What Does it Take to Get Published in High Tower Magazine?

A Guide from your Editors

Ben Wheeler:

Ben Wheeler as editor for High Tower looks for high quality works that promote the superversive ideal. There is no specific story that Ben looks for in any portion of his work as an editor. Is it good? Is it interesting? Does it glorify?

A good story is like smoke from a campfire. I know the smell, I know the form, I know the safety protocols, I know where it should be, I know what can be cooked on it. I am looking for the deeper thoughts within the flames.

A good story is not the worship of ashes, but the heat of the fire.

David Hallquist:

While we receive many stories at High Tower Magazine, not all are accepted. It is always a difficult process to reject a story, but each is examined first.

The principal reason for rejection, and the first thing we look for, is professional writing standards. We aspire to excellence at High Tower, and expect our writers to do likewise. Thus, sloppy writing, bad grammar and other consistent errors can lead to a story's rejection. Please make sure all submissions are properly edited first.

The second issue concerns superversive content. We are looking for the opposite of subversion. In short, we are looking for uplifting tales of heroism and the best in people. Stories can be frightening, even horror is OK, but tales of nihilism or hopelessness are not suitable for our publication.

Finally, we are publishing only so many stories per month, thus we must pick the best from among the remainder. High Tower aspires to literary excellence, so we strive to pick from among the very best, and that means that sometimes stories that are otherwise acceptable may not make it into the final cut.

As always, thank you for you attention, and best of luck with your writing.

Anthony Marchetta, Editor in Chief:

As editor in chief, I intend for my portion of the article to be the most detailed.

As the editor I have three primary considerations when considering if a story is going to be published in High Tower Magazine:

1. Have you followed the submission guidelines?

2. Does your story reflect the superversive ideal?

3. Is your story good (which means both objectively good but also, inevitably, to my personal taste - more on that later)?

One is easy. If you don’t follow the guidelines, it’s an automatic rejection. We need to be ruthless about this - I don’t read these stories and encourage my other editors to do the same. We get hundreds of submissions and simply cannot afford to waste our time on stories that don’t follow our rules.

Two is where things get more complex. One of the most commonly asked questions is, when we ask for a superversive story, what do we really mean? We can point to Tom Simon’s legendary essay and give examples of other stories we consider superversive, but as editors, what do WE consider superversive?

For me, the best way to describe it is to say that I want you to write a story that MEANS something. There needs to be a point.

Can the point be “Civilization is evil and needs to be destroyed?” For a superversive story, the answer is most definitely no. Superversive stories are not about the tearing down of civilization, but the building up. The objection is that some civilizations - like the Aztecs, or the Comanches, or the ancient Carthaginians - are evil and need to be destroyed, but the destruction cannot be wanton and random; it needs to be purposeful, with, at minimum, an eye towards building upon the ruins. Or, conversely, it needs to be about protecting the good, true, and beautiful already in the world.

So does that mean that a happy ending is necessary? Not at all. A sad or tragic ending is certainly possible, as long as the message you are left with is not “Evil always wins” or “Doing good is not worthwhile” or “Nothing really matters anyway”.

Let’s take John C. Wright’s short horror story, “Fate of Fortune”, released for free on his website, as an example of superversive horror. I highly recommend you read it first, as I am about to spoil it (it’s not long).

The story is about a foolish lawyer who attempts to bargain his way around a deal with the devil. The story ends -

SPOILER!!!

…

…

- With the lawyer getting tricked by the devil and sent to Hell.

…

…

SPOILER ENDS

So was this story superversive? I would argue yes. The story is ABOUT something. Specifically, the story is about the foolishness of thinking you can trick a spirit of superior intellect and infinite malice, and the impossibility of true happiness gained through evil, among other things. The ending is almost as dark and grim as you could possibly get - but the story is superversive. There is something to build on here, something you can take out of this and bring out to the world to make it a better place, even if it’s simply that you learn a lesson from it.

