Pulp, the fiction, much like the paper on which it was printed, was rough with ragged edges, lacking the smooth polish of the glossy works produced by the literati.  Pulp was not – is not – a genre, it is a style of writing, a feeling, which at its epicenter is the anti-literature, stories for Joe and Jane Six Pack, something to read quickly on the train or bus on the way home from the plant or the office.  The pulps in their heyday, featured fast paced adventure stories of aviators, hard boiled detectives, explorers, horrors, mad scientists, and masked avengers fighting crime on the dark streets.

It is our goal to bring pulp fiction back. This is literature for the masses; so if you’re looking for spit and polish you probably want to stop reading here.

We at Crimson Streets know that there was no golden age, but just as fashions return in time, so too would we like to bring the pulp magazine, albeit in a different form, back to life; and just as fashion never returns exactly the same, so too is it with Crimson Streets.  Gone is the cheap pulp paper and the monthly issues.  In its place is the website, the news feed, and the eBook.

We love print, the entire visceral reality of it, the way that it feels in the hand, and smells when it comes off the press.  Print evokes emotion, more real than bits, bytes, and pixels.  However,  economics are the enemy of the small press publisher, and while they have never been particularly favorable, the cost now so greatly exceeds the value when dealing in small runs, that it would be impossible for something like Crimson Streets to exist solely as a print magazine.

So then, how do we make it work?  We’ve come up with a format we call web-now/print-later.  As we purchase new fiction, it will appear on our web site in the New Fiction Feed.  When we have collected enough stories, we will produce an “issue,” which is an anthology of work to be available in a variety of eBook formats and print-on-demand.  If there is interest, we will use a crowdfunding site to do a special printing.   It is our hope that the revenue generated from the various anthologies will provide us with enough revenue to keep the New Fiction Feed going.

We understand that this will take time.  Time to find contributors, and time to find readers, but it is our hope that there is still a place in this world, and in the broad swath of literature, for short, fast-paced, stories that focus on atmosphere and action.

If you’re interested in contributing, please read our Submission Guidelines.