What is Phase 3?
Phase 3 is a publication looking to find the best, funniest, most touching, most awesome stories out there. We know that stories can be told in lots of different ways, so our policy is if we can print it, you can submit it. Prose, poetry, comic books, pictures, paintings…whatever medium fits your story the best, makes it the most amazing thing you can release on the world, we want to see it. All that we ask is that you make it the best story possible. We want to put out a publication that’s interesting, fresh, and comes from a very honest perspective—your perspective.

For our first issue, while we tell our own origin story, we’re looking for the same thing from our contributors. Each one of us has at least one interesting story to tell. What we want to hear about is who you are, and the things that make you you.

• Maybe it was that time late at night on the subway, and you overheard two very drunk people talk about their father who had just passed away, which prompted you to finally call up your old man after 17 years of not speaking.
  
• We’d like to hear what Neil Gaiman told you when you asked him for writing advice when you met him at a comic convention.
  
• Tell us about the first time you listened to The Clash, and why the band and its core message of independent thought has been so important to you ever since.
• Maybe it was something about that Randy Savage versus Ricky Steamboat match that stole the show at Wrestlemania 3 that fostered the idea that you can do better than the guys ahead of you.
  

Whether based on true events, something of fiction, or something in-between, what we want for Phase 3’s first issue are stories about the people, the places or the things that changed your life in some incredible way. Tell us a story of something that has shaped the kind of person you are and/or still hope to become. 

If you’d like to contribute with other ideas of your own, don’t be afraid to hit us up! We’ve also got a few surprises of our own to show off, too. So stay tuned. In the mean time–

Welcome to Phase 3! We’d love to hear your story.

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Instructions for Submission:
Submit your work to phase3mag[at]gmail[dot]com

In the subject line, include the title of your work, your name, and the type of work it is (Fiction, poetry, non-fiction, art, etc.).

Attach all text as .txt, .doc, or .pdf files. Please don’t paste it into the body of the e-mail, it’ll royally screw up the formatting you worked so hard on, and we don’t want that.

Attach art as .pdf, .jpg, .tif. No .psd, .ai, or similar, please.
If you do send something in a strange file type, please explain why you can’t use one of the suggested ones…it’s not that we don’t trust you, we just sort of hate viruses around Phase 3 HQ.

We will acknowlege receiving your work as soon as possible, and we’ll provide feedback on every piece we receive, accept or reject.

If we accept your work, we will contact you with further details, contracts, etc. Please respond quickly if we accept…if we don’t hear back from you within 30 days of acceptance, you’ll have to re-submit.

If we reject your work, please don’t take it personally, and don’t take it as a deterrent to submitting things in the future. Sometimes things just don’t work out for us, it doesn’t mean the next thing you submit won’t be a masterpiece.
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Now for the grimy legal bits we wish we didn’t have to get into, but do:
For right now, we aren’t in the position to pay anyone for their work (this will hopefully change in the future), but we can promise all contributors a short biography in the magazine, some online linkage to your personal website, twitter profile, pictures of your cat, whatever. You will also receive a print copy of each edition your work appears in (if the work is printed…we plan on having digital-only stories and features, in addition to works that appear in print), in addition to a high quality PDF.

You, the author(s), retain all copyright of your work. If your work is accepted for publication, you grant us 90 days exclusive publishing rights, electronic and print, from the publish date of your work. After those 90 days, you’re free to do with it whatever you want. If we would want to re-publish your work for an anthology, retrospective, etc, we’ll contact you to re-negotiate the second publishing.

Simultaneous submissions are OK, just be sure to let us know if you’ve had your work accepted. We don’t want to put stuff out that’s already available at a million other places, and if you’re lucky enough to get accepted somewhere else, we’d much rather give a slot to someone who is still waiting in the slush pile.

We assume what you’re submitting is yours, and you own all copyrights on it, worldwide. If there’s a question whether or not you wholly own your work, talk to a lawyer before submitting to us.

If we find work that is plagiarized, you assume all liability for submitting the plagiarized work, and we’ll be sure to publicly shame you for being a dirty plagiarizer, too. So don’t do it!

We’re looking forward to your submissions, and we can’t wait to see what you have in store for us. The deadline for submissions is August 10, 2012, so let’s get to work!

-Sean May & Joey Pangilinan
Editors, Phase 3