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Top-Paying Open Calls for Speculative Fiction Writers | Week of March 18-24, 2023

Hello and welcome to our latest installment for #authors and #writers! We’re excited to continue celebrating Women in Horror Month, and in this video, we’ll be showcasing the latest opportunities for sharing your speculative fiction with the world.

Our expert, Belinda Brady, has carefully curated a list of the top-paying and most interesting markets from the past week for you to explore. Whether you’re an experienced writer or just starting out, finding the right home for your creations requires hard work, persistence, and patience. But the rewards can be priceless.

In this video, we’ll take a closer look at exceptional open calls that are happening from March 18th to March 24th, 2023. You’ll receive valuable insights and inspiration to help you find the perfect home for your stories.

Remember to subscribe to our channel for more valuable content like this. You can find direct links to the open calls from this week in the video description below.

So, grab your writing tools and join us on this journey to discover new opportunities and take your writing career to the next level. Thank you for watching, and we’ll see you in the next video!

Direct links to the open calls from this week are found below:
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Taking Submissions: Shadowed Realms: The 2022 Indie Dark Fiction Anthology

Deadline: May 31st, 2023
Payment: 1 cent per word
Theme: The best 1,000-9,000 word dark fiction published in semipro and token paying markets in 2022.

Horror Tree is pleased to announce the first Shadowed Realms: The 2022 Indie Dark Fiction Anthology

Here at Horror Tree, we believe there is excellent fiction being published at semipro and token-paying publications, and we’d like to celebrate and highlight these authors and their stories. This anthology will be a collection of reprints, featuring the best dark fiction published in semipro and token-paying markets in 2022.

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The Fantastical Five with Willow Croft and P.A. Cornell

Welcome to the first-ever “Fantastical Five” interview with speculative fiction author P.A. Cornell. Since this is the science fiction version (it also comes in fantasy flavour), we’ve taken our tea out to the far reaches of space!

P.A. Cornell (She/Her) is an award-winning, Chilean-Canadian, speculative fiction author who was raised on a steady diet of books. When she was five years old she learned where all these books were coming from and decided then and there that writing was the path for her. She penned her first speculative story as a third-grade assignment: a science fiction piece about shape-shifting aliens. Over three decades later, she still has this story, which she keeps in her writing desk to remind her of how far she’s come.

Despite her early interest in fiction, her first publications were in non-fiction as a journalist and copy editor in Toronto, Canada. Since 2016, she’s dedicated herself to writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror full time. Her stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in multiple genre magazines and anthologies, including Flame Tree Press’s Gothic Fantasy series, ZNB Presents, and Apex Magazine, to name a few. Her short story, “Splits,” first published in Cossmass Infinities, went on to win the 2022 Short Works Prize for Fiction. That same year she also published her debut science fiction novella, Lost Cargo, through Mocha Memoirs Press.

An avid collector of joyful moments, when not writing she can be found reading, drinking various varieties of tea in ridiculous quantities, building Lego sets (check out some of her builds on Instagram), hiking, making felt art, and watching movies, among other things. She also enjoys travel and hopes to do more of it in the future.

Cornell is a 2002 graduate of the Odyssey writing workshop, and full member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association. She has lived in six cities across two continents but currently lives in Ontario, Canada in a home she shares with her husband, three kids, and two cats. The cats are named after two of her characters: “Jax” and “Rebel.” (Bonus points for anyone able to name the stories they appear in.)

Website: https://www.pacornell.com/
Twitter/Instagram/Facebook: @CornellWriter
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17347884.P_A_Cornell
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/P.-A.-Cornell/author/B074G52MGD?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

All purchase links and information for my novella, Lost Cargo: https://www.pacornell.com/lost-cargo.html.

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The Spooky Six with Willow Croft and Ben Fitts

For this Spooky Six tea with Ben Fitts, I sought out the most unusual and unique flavors of yogurt I could find, and we grabbed some very big spoons and dove right into the interview!

Ben Fitts (he/him) is a writer, musician and zinester from New York. Fitts is the author of the books My Birth And Other Regrets and Snailbutter, as well as over forty published short stories. He has been writing for fun since around the time he learned how to read, but began to taking the craft seriously as an undergrad at Hampshire College when he realized he wanted another creative outlet when the band he was in at the time broke up. His short stories soon began receiving publications in a variety of zines, anthologies, and other DIY publications that weren’t turned off by their oddball content and dark humor. Nineteen of these early stories were collected in his debut collection My Birth And Other Regrets, which was published by the press NihilismRevised in 2019 when Fitts was twenty-two years old. My Birth And Other Regrets has received praise from a variety of notable authors within the bizarro fiction movement, including Danger Slater, Sam Richard, and Ben Arzate, among others.

