V.F.D’s Codes (Happy Bi Visibility Day!)

I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to read thoroughly through the terms of any publication before you send your writing to them. It is mandatory that you know and understand what rights you’re giving away when you’re trying to get published.

Just the other day I was emailed by a relatively new indie journal looking for writers. They made it very clear that they did not pay writers for their work, so I figured I’d probably be passing, but I took a look at their Copyright policy out of curiosity and it was a nightmare. They wanted “non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license and right to use, display, reproduce, distribute, and publish the Work on the internet and on or in any medium” (that’s copy and pasted btw) and that was the first of 10 sections on their Copyright agreement page. Yikes. That’s exactly the type of publishing nightmare you don’t want to be trapped in. 

Most journals will ask for “First North American Rights” or a variation on “First Rights” which operate under the assumption that all right revert back to you and they only have the right to be the first publishers of the work. That is what you need to be looking for because you do want to retain all the rights to your work. 

You want all rights to revert back to you upon publication in case you, say, want to publish it again in the future or use it for a bookmark or post it on your blog, or anything else you might want to do with the writing you worked hard on. Any time a publisher wants more than that, be very suspicious. Anyone who wants to own your work forever and be able to do whatever they want with it without your permission is not to be trusted. Anyone who wants all that and wants you to sign away your right to ever be paid for your work is running a scam.

Protect your writing. It’s not just your intellectual property, it’s also your baby. You worked hard on it. You need to do the extra research to protect yourself so that a scammer (or even a well meaning start up) doesn’t steal you work right from under you nose and make money off of it.

Do Hangfire and V.F.D. share a secret criminal past?

An overlooked aspect of “All The Wrong Questions”’s complex plotting is the apparently extensive knowledge Hangfire managed to compile on the V.F.D. organization. It seems that his sinister Inhumane Society acts as an evil (well, slightly more evil) counterpart to the volunteers, copying a number of their most frequent methods: disguises, arson, secret messages, trained animals, etc.

“The jig’s up for Snicket,” Stew sneered. “The boss told me to make sure he suffered. Hangfire has a particular revulsion for members of V.F.D.” [Shouldn’t You Be In School?, Chapter Twelve]

“That’s exactly wrong,” I said. “You’ve concocted a beautiful plan, Hangfire. I’m not going to mangle it.” He turned his mask to me. “But V.F.D. stands for the true human tradition of justice and literature,” he said. “I thought you’d find a lawless world an ugly place.” [Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?, Chapter Nine]

But we don’t exactly know HOW and WHY Hangfire got all this information. Dashiell Qwerty is young, but he’s clearly been the librarian of Stain’d-by-the-Sea for quite some time. When did V.F.D. start investigating the secrets of this town? And how does that factor in with the history of Inhumane Society? It seems that Hangfire and V.F.D. are much closer than either cares to admit.

The following article is highly speculative but nevertheless tries to paint a coherent narrative around Armstrong Feint’s start of darkness. Find out how V.F.D. created its own worst enemy after the cut.

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Today I learned

a collection of motivational insights regarding content creation and creative hobbies

and of course the classic

Things I need more of in my life: Midwestern gothic/horror stories.

Barns with no doors that almost seem to breathe, their walls bending inward and outward every few seconds.

That one diner at the edge of town where the people you see through the windows on the outside are not the same as the ones inside.

That late night train that travels slowly across the tracks, steam leaking out of the closed doors of the cars. If you listen closely you can hear skittering inside them.

In the park there is a circle of dead grass right behind the swings and if you get close enough you can hear it whispering.

Fields of corn that rustle in the wind and anyone foolish enough to wander into them are never heard from again. Sometimes the farmers will find their shoes during the harvest.

Back roads that don’t make geographical sense. Sometimes you just get stuck in a curve for an hour only to find yourself a mile away from the nearest town afterwards.

Passing the same farm house five times in a row.

Never listen to the crows. Their secrets will alter you in terrible ways.

The scarecrows are always wearing new clothes whenever you see them, even when you take your eyes off them for only a moment.

Don’t ever mention the man who waves to you on your way to work every morning. Don’t mention that he’s been dead for ten years.

Never buy flowers from the flower shop on Main Street. You know the one: the doors are always open, even in winter, and you can smell the sweet scent of roses mixed with something rotting.

