Category: Anthology

Taking Submissions: Children of the Blind Owl

Deadline: August 31st, 2024
Payment: $150 – $250
Theme: Original weird tales and essays set in the Middle East that explore the human (and inhuman) experience through the lens of weird fiction and horror

Sentinel Creatives has opened up for submissions for our anthology of Middle Eastern Horror: “Children of the Blind Owl”.

Deadline for Submissions: 31 August 2024
Wordcount: 3,000 – 6,000
Remuneration: $150 – $250
Simultaneous Submissions: Yes

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

We’re looking for original weird tales and essays set in the Middle East that explore the human (and inhuman) experience through the lens of weird fiction and horror.

We are looking to secure 11-13 tales of weird fiction and 1-3 essays (any length). Submissions should delve into the history, folklore, ideas, experiences, identities, religion, and philosophies of the region in some way.

Time Period: We are looking for stories in both historical and contemporary settings.

As the title of this anthology suggests, one of the inspirations behind this project is Sadegh Hedayat’s “The Blind Owl,” a surrealist, horror, weird fiction, novella completed in the 1930s. Though we hope the stories in this anthology take inspiration from Hedayat’s work, we are not looking for stories set in or derived from his novella or other works. Rather, we are hoping writers will take cues from the themes Hedayat grappled with: alienation, futility, despair, rage, transgression, to name a few.

Ahmed Saadawi’s “Frankenstein in Baghdad” is another work that serves as a good example of what we’d like to see from the stories in this anthology. Saadawi uses, to great effect, some of the vocabulary and motifs from horror to illustrate the problems facing modern-day Iraq, with the corpse itself representing, in some ways, the various ethnic and religious groups and ideologies sewn together as Iraqi pluralism.

Give us your tales of the uncanny, of the monstrous and surreal!

Contributing editors, voice artists, and artists will be announced for this project at a later date.

While this is by no means an exclusive call, we hope to attract writers who are either from the region or have some relationship with it.

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Taking Submissions: Untitled Anthology About Dogs

Deadline: July 1st, 2024
Payment: $20 USD
Theme: A story about dogs in any of the following genres: Literary, Romance, Sci-Fi & Spec Fic, Mystery, Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retellings, Historical Fiction, Humor/Satire, Paranormal, Magical Realism, and others. (NOT Horror.)

  • Theme: Dogs (A dog or dogs should figure prominently in the story in some way.)
  • Deadline: July 1, 2024. Submissions are considered on a rolling basis, meaning that acceptance/rejection decisions are made as submissions come in. Authors can generally expect an initial response to their submission within 72 hours.
  • Anthology Release Date: Fall 2024 (exact date TBD)
  • Genres and categories accepted:
    Literary, Romance, Sci-Fi & Spec Fic, Mystery, Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retellings, Historical Fiction, Humor/Satire, Paranormal, Magical Realism, and others.
    No horror (spooky is okay), gratuitous violence, or erotica, please. No essays, CNF, poetry, or anything that isn’t fiction.
    No AI-generated or AI-assisted stories. All submissions should be original stories that have never been published elsewhere (including, but not limited to, social media, a personal blog or website, etc.).
  • Reader Demographic: YA to adult
  • Word count: Between 1,500-2,000 words
  • Payment for accepted submissions: $20 USD (via PayPal, Zelle, or another, mutually agreed upon electronic payment method)

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Taking Submissions: Hentai Ectoplasm (April 2024 Window)

Submission Window: April 1st – 30th, 2024
Payment: $100
Theme: Telling the cannibus-positive tales of the last survivors of a specific neighborhood. Details found below

OpensApril 1, 2024, midnight est 

ClosesApril 30, 2024, midnight IDLW

Compensation: $100 USD

Theme: Adult horror, including genre-chimeras

Submissions must be between 3,000 and 6,000 words

Expected release April 2024

Submit to hentai.ectoplasm@bookslayerpress.com

On the night of April 19, 2021, something happened in the suburban town of Brookhaven that changed the course of humanity. In the fancy Southtown gated community, The Sanctuary at Lemongrass Lake, a cosmic event occurs, destroying most of it in the impact. Over on the North end, middle-aged, overweight, cannabis grower, Pam Goodall, determined to save her holy holiday—4/20, bands with unlikely neighbors to not just survive the night, but save humankind.

HENTAI ECTOPLASM is not your average anthology. Twelve – fifteen authors will tell a story of survival as their neighborhood is cut off by the destruction, each delivering the perspective of their respective home.

