Category: Artwork

Taking Submissions: Electric Spec August Issue 2024

Deadline: July 15th, 2024
Payment: $20 per story or artwork
Theme: Electric Spec prefers science fiction, fantasy, and the macabre, but we’re willing to push the limits of traditional forms of these genres.

submissions at electricspec (dot) com
Please don’t query us about your story submission. We don’t have the manpower to answer such queries. An editor will email you back as soon as possible with the decision about your story. This can take a few days, or, up to three months. We make every effort to get back to authors in a timely manner but we get a lot of submissions so sometimes it’s not possible.

A note on our editorial policy: before publication we may work with the author to edit the story for length or readability. However, we always remain true to the spirit of the story and the author has final approval.

Issues are published at the end of February, May, August, and November. We reserve the right to shift publication date slightly, as necessary.

We have reading periods for each issue, though we never close to submissions.

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Taking Submissions: Radon Journal September 2024 Issue

Submission Window: April 16th – Aug. 15th, 2024
Payment: Fiction: 2¢ per word for original, 1¢ per word for reprints. Poetry: $20 per original poem and $10 for reprints. $100 for issue cover art, $30 for back cover art, and $20 for art used on our site
Theme: Stories and poetry containing elements of science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, or dystopia.
Note: Reprints Welcome

Radon welcomes short stories and poetry containing elements of science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, or dystopia.

We publish quality literature every mid-January, May, and September.

  • Submissions are accepted year-round.

  • Simultaneous submissions are welcome.

  • Reprints accepted if writer has the rights.

  • AI submissions are not allowed at Radon.

Please click below to submit your work through our no-fee Submittable page:

We kindly request a third-person bio that is 100-words or shorter in your cover letter.

Author rights:

For original work, Radon asks for first English digital rights and non-exclusive, indefinite archival rights.

Authors published in Radon cannot be accepted into the issue immediately following, but may submit after this period.

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Taking Submissions: Haven Speculative 2024 General Submissions Call #2 (Early)

Submission Window: April 1st – 30th, 2024
Payment: 8 cent per word for fiction, $20 for poetry, 8 cent per word for non-fiction, $125 for cover art
Theme: Speculative fiction

It’s our goal to publish diverse voices from around the world, and to do that, we are actively seeking stories, poems, and non-fiction pieces by authors from backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the science fiction and fantasy canon. Our submission cycle is therefore split into two categories, where every other month is explicitly reserved for submissions by authors of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and other underrepresented groups. The interposing six months remain open to everyone.

As writers ourselves, we do our best to handle each submission with the care and attention it deserves. Every submission is an act of bravery, and we know that putting yourself out there as a writer can be tough. Just know that any submission we receive, unless it contains something illegal, will be kept in confidence.

When in doubt, don’t self reject! Submit submit submit!


Guidelines for Fiction

We like stories that are subtle in their telling and stick with us long after we’ve finished, and we’re more likely to buy stories that balance a sense of wonder with a bold plot and emotional depth. For our two issues focused on the climate crisis, we’re particularly interested in publishing stories from people displaced by or threatened by the climate emergency (see our themes below). For our other four issues, we’re open to a wide variety of stories across the SFF and weird spectra.

  • Pay: 8¢ per word for original fiction
  • Word limit: 6000 words
  • Language: English
  • Rights: We buy first serial print and electronic rights for publication of the story in the English language and throughout the world. We also buy non-exclusive archival rights for our website and non-exclusive anthology rights.

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Taking Submissions: NonBinary Review #37

Deadline: August 1st, 2024
Payment: $10 for poetry, $25 for artwork, 1 cent per word for fiction
Theme: False Memories
Note: Reprints Welcome

NonBinary Review is currently open for submissions on the theme of FALSE MEMORIES.

False memories first came to public consciousness in the 1980s when a group of pre-schoolers at a California preschool were coached by well-meaning social workers and police investigators into “remembering” Satanic abuse that never happened. The fallout from that episode wasn’t just the persecution of an innocent family, but a nationwide mass delusion now known as “the Satanic Panic,” where authorities were warning the public about supposed widespread satanic cults committing heinous acts of abuse. Not a single one of these warnings were founded in fact, and it is now known that a large number of them were propaganda.

