Frequently Asked Questions

1) What is Mystery In Scarlet City?

A: Mystery in Scarlet City is the culmination of nearly a decade of creative work. It started as a mystery story project in a Northern California High School Classroom and has since grown into a comic book and website project.

2) How can I contribute to Mystery In Scarlet City?

A: We are always on the lookout for new talent to help with our projects. If you’re a writer, we welcome submissions for short stories, plays, novels (which would be published as serials) and comic books. If you’re a computer programmer, we could use your talents to upgrade and maintain the quality of this website. If you’re a business person or someone with a background in marketing, we could use help getting the word out about our site. The handy "Contact Us" link on the left hand side of this web page, under the "Main Menu" is your one stop for any questions you might have.

Please note: If you are a writer or an artist and wish to publish your work on our site, you must first make contact via the "Contact Us" form. We cannot accept automated submissions at this time (we’re working on a process for this).

3) What are the ground rules for a contribution?

We try to keep our ground rules as simple as possible, so as not to detract from the writer's or the user's experience when using our site. The two things that we insist on is that all work be the original creation of the person submitting the story, that all stories be in good taste and generally all ages appropriate (i.e., "rated PG-13", no adult erotica or horror stories, sorry).

4) What is the compensation for contributing to this site?

Currently, our budget is that we cannot promise compensation to our creators. However, if we decide to buy the rights to a story from a creator, the creator will be compensated. Here's how it works. If a creator submits a story/poem/play/comic book script/novel to us, and it is of high quality, and fits the grounds rules for a submission, we will add that story to this site in a prominent place. The creator of the story will retain all rights to that creation, for as long as it stays on our site, and we will retain the rights to scarlet city, which the creator of the story is allowed to use just in that story. Every month (or when we accumulate fifteen stories for the site, whichever happens later), the three to five best stories (depending on our current budget) will be selected for a $20 cash prize (payments made via paypal). As our site grows, we anticipate this cash prize growing.  After this website adds a subscription service (coming once we have enough material to warrant user subscriptions), we will likely add free subscriptions to this site as part of the prize package.  Currently, contest winners are decided by a panel of the three founders of mystery in scarlet city, but, as our site grows, and we add users, we eventually want to put this up to a vote of the users of this site. Contest winners will have their stories placed on our website for as long as we run the site, provided they sign over the rights to that story.

IMPORTANT NOTE: signing over the rights to a story does not mean a writer signs over the rights to characters used in that story, so, if a writer wants to do a serial, and enter in a different story using the same characters every month, they are allowed to do so, and each story will be counted as a unique contest entry. We WANT to encourage writers to write serials of this nature, that is why we are dividing up the rights. What this also means is that if a writer wants to use characters created for this site in a story not published on this site, they are free to do so, provided the story does not take place in Scarlet City (reality check: just ask our permission first, and we'll probably say yes you can use our city, we want to be marketed too.)

5) why do you want to encourage writers to write serials?

Because the birthplace of Scarlet City, and of this project, is in serialized comics, which use the same characters, and tell ongoing stories every month. That is our heart, that is our soul, and we here at mystery in scarlet city believe wholeheartedly in the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby shared universe of story-telling. To bring that level of quality to other mediums and to experiment with those mediums, and with comics too (nobody forgets where they come from here) is our stated goal.

6) sounds good, how do I sign up?

First you need to get a user account, as eventually, we're going to automate story submission through the front end of this website for registered users (user registration is free). At this time, submissions are done via email. Send an inquiry, and a short paragraph (a few sentences are sufficient) describing the story idea via the contact us form (we don't publish our email address due to spam issues). If we're interested, we'll be in touch soon (we don't take more than a few days to get back to an email)

If you are an artist and want to contribute original art to this project, please, feel free to do so. Once you make contact with us via the "Contact us" link of the main menu, we can pick up your email address and we will send you our's.