When Zombies Attack!

Did you pitch a story to the Early Harvest Editorial Board at our launch a few weeks back? Were you encouraged to work on your plot a bit more, or your inciting incident? Or were you gently rebuffed?Now you might wonder, what gave these young upstarts the idea that they had the power to reject your story? Apart from the fact that you probably made it up on the spot by pulling words from a jar (yes, OK, we did set it up that way), just who do they think they are?

The Early Harvest Editorial Board knows their stuff. Over the past six months, these young editors have honed these skills in a series of after-school workshops with publishing professionals, agonising over themes, commissioning criteria, submissions and illustrator folios for a one-of-a-kind literary magazine. So when they say you should work on your ending a bit more, then you probably should.And look, unless you pitched a story about zombies, aliens or other strange life-forms (or un-life forms), then it was always a long shot that you'd be accepted for publication in this issue, it being the kind of magazine that features characters like this charmer.

Early Harvest Issue 2 will be published in November 2014. You'll be able to pre-purchase your copy shortly, but in the meantime listen to this interview on ABC Books and Arts Daily, and check out the progression from idea seed to full-grown undead story crop in the picture gallery below.