little submission requirement you have that forces contributors to prove that they’re from the south. How did you come up with that idea?
Valerie: It came with the advent of Internet submissions. It's way too easy to send off a gabillion submissions of the same story, poem or essay to every Tom, Dick, and Hairy. Early on, we kept getting submissions beginning with the author's previously published lists and bios and, frankly, I got sick of reading them. It takes no time to copy/paste that sort of thing into the body of an email. How clever can a list of publications be, you know? Writers need to want to be in The Dead Mule, not just anywhere the submission email links sent them. It's really quite simple to prove your southern-ness. We get some great writing in those Southern Legitimacy Statements. That's why we publish them on the index page of each section of the Mule.
Michael: I’ll bet you get a lot of responses that are unpublishable, too. Have you ever rejected a good story just because someone couldn’t prove they were from the south?
Valerie: I don't think we've ever received an offensive SLS (Southern Legitimacy Statement), come to think of it. Could be writers take that sort of thing seriously... I don't know. The Mule is pretty apolitical, writers must sense that. To me, it is anyway. No red state, blue state BS or links to moveon.org. Whenever we receive a submission without a SLS, we send it back and tell the author something to the effect of "check the submission page, send us your Southern Legitimacy Statement" and we're very polite about it. No one's ever not re-submitted with a statement of some sort. Sometimes it's just as simple as "I love fried chicken and sweet tea” or “I own two yard dogs”.
Michael: I’ve read just about every issue of yours since I first discovered it. It’s definitely one of my favorite on-line publications. But I have to say; I have trouble classifying your style of literature. The fiction you choose isn’t exactly mainstream; but then again, it hardly fits into any of the classic genres. What suggestions do you have for my readers who would like to place a story in your magazine?
Valerie: We read anything, really. And flattery will get you everywhere, we're whores for compliments. I don't suppose we know what's going to trip our trigger until we read it. Aside from the word limits, I don't reckon much else matters. I think we've even published science fiction and fantasy. Wait, I take it back... we don't publish erotica. First off, I don't read it myself so I wouldn't begin to know how to "judge" it and secondly, we have a large high school audience. We've only had a few stories of that genre submitted in the last 10 years. One of the keys to successful writing is to know your audience and the publication you're submitting to. Like I said, with us, you need a SLS, but we welcome about anything. There are a few words we'd prefer not to publish -- mostly referring to genitalia or racial & ethnic slurs-- unless they are truly necessary to the story's plot.
Michael: Can you see yourself ever doing a print version of your journal?
Valerie: We are currently working with Lulu to get a volume together. I used to talk with Jeremy Hogan about Linux back when he was with Red Hat and now he's with Lulu. Naturally, I was curious about the whole POD industry, checked into Lulu and they are very impressive, I'll tell you. Check them out. Since the new Mule's backend was created from WordPress, Robert is currently working on a way to convert the MySQL database into a .pdf so we can publish. We're getting close. Once we get a "best of" collection out there, we'll start offering the Mule monthly. BTW, I imagine we'll offer it at cost + 25 cents or something insane like that. I don't want to make money off the Mule, ever. Robert and I pay for everything out of our own pocket. It's a great hobby.
Michael: We suffer from the same affliction. LL has set me back several hundred dollars so far and I haven't made a nickel. Probably never will. One would think that you would be able to put together a kickass anthology from the stories you’ve collected. How soon before I can put in my order?
Valerie: I'm hoping for the Mule Anthology to be available by late Fall, but maybe sooner. I have to look into legalities -- I'm not sure if I have to receive permissions from the writers... We have been trying to determine what type of Creative Commons license to use on the Mule, but we don't want to scare off writers. It will probably be the Attribution license.
Michael: Watch your language, please. I'll not have any attributioning going on in my magazine! One last question, and then I’ll let you go. What advise do you have for the aspiring writer trying to get a foothold in today’s incredibly competitive market? (To heck with my readers; this question is for ME!!)
Valerie: Most every writer I talk with on a regular basis agrees with me on this one – we all write because we have to. Writing is like eating, or breathing. Committing the Act of Writing is necessary for our continued survival. Keep that in mind and then submit wherever your writing fits. Develop a thick skin and don't take rejection personally. Editors or agents don't know you, they don't like or dislike you as a person. They just don't like what you've written and sent them, for one reason or another. Rejection is often because a writer didn't do the necessary submission research – sent a science fiction book to a publisher of historical fiction or an essay on fly fishing to a computer programming magazine.
