Word Pirates: How does Barrelhouse decide what it will publish? What’s the process: Who looks at the submissions, what is done with them, etc.?

Dave Housley: Stuff comes into our email box and then we expedite from there. We have 5 fiction editors so we split the first readings up evenly. For the things that are just not good enough to publish, each editor will reject those on their own. If there’s even a chance that we might publish it, or that one of the other editors might like it, even if the one who read the story first doesn’t really dig it (this sounds funny, but it’s actually pretty easy to narrow those down), then the story goes off to another editor. If one of those two editors likes the piece enough (meaning, enough to publish) then it goes to our final pile.

At this point, we have kind of an editorial cage match – everybody reads the story and we all weigh in. We’re very democratic, but we do allow for grandstanding and loudmouthing and speechifying – you can either weigh in if you love a story, or veto if you hate it. We probably accept about a quarter of the stuff that makes it to final consideration. It’s a tough process, and we’ve rejected stories that I really loved. I’ve also personally vetoed stories that went on to be published in magazines that are much better known than ours, so it’s a very, very subjective process.

WP: What story plots are overdone and overplayed?

DH: For awhile we were getting a lot of stories with the “Garden State” plot: slacker guy slacks around and complains about being misunderstood in a kind of disaffected way and fights off interference/advances/urging of parents/girlfriend/wife and then kind of comes to a mini-epiphany in the end. I think that might have been right around when Garden State opened or something, or maybe we originally appealed to male slackers of a certain age.

In general, I’d say there’s no plot that’s overdone, as long as the details and characters are compelling and the story works.

WP: What do you wish you saw more of?

DH: I’d love to see more stories set in very specific, original places. There’s a kind of strength and authority that bleeds through when you can tell a writer really knows the territory they’re talking about. It can’t make a story in and of itself, but it can make a story much more interesting. Boy meets girl (or, in the case of the story I’m thinking of, Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard, boy meets boy), set on top of a plummeting zeppelin, is inherently more compelling than the same story set in a mall.

That said, if the mall story has all the telling details right, that can work, too.

I also wish we saw more funny stories.

WP: If you could publish any living writer in the journal, whom would you pick? Why?

DH: George Saunders. He’s great – funny, original, with something to say. We’ve approached him and he was incredibly sweet about it, explaining that he’s got a deal with a little publication called The New Yorker, and they’ve got right of first refusal on all his stuff. We were just thrilled to get a return email.

WP: How many submissions do you actually receive? How much of that would you consider amateurish and unpublishable?

DH: For us, it depends on whether we’re advertising that we’re open or not. We usually put a small ad in Poets and Writers when we open up. We get probably 200 or 300 per month during those times. Maybe about half are “amateurish,” and then there’s another percentage that are well executed but have something significantly wrong with them (like a shirt at Old Navy that looks good from far away, and then you get up close and they’ve put a camoulflage band around the neck, or a picture of a cowboy down the back, or something). So there’s probably a third or a quarter of all the submissions that are good enough for us to seriously consider.

Giving examples seems kind of mean, and I’m a writer, too, so I’m afraid of the literary karma that might come down on me if I give you specific examples of bad stories. I will say this: a lot of people write about a character getting drunk – nothing else, just kind of getting drunk and grousing – and as much fun as that might be to actually do, it’s not much fun to read about.

WP: How much of what you publish is solicited vs. unsolicited work? Are a writer’s credentials/previous publications important? If so, what is likely to get your attention?

DH: We’ve done just a bit of soliciting. Our next issue will include maybe three or four stories that were solicited. We tend to not put a lot of stock in credentials, or at least we try not to. If somebody has really amazing credentials, or more importantly, if I’ve read something of theirs that I really enjoyed (this happened recently, actually, and it was a great surprise), obviously that comes into play, as much as you try to put it out of your mind.

WP: Do you get more story, poem, or essay submissions? Which would you like to see more of and why?

DH: We get a lot of story and poetry submissions. We would LOVE to get more essays, but only about pop culture –it says on our website very specifically that this is the kind of thing we’re looking for, and we try to be pretty loose with the definition of “about pop culture,” but an essay about a really deep camping trip with your grandmother, as great as it may be, just isn’t about pop culture. Now, an essay about the sociopolitical implications of the Smurfs, that’s about pop culture. And yes, I am kind of waiting for that essay to come in…

Also more web fiction, meaning very short (under 1,500 words). I know people place a premium on print publication, and I’m a writer and I do the same, to a certain extent, but a lot more people will read our site than our magazine, so in a lot of ways, it might be a better venue for somebody hoping to get noticed, or just get started publishing.

WP: Would you say you are more likely to publish short pieces over long pieces? Why/why not?

DH: I think the longest story we’ve published has been 7,000 words, which is a pretty long story. We’re an independent magazine, and we actually buck up our own money for printing – pay the printer, divide it by five, write out checks – so if we’re going to print a long story we all have to really, really like it. We have to like it enough to want to pay to publish that one long story instead of maybe 2 or 3 shorter pieces, so it’s got to be really good.

WP: When do you accept submissions? What time of year are you the most likely read for the next issue?

DH: We read most of the year, so we’ll accept something after one of those steel cage editorial smackdown meetings I described above. If one of us really likes something, we’ll put it on the fast track and have everybody else read it right away, and we’ve accepted things as soon as a week after we’ve received them, but that doesn’t happen often. We’re really trying to speed up our process, actually – with five people, all working real jobs, with real families and other things that demand attention, it’s hard to manage this process in a really timely fashion, but we’re always trying to be faster.

WP: What are your pet peeves about your job?

DH: Mainly, that it’s not my job. We’re all doing this just because we really love it – as I said, we’ve all got full time jobs, and we pitch in our own money to publish Barrelhouse. I’d love it if this was my full time job, but the indie lit mag business is not quite as lucrative as, oh, as I imagine selling soft pretzels in the street might be. It’s a labor of love, no doubt about it.

WP: Do you have any other thoughts you’d like to share?

DH: This sounds cliché, but if you really like a story and it gets rejected, keep plugging away. It’s true that most stories get rejected a LOT before they’re actually accepted anywhere, and I know for a fact that we’ve rejected stories that are published elsewhere.

I think in general that the web venues get overlooked sometimes. I’d tell anybody who is just starting out, especially if they’re writing some shorter stuff, to look hard at the web venues. There are some great places out there, and the nature of the web is such that most folks are constantly looking for new content (some examples, and this is just a sample: Hobart, Pindeldyboz, Monkeybicycle, StorySouth, Eclectica, Juked, Frigg, Opium, Word Riot, Failbetter, Smokelong, and, of course, us).

Oh, and while I’m spouting off: buy literary magazines! Especially independent ones. We’re all scrambling to stay alive, and any kind of support, especially financial, really makes a difference.

WP: Thanks again, Dave.