Why submit? · What gets posted? · Rules · Additional guidelines · Critiques/beta reading · Article submissions · Link submissions

Why submit?

Why send your story to me, rather than to your friend with the spiffy color-coordinated site at Geocities? Well, ask her to post it too! It's always good to have a backup, she'll doubtless appreciate your contribution, and it is your story to do with as you please. However, there are some advantages to having it posted here, which may appeal to you.

First, it's that much more likely to get read. This is a pretty popular site, and your story will not only be posted, it will be noted on the updates page and in the monthly newsletter that currently has a circulation of 80 or so. If I like it well enough, I may also spotlight it in the newsletter, telling people why they should read it.

Second, the Index is not located on a free webspace provider, and therefore your fic will seldom if ever be unavailable due to server outage, nor will ad banners be pasted on it. (Knock on wood.)

What gets posted?

When you send me your story, you can usually expect that it will be posted, regardless of whether I personally like it or not. There are certain exceptions.

• "Humor" in which the characters of Les Miz are barely recognizable, and which isn't funny. Funny is completely subjective.
• Outright pornography. In Manon's dictionary, that's "graphic sex for the sake of graphic sex, devoid of artistic merit". Artistic merit is also completely subjective.

I will scan it for any glaring typographical errors, but it's common courtesy to run your own spelling and grammar check before you send it to me. Other than that, I will not alter your fic. That means I won't fix it for you if you do something really stupid, like have Marius say "Dude!" or change someone's name halfway through or insert snippets of blatantly incorrect French.

Rules (Things on which I insist)

Due to the number of submissions I get, I have had to tighten up the submission requirements. This is not to be picky or annoying, but simply to make my job tedious rather than outright impossible.

1. Send all submissions to abbygoutal at yahoo.com.
   Fics sent to any other address will be deleted without notice. I get way too much spam; I have to keep organized somehow.

2. Submissions must be in plain ASCII text (.txt) format.
   You can send them either in the body of your email, or as attachments, but they must be plain text. This is the only format which does not have huge hassles attached to it. Fancy word-processing programs have a habit of inserting "smart quotes" and the "smart ellipses", which show up on my end as bizarre things like ^Ó. Fixing these "enhancements" is a huge pain in the neck.

   If you are not endowed with computer smarts, there is an easy way to make sure of this: type your story in Notepad, or SimpleText, save it as something.txt, then send it to me as an attachment. You can indicate italics by surrounding the italicized text with *asterisks*, or /slashes/, or _underscores_, or HTML tags. Just be sure to indicate where the italics leave off, as well as where they begin.

   I am sorry to make a big deal over this, but it's the one rule that people just do not seem to get. Plain text means just that: plain, no special fonts, no colorful text, no big and small text, no italics or boldface or underline. I can take .doc files, but they are all too apt to give me viruses that you didn't know you had. I can take HTML files, but then I have to strip out your formatting and put in mine, which is counterproductive. Please, people, plain ASCII text.

3. Submissions must have a title.
   Any title. Please. The dumbest thing you can think of is better than "Untitled", if only because it is then easier to give it a filename. I'll bend this rule once per author, because titles are admittedly difficult, but just once. More than that, and I'll start giving them titles myself, and you Don't Want That.

4. Specify in your email whether your story contains adult content.
   Because while I skim every story, I don't necessarily read them attentively before posting. Adult content includes: a lot of foul language, explicit sex, graphic violence, touchy themes such as rape or incest. It does not include: a couple of profanities, vague sexual content with a fade-to-black, slashiness, mention of prostitution, death. This is Les Miz, after all. :)

Additional guidelines (Things which I encourage)

1. You are encouraged to include a short summary to appear under your story's title on the listings, but it should be concise, descriptive, and impersonal.
   • Yes: "A short, bitter Eponine angstfic."
   • No: "This is just some thoughts of Eponine while she walks alone at night... its my first fanfic so I hope you like it."

2. If it is your first submission, you should indicate what name you want to be listed under. If you don't do this, I will use whatever looks to me like the right name, and you may be caught by surprise when your dad or your employer gets credit for your fic.
   • Example: "My First Fanfic", by Mademoiselle Doe

3. If you want your contact address to be different from the one you're sending the story from, you should indicate that as well.

4. Please, no "author's notes" unless they're necessary. Justifying what might otherwise appear to be an anachronism may be necessary. Explaining how you got the idea for your story, and that none of these characters belong to you, and that you wrote it especially for your best friend from school, is not necessary.

5. Do not submit a story asking for my opinion. I have no time to figure out whether you want me to post it and then comment, or comment and then wait for your second draft (if any).

Critique/beta reading

If you want an opinion on your story, your best bet is to post at the Fanfic Forum asking for someone to beta-read/critique/go over/spellcheck it, and see who volunteers. You can send it directly to me if you want, but you'll take your chances.

Article submissions

There are a few things I don't need:

• articles on the theme of "to slash or not to slash"; I already have a couple, and it just doesn't need to be that big of a debate.
• timelines of the book; I already have several, in varying degrees of detail.
• random gushes about how much you luv Les Miz.
• random rants about how much you hate Cosette/Enjolras/Javert.

If, however, you think you have a new and worthwhile slant on any of the above, you can send it in anyway and I'll take a look at it.

What would I like to see? Almost anything else that's well-written and thoughtful. I would be interested in, for example:

• a comparison of the published Les Mis sequels (Kalpakian, Harris, Ceresa).
• what you think makes a great fanfic.
• a list of the ten stories you feel are must-reads and why
• discussion of a certain genre of Mizfic (what IS the appeal of Javert Porn, anyway?)
• general advice on how to write better fic
• a study of insert-your-chosen-character

Basically, whatever you can come up with that hasn't been done already.

Article submissons should adhere to the rules for stories.

Link submissions

I would be delighted to see any sites you come across which might be helpful. Sites which help in historical matters, like The France of Victor Hugo, are especially welcome; if anyone can find a site that gives tips on basic French, that would be cool too. General writing sites are also okay, if they're outstandingly useful. Browse the Resources page to see what kind of thing I'm interested in.

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