Author: Stuart Conover

Being part of a Writing Group
Being part of a Writing Group

Artwork / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine / Pro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Cosmic Horror Monthly January 2023 Window (Early Listing)

Submission Window: January 1st 2023 – January 7th 2023
Payment: 6 cents per word for original fiction, 50 dollars for artwork chosen as interior content. Negotiable., 200 dollars for cover art. Negotiable.
Theme: Cosmic Horror, Lovecraftian, and Weird stories

Submission Period

*SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED!* – Submission periods are twice yearly from January 1st – January 7th and July 1st – July 7th.

January stories accepted will appear in issues from the following July – December

July stories accepted will appear in issues from the following January – June

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

We are now accepting Non-Fiction submissions as well as Fiction. We would love to see Non Fiction essays that explore the state of horror as well as the philosophies that are often found in Cosmic Horror, existentialism, nihilism, etc.

Instructions: All writing must be submitted via email to [email protected]. When submitting, include a little background information about yourself in the body and attach the story in the form of a Microsoft Word file. Please include a word count and a brief synopsis of the work. For artwork, please put a link to the gallery/pieces in the body of the email along with any relevant background information. You may also attach example art. Acceptable file formats for attachments are DOC, and DOCX for fiction, JPG, and PNG for art.

The subject line of the email should read: “CHM Fiction Submission” for fiction, “CHM Non-Fiction Submission” for non-fiction, and “CHM Art Submission” for art.

Guidelines

(more…)

Anthology / Events / Flash / Royalties

 by 

Taking Submissions: (Not So) Dark Passages Submission Guidelines

Deadline: March 1st, 2023
Payment: Royalty split on 2000-7000 word stories, half split for flash fiction under that
Theme: Spoopy (spooky but mostly fun) stories you can share with grandma and the kids

We are looking for spoopy (spooky but mostly fun) stories you can share with grandma and the kids. (Doesn’t have to be Halloween themed, but the Halloween holiday is the general aim of this anthology.)

Submissions open now until March 1st, 2023. Anthology expected to be published in or around October, 2023.

**If you don’t have the patience to wait a year for your story to be published, DON’T SUBMIT.**

**If you are not willing to obtain a Draft2Digital account in order to receive royalty shares as payment, then DON’T SUBMIT.**

(more…)

Articles

 by 

Everything You Need To Know About Writing Dialogue: Formatting Advice, Writing Examples And Tips!

From character names to story locations, when it comes to the world of writing, one of the best parts many writers enjoy is the creative freedom that comes with creating a story.

However, one of the toughest parts of writing is learning how to present dialogue correctly. Believe it or not, there is an incorrect way to write dialogue, which can leave many writers scratching their heads.

Everything You Need To Know About Writing Dialogue: Formatting Advice, Writing Examples And Tips!

You could have a stellar plot in the works, but if you aren’t making sure that you are presenting your character’s dialogue correctly, you’re more than likely going to find that your book falls at the first hurdle.

The dialogue is often the main way that readers are able to form emotional connections to characters, and without the presence of great writing, the book will all too often be put down.

The only question is, how do you write dialogue correctly? If you are currently finding it a bit of a challenge to write dialogue – rest assured that you have come to the right place.

In this article, we are going to be sharing with you helpful tips, guidance and more that will help you to become a better creative writer, all while ensuring that you are able to nail dialogue writing, too.

Along with all of the above, we are also going to be sharing some helpful examples along the way that will help to make the writing process of your novel as smooth and as enjoyable as possible. So, without further ado, whenever you’re ready, let’s dive right in.

(more…)

Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Poetry

 by 

Taking Submissions: A Flight of Dragons

Deadline: December 31st, 2022
Payment: £10 and a contributors copy
Theme: Dragons must form a significant element of the submission piece

Submissions are open for A Flight of Dragons!

We are now accepting submissions for our anthology, A Flight of Dragons. Here is a quick overview of what we’re looking for.

* Short stories of up to 5,000 words

(more…)

Events / Flat Amount / Magazine

 by 

Taking Submissions: Contrary Spring 2023 Issue

Deadline: March 1st, 2023
Payment: $20
Theme: We ask our fiction writers to imagine their readers navigating a story with one finger poised over a mouse button. Can your story stay that finger to the end?

“Turning words into art is unnatural. It begins with a contrary attitude. It says, I am unhappy with the way things are and desire to make things different. Rather than represent the world, I will make something wildly and savagely new. I will defy logic. I will invest in new perceptions. I will combine and recombine and fabricate and juggle until something that I have never experienced is experienced. The process is alchemical. The process is violent. It goes to the heart of creativity. It disrupts and shatters. It is splendid with provocation. It is an aggression against banality. It is sharp and loud like a janitor scraping frost from a window. The hectic bounce of steam on a street after a truck roars by. The anarchy of waters, the comedy of the face, dangerous feelings vented from a cage of skin.” ~ John Olson

