Love Story

Jethro Tull has an amazing discography. Spanning everything from folk music to heavy metal over 50 years - and yes, the flute is indeed a heavy metal instrument! - their music has inspired generations of artists of all types.

Including authors!

Stories in the Key of Tull is an anthology of fiction that pays tribute to that inspiration. Just as the music of Jethro Tull spans genres, so does out call for stories. While we have a preference for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, any genre - western, romance, MilSF, you name it - is welcome.

We are currently planning on two potential volumes, depending on response: 

• Volume I: Minstrels in the Galaxy (SF focus)

• Volume II: Tales from the Wood (Fantasy focus)

Dot Com

Our goal, first and foremost, is to entertain our readers. That's the primary criteria we will use to judge a story.

We're looking for stories of between 5k-8k words, though length (shorter or longer) is negotiable for a solid story. Reprints are acceptable, but we prefer new stories. If you submit a reprint, please note that in your submission email.

Submissions close at midnight, March 1st, 2024. We hope to have an initial read-through of submissions and final acceptance notices sent by April 1st, 2024. Estimated publication date is third quarter of 2024 (with a target date of August 10th, 2024).

If your story is accepted, we will ask you to provide an introductory paragraph (up to 100 words) for your story, describing how a particular Jethro Tull song or songs inspired you. We will also ask you to provide an author's biography (up to 100 words) for inclusion in our end matter, along with a link (Amazon author, author's blog, etc.) we can publish to help readers find your other works.

While we hope to be able to do two volumes, that's not guaranteed. Depending on our submission volume and quality, we may do a single volume, or we may do more than two if possible. I mean... Down at the End of your Road would be a fantastic title for a volume of Jethro Tull inspired horror stories, wouldn't it?

You can submit your story via email at submissions@alphamercs.com. Manuscripts should be a Microsoft Word (docx) file in Shunn format. If you're unable to provide a word document, RTF is acceptable.

The Witch's Promise

We are seeking one year, first world anthology rights for publication in the English language. You can peruse our sample contract, modeled after the one used by Raconteur Press. Be advised that like anything else, life is uncertain - so the details of the contract might change, though we do not anticipate any drastic shift in terms.

This will be a royalty-share anthology, done using PubShare. If you've never used PubShare before, don't worry - it's very simple, and as an author, all you need there is a free account.

The royalty share for the anthology will be allocated as follows: one share for each published author; one for the cover illustrator; one for the editor; and one for the publisher.

Nothing is Easy

We do not have a license from anyone to use song lyrics! So - unfortunately - you may not directly use song lyrics in your work. If we see that happening, we will either ask you to remove those lines, or we will reject your story.

Using song titles is acceptable. However, don't overdo it. Cramming a dozen song titles into a story may be be an interesting challenge, but that's not what we're looking for. If you want to title your story after a particular song, though, go for it.

Jethro Tull has an extensive discography. Delve deep! If you have a story inspired by a little-known song, you're probably going to have a better chance of being accepted. We're going to shoot for one story per song per volume, so if you pick "Auqualung", for example, you'll likely be vying against a larger pool of stories than if your story was inspired by "Glory Row".

Solo albums from Jethro Tull members (Ian Anderson, Scott Hammond, Martin Barre, etc.) are fair game as well.

Finally - we are looking for stories that are inspired by the music of Jethro Tull. Many Tull songs tell a story themselves (ex, "Down at the End of Your Road", "Mountain Kings", etc.) Please don't retell the story of the song! A retelling of "Big Riff and Mando", for example, isn't what we're looking for. On the other hand, a fantasy story inspired by that song - say, about teams of completing bards frantically searching for a stolen mandolin to earn a powerful patron's favor - would be entirely on point!