“Everybody’s got a water buffalo. Yours is fast, but mine is slow. Oh where’d we get them, I don’t know, but everybody’s got a water buffalo-oooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! ”

– From Silly Songs With Larry, Veggie Tales

I was a child when I first heard this silly, and very short song, but it got stuck in my head, and I have known it ever since. One of the reasons I liked this song so much as a child is that I liked imagining everyone having a water buffalo. I imagined how much more interesting school would be, particularly gym.

Now the song only pops into my head whenever I see a water buffalo, which is rarely. However recently I saw a whole field full of them, and I started thinking what if everyone did have one, or if not a water buffalo, what if everyone had a porcupine, or a parrot, or even a dog. How would that change the world?

So your prompt today is to write a short story or a poem that involves everyone having some sort of animal. Now this prompt leans towards the absurd, but if you want to take it more seriously, go for it. Have fun creating.

But first, a bit about our contest series. Every week we are going to have a contest on our Facebook Page. The contests will change from week to week, but the winners will always be published in the magazine. The contest winner and the runner up are chosen by a voting system, and then the editors of Authors Publish will select several additional entries from the rest to be the Editor’s Choice winners.

Below are all the winners of this week’s contest. This week the challenge was to write your life story using only six words.

Winner:

Runner Up:

Editor’s Choice:

However, it is worth noting that the poems on the site are selected by an intern and not by the editors.  They try to respond to submissions within a month. They publish two issues every year.

The editors both have MFAs and are emerging poets in their own right. The journal is named after an area just north of Omaha that had a sordid past but is currently going through an artistic revitalization. They prefer to publish poems that take risk.

They accept all submissions through their submission manager. You can submit up to 5 previously unpublished poems at a time. Simultaneous submissions are permitted. A cover letter is preferred but not required. There are no content or form restrictions. They do not use readers which means that one of their editors reads every submission.

Unless they explicitly ask to see more of your work, submit only once every six months. They do not close to submissions at any time during the year. They accept less than 5% of the work submitted to them for consideration.

To learn more or to submit, visit their website at http://burntdistrict.org/.

UPDATE: Tyrus Books permenently closed its doors as of April 7th 2017. This was after they became an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Tyrus Books is a publisher of crime and literary fiction. All the work they publish leans towards literary. They offer advances to authors. They have a good distributor and a good reputation.

They have extensive notes for potential submitters on their website. These are worth reading to know more about what they are and are not interested in.

However, it is best to know upfront that they do not consider publishing novels where the protagonist works for the CIA, FBI, NSA, the military, or law enforcement of any kind. They are also not interested in books where the protagonist is an unrealistic “bad-ass” or involved in an important criminal syndicate. They also are not interested in cliches or tropes, like being pursued by a serial killer or defusing a bomb.

In other words if you wrote the book version of CSI, Criminal Minds, or a Hollywood blockbuster, they are not interested.

 They are interested in books that are set somewhere unusual in the States. They are interested in books where melodramatic violence and car chases do not play a significant role. They are interested in books set today and during the last decade.

They are looking for edited (no first drafts) manuscripts that are between 60,000-100,000 words.

It is good to look through their list of past publications to see if anything matches your writing style. If you think one of their books might be similar to what you have written and you don’t have the money to buy that title, you can tell them. They will either buy the book for you or offer a significant discount. That is a really unusual and impressive offer.

They try to respond to most queries within three months. If you have not heard from them in that time, consider your work rejected.

If you are interested in submitting your manuscript, send a a synopsis to them via email. You do not need to include any of the manuscript, but if you do, just make sure it is less than 20 pages in the body of the email.