Vautrin is closed to submissions until further notice, with the following points to the fore:
We are working on a remedy for one or two of the conditions that make it a challenge to stay in business. The possible remedies do not, however, include turning Vautrin into an online only magazine. This is not to suggest that online only magazines are not great. Rather, we’re inspired to keep on with the paperback.
Blame it on John O’Hara. But at Vautrin, after reading “Ninety Minutes Away” in The Hat on the Bed, there is a full-on jones for longer stories. Novelettes? Possibly. Whatever the gods have to say about stories in the 7,500 to 17,000-ish word range. A bit more room to tell the tale, to explore voice, theme, character and scenes. Though we still like stories that move. And wouldn’t it be a pleasure if writers show up with something sublime.
7,500 – 9,999 words: $165.00, plus one copy of the issue.
10,000 – 12,999 words: $205.00, plus one copy of the issue.
13,000 – 14,999 words: $225.00, plus one copy of the issue.
15,000 – 17,000 words: $255.00, plus one copy of the issue.
NOTE: If a story spills over the 17,000 word mark by some reasonable amount, it could still get in if we like it enough. But $255.00 is the maximum payout unless you want to light a candle with Carlos Herrera.
Light a Candle with Carlos Herrera
Vautrin doesn’t always call himself Vautrin in Balzac’s novels. He goes by that in Old Goriot, but his real name is Jacques Collin. Due to some of the shady activities he’s been involved in, though, he needs an alias or two. Thus Vautrin. And he passes himself off as a priest named Carlos Herrera in A Harlot High and Low. What with Vautrin (this magazine) going full-on novelettes as detailed above, it feels like the time is right to entertain identity switch/alias-type narratives. Think Mildred H./Muriel in Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake. Mind, it might take a trickster indeed to pull off a fake identity in present-day hyper monitored techie world. But maybe some writers will give it a shot. And there’s nothing saying the novelette must be set in the here and now.
To be clear: there is no requirement to write and submit an identity switch/alias narrative when subs open. Topics, themes, plots, etc., are wide open. But the winning identity switch/alias narrative (essentially the tale the editor likes the best that falls in that vein), will get $350.00 (applies to all novelette lengths up for review), plus one copy of the issue.
No flash fiction.
No reprints.
Limit one story submission per writer.
Do we allow simultaneous submissions? Yes.
###
“Of offering more than what I can deliver, I have a bad habit, it is true. But I have to offer more than what I can deliver, to be able to deliver what I do.” –Ken Kesey