Spare me the commentary on message fiction. All stories are about something. What makes something message fiction is when your primary goal is to convey that message instead of to entertain. Entertainment should always be the primary goal, and any message secondary. That doesn’t mean the message is non-existent.

Let me use another example to explain - this time one from High Tower Magazine. Nicholas Ledhe’s superb story “The Buried Campaign” is a good example of the sort of a story that is very dark, and doesn’t necessarily have a positive ending, but is superversive in the sense I’ve been using it - it is ABOUT something. It has something to say.

In this case, the story is about the battle of civilized forces to hold back the forces of evil and darkness on the edge of the world. Superversive doesn’t necessarily mean profound and certainly doesn’t mean didactic. I’m not looking for you to give me all the answers. Simply by presenting the problem in this way I know that I am reading a story that is on the side of civilization.

Okay, so you have an idea of what we mean by superversive, and how even dark stories with dark endings can be superversive. So what else am I looking for?

This is where we get to quality, and here I can only point to the most common issues I saw.

Story after story had an interesting premise and got off to a good start, only to just sort of…stop. I often got the impression that I was reading the beginning of a potential novel that was trying to sell me on reading the rest.

Don’t do that. We publish short stories here at High Tower Magazine. It should feel complete in itself.

I don’t want to ban sex entirely, as I can imagine a theoretical story with sex in some form that genuinely adds something significant and isn’t pornographic, but it is going to be a REALLY REALLY REALLY hard sell. It’s as close to an auto-rejection without officially being an auto-rejection as you can possibly get. Try it if you want to, but don’t expect much.

The main thing I’m looking for, though, the thing that makes me excited, is VOICE. I should start your story and immediately tell that this is a writer with a VISION. A point of view. It’s hard to explain this except through example, so I will take a page out of the Mystery Writer’s Handbook (which did something similar) and ask you: What story would you read?

This is a generic story opening of the type we get tons and tons of (I wrote this, but think of it as Based on a True Story):

Joe Schmoe sat up straight in bed, confused. It was way too early for his alarm to go off. Right?

But it wasn’t his alarm. It was his phone. Nikki? What was she calling about now?

Though tired, Joe managed to get the phone to his ear. “Nikki? Wazzup?” He was still half-asleep and his speech was slightly slurred.

This is…fine. It has no punch. No pizzazz. I got bored writing it. And it’s way too representative of stories we have genuinely received. Not in what happens in it, but in the feel of it. The lack of vision.

Contrast that with the opening of Harold Hoss’s “car·niv·o·rous”:

The Los Angeles Department of the Medical Examiner is a regal concrete and red brick building in Boyle Heights. One that is even more striking because it faces a dilapidated yellow brick flop house and a run down burger joint with suspiciously low prices.

Detective Sam Carter isn’t a picky eater, but even he draws a line at dollar burgers in such close proximity to the morgue.

Look at how much more personality this has! Just a touch of humor, and even though we don’t get a ton of exposition look at the expert way atmosphere is created with the image of the dilapidated yellow brick flop house next to a cheap burger joint.

Or look at the opening of Ben Zwycky’s “Kronos’ Cradle”:

The promise of eternity lures fragile souls to hell and back;

Despite the great uncertainty, they venture out into the black

To Kronos’ very cradle, bound by seven gleaming rings

(According to the fable—that’s how one hears about these things).

Do I even need to say what makes this one pop? Poetry aside, there is so much personality in the language used.

I can go on and on, and maybe in the future I will, but that’s where I’ll leave things for now. Remember too, if you were rejected and you’re convinced that you ticked all of the boxes- some of it is just taste. Sometimes I get a really good story but for whatever reason it doesn’t fit the particular things I’m in the mood for and you’re out of luck. In the end, that’s the industry. If you want to get published in High Tower Magazine, make sure your story is superversive, and make sure that you have a voice - a vision. I want to read your story and get excited about your perspective. I want to be EXCITED to publish you!

Good luck. High Tower is here to stay.

- Anthony Marchetta

Editor in Chief