Category: Magazine

Magazines and eZines

Taking Submissions: Solidarity Forever Zine

Submission Window: April 1st – 7th, 2024
Payment: 10 cents per word
Theme: Solidarity Forever – fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. (See below for specifics)

The Solidarity Forever zine will be included with all preorders of The Nightmare Box and Other Stories by Cynthia Gómez placed through the Cursed Morsels store.

Cynthia Gómez and Eric Raglin will be coediting this zine. See submission details below.

Theme: Solidarity Forever – fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
Word Count: up to 500 words
Pay: 10¢ per word
Dates: April 1st through 7th
Send to: cursedmorsels@ericraglin1992
Simultaneous submissions are fine.
No multiple submissions.
Absolutely no AI submissions.

FAQ
Does my story/poem/nonfiction have to be horror?
No. We welcome varied creative approaches to the theme.

What does “solidarity forever” mean?
It refers to the old union song of the same name. This song explores the workers’ struggles, triumphs, and collective power against oppressive capitalism when organized as a union. However, your submission does not have to be specifically about unions. It could be about all sorts of problems solved through collective resistance and people standing together.

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Taking Submissions: Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores April 2024 (Early Listing)

Submission Window: April 2nd, 2024
Payment: 8 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints, For artwork: $10 for the non-exclusive right to use each image, for as long as the site is online.  If we publish a print collection we will pay a pro-rata share for each image used.
Theme: Well written original work in science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form, and from around the world.
Note: Reprints welcome

 

 

Submissions Schedule

We have a new submissions schedule as of June 1, 2020:
The first and second day of every month, 12 am of the 1st to 12 am of the 3rd, E.S.T.
Only one submission per person.

For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers.

We pay 8¢ per word for new fiction, 2¢ per word for fiction reprints, 2 – 6¢ per word for new fact-based work, 1- 4¢ per word for reprinted fact articles.
For new poetry, we pay $1 a line, reprints would be 50¢ a line, up to 40 lines. We’ll look at longer poems but that would be a hard sell, and words over 40 lines would be paid at 6¢ per word.

We began The Kepler Award to recognize and encourage writers of excellent science fiction and fantasy stories that creatively extrapolate on known science in constructive and exciting ways. You can learn about The Kepler Award here.

You can read a copy of our standard contract here.   It can be varied as needed to include the rights of translators, voice actors, etc.

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Taking Submissions: The Lorelei Signal 2024 Oct – Dec Issue

Submission Window: April 15th – May 15th, 2024
Payment: $15.00 for short stories, $5.00 for poems and flash (<1000 wds) fiction pieces., $5.00 for reprints
Theme: SF/Fantasy (ideally fantasy) with strong and complex female characters
Note: Reprints Welcome

 

The Lorelei Signal is a quarterly SF/Fantasy electronic magazine – one that will feature strong / complex female characters. This does not mean your female character has to be the main hero or villain in the story. What it does mean is no shrinking violets, or women who serve only to get into trouble so the male hero can rescue them.


Each issue I hope to publish:
7 short stories, 1 flash fiction piece and 2 poems
that meet the following guidelines:

My primary guideline is simple:
Write a good fantasy story with strong/complex characters.



What I am NOT looking for – erotica / slash / or other such stories.
Although well written love scenes that are IMPORTANT to the story will be considered on a story-by-story basis.

1) Stories should be no longer than 10,000 words.
However, tell the story – if it takes more than 10,000 words to tell the story properly so be it.
Just try to cut it down if possible – but remember the story is the important part.

2) Stories must feature 3 dimensional / complex characters.

3) I will accept reprints as long as it has been at least 1 year since the story was previously published,
rights have reverted back and you tell me where it previously appeared.
These will be limited to 2 per issue.

4) Please keep the graphic gore down to a minimum
(only what’s needed for the story).

5) Please keep the obscene language to a bare minimum
(again, only what’s needed for the story).

6) Simultaneous Submissions will be considered IF:
a) You tell me up front
b) You inform me immediately if the story has been accepted elsewhere
If I have too many occurrences of finding out a story was accepted somewhere else when I contact an author to tell them I would like to accept their story for The Lorelei Signal – I will no longer accept simultaneous submissions.
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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: Vault of Shadows: Issue 1

Submission Window: April 1st – 15th, 2024
Payment: $35 per page of the adapted script, up to 12 pages, paid via PayPal, and a print copy of the issue.
Theme: Scripts for comics in the style of Tales from the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, etc.

Vault of Shadows: Issue 1

A New Generation of Horror Comics

Wish your story could be adapted as a comic book?
Here’s your chance to make it happen.

Open call submission window open April 1 – April 15, 2024.

Extended submission window exclusively for LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, neurodivergent, and other marginalized writers open April 16 – May 1, 2024.