Index of Frightful Friday Posts 101–200

Young Goodman Brown | Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Devil and Daniel Webster | Washington Irving

The Cigarette Case | Oliver Onions

The Readjustment | Mary Austin

No. 5 Branch Line: The Engineer | Amelia Edwards

The Easter Egg | Saki

The Lottery | Shirley Jackson

The Secret of Kralitz | Henry Knutter

Mother of Toads | Clark Ashton Smith

Old Garfield’s Heart | Robert E. Howard

The Outsider | H.P. Lovecraft

The Ghosts | Lord Dunsany

The Man-Eating Tree | Phil Robinson

The Reckoning | Lafcadio Hearn

Wild Swimming | Elodie Harper

Neighbourhood Watch | Greg Egan

The Bus-Conductor | E.F. Benson

The Nightmare Room | Arthur Conan Doyle

The Devil of the Marsh | H.B. Marriott-Watson

Weeds | Stephen King

Djinn and Bitters | Harold Lawlor

A Night of Horror | Dick Donovan (aka James Edward Preston Muddock)

Leiningen Versus the Ants | Carl Stephenson

The Vampire of Croglin Grange | Augustus Hare

Lost Hearts | M.R. James

Round the Fire | Catherine Crowe

The Music of Erich Zann | H.P. Lovecraft

Sir Dominick’s Bargain | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Pigeons from Hell | Robert E. Howard

The Medici Boots | Pearl Norton Swet

The Toll-House | W.W. Jacobs

Pride & Prometheus | John Kessel

The Shadowy Third | Ellen Glasgow

Was It a Dream? | Guy de Maupassant

The Open Door | Margaret Oliphant

Three Skeleton Key | George G. Toudouze

Man-Size in Marble | Edith Nesbit

Silent Snow, Secret Snow | Conrad Aiken

A Sound of Thunder | Ray Bradbury

The Gateway of the Monster | William Hope Hodgson

Ofodile | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Repossession | Lionel Shriver

Light and Space | Ned Beauman

Stairs | Penelope Lively

Dark Christmas | Jeanette Winterson

How Fear Departed the Long Gallery | E.F. Benson

Thurnley Abbey | Perceval Landon

To Be Read at Dusk | Charles Dickens

The Tractate Middoth | M.R. James

The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth | Rhoda Broughton

Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse | Louisa May Alcott

The Sumach | Ulrich Dabney

The Pavilion | Edith Nesbit

The Flowering of the Strange Orchid | H.G. Wells

At the Dip of the Road | Mary Louisa Molesworth

At Chrighton Abbey | Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Banshees and Warnings | Lady Gregory

At the End of the Corridor | Evangeline Walton

The Tree’s Wife | Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Pickman’s Model | H.P. Lovecraft

The Dead Man | Fritz Leiber

The Canal | Everil Worrell

The Return of the Sorcerer | Clark Ashton Smith

The Child That Went with the Fairies | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Piano Next Door | Elia W. Peattie

The Miniature | J.Y. Akerman

The American’s Tale | Arthur Conan Doyle

The Death’s Head | Friedrich Laun

The Spectre-Barber | Johann Karl August Musäus

The Family Portraits | Johann August Apel

The Storm | Sarah Elizabeth Utterson

The Invisible Girl | Mary Shelley

The Botathen Ghost | R.S. Hawker

The Whisperers | Algernon Blackwood

The Curse of Vasartas | Eva Henry

The Lost Door | Dorothy Quick

Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook | M.R. James

The Mysterious Mummy | Sax Rohmer

Dagon | H.P. Lovecraft

Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Poor Ghost | Christina Rossetti

The Night Wire | H.F. Arnold

Old Aeson | Arthur Quiller-Couch

The Feather Pillow | Horacio Quiroga

Fingers of a Hand | H.D. Everett

The Tale of Satampra Zeiros | Clark Ashton Smith

The Story of Baelbrow | Kate & Hesketh Prichard

The Jelly-Fish | David H. Keller

The Ebony Frame | Edith Nesbit

The Man of Science | Jerome K. Jerome

The Open Window | Saki

The Hall Bedroom | Mary Wilkins Freeman

No. 252 Rue M. le Prince | Ralph Adams Cram

The Weird Violin | Anonymous

The Ghost’s Summons | Ada Buisson

The Doll’s Ghost | F. Marion Crawford

The Canterville Ghost | Oscar Wilde

The Tapestried Chamber | Sir Walter Scott

The Gorgon’s Head | Edith Bacon

The Empty House | Algernon Blackwood

For the first one hundred stories, please visit: Index of Frightful Friday Posts 1–100

On a scale...

from Saoirse Ronan

to Saoirse Ronan

How successful were you in drowning your sister?

Endou Yuu versus the cosmic unknown