A new crime fiction print mag seeks submissions

It's the brainchild of Baltimore-based Cortright McMeel and Tristan Davies, and from the missive McMeel sent me, I'm already super excited for this mag's prospects. The submission call appears below:

Murdaland: Crime Fiction for the New Century will feature the best and most derelict, deranged, bareknuckled honest voices to bring about a renaissance of crime fiction. Currently, the predominant “mystery” magazines are two lame, staid, old fogey establishment publications: Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Both are put out by the same publisher and stuck in a timewarp of 1950's schlock. They even have mystery crossword puzzles catering to nuns living sober lives in the cornbelt.

Murdaland will not be kin to this kind of writing or experience. More risk taking in nature, possessing the kind of vision and rebellious attitude as such rogue presses as Olympia (Naked Lunch, Burroughs), our mission will be to free American crime fiction from the cage of civility where it now rots. Murdaland is a beast of three parts: part literature, part rabid dog, part sad whiskey shot spilled on the barroom floor. The final result will be in the tradition of crime writer David Goodis (Shoot the Piano Player), as he was once described by Kerouac: “the poet of the losers.”

We are calling for stories that will help redefine the Noir/Hardboiled genre and take it to new literary heights. Stories don’t have to be about boxers, PIs, pimps, hookers, bank robbers and drug dealers, as much as they should be about exploring characters in a violent modern world existing on the margins of society. Above all, it’s about the writing. The prose must be high and tight.

We plan to go to press in April so any story received should reach us by March 1, 2006.
Send manuscripts to:
Cortright McMeel
1218 Wine Spring Lane
Baltimore, Md. 21204

Or email submissions to fiction editor Eddie Vega at  vegae@pbcc.edu.

Payment is $100 per story. There's no word count limit, because as McMeel puts it, "there are no rules. We just want good writing."

Comments

[N]

I declare this the rightful heir to PLOTS WITH GUNS.

(like anyone gives a shit what I think, though...)

The king is dead. Long live the king. Bite me.

[Olen Steinhauer]

With this and Fuck Noir, it's gonna be a great year.

[Jim Winter]

A new PRINT mag? That isn't lame? (Well, CRIME SPREE and CRIME SCENE SCOTLAND notwithstanding.)

[Brian Drake]

Thank you very much for posting this! It's indeed exciting, and I think I have something right up their alley. --B--

[Judith R. Parker]

Sounds interesting. I'll be sending an 800 word short story but I doubt you'll use it. It is NOT politically correct.

[Guyot]

In my experience, when someone feels they must promote themselves by bashing others, they aren't around long.