Deadline: December 15, 2016
Payment: Short Stories: $50 plus a print copy of the magazine, Flash Fiction: $10 plus a print copy of the magazine, Horror Poetry: $10 plus a print copy of the magazine.

Flash Fiction: Fiction in a flash? Challenge accepted! Keep your story between 300 – 700 words. Wow us with your word will-power! As it’s said, so well and so often, “Kill your Darlings”.

Short Fiction: Ah, our bread-and-butter! Stories within 2,000 – 7,000 words will be accepted. Keep them creepy.

Poetry: We love a poem or three here at DeadLights. So in what form of poem should you write? Well, it can be any kind of poem at all, really, as long as haunts us all in our sleep. Feel free to express yourself in no longer than a single-space page length in Microsoft Word.

Creative Non-Fiction: We are accepting creative non-fiction stories that are terrible, horrible, or gross. These are meant to be small stories about real-life, interesting things that have happened to our readers. Word count? 300 – 3000!

Art: For those of you feeling creative, we do accept drawings, paintings, graffiti, whatever, as long as they are sent to us in a digital format. We love horror-art!

How to Submit

Format: Manuscripts? Pile’em on us. Just remember, there are a lot of stories out there, and not a lot of ‘us’. To ensure that you get your fair share of limelight, follow these tips:http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

We are not format fascists here at Deadlights, and if you keep your  submissions in a Microsoft Word (.docx) Document or .PDF, we may squeak by a good tale or two, formatting be damned. For our first go-round, though, do keep all submissions in one of the two formats. Thank you.

Sending it in: In the subject of the email, please place your last name and your fiction form (fiction form meaing, Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, etc.) so that it looks like this: Smith_Poetry.

In the body of the email, say hello! Tell us who you are, and if you’ve been published before. If you have, well, right-on! If not, that’s ok. We’re looking for new, dead lights (heh-heh) to publish. No need to tell us who in your family grows toe-nails the fastest, but if it’s relevant to your submission … well, maybe still don’t tell us. After all is said (or not said) and done, please attach your manuscript to your email, and hit send! And no worries: we do accept multiple submissions.

Email: Send your submissions to deadlightsmagazine (at) gmail (dot) com — sorry email snatching robots, today is not your day!

Other Odd Things

Wait Time: DeadLights Magazine is the new kid on the block, and as such, we don’t know what we don’t know. Classic response, right? You should hear if your story has been accepted or rejected in a month’s time. If you haven’t heard from us, please let us know. We aren’t deliberately obtuse, we were just kind of born that way …

Payment

Short Stories: $50 plus a print copy of the magazine.
Flash Fiction: $10 plus a print copy of the magazine.
Horror Poetry: $10 plus a print copy of the magazine.
Cover Art: $40-$80 plus a print copy of the magazine.
Inside Art: $5-$10 plus a print copy of the magazine.
Creative Non-Fiction: $5-$10 plus a print copy of the magazine.

These figures are subject to change for the better. We’re hoping our pay-rates grow along with the publication. If you’re interested in supporting DeadLights Magazine, please head on over to our Kickstarter page to help us pay our authors and artists:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/331986466/deadlights-magazine

Rights: When it comes to claiming rights on individual works, we have a fiction first policy here at DeadLights. Should your work be published, once you are in print, the rights to your story return to you. We do not hold art hostage.

We may choose to do a ‘The Best of …’, year-end edition, and if your story is a candidate for this publication, we will reach out to you. If the story is unavailable, that will just have to be our bad luck; but it isn’t bad luck, not really, because your success is our success!

Via: Dead Light Magazine.