Grateful to the zine community that had given him his start, Fitts created The Rock N’ Roll Horror Zine in 2018, a DIY hand-stapled publication that published only rock, punk, and metal themed genre fiction stories. The Rock N’ Roll Horror Zine was published between 2018 to 2019 for a total of six issues that featured works from a wide variety of underground writers. In addition, he created the one-off zines Choose Your Own Death, A Beginner’s Guide To Bizarro Fiction, Ant Sniffing Zine, and A Beginner’s Guide To Witch House.

Following his graduation from Hampshire College, Fitts relocated to Brooklyn, New York where he co-founded the indie rock band War Honey and has since made a living as a working guitarist. War Honey released a pair of extended plays, including 2020’s Shard To Shatter which has received a colored-vinyl reissue from the label Handstand Records.      

His second book is the novella Snailbutter that was released by Hybrid Sequence Media in 2021. A work absurdist and bizarre horror-comedy, Snailbutter follows a day of school in the life of ninth-grader Doug, whose best friend had climbed into a giant snail shell that he found in his backyard and refuses to come out. As he tries to help his friend come out of his shell, Doug encounters monsters, robots, mutants, Nazi scientists, British girls from other dimensions, and other things you probably dealt with at that age as well. A second edition version of Fitts’ collection My Birth And Other Regrets featuring two brand new stories is set to be released in spring of 2023 by Hybrid Sequence Media.

Website: https://doomgoat666.wixsite.com/benfitts
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ben-Fitts/author/B07KFRJLKT
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18261823.Ben_Fitts
My Birth And Other Regrets New Edition Pre-Order: https://hybridsequencemedia.com/product/my-birth-and-other-regrets/

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WiHM 2023: The Best Horror Books Written by Women: A List of Must-Read Titles

The Best Horror Books Written by Women: A List of Must-Read Titles

by: Kaaron Warren 

 

I have a running list in my head and on my bookshelves of must-read (and re-read) horror books. Not all of them are by women, but many are, and for Women in Horror Month, I’ve jotted down just some of the books that have impressed, horrified, delighted, and influenced me.

 

Horror lends itself to short fiction. The terrifying image, the unbearable ending, the twist you didn’t guess; all of these are served well by short fiction. The novella also works well because you can explore further themes in a slightly longer piece, and add some layering to your plot and to your characters.

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Indie Bookshelf Releases 03/24/2023

Got a book to launch, an event to promote, a kickstarter or seeking extra work/support as a result of being hit economically by Covid or life in general?

Get in touch and we’ll promote you here. The post is prepared each Thursday for publication on Friday. Contact us via Horror Tree’s contact address or connect via Twitter or Facebook.

Click on the book covers for more information. Remember to scroll down to the bottom of the page – there’s all sorts lurking in the deep.

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Taking Submissions: Steel True, Blade Straight

Deadline: June 30, 2023
Payment: Contributors Copy
Theme: Stories, poems, and scholarship inspired by and about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes.

Steel True, Blade Straight
The Belanger Books Journal of Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Inspired Stories, Poems, and Scholarship
2023 Annual
Description: This anthology will have stories, poems, and scholarship inspired by and about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. While the anthology will contain new Sherlock Holmes stories, the intent would be for at least 25% of the material to be stories and poems inspired by the life and non-Sherlockian writing of Sir Arthur. Another 25% of material would be scholarship on Holmes and Doyle.
All proceeds from the Anthology will be donated to The Beacon Society, a 501c(3) nonprofit scion society of The Baker Street Irregulars (BSI), that serves as a link to other scion societies, providing teachers, librarians, children museums, and children theaters with local resources to bring the magic of Sherlock Holmes to life.
Guidelines:
Stories – 3,000 – 10,000 word submissions that connect to the writing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. These can be Sherlock Holmes stories, or stories connected to Sir Arthur’s additional writings (far too many to list here).

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WiHM 2023: The Most Chilling Women in Psychological Horror: A Ranking of Most Disturbing Female Characters

The Most Chilling Women in Psychological Horror: A Ranking of Most Disturbing Female Characters

By Yawatta Hosby

 

How does the saying go? Villains are the misunderstood protagonists in their own heads. I love horror movies so much that I thought it’d be fun to rank the most chilling women in psychological horror.

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