Update

We have about 50% of required content for our first issue. We intend to go to press when we have enough acceptable content to fill an 80-100 page magazine. 

Accepting Submissions

The Scented Flower is now accepting submissions for our first issue. We look for the best writing available, and are pleased to introduce both new and emerging writers. Work must be previously unpublished in print or online and, if accepted, must not be published anywhere else before it appears in The Scented Flower.  For more information please see our submission guidelines:

http://thescentedflower.blogspot.com/p/submission-information.html

Coming Soon -- The Scented Flower, a literary magazine

The Scented Flower is a literary magazine written by and for people seek an understanding on what it's like to live at an intentional community. Although community dwellers might find it particularly interesting, we believe the the magazine, through excellent writing and story telling, will appeal to a wide audience. The idea for The Scented Flower was conceived almost two decades ago at a fledgling intentional community called Adirondack Herbs, tucked away in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains.  An eclectic mess of insane people provided us with true stories that were stranger than even the best fiction. We felt many of these stories needed at outlet. At that time, however, there was no internet or electronic publishing, so using an old computer and a dot matrix printer we created an in-house newsletter called The Scented Flower. That old magazine was the genesis for what we now hope to create.

Why we are calling our magazine The Scented Flower needs clarity. Years ago, after a fire burned down our good home, we cowered in an abandoned decrepit farmhouse we had just purchased. We could not use the wood stove because the smoke would have given us away. We were surreptitiously working on the house, without a permit. The house had been condemned as a "collapsing building." Some day, soon, the house would be repaired and the building inspector invited over and shown an accomplished fact. In the meantime we had no power, no water, and no heat. We were most definitely freezing in the dark. One dark bleak November day a visitor arrived. He was delighted with the accommodations. The lodging was top quality, he told us. But soon he began to look at us askance. It turns out that he had opened at random his Necronomikon and had read "Beware of the Cult of the Dog." We had dogs. It was an open and shut case. He viewed the squalor in which we lived as luxury intended to lure innocent victims like him. His last worlds before leaving us to enlist in the Salvation Army were: "Beware of the Cult of the Dog. Beware of The Scented Flower."

His statement was so profound that even the most craven of us could ill afford to ignore it; he provided us with the perfect name for a periodical through which we could tell our tales. Now, in 2014, the tales that were previously known to only a select few will be made public.

Although much content revolves around stories and events that transpired at our community, we gladly welcome submissions from residents of other communities and from the general public. We are in the process of contacting over 1000 North American communities to increase awareness of our magazine. 

Our publication schedule hinges on the amount of acceptable material we receive. We hope to have our first issue ready for distribution by September, 2014. Our goal is to publish quarterly in the following formats:

• The Scented Flower online (free)
• The Scented Flower delivered via email in .PDF format (free)
• The Scented Flower printed as perfect-bound quarterly literary magazine ($8.95)