Writer's Guidelines

Fiction Guidelines

Moocat.net wants short stories and excerpts from novels! Interested in fiction on many themes, with the goal of taking the reader on a pleasant and unusual little mind-ride. Uninterested in polemics, erotica, or anything vituperative, mean-spirited, or rapturously religious. The moocat is a gentle cat.

Original works only. Willing to consider simultaneous submissions, but please select “This is a simultaneous submission” on the submission form. Only works sent in via the online submission form will be considered.

Length and Quality

The moocat is interested in publishing short fiction, from 500 to 5000 words long.

Clichés are ambivent foreign gods who look upon short fiction as a disappointing failure to worship them. So please don’t use them, unless you’re doing it intentionally to somehow comment on the cliché itself.

Copyright Considerations

Contributors retain copyright over their works after publication. The only form of payment I can offer is the knowledge that your work is being read by some unknown number of anonymous Internet users.

Other Stuff

I will only post material sent from contributors with a working e-mail address. I will not include your email address or any other direct contact information but will gladly forward to you any Feedback coming in via the “Tell Us What You Think” form. Submission to moocat.net is tantamount to permission to web-publish your material.

I will try to notify all submitters if their work is rejected (at least, until the incoming stream gets too torrential). I’ll certainly notify contributors if I’d like to use their work, and if proposing any edits will mark them clearly and send them to you for your review and approval before final publication.

Guidelines for individual sections: