Everything else on this site is mine. This part is not.
Friends of Wonderous Worlds of Words is where I put work by writers who are not me — a story, an essay, a chapter, a poem — because it deserves readers and because a house with only one person in it is not a house, it is a room.
Two rules, and they do not bend
It is free. Guest work never sits behind a plan. Not a preview, not a teaser, not a tier. If you subscribe here you are paying for my writing, and you will never once pay me to read somebody else’s.
It stays theirs. Featuring a piece here changes nothing about who owns it. The writer keeps every right they walked in with, can publish it anywhere else at any time, and can ask me to take it down — no reason required, no argument from me.
If you write, and you want to be here
Send me the piece and permission to publish it. That is the whole process. There is no submission window, no reading fee, no form, and no algorithm deciding whether you are a fit. I read it, and if it moves me I ask you for a bio line and a link, and it goes up under your name.
What I am looking for is narrow and honest: writing that is trying to do something. I would rather run one strange, ambitious, imperfect piece than five safe ones. I am one person reading in the evenings, so I am slow, and a no from me means very little — it means one man in New Mexico did not connect with it on a Tuesday.
Reply to any email from this site and it reaches me.
— Tyler Wayne Bussell