These notes are an attempt at a summary to help those considering making submissions for publishing in the Chronicles. A lot of you have ideas of things you want to see in the magazine but are not sure how to start or whether what you have in mind might be suitable. This guide might help. If you have skills and you want to contribute, but can't decide on what, this won't help. More usefully, just have a think about what you would like to see in the magazine.

If you think your spelling or syntax are weak, we are prepared to help and our main motivation is to get more readers involved in the publication. Broadly speaking, the content is characterised by the words above our masthead:- Vampyres_Alternative_Gothic_Pagan_Fortean_Fetish - although saying this might not be such a grand help.

We do not see that we have to include these equally in every issue, nor do we have to include the whole gamut of each descriptor. For the present, we have moved away from theming the issues and we feel this is justified by the fact that we are receiving more than enough copy and the variety seems to be working. At the moment also, very little work submitted is rejected as needing much modification.

What we are not, and this is based on the direction we see the magazine moving in:

1. We are not a "glamour" magazine. We don't see mainstream defined notions of beauty, fashion, style or titillation as part of our alternative scene. This doesn't apply to cutting edge or provocative/ambiguous material. If we produce pictures, they will not be restricted to "pretty" or good looking people. Anyone who wants this is better off resurrecting "Bloodstone" or submitting to "Razzle". W

We are getting some models (exclusively from the US) writing to us asking for us to cover their shoots and we are unlikely to do this per se. The spirit of our aesthetic is that "ugliness", or non stereotyped views on how people should look, can be normal and we are also interested in what people have to say/attitudes.

2. We are not a "contacts" magazine. Anyone seeking contacts/penpals/ fellow travellers will have to join the club or one of the forums/ egroups. A lot of these sorts of approaches can be made by writing in the form of a letter, which we will entertain, but not "personals".

3. We are not just a "music" magazine. We do want to develop more discussion about music, but about all genres. We notice that most other mags have started off trying to mix music with genuine articles and have nearly all fallen in to the habit of doing just interviews, and usually to the same, often tedious format. Sadly, a lot of the bands photographs make them look like hip-hop groups, with a line of blokes looking cool and we are just waiting for the reversed baseball caps and fingers held "crips" stylee.

4. We don't do stories, poetry, short prose, limericks:- these go in the Literary supplement for members

What we want:

Written: Imaginative articles about aspects of the genre; reviews of events, bands, exhibitions, galleries, publications, screenings (TV and film); lighthearted, jokey articles; "serious analysis" of something (we attract lots of serious researchers); opinions - strongly held argumentative views especially; controversy, i.e. responses to others' opinions; interviews.

Stuff which could end us up in court will be edited, as will lines of writing which assert things that we cannot understand, or which don't actually make sense, so speculation without evidence or any explanation should be avoided. Written stuff should be in a Word document, with single line spacing on 12 point, and with a five space indent for each paragraph. Well, that's how we want it!

Photographs: Photographs about almost anything relevant, including submissions for the front cover. For our purposes a "good" photograph might not be right as composition is important. We have portrayed galleries of participants at events in the past, partly to depict the flavour of the event, partly to get a feeling of involvement to those in the pictures, and also hoping they might buy the magazine. (Have we let a cat out of the bag?)

However, composition will be a more important consideration now. In many cases people pictured at an event posing for the camera look too wooden and their facial features are too contrived, so we will choose more "natural" renditions of people's involvement, e.g.in conversation, in contemplation, or "doing" something.

One criticism has been that we display too many women so we want more pictures of men and also more "uglies", or those who do not conform to accepted notions of "good looking". Bear in mind also, that a lot of our pics have to be rendered into Black and White, but this will change as we proceed to getting more colour in the mag. Photos should be supplied at 300dpi and assuming a width of 20cm. Best format is TIF, but RAW is good also. For front covers assume total size of 21x30 cm at crop.

Drawings: these provide the greatest opportunity for an entertaining article, either as stand alone cartoons or as supporting drawings. Again these should be supplied at full size and at 300dpi as TIFs. We are aware that illustrators quite often need a script to work to, so this is something to be negotiated when we have an idea of what you want to submit.

This is a tricky area, but something that we are beginning to get right: - nobody else is even trying to do this. We have four illustrators at the moment, each with skills that lead to different results so, knowing this, we can choose who can come up with the most suitable result.

Ok, that's it so far - no we don't have all the answers as we are learning all this quite fast as well, - a year ago we didn't really have a clue! Remember, we are the only people doing this kind of magazine and we will do better in getting it right..

The eds