Author: Stuart Conover
Taking Submissions: Gauges and Ghouls
Deadline: May 31st, 2025
Payment: Royalties
Theme: Haunted workplace stories
What I’m Looking For: Haunted workplace stories, modern day or historical, it’s completely up to you. Just write a great character-driven story that hooks the reader fast and reels them in hard. There do NOT need to be ghosts. You don’t need to have a truly haunted workplace. You can have spooky vibes, vampires, werewolves, the whole nine.
Story length will be between 5,000 and 10,000 words.
Taking Submissions: Eternal Haunted Summer: Summer Solstice 2025
Submission Window: May 1st – June 1st, 2025
Payment: $5
Theme: Poetry or short fiction about the Gods and Goddesses and heroes of the world’s many Pagan/polytheist traditions that somehow features Music
Summer Solstice 2025: Music. Submission Period: 1 May through 1 June 2025. Jazz and blues. Rock and opera. Ballads and filk songs. Music has been an integral element of human creativity and culture since we first learned to carve holes into bones. Send us your best poems, short stories, and essays about music — in all its forms — from a Pagan/polytheist, witchy, and mythological point of view. Send us poems about the duel between Apollo and Marsyas, Bragi wooing Idun, and Pan stalking a poacher with madness-inducing pipe music. Send us short stories about a desperate musician making a crossroads deal with Dionysus, a composer praying to Hymen for inspiration, an archaeologist uncovering a temple and sacred instruments of Kothar-wa-Khasis. Send us essays about Väinämöinen as archetypal musician, Mozart’s opera Apollo et Hyacinthus, and the rise of the modern Pagan music scene.
Creating a Perfect Antagonist for Your Student Horror Story
Creating a Perfect Antagonist for Your Student Horror Story
Horror stories thrive on fear, and at the heart of every great horror story is a terrifying antagonist. Whether it’s a supernatural entity haunting a school dormitory, a deranged professor with a dark secret, or a sinister force lurking in the library basement, your antagonist is the driving force behind the fear. A well-crafted antagonist does more than just scare readers; they create tension, challenge protagonists, and make your horror story unforgettable.
Taking Submissions: Eye to the Telescope #57
Deadline: June 15th, 2025
Payment: US 4¢/word rounded up to nearest dollar; minimum US $4, maximum $25
Theme: Speculative poems about Birds
Eye to the Telescope 57, Birds, will be edited by Maria Schrater.
Send your speculative bird poems! The endless diversity of birds is one of the great marvels of our world. Migration patterns, flight mechanics, song, life cycle, and more—it’s a diverse pool to draw from, with deeper potential with the addition of speculative layers.
Guest Editor Maria Schrater has been fascinated by birds since she was a child, learning to imitate their calls and identify local species just by a flash of color. She has rescued baby birds, carefully viewed delicate nests, and watched majestic waterfowl take flight. Apparition readers may remember that Schrater adores out-of-the-box forms. You could even send a poem shaped as a bird. If you pick a traditional form, please name the form in the cover letter so it can be evaluated with that in mind.
A generous interpretation will be applied to the definition of bird, but this call is not intended to include dinosaurs unless modern birds are also discussed. We are excited to see your poems!
Taking Submissions: Untitled Science Fiction Anthology
Deadline: August 1st, 2025
Payment: $10 and a contributors copy
Theme: Pure science fiction stories between 2,000 and 8,000 words
What we Want: Good science fiction stories between 2,000 and 8,000 words for our upcoming anthology. No fantasy or horror. We will read any science fiction stories.
What we Don’t Want: We don’t want porn. No poetry. We don’t want pure romance stories, but of course you can have romance in the story (You know what we mean). If you don’t have a clue then just send it anyway, I reckon.
Taking Submissions: Saturday Mourning Television
Deadline: June 30th, 2025
Payment: $35 and a contributors copy
Theme: Short horror fiction inspired by early morning kids TV
Send us your best short horror fiction inspired by early morning kids TV for our next anthology, Saturday Mourning Television. Tune us in to something scary based on any decade you like: the educational/bizarre 1960’s & 70’s, the advert-packed 80’s, the radical 90’s, the wayward & wacky 2000’s or anything beyond. Even web-based entertainment is fair game. And don’t limit yourself to tales involving kids, what about parents, or performers & hosts, workers behind the scenes, even animated creations. Let your imagination go wild, and remember not to sit too close to the screen!
Taking Submissions: HellBound Books’ anthology of Campfire Stories
Deadline: June 30th, 2025
Payment: $5
Theme: Terrifying Tales to be told around a campfire!
Send us your creepiest, most spine-chilling tales of terror best told around the campfire or a late-night sleepover! We’re looking for mysterious strangers calling from inside the house, weird, inhuman beings lurking in the woods, inexplicable behaviours from once-trusted friends and relatives that may be madness, a brain-altering disease, demonic posession, or something much, much worse…