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Taking Submissions: Cursed Cooking: A Horror Community Cookbook and Food Horror Anthology

Deadline: April 30th, 2024 and May 10th for writers of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other underrepresented groups
Payment: 5 cents per word for original fiction works and 1 cent per word for reprints. Accepted recipe submissions will receive $5
Theme: Real-world recipes and food horror fiction
Note: Not looking for cannibalism stories
Note: Reprints Welcome

Cursed Cooking: A Horror Community Cookbook and Food Horror Anthology

Open call submission window: March 15 – April 30, 2024.

Extended submission window exclusively for writers of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other underrepresented groups: May 1 -May 10, 2024

Cursed Cooking is a horror community cookbook and food horror anthology, featuring both real-world recipes and food horror fiction. This hybrid publication aims to feed not only your body with frighteningly good food, but also your imagination with cleverly crafted horror stories.

So, send us your tales of haunted hamburgers, killer chocolate chip cookies, monstrous manicotti, world-ending wontons, and everything in between. Cook up a story filled with genetically modified grossness, fast-food freakiness, or homemade horrors. Get creative. Get hungry. Think outside the pizza box. But also, send us the recipes that you love, recipes that make your mouth water and have people screaming for seconds (and thirds and fourths). We want it all!

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Taking Submissions: Steampunk Sleuths

Deadline: October 31st, 2024
Payment: $50
Theme: A novelette featuring detectives in a steampunk setting solving peculiar crimes.

Deadline: October 31st, 2024

The genre of mystery is designed to get the cogs cranking, but let’s not forget that steampunk is all about cogs too! Why not bring them together? Steampunk Sleuths will be an anthology of four novelettes (15 – 20,000 words) featuring detectives in a steampunk setting solving peculiar crimes. The only requirements for submission will be that the means of committing the crime (murder, theft, kidnapping…) must be clearly steampunk and the reader must be given the tools to crack the case before the solution is revealed. Think Agatha Christie and Jules Verne getting kinky together… um, actually, please don’t. 😉

* Previously unpublished only

* Double the standard rate for this one: $50 USD

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Taking Submissions: Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Vol. 9

Deadline: May 15th, 2024
Payment: 1 cent per word and 5 contributors copies
Theme: Horror stories based in Texas by Texas-based authors

DEADLINE: MAY 15, 2024
Starkweather Imprints is pleased to announce plans for the 2024 edition of Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, Vol. 9.
Road Kill co-creator Bret McCormick will edit Vol. 9 of the series, which has featured the works of Joe R. Lansdale, Katherine Anne Porter, Stephen Graham Jones, Robert E. Howard, O. Henry, Russell C. Conner, Madison Estes, Patrick C. Harrison, E. R. Bills and others. McCormick is looking for original horror stories 1,500-10,000 words in length.
The stories must be written and submitted by Texas authors and must be set (based) here – hence the title. One cent per word and contributing writers will receive five free copies. Writer stipends will look something like this: 10,000 words – $100, 7,500 words – $75, 5,000 words – $50, 2,500 words – $25, 1,500 words – $15.
All payments will be made after official acceptance, and when acceptance is communicated, each author will need to send a short bio.
Starkweather Imprints will be requesting one-year non-exclusive rights. This means we will use your story in this anthology and we can print excerpts of it online and otherwise (for promotional purposes, etc), but one year down the road you can do with it what you like.
The Submission Period begins on February 5, 2024. The deadline to turn in stories is May 15, 2024, and our intent is to have the book printed and available by October 1, 2024, in plenty of time for Halloween. Please send submissions to: [email protected]

Taking Submissions: Hemorrhaging Flowers: A Collection of 100% Femme Rage

Deadline: April 30th, 2024
Payment: $10 USD
Theme: Poems inspired by feminine rage. All speculative tropes are welcome

OpensMarch 1s 2024, midnight EST 

ClosesApril 30, 2024, midnight IDLW

Compensation: $10 USD

Theme: Adult speculative poetry

Submissions must be under 50 lines

OPEN to any and everyone that identifies (now or in the past) as femme in the most inclusive of definitions.

Expected release: March 2024

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Taking Submissions: Fear’s Accomplice Volume 2

Deadline: June 1st, 2024
Payment: £5
Theme: All styles or horror, likes the types of tales you’d see in Tales from the Crypt, Twilight Zone, and similar

There is no theme. As long as your story is in the horror genre, I’m interested. Check out Fear’s Accomplice Volume 1 or Fear’s Accomplice: Halloween to get an idea of style. Think of Tales from the Crypt, Twighlight Zone, and similar. I want variation. Don’t be afraid of violence or strong language, though. You’re free to write any style of horror you choose.

Zombies, werewolves, vampires, etc, are more than welcome, but they are something of a hard sell. Make it unique or interesting.

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