A Quick Introduction

The Latest Project from Lurking Llamas Press

Welcome to the Lurking Llamas Review. I couldn’t think of a more creative or interesting opening sentence, so I settled on the obvious choice. If you’re disappointed, I apologize. Fret not, however, as disappointment ought not be common in these pages (at least, I hope so).

Lurking Llamas has been in the publishing game for nearly six years. I recognize that this does not represent a tremendous amount of time, but it does represent enough time for us to have seen plenty of great work from great writers in need of a home. Over these six-odd years, we have focused almost entirely on publishing books, whether they be fiction anthologies, nonfiction books, or affordable editions of the classics. We’re very proud of the books we have published, but our sole focus on the book format has also, at times, left us unable to publish many great pieces of fiction, poetry, or essays—especially those of shorter form.

The Lurking Llamas Review aims to change that. The magazine is the perfect format to share these great pieces of art with you, the reader. Of course, our commitment to the book format is in no way diminished by the birth of this magazine; if anything, it is strengthened, as many of the works published in these pages will undoubtedly find their way into anthologies and collections. This is not a change of course for Lurking Llamas; it is growth.

Anyway, I have consumed enough of your precious attention explaining the raison d’être of the Lurking Llamas Review; let’s move on to what you, the reader, should expect from our publication. First off, the Lurking Llamas Review, like everything at Lurking Llamas, will be bilingual. Ahora, eso no quiere decir que tengas que ser bilingüe para poder disfrutar de la revista; habrá suficiente tanto en castellano como en inglés para todos. In addition to linguistic diversity, the Lurking Llamas Review will boast a wide diversity of artistic forms. Short stories, poetry, essays, anecdotes, flash fiction, novelettes, novellas, drawings, paintings, and even music will grace our fledgling magazine.

Work will come, of course, from writers who have already graced the pages of Lurking Llamas Press. If you’ve purchased our books in the past, you may already be familiar with some of their wonderful work. That said, much—if not most—of the work you will see published in this magazine will come from writers who have never been published before by our humble publishing house. In many instances, they may never have been published before anywhere (in fact, it is our mission to change that).

Writers will have, as they already do at our publishing house, full creative freedom. We strongly believe that the sole purpose of editing is to help authors make their stories even more their own—flourishing, not trampling. We also believe in not only a diversity of backgrounds, but a diversity of ideas. There may be essays or stories published in this magazine that argue things that I, for example, do not necessarily agree with. The only things there will be no room for are disinformation, pseudoscience that puts people in harm’s way, the wide spectrum (and, alas, ever-expanding) of hate, and attacks on democracy, human rights, and the norms that uphold them (something very much in vogue as of late).

In due time, we will publish our submission guidelines for writers who wish to have their work featured in the magazine. Ideally, we will open for submissions in the coming months as we perfect the ins and outs of running this literary publication. In the meantime, we have a significant backlog of great work to share with you, the reader.

Subscriptions to the Lurking Llamas Review are currently free and will remain so for the foreseeable future. At the outset, we plan to publish something roughly every two weeks, aiming for Saturday publication dates. We’ll see how things progress throughout the year and adjust our schedule accordingly.

That’s about it for now. I’m not sure there is much more to say, and I have no intention of filling pages with unnecessary text that interests nearly no one, so I’ll let you go on that note. Thank you for subscribing to the Lurking Llamas Review, and thank you for supporting the authors whose work will grace these pages. Oh—and happy new year.

Your editor,
Alejandro Hodge Hernández