Deadline: December 31st, 2014
Payment: 3 cents per word

Call to action!

Dark Recesses Press is now accepting short novella length submissions for A COLLECTION OF UNTIMELY HOURS. Between four to six stories will be selected for this themed anthology.

The theme is time.  The genre is dark fiction. A broad spectrum, we know, but what we mean by this is truly the dark spectrum – from horror to supernatural, to slipstream  – and all points in between. That said, Splatterpunk and Bizarro fiction are probably not the right fit for this gathering. This is also not the venue for high fantasy or hard sci-fi, but if you have a shadowy urban fantasy or a dark tale that happens to take place upon a space freighter, that’s fine. Just make sure there’s no need to learn a new language in order to read the story. Seriously.

The key here is to offer our readers a cool creep, a sense of dread, and the tension of time from which they can’t escape. It’s your world. Build it, and drag the reader through it with the seconds ticking at their heels.

Of course we have the standard caveat of Gore for Gore’s sake and overused tropes are not going to fly.  But you’re professionals and you don’t see a need to resort to cheap parlor tricks, or taking the easy road to reach nirvana.

One more important NO :  No Sexual Abuse of Children, direct or implied.  Period.  It’s not a flexible point.  If you’re unsure, query at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to clarify and save you time or frustration.

Now for the nitty-gritties:

Submission deadline: December 31st, 2014

Word count: 15,000 –  25,000 firm

Pay:  3 cents / word

Reprints:  No

Rights: First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) and Electronic Rights to distribute the text in multiple print and electronic formats for twelve months from publication, and a three-year non-exclusive worldwide license from the date of publication to continue to publish your work in other formats as part of the anthology volume in which it was first published without extending the license term and without constituting a new publication, and to keep that discrete anthology available in our salable inventory throughout that term.

(For example, we can re-publish the same anthology that includes your work in a cool new techno-format that comes along, but we can’t publish your work as part of a different anthology. Also, no matter what new format is added during the license term, our right to publish still ends three years after initial publication unless we re-negotiate with you.)

Format: Standard Manuscript Format with the following noted requirements.

• Scene breaks marked with  ##
• Special formatting (italics, bolds, underlines) set up exactly as you want it printed.
• DO NOT USE TABS OR SPACES for Indents.  I cannot stress this enough.  DON’T  Set the indent under your document paragraph settings, or just don’t indent.
• Do not use special quotes
• Saved as .doc, .docx, or .rtf format.

Send submissions to: [email protected]

Subject line: “UNTIMELY HOURS – <SUBMISSION TITLE>”

Via: Dark Recesses Press.