Poetry — We believe poetry is contrary by nature, always defying, always tonguing the tang of novelty. We look especially for plurality of meaning, for dual reverberation of beauty and concern. Contrary’s poetry in particular often mimics the effects of fiction or commentary. We find ourselves enamored of prose poems because they are naturally contrary toward form – they tug on the forces of exposition or narrative – but prose poems remain the minority of all the poetic forms we publish. Please consider that Contrary receives vast amounts of poetry and that we can publish only a small percentage of that work. Please submit no more than three poems per issue. Our poetry editor is Shaindel Beers.
(more…)

Anthology / Events / Pro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Kangas Kahn Publishing Untitled Halloween Anthology

Deadline: March 1st, 2023
Payment: $.08 per word
Theme: Halloween

Kangas Kahn Publishing is seeking unpublished Halloween short stories for an upcoming anthology to be released in September of 2023. We’re looking to put together the best Halloween anthology in existence, and that’s a tall order because there are a lot of great ones out there. That’s why we’ve hired one of the best to edit it: Kenneth W. Cain.
(more…)

Events / Flat Amount / Magazine / Reprints Allowed / Royalties / Semipro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Archive of the Odd Issue #3

Deadline: February 1st, 2023 (BIPOC-only extension until February, 8th 2023)
Payment: $0.01/word and 50% of the royalties divided between authors for short stories, $20 for ‘Between the Shelves’, Artwork: $20 per page
Theme: Unthemed speculative found-fiction
Note: Reprints Welcome

A home for the strange, the uncanny, and the odd.

Open Submissions

  • Query for
    • Serializing
    • Audio/video
    • Finished chapbooks/booklets
    • Pieces you would like us to help promote

Closed Submissions

  • Issue #1 (Closed Dec 1, 2021)
  • Issue #2 (Closed June 15, 2022)
  • Issue #3 (Unthemed, open Dec 1 2022-Feb 1 2023, BIPOC-only extension until Feb 8 2023)

Rules

(more…)

Events / Magazine / Pro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Mysterion January 2023 Window

Submission Window: January 1st – 31st, 2023
Payment: 8 cents/word and 4 cents/word for reprints
Theme: Speculative stories–science fiction, fantasy, horror–with Christian themes, characters, or cosmology
Note: Reprints Welcome

Open to fiction submissions each year during the months of January and July.

Open to art submissions year-round.

We are looking for speculative stories–science fiction, fantasy, horror–with Christian themes, characters, or cosmology, and for artwork for this site.

Fiction Guidelines

Technical details

  • Stories can be up to 9000 words (thanks, Patreon supporters!). This is a hard limit–our submission system will enforce it.
  • We pay 8 cents/word for original stories (or original translations of stories that have not previously appeared in English), and 4 cents/word for reprints (thanks again, Patreon!).
    • Authors are paid once we’ve agreed on edits and signed a contract, prior to earliest publication (generally on our Patreon page).
  • We are seeking 6 months’ exclusive worldwide publication rights for original works (with exceptions for established Best of the Year anthologies), and non-exclusive worldwide print and electronic rights thereafter for both original works and reprints.
    • We want to publish your story online in our webzine and keep it there indefinitely.
    • We’re also acquiring the right to offer ebook versions of the stories we publish, as Patreon rewards or for purchase; and to publish a print and ebook anthology of all the stories that appeared in the webzine over a given 1- or 2-year period.
    • For original fiction, we want to be the only place publishing it for the first 6 months; after that, you’re welcome to publish it anywhere else in any format you like.
  • No multiple or simultaneous submissions.
    • If multiple writers co-write a story, we consider each distinct group of writers a different submitter. In other words, if two people co-write a story, and they submit the co-written story, and each of them also submits a story written on their own, that would not violate our no multiple submissions policy. Submitting two stories co-written by the same two people would violate our no multiple submissions policy.
  • Don’t resubmit a story we’ve rejected unless we request revisions.
  • We usually manage to respond to everyone within four months of the submission window’s closing. Feel free to query ([email protected]) if it’s been longer than four months since the end of the submission period.
  • Format requirements:
    • Stories must be double spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman or Courier font.
    • The story title, your byline, a word count, and contact information should appear on the first page, and your last name, story title, and page number should appear in the header information of all other pages.
    • If you want to make our lives easier, our preferred format is Times New Roman, italics for emphasis, one space after periods and colons, smart quotes, m-dashes instead of double hyphens, and first line of paragraph indented 0.5″ in Paragraph formatting instead of with the Tab key. But we aren’t that particular about any of this when evaluating your stories.
  • Stories should be submitted via the Moksha submissions system: https://mysterion.moksha.io/publication/mysterion.
  • Submit your stories in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format.
  • Your cover letter should contain a list of your three or four most prestigious publications (if any), and any pertinent biographical details: tell us if you’re an astronaut writing about space travel, but not if you’re an astronaut writing about the elf-dwarf war. Invert that if you’re an elf. If you’ve met us in person, feel free to mention it. Finally, let us know if the story is previously published and where it first appeared–even if it appeared on your blog or Twitter feed. Don’t try to summarize your story or explain why it’s a good fit for our publication (if it’s a good fit, we should be able to tell by reading it).

(more…)