Category: Anthology

Anthology / Events / Royalties

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Taking Submissions: The Dance

Deadline: August 1st, 2023
Payment: Royalties: one (1%) per cent of net sales
Theme: “Life is the dance between choice and chance.”

“Life is the dance between choice and chance.”

How did you come to the point in life where you now find yourself? Two factors were likely in play: choice and chance.

The choices you make are clearly a factor in shaping your life. For example: a woman in one universe elopes with her high school sweetheart, but they are too young to make the marriage work and divorce at any early age; in a second universe, she marries him after they graduate from university and happily becomes a stay-at-home mom; in a third universe, she doesn’t marry him and pursues a successful career. Making different choices about the same life goal can lead to very different lives.

It’s also true, though, that chance, forces that are out of our control, shapes the choices that are available to us. This may be because of the choices of others which directly affect us, or it may because of the society into which we are born. For instance: a black man sleeps in his car in the drive-thru lane of a fast food restaurant. In one universe, two white cops are sent to deal with him; forty-five minutes later, one of them has shot him dead. In a second universe, one of the white cops and a psychiatrist are sent to deal with him; after a tense confrontation, he is arrested and his car impounded. In a third universe, the psychiatrist and a social worker droid are sent to deal with him; he is sent home to sleep it off and told he can pick up his impounded car the next day. The different outcomes are a product of chance, the different structures of the societies in which the main character finds himself.

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Anthology / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: Witch, Wizard, Warlock

Submission Window: June 1st – July 31st, 2023
Payment: $10
Theme: Stories of any genre as long as they have a witch, wizard, warlock, or combination of them within!

THREE COUSINS PUBLISHING, an imprint of WEST MESA PRESS, will be accepting submissions for its next anthology, WITCH WIZARD WARLOCK from June 1, 2023 until midnight July 31, 2023. Stories submitted before or after the submission period will not be considered.
We’re looking for stories that fit the anthology title. Submissions must feature a witch, wizard, warlock, two of those, or even all three. Horror, humor, fantasy, science fiction, or even some entertaining, but bizarre mashup of genres that we haven’t considered. Your characters may be young or old and the time frame may be from the dawn of mankind to the far future. Here’s the short list of guidelines. Pay attention, please. These are important.

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Anthology / Events / Pro

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Taking Submissions: Rhapsody of the Spheres (Early Listing)

Submission Window: May 19th – June 1st, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word
Theme: “An effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling” in the SF, fantasy, space opera, hopepunk genres

Theme: Rhapsody of the Spheres – SF, fantasy, space opera, hopepunk

The dictionary defines a rhapsody as “an effusively enthusiastic or  ecstatic expression of feeling.” In ancient Greece, a rhapsody was also part of an epic poem of a suitable length for reciting.

Edie Brickell waxed rhapsodic about a smile on a dog, and Queen and Liszt gave us their musical Bohemian and Hungarian rhapsodies, respectively.

Please give us a speculative fiction story or poem about what would make us happy right now.

Reading Period (open): May 19 – June 1, 2023
Writer Deadline: June 1, 2023
Publication Date: August 2023

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Anthology / Events / Flash / Poetry / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Alternative Truths, Southern Edition: Bless Their Hearts

Deadline: June 30th, 2023
Payment: 3 cents per word
Theme: A look at the south of the United States through the lens of speculative fiction

B Cubed press is proud to announce our latest Open Call:  Alternative Truths. Southern Edition: Bless their Hearts (working title).

Edited by K.G.  Anderson and Bob Brown and the next in B Cubed Press’s best-selling Alternative Truths series.

This book will examine the South, a place where politicians and their followers compete to peg the outrage meter. Why—and how—are they turning the United States into a cauldron of bigotry and hate?

  • They are banning books.
  • They are controlling free speech (“Don’t Say Gay”).
  • They have placed bounties on abortion seekers.
  • They have declared war on Mickey Mouse.
  • They promote state takeovers of local prosecutors’ offices, election boards, college governing boards, and school curricula.
  • They think no one is too young or too unbalanced to have a gun and are In full retreat on gun-safety laws.
  • They would make your gender identity a crime.

It goes on and on.

This book will look at the mindset behind these and other efforts to bring back the Old South, a mythical place and time when everyone knew their place.

We want you give us stories that speak to the consequences of such a mindset and where it may be taking us as individuals and  as a culture. What, if left unfettered, would they make of America, the world, and the future. And more important, how will we fight to stop them.

