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: 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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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: Diet Milk Magazine Spring/Summer 2023 Issue Window

Submission Window: December 1st 2023 – January 8th, 2024
Payment: $15 per poem, $0.01 per word ($40 minimum) for short stories, and $50 per art piece via PayPal
Theme: Gothic stories, no set genre

Opens on Friday, December 1, 2023 12:00 AM UTC (in 24 days)

From December 1st – January 8th, Diet Milk Magazine will be accepting submissions for its Spring/Summer issue. We will be open to poetry, prose, and visual art of all kinds. While the most detailed information can be found on our website, here’s a quick rundown of what potential contributors need to know!

GENERAL GUIDELINES:

  • All submissions must fall under the Gothic umbrella, but aren’t required to be a specific genre
  • No reprints or multiple submissions
  • Simultaneous submissions permitted, though we ask to be informed promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere!
  • Poetry/Prose submissions should be .doc.docx, or .pdf // Art submissions should be .jpeg or .png
  • If you receive a rejection, you may submit again (with new work) immediately

P O E T R Y :

Poets may submit up to three poems at a time. No single poem should exceed five pages in length.

P R O S E :

Authors may submit one short story at a time, up to 5000 words. This doesn’t have to be on the dot, but stories exceeding 5025 words will be rejected automatically.

A R T :

Artists may submit up to two pieces at a time. We’ll consider any type of visual art. If you’re unsure whether or not your work falls into this category, query us first. Reach out to [email protected] using the subject line “QUERY: YourName [ART SUB]”. We’ll let you know within 24 hours if your preferred medium is eligible.

Responses, Rights, & Payment

  • Please allow up to three weeks for a response. After that, send a gentle nudge via email
  • Diet Milk Magazine asks for first serial rights. Upon publication, all rights revert back to the creator. A contract will be provided upon acceptance
  • All payments made via PayPal.

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Taking Submissions: The Quarterly Journal – In The Dark

Deadline: January 31st, 2024
Payment: $5
Theme: What happens in the dark? What lurks there? Show me those intimate moments—or the ones that will freak me the fuck out. Or any combination therein.

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.
Please Note: All submission windows may be closed early if “full.”

2024’s Themes and Deadlines:

In the Dark (Jan. 31)

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Taking Submissions: Diet Milk Magazine In The Bleak Midwinter

Submission Window: October 1st – 31st, 2023
Payment: Microfiction: $3 per piece, Flash Fiction $5 per piece
Theme: Gothic stories

From October 1st – 31st, Diet Milk Magazine will be accepting micro and flash fiction for its December series, IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER. Twenty-five works will be chosen to be posted from December 1st through Christmas to our website and boosted on twitter.

At the end of the month, all pieces will be compiled into an easy-to-read .PDF and made available for free (though donations are appreciated!) on our issues shop.

GENERAL GUIDELINES:

  • All submissions must fall under the Gothic umbrella, but aren’t required to be a specific genre
  • No reprints or multiple submissions
  • Simultaneous submissions permitted, though we ask to be informed promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere!
  • Submissions should be .doc.docx, or .pdf format
  • If you receive a rejection, you may submit again (with new work) immediately

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Taking Submissions: NonBinary Review #35

Deadline: February 1st, 2023
Payment: Fiction: 1¢ per word, Poetry: $10 flat fee, Artwork: $25 flat fee (Cover art is $50)
Theme: Lies for Children

NonBinary Review is open for submissions on the theme of “lies for children.”

“If you keep making that face, it’ll freeze that way.” “We found you under a cabbage leaf.” “If you drink coffee, it’ll stunt your growth.” “If you go to sleep with wet hair, you’ll catch pneumonia.”

Adults tell children some outrageous lies. Think back to your own childhood and explanations your parents gave you for things you didn’t understand or superstitions they perpetuated. Why do adults feel that children need credulity-straining fictions rather than objective truths? What things do we find so uncomfortable that we can’t explain them to children? How do those lies affect our relationship with the children we lied to, or the adults who lied to us? Some of these lies are benevolent (although kind of weird), but some can be trauma-inducing. We want to hear the stories behind those lies, and the consequences they engendered.

We’re NOT looking for fairy tales, re-tellings of children’s bedtime stories, tall tales, Santa Claus/Easter bunny/tooth fairy origin stories, or any other fictions that even children know are stories told for fun.

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Taking Submissions: Reckoning 8

Deadline: September 22nd, 2023
Payment: 10 cents/word, 2 cents/word reprints, $50/page of poetry, $50 minimum per piece of artwork.
Theme: All of the current social issues that are happening

We’re very excited to announce, for the forthcoming Reckoning 8, editors Knar Gavin and Waverly SM! Read on for their issue-specific submission call.

Reckoning is a journal of creative writing on environmental justice; we’re looking for fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, poetry and art.

For Reckoning 8, we want thinking, writing and art about … this. All of this, right now. We want to hear about active resistance to the patriarchofascist, corporate-captured extractive state. Show us what it means that in order to build Cop City*, a massive facility intended to train a new generation of lethal enforcers into an institution directly descended from slave patrols, the state of Georgia and its actors must first level a forest and label protestors “domestic terrorists” as a precursor to murdering them. Help us understand how strategies of repression and control all over the world concentrate agency in the hands of the few at the expense of all other life. We are looking for work in opposition to a broad, insidious fascism that treats water, trees, and bodies as exploitable, expendable resources rather than sacred, essential components of our global, infinitely interconnected and interdependent web of life.

As always, we’re seeking work from people of all genders or none, all sexualities or none, of all neurotypes, all levels of physical ability, from all racial and ethnic backgrounds, in all parts of the world. We’d love to add all languages to that, though we publish in English and are currently limited to reading submissions for potential translation in Spanish, French and Swedish.

Payment is 10 cents/word, $50/page of poetry, $50 minimum per piece of artwork. We don’t charge submission fees.

We’re always open to submissions. Deadline for Reckoning 8 is the solar equinox, September 22, 2023.

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