Deadline: February 1st, 2017
Payment: Royalties

Supervillains have been invited by the proto-villain, G-Force, and are all seated around the huge table at the old gothic hotel in an undisclosed location. They have decided to come together to pool their resources against the superhero interlopers, who always seem do a much better job of teaming up. The only way the villains can make a new association of misunderstood metahumans work is to choose a leader. So they each give their case, explaining why they should be selected as the Supreme Archvillain.

You are invited to submit your writing where your original supervillain pleads his or her case as to why they are the best suited to become the Supreme Archvillain. It can be through their dramatic battle(s), humorous, or some other unique device.

The Supreme Archvillain Election is a superhero prose fiction anthology project open to anyone, until February 1, 2017. It is a vehicle for published authors of prose superhero fiction to promote their work. New writers are also welcome to contribute. Stories and characters must be original, or public domain. No fan fiction. This is not a Creative Commons project. Submission does not guarantee acceptance. You may be required to rewrite or edit, or your piece may be rejected. Or, I may do some light editing on my own. The contributions should be around 3,000 to 5,000 words long.Reprint excerpts that fit may be used. Upon acceptance, you will be giving one-time rights to use your piece. Bear in mind that most publications will not publish pieces that have already been published, so after your work is published by us, it can only be marketed again as a reprint, which severely limits the number of markets that will accept it, and drastically reduces the pay rate it can receive. If you submit a contribution, I may request your consent to use your character briefly in a story in the conclusion of the Anthology. (Because at the end of the book, I may want to have characters interact and pick a leader through some big battles or arguments. But I will run any such concluding story by all of the contributing authors and I promise to make them all happy with what their character did or said.)

Submissions: There are no fees or any membership requirements to submit. There is no requirement to purchase anything. Send submissions to my email. Put a paragraph or two synopsis about your work for the back of the book, along with the link to your web site. Then the submission in the body of the email. I should be able to respond within a few days to a couple of weeks. Hard copy submissions will not be accepted. Multiple submissions are accepted, but those after your best one will be given secondary consideration. If you do send any brilliant additional submissions, you will get an extra royalty share for each acceptance. I will need your mailing address or Paypal account name.

Submissions shall start and end with your most interesting villain as the narrator, talking to the other villains at the table. The whole story need not be in the voice of the narrator, but their narration can take the reader into some action. Therefore, choice excerpts from your books may be used.

Some suggested topics for your article:

Your supervillain/supervillainess brags about his superpowers, henchmen, hideouts, gizmos, and accomplishments. (All ridiculous statements will just be considered as lies by the other characters and readers.)

He may suggest a name for the group and what direction they would take the group.

He laments about how he was foiled and how things will change under his/her leadership.

How he/she became so evil or misunderstood.

Issues some serious threats.

Acts like a creepy or scary sociopath, showing some of their quirks.

Abundant trash talking.

Acknowledge murmurs or laughing by other characters that you know would be there if your character made such a remark.

For more information on the development of the anthology, check out the Shared Universe Page.

This anthology is not a competition to see who can come up with the most powerful being, like some rule-bending role-playing gamers. It is to showcase writing for the entertainment of the reader.

Publication: The plan is for the anthology to appear on Amazon/Kindle Unlimited. It will be put on fewer channels to make the cost of the paperbacks lower to the reader.

Author Payment: Be advised that the payment from your submission may not amount to more than a token amount, if anything at all. After expenses, (such as the income tax, which I will pay, or artwork) all of the authors, will be given an equal cut of the profits for each acceptance. On any month when the royalty checks (or any ancillary income) owed will each be more than ten bucks, I will write the checks all out and land mail them, or send via Paypal. There is no plan to offer print author copies as the book may become large with a large number of contributors, making the cost prohibitive.

We want this to be a team effort, where we all help promote it and everyone involved wins. The more authors we get involved with more entertaining chapters, the more promotion it will get.  This could be a ton of fun, and be a boost to superhero prose fiction. If it goes well, we could follow it up with a sequel. Please email me for any clarifications.

If one of the contributors also contributes front or back cover artwork, they will get credit for the cover, which will also help promote their own character.

Via: Unbelievable Universe.