This web site is home to stories by those who write because not writing feels bad. It bothers them to sit around at night after the day job without trying to create something bigger than their own lives. If you can relate, you're in the right place. SSFH could afford to pay $10 a story upon acceptance, but that would insult everyone involved.
Feel free to submit a story. There are no technical guidelines other than competence. There is an editorial bias inherent in any publication or web zine. Ours is clearly evident here. It should be ridiculously obvious that happy stories about the antics of your pets are going to be quickly discarded. Other than that, have at it.
Four pieces of advice are forthcoming. And here they are.
1) Writers who are overly concerned with publication and/or making money writing fiction, two very difficult things to do, tend to write what they think someone will like, and thus produce watered down, politically correct drivel.
Don't write to be liked or published. Write for yourself. Anything else is fraudulent and transparent.
2) DO NOT try to shock us. You can't do it. We've seen it all, we've thought most of it. If your story calls for disememberments and or the word fuck a few thousand times, then so be it, but don't force it.
3) Please be sure you write a story. I'm not talking about the "rules" of composition where I can identify a beginning, middle, and end. I'm talking about a piece of fiction that is not a re-constituted journal entry or a long description of a situation. All the linguistic expertise in the world will not hold a reader's attention if the story doesn't grab them and hold their interest.
4) Don't send "flash fiction." People's first ideas and thoughts can always, always, be at least refined and honed, but probably should be discarded altogether.
Email a work and check back periodically to see if it gets posted. In the past, we attempted to have a rhyme and reason in terms of a publication schedule, but we've sinced learned that stories gestate and are born on their own terms.
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