But false memories aren’t always bad. There is a common phenomenon wherein people hear stories of their early childhoods so often that those stories turn into “memories.” It is common in dreams to have “memories” of things that happened to the dream self, but not to the real self. Or a person might believe that they took their regular medication, brought in the garbage bins, or picked up the mail when they haven’t.

We’re looking for weird and wonderful stories of not just the memories themselves, but of their production, their repercussions, their wider meanings. We’re looking for false memories that might have changed history, that led to remarkable discoveries, that impacted lives.

We’re NOT looking stories of recovered memories. Recovered memories are memories of real events that have been suppressed because they’re traumatic, and are a widely disputed phenomenon. We would also like to avoid stories centering abuse, trauma, and violence.

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Taking Submissions: Sundog Literature 2024 Window #1

Deadline: March 1st – May 1st, 2024
Payment: $50
Theme: Writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in.

A Note on Our Aesthetic

We believe there is beauty in scars on smooth skin, in the small fissures where things begin to break apart. Sundogs are not the sun itself but phantom stars appearing on the horizon, illusions produced by the play of the sun’s heat with crystals of ice. They shed their light all the same. Many are tinged with color.

We look for this same quality in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We want writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in. We seek a diversity of voices speaking from visceral, lived experience. We like truth we can stare at until our eyes water, words so carefully chosen we want to reread them as soon as we have finished.

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Ongoing Submissions: Flash Digest

Payment: Original Stories: 1 cent a word, Cover art: $15.00, Interior art: $5.00
Theme: Original stories that are entertaining and/or have a serious point to them. We prefer to see stories with plot, tension, suspense, conflict, and character development.

Flash Digest is published quarterly, in January, April, July, and October, in print and as an ePub and PDF. It presents original science fiction, fantasy, and spooky horror stories of flash fiction length, which we regard as less than 1500 words. The lead editor is Terrie Leigh Relf.

Flash Digest wants non-AI original stories that are entertaining and/or have a serious point to them. We prefer to see stories with plot, tension, suspense, conflict, and character development. Remember, if readers do not care what happens to your main character[s], they won’t read the story. The narrative should maintain a sense of wondering what’s going to happen next; of what’s lurking just around the corner. Showing is better than telling. Frex, instead of telling the reader that it’s cold, show your character shivering, stomping feet, or having ice form on beard or hair. The inner thoughts and emotions of your character[s] are just as important.

As we will publish no more than six to eight stories per issue, we will be very picky with what we select. Just sayin’.

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Taking Submissions: The Quarterly Journal – WET

Deadline: April 30th, 2024
Payment: $5
Theme: Wet

A Literary Journal with Some Art, Comics, and Analysis Thrown in for Good Measure

As Quarter Press continues to grow, we’re adding another coin to our pocketful of change. We want to offer a space for shorter works to mingle with art and other bits of nonsense, so we bring you The Quarter(ly): It just makes cents.

Issues are themed; however, we consider all interpretations.

2024’s Themes and Deadlines:

WET (April 30)

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Taking Submissions: Dracula Beyond Stoker Issue #5

Submission Window: May 1st – June 15th, 2024
Payment: Contributors copies, 5 cents per word for original work, $55 for reprints, undisclosed sum for cover artwork
Theme: Lucy’s Suitors – Quincey, Jack, and/or Arthur

Issue 5: Lucy’s Suitors – Quincey, Jack, and/or Arthur (To be published November, 2024)
Quincey was a cowboy who may or may not have been in cahoots with the count.

Seward was a drug addicted custodian of a lunatic asylum.

And Arthur was there, too!

Let’s read some stories of these men – together, individually, in combination – before, during, and after the events of the novel. Did Quincey survive as the undead? How did Jack treat his other patients? When the dust settled, did Holmwood completely break down? Stoker tells us these three men adventured together prior. What might that look like?

Currently this is planned as a single book, but quantity and quality may dictate a book for each man.

Submissions open May 1, 2024-June 15, 2024. Submissions received earlier will be read and considered but will not be responded to until the window opens.
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