 What we are looking for:
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Anthology / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: Written in the Wind – Fantastic Tales on the Power of Names

Deadline: June 30th, 2023
Payment: $20
Theme: Fantasy short stories that explore names

Theme: What’s in a name? Is it a simple collection of symbols and sounds, or something more? A name is one of the first things we are given in this world, and is the first thing we give to others. But names hold power. They can define and divide, unite and reimagine. A name can truly change your fate.

This collection of Fantasy short stories will explore names and the power they hold over us. Featuring stories from the Worldsmyths community, these tales will show you new worlds and open your mind to the power of names.

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Anthology / Events / Royalties

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Taking Submissions: What Really Happened

Deadline: July 31st 2023
Payment: Royalties
Theme: Pick a famous incident, an unknown one, or make up your own and let us know what really happened!
Note: Not looking for ‘extreme’ horror

What Really Happened (Tentative Title)

Swamp gas?

Weather balloons?

Ball lightning?

That couldn’t really have been an atmospheric reflection of Venus, could it?

Heck no!

And we want you to tell us what it REALLY was!

Pick a famous incident, an unknown one, or make up your own and let us know what really happened! I mean, we’re not saying it was aliens, but…

Submission Guidelines:

Submissions will be open May 1st to July 31st 2023. Send submissions to [email protected]

Please attach your story as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file. No PDFs or cloudsharing will be accepted.

Anthology expected to be published in or around November, 2023.

Word count maximum (firm) of 7,000 words. Anything under 2,000 words will be considered flash fiction.

Flash fiction is welcome and will be paid at 1/2 rate.

Payment is royalty sharing through Draft2Digital’s Royalty Sharing Program.

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

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Anthology / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Poetry / Pro

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Taking Submissions: Qualia Nous Volume 2

Deadline: July 31st, 2023
Payment: 10 cents per word up to 3,000 words, $500 for novelettes, $50 for short poems, $100 for longer poems
Theme: Qualia: instances of subjective, conscious experience; the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena; the way it feels to have mental states. Nous: intellections; awareness; perception; understanding; reason; thought; intuition; the faculty of the human mind; having the ability to understand what is true or real; practical intelligence.

The first volume of Qualia Nous (2014), edited by Michael Bailey, won the Benjamin Franklin Award for science fiction and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology. It was a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year finalist in horror, science fiction, and a bronze winner for anthologies, as well as a silver medal finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Awards, a finalist for the Indie Book Awards, and a winner of the International Book Award. It was also the first Written Backwards anthology (of eventually many) to contain work by Stephen King.

Usman T. Malik’s “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” was a finalist for the Nebula Award and tied to win the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction with Rena Mason’s “Ruminations.” And Marge Simon’s poem “Shutdown” (the only poem in the anthology) won the Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. So, a second volume of Qualia Nous was inevitable, albeit 10 years later, and will again not only feature legends of the craft but showcase today’s emerging talent.

What does the title mean? It’s up to interpretation.

Qualia: instances of subjective, conscious experience; the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena; the way it feels to have mental states.

Nous: intellections; awareness; perception; understanding; reason; thought; intuition; the faculty of the human mind; having the ability to understand what is true or real; practical intelligence.
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Anthology / Events / Flash / Poetry / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Alternative Leadership

Deadline: August 1st, 2023
Payment: $.03 per word
Theme: Alternative Leadership

B Cubed Press is pleased announce an Open Call for Alternative Leadership.   

An anthology about leadership. Leadership by the under-represented, by those too often forced to watch as those less qualified, less capable rise in a system that cannot see the value of diversity and change.

We’re looking for broken barriers of all kinds.  Can a man lead the National Organization of Women? Can a woman lead the NFL Players Association?  Not in our current world, perhaps, but maybe in alternative worlds?

This will be a book about those things, in government, in the PTA, in the Horde, in the town or village.  In the world. About the Orc would be King of the Goblins, the woman who would be Pope.  The only limits are those of your own imagination.

So understand there is no magic formula for sex, orientation or race of your protagonist.  We want our readers to enjoy the story, sometimes laugh, but always think.

The Alternatives series often uses humor and satire as a way of looking at issues.  You don’t have to write satire or humor to sell us a story, but it sometimes helps.

We are unabashedly social justice fans and love redemption.  Your story doesn’t have to reflect progressive perspectives, but again, it helps.

But most of all, we want our readers to think about the story after they’ve put down the book.

We are looking for good writing, first and foremost. We also want imaginative scenarios, and a good bit of humor in stories, essays or poetry is always appreciated.

Write of successes.

Write of failures.

Write of the perfect, the imperfect, the noble, and the wretched.

Write the story of the person who said, “I can be more.”

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