- Now, in 2005, a good Blog helps (like this one Mental Kudzu -shameless plug.) I wouldn't have said that a couple years ago, even though I've been blogging since 1996 in one form or another. And many writers will disagree with me. Phoebe Kate Foster, the Mule's Ass Ed and one of my best friends, frequently tells me she doesn't “get” blogging, wonders why writers would give away writing like they do in a blog. She'll accuse me of posting my “best stuff” rather than sending the writing out into the world for someone else to publish. This is good for me to hear, it keeps me from obsessing over the blog and puts it into perspective.
- Know your craft. Edit the hell out of everything you write, when you think you've finished a piece -- put it away for a week, then get it back out and read it. Edit it again. Every word, every sentence. Every nuance, comma, sentence frament. I suck at punctuation, btw, but I try not to emulate Cormac McCarthy. Lots of writers love to workshop their writing on websites like Zoetrope but I've never done that. I'm sure it works well for many people.
- Be Computer Literate. I cannot stress this enough. It's not cute to include “this is my first time ever to send an email, so please be gentle” in your submission. It makes you sound stupid, not coy. It's 2005, for crap's sake. If you don't know how to email an attachment, go to the community college and take a class. Tough love, people. Know the difference between .rtf, .txt, and .doc. If you're still using Microsoft Works, please buy a real word processor or download OpenOffice. It's free. I use it. Then again, I don't use any Microsoft products, I'm a Linux Geek. Read about it here. Writers should have a personal website with a real domain name. Blog or other type. Make it fun.
- Research the market. Don't submit to every website online. And learn how to detect legitimacy. Editorial slant, purpose, professionalism -- Get a copy of Writer's Digest Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. Read it to understand the industry, what people want, who's real... that sort of thing. But always, always, visit the website of a publication before submitting, don't go by NSSWM alone. Buy the new <a href=”http://www.clmp.org”> CLMP "Literary Magazine and Press Directory" or Poets and Writer's Magazine... And remember, a good writer never, ever, ever repeats modifiers.
- One more bit of advice. Submit to academic literary journals like the Mississippi Review, Plougshares, The Southern Review, Shenandoah... to name a few. While many of these publications are difficult to break into, when you finally do, it will open doors. Writers should also submit full-length manuscripts to University presses. Check out the AAUP website for information. Also, enter legitimate literary competitions, especially university-based ones.
Personally? I went to Holland to the Ploughshares International Fiction Writing Seminar and it changed my life. Writers should definitely research going to seminars -- flesh and blood ones, not online -- I advise attending ones that you have to qualify for, not open calls, but most seminars can help in some way, even if it's only letting a writer know they're not the only ones who are social one day and reclusive the next. It's helpful to belong to a writer's group -- one with sensate beings meeting in one room a couple times a month, not an online support group. I used to go and it helped me immensely. Many writers self-promote, both in their communities and elsewhere. I'm reclusive, agoraphobic, half-human half-lizard and live at the Ass End of the Great Dismal Swamp so I can't really give a thumbs up or thumbs down to this practice. Good Lord, I could go on for days about this. The sad thing is, I don't know of any magic potion a writer can drink that will assure success. Shit, people actually pay good money to read Nicholas Sparks' novels, who am I to say what sells?
I suppose ya'll can tell by the rambling above that this is a rather difficult topic to deal with in just a few paragraphs. No one gives the same advice, I suppose we all have our quirks and eccentricities. A lot of my successes come from being the Books Editor for Popmatters for 3 years. I got to know some well-known writers through interviewing them and developing a rapport. I never asked them to publish or recommend my writing, mind you, but I did listen to what they told me about how, when, why they write.
Michael: Thanks for your time,Valerie. I really do appreciate it. Why don’t you tell my readers how they can get your magazine and what they can do to help you keep going?
Valerie: Go to The Dead Mule. Submit. Buy a t-shirt to help cover our hosting costs. Read the Mule each month. Submit again. Buy me a pony. Send me a crate of home-grown tomatoes because the blight took my plants and done kilt 'em. Get me a case of Red Bull, sugar-free... contribute to my grandson's college fund... I can be bought.
