Category: Call Type

Taking Submissions: Mysterion January 2025 Window

Submission Window: January 1st – 31st, 2025
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).

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Taking Submissions: Cosmic Horror Monthly January 2025 Window (Early Listing)

Submission Window: January 1st – 31st, 2025
Payment: 3 cents per word
Theme: Weird and cosmic fiction under 5,000 words

What do we want?

Weird and cosmic fiction under 5,000 words

When do we want it?

Twice a year: January 1-7 and July 1-7

How do we want it?

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Dark Age Press January 2025 Window For Fantasy and Science Fiction Novels

Submission Window: January 1st – 31st, 2025
Payment: $500 to $2000, negotiated royalties, set number of contributor copies
Themes: Fantasy, Science Fiction, or Literary Fiction

The next Open Submissions begins on January 1, 2025.

Who We Are
Dark Age Press is a small, independent publisher. We presently focus on Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Literary Fiction. We are not looking for picture books, children’s books, or works focused on themes for Young Adult (YA), religious, or erotica. We are not a vanity press.

Our mission: to support local, independent bookstores and pop-up bookstores, and, as such, we only sell to those bookstores.

Our goal is to publish two works per year.
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Taking Submissions: Childbirth Horror Anthology

Deadline: December 23rd, 2024
Payment: $20 and a contributor’s copy
Theme: Horror that includes childbirth

Childbirth Horror Anthology
Open call for very short stories
Stories should be emotional, unexpected, incredibly well-written, and raw.
Must include a childbirth, all other elements open.

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Taking Submissions: Untitled Illustrated Poetry Anthology

Deadline: May 31st, 2024
Payment: Written work: .02c/word, Artwork: $75
Theme: Grim, gothic, morbidly funny, and terrifying works

Calling all poetry authors AND artists!

We’re stepping outside of the box here and trying something new. We’re calling on poets and artists this time to help us craft an illustrated poetry anthology. Give us your limericks, sonnets, haiku, ballads, and free-verse! Have visual poetry? EVEN BETTER. We want grim, gothic, morbidly funny, terrifying works.

Your poetry submission:

  • should be 150 lines (not words) max
  • horror centric
  • any form of poetry is allowed
  • multiple submissions allowed

Your art submission:

  • color or black/white (a color edition is tentatively planned)
  • various sizes/dimensions considered
  • submit as jpg, tiff, png, or pdf
  • multiple submissions allowed
  • NO GENERATIVE AI ART OF ANY KIND.


Est. publication date:
 July 2025
Compensation (written work): .02c/word
Compensation (artwork): $75 (more…)

Taking Submissions: Lured Into The Deep

Deadline: February 28th, 2025
Payment: Authors get 30% Royalties for first year from date of publication. Afterwards, 30% of all
proceeds go to a charity chosen by the Publisher
Theme: All mermaids (and their kin), kraken (sea monsters), underwater civilizations, etc. stories are welcome. All genres are accepted.

LURED INTO THE DEEP
(Rated R)

Deadline – February 28th, 2025
Publication – May 2025
Word Count – 3,000-20,000
Theme – All mermaids (and their kin), kraken (sea monsters), underwater civilizations, etc. stories are welcome. All genres are accepted.

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Taking Submissions: The Best Trans Horror of the Year, Volume One

Deadline: January 1st, 2025
Payment: Fiction: 2c per word plus a paperback contributor copy, Poetry: $25 plus a paperback contributor copy
Theme: Reprints of horror stories published in 2024 by authors who identify as trans or nonbinary

Last week, just a few days after the election, I had a bit of a manic episode that ended with me dying my fading lavender hair black and posting the following on Bluesky:

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Taking Submissions: Noncorporeal III: Nightfall

Deadline: January 31st, 2025
Payment: Royalties and if in the US a contributors copy
Theme: Spooky stories that aren’t horror which contain at least one paranormal entity and ideally will include a scene at night or take place at night

Submission Period: November 1, 2024 to January 31, 2025

We’re searching for the spooky stories. This is not horror, though there may be suspense and even a dash of horror. A spooky, haunting, incorporeal element is certainly expected. Humor and mystery beats are welcome.
Incorporeal – At least one paranormal entity must be not composed of matter; having no material existence.
Nightfall – Some stories selected will have a component of night to them, it is not required for submission
Express yourself as the theme moves you.
There is no restriction as to how you incorporate the theme into your story. However, we’ll be seriously impressed if you can work within Sci-Fi or Fantasy, but they might not be the bulk of the accepted submissions. We encourage you to weave the theme into an engaging story with well-developed characters and deep emotion. Suspense and thrillers are encouraged over horror for this anthology, but a great horror story may rise to the top.
Stories that contain infanticide, rape, or gratuitous gore will not be accepted.

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