Rock and a Hard Place Press is a lit-noir publisher, focused on stories of struggle, tales of the powerless and marginalized, characters on the fringes of society … and what they do next.
Lots of news to share, friends!
First, we’re so happy to welcome a bouncing baby book into the family. Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, Issue 12 is available now for purchase through online platforms, and by request at local independent bookstores! Featuring a dirty dozen stories that will break your heart, make you think, and maybe even elicit a dark chuckle in these end times.
A particular point of pride: we have stories that run the gamut on subject, from tales of blurred family dynamics in remote African fishing villages, to elder care in England, to civil war and oppression in Myanmar. We’re featuring authors this time around from four or five different nations, which is going to make our shipping bills a nightmare when sending out contributor copies, but totally worth it to get a really diverse and powerful addition to the RHP Line-up.
Speaking of family, we’re happy to welcome new members to the RHP Editorial Family to help us keep up with the demands of reading that come along with running a literary magazine, independent publisher and monthly online stories through Stone’s Throw. We’re excited that these new readers will bring fresh perspective and ideas, and help us continue to push to put out the maximum number of books we can in the course of a year. Please welcome: Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier, Victor De Anda, and Susan Jessen to the team!
On the topic of Stone’s Throw, we’ve added next year’s story prompts to the Stone’s Throw Submissions page. As a reminder, the window for submissions for Stone’s Throw is purposefully short (only four days), but there’s nothing keeping you from looking ahead and writing to a theme that might speak to your particular sensibilities, so that you’re ready to rock once we open the window. And we’re hard at work prepping our annual print edition of the Throw to launch at the beginning of next month, collecting all 12 stories we ran the previous year in a single tome at the lowest price point we can offer it through our printer.
While we’re talking about submissions, the next open submissions period for Rock and a Hard Place Magazine will be January 1 - January 25, 2025! That’s only a three-week window, but we’re giving you plenty of notice to get your best stuff in. Last time around, we were able to populate three issues with the great submissions we received! More details of what we’re looking for are on our submissions page.
And finally, how do we keep up with all this amazing news? Well, the newsletter is a great start, but if you want to fill in the gaps between newsletter emails, how about following us on one of our new social media platforms? The latest and greatest are linked in the footer on this site.
Thanks, and happy reading!