Closing Date: 5th May 2014
Submitting for Flappers, Jazz and Valentino – A Jazzy Q&A
What is Flappers, Jazz and Valentino?
An anthology of erotic fiction set in the 1920’s – in the US
(and also Canada and the UK) this decade was known as The Roaring Twenties, an
era of excess after the sorrows and hyper-emotional patriotism of World War I.
It was an era full of creativity, with the blossoming of jazz music, the
flapper redefining modern womanhood and the peak of the visual arts style Art
Deco.
As Wikipedia puts it –
“The spirit of the
Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated
with modernity and a break with traditions. Everything seemed to be feasible
through modern technology. New technologies, especially automobiles, moving
pictures and radio proliferated "modernity" to a large part of the
population. Formal decorative frills were shed in favour of practicality in
both daily life and architecture. At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in
popularity, in opposition to the mood of the spectre of World War I. As such,
the period is also often referred to as the Jazz Age.”
Films and series set
in the era
- Bugsy Malone
- Chicago
- Boadwalk Empire
- The Great Gatsby
- The Untouchables
- Public Enemies
- Coco Before Chanel
- The Artist
- Some Like It Hot
- Singin’ In The Rain
- Porco Rosso
- Out of Africa;
- Miller’s Crossing
- Malcolm X
- The Wind That Shakes the Barley
- The Cider House Rules
Some notable titbits about this era
- Women’s suffrage – with a few exceptions, this was the decade in which women received the right to vote and to stand for election in the US, Canada and most major European countries, as well as India. Notable suffragettes included Carrie Chapman Catt, Esther Hobart Morris and Alice Paul in the US – Emily Davison, Sophia Jex-Blake, Florence Nightingale, The Pankhursts (Emmeline, Christabel, Sylvia, Adela) in the UK.
- The Lost Generation – a term usually referring to a group of American literary notables who had come out of WWI disillusioned and cynical about the world around them – they lived in Paris at the time (TS. Eliot, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein,...)
- Bright Young Things – the opposite of the Lost Generation, the Bright young things were a group of young British aristocrats and socialites who revelled in the lavish excesses and threw parties, went on elaborate treasure hunts and were seen everywhere important.
- Cinema – the growth of the colour film, the dawn of the talkie (Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer came out in this decade), the first movie stars (Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Greta Garbo, ... to name a few)
- Harlem Renaissance –the name given to the rapidly developing African-American literary and artistic culture during that decade. Notable authors during that time - Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.
- Prohibition and the rise of the gangsters
- Literature – This was the decade in which the then-controversial Lady Chatterley’s Lover was released, along with classics such as The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises.
- Black Tuesday –Sort of the day the music died, as this is the name given to the catastrophically huge stock market crash which happened on October 29th, 1929. It instantly ended the era of excess and gave way to The Great Depression of the early 30s.
The key points I’ll be looking for in a submission.
- Stories between 3000 and 7000 words (with a ten percent under or over allowance either way).
- Any pairing goes (threesomes, foursomes and moresomes are welcome as well). I would love to see a variety of pairings, so don’t restrict yourself to just M/F – go nuts!
- Characters - again, a variety of characters would be lovely. They don’t have to all be glamorous flappers, dangerous gangsters or shining film stars – think about your average Joes and Josephines. A young suffragette, a banker or broker affected by the crash, a bartender in a speakeasy, a fledgling jazz musician, a disaffected writer, someone who works in a film studio, a private detective, ... the options are endless. Just as long as they are well-formed characters, who evoke the age they are living in.
- Plot – the general plotline, although important (of course), doesn’t really matter, as long as the feel of the story and the setting is in this decade. Show that your submission is set in the twenties. Perhaps refer to certain events that happened, and how they might have affected your character’s life.
- Setting – does not need to be set in America – think beyond the States to places like the UK and France and how they were affected.
- Usual House of Erotica no-no’s
Never fear, because
there are plenty of sources of inspiration on the internet!
On Wikipedia
The Roaring Twenties page in general is awesome for a whole
bundle of information.
MUST READ - Fredrick Lewis-Allen’s survey Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-twenties – http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/ALLEN/Cover.html
On Youtube
I hope this gives you a bit of inspiration! If you’ve got
any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me at jboydwrites@gmail.com with the subject
line Twenties Anthology Query.
Let’s
make this a whopper of an anthology together!
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