Do you love old-school horror comics? Think Tales from the Crypt, Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, etc. We want to work with you to adapt your short story (original stories and reprints welcome) into a comic with artwork by the incredible Christopher Castillo Díaz (It Was All a Dream, It Was All a Dream 2 interior illustrator). If your story is selected, you’ll have the opportunity to adapt your story into an 8-12 page comic script that will be inked, colored, and included in the first volume of Hungry Shadow Comics’ Vault of Shadows. Only 3 stories will be selected for the first issue, with a fourth selected from an invited author (TBD).

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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: The Lost Poetry Club: The Four Humours

Deadline: March 31st, 2024
Payment: £0.015 per word.
Theme: Speculative fiction that deals with The Four Humours (Details on that below.)

A brand new audible zine centering the bizarre, the horrifying, and the what-ifs. New Episodes bi-monthly with an exciting new theme every time. Imagine attending an open mic story-telling night in the cellar of that haunted house on the hill or the canteen of a starship that traverses time and dark dimensions. What stories would you hear? Would they inspire awe or disgust? Hope in the future or existential dread?

Genres: Sci-fi, Slipstream, Weird Fiction, Near-Future, Retellings, Folk-Tales, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Surrealism, Cosmic Horror, Dark Fantasy, Speculative…

Formats: Mainly Short Stories, Poetry, Flash Fiction, Short Plays/Extracts, (but open to) Personal Stories, Dreams/Nightmares, Songs, Soundscapes, Fictional or Real Mini-Docs, Interviews, and whatever else you can dream up…

THEME 1.02: The Four Humours

When our nature is out of balance; tempers, like fevers, run high. Step into the bewitching world of the Four Humours, where ancient alchemy meets the intricate tapestry of the human psyche. Dividing our episode into four sections: Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, and Phlegmatic.


Does your tale weave characters with raw intensity and larger-than-life personalities?  Are they charismatic, ambitious, deep thinkers, or cool-headed under pressure?  Or,  instead, impulsive, domineering, pessimistic,  or lazy?

Think tales of disease, of body or mind, potions and magic, chaos and order, material change, and personal transformation. Treat us to characters whose flaws are their undoing, whose struggles mirror our own, and whose stories resonate with the raw intensity of big emotions and larger-than-life personalities.

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Taking Submissions: khōréō April 2024 (Early Listing)

Submission Window: April 15th – May 15th, 2024
Payment: 10 cents per word and $500 for custom cover art and $100 for cover art drawn from an artist’s existing portfolio.
Theme: Fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and any genre in between or around it, as long as there’s a speculative element.
Note: You must identify as an immigrant or member of a diaspora in the broadest definitions of the terms. This includes, but is not limited to, first- and second-generation immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, persons who identify with one or more diaspora communities, persons who have been displaced or whose heritage has been erased due to colonialism/imperialism, and anyone whose heritage and history includes ‘here and elsewhere’.

khōréō is a quarterly publication of stories, essays, and art: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and any genre in between or around it, as long as there’s a speculative element. We’re especially interested in writing and art that explore some aspect of migration, whether explicitly (themes of immigration, colonialism, etc.), metaphorically, or with a sly nod and a wink. Most importantly, we’re a new magazine and we’re still finding our identity: therefore, please don’t self-reject because you’re not sure if your work is a good fit. We won’t know until we see it, so please give us a chance to look!

See submission requirements & how to submit at the following pages:

Who can submit?

khōréō is dedicated to diversity and amplifying the voices of immigrant and diaspora authors and artists. We welcome, but do not require, a brief description of the author’s/artist’s identity in their cover letter.

We invite you to submit if you identify as an immigrant or member of a diaspora in the broadest definitions of the terms. This includes, but is not limited to, first- and second-generation immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, persons who identify with one or more diaspora communities, persons who have been displaced or whose heritage has been erased due to colonialism/imperialism, and anyone whose heritage and history includes ‘here and elsewhere’. We especially encourage BIPOC creators who identify as the above to submit their work.

When reading submissions, we take in good faith that you identify as an immigrant or member of a diaspora as described above. If you still aren’t sure if you should submit, please email [email protected].

We kindly request individuals who do not identify as such to support the magazine by reading our stories, subscribing, and helping spread the word instead.

Submission Periods

We have the following reading periods for fiction in 2024:

  • January 15-February 15 (Issue 4.3)
  • April 15-May 15 (Issue 4.4)
  • July 15-August 15 (Issue 5.1)
  • October 15-November 15 (Issue 5.2)

Please see the fiction submissions page for additional details.

In some cases, we may cancel a reading period as we have filled all available slots for the next issue. We will note these changes on our website and announce them on social media. Please follow us in Twitter, Instagram, or BlueSky to hear about these updates in real time.

Please note that art submissions are open year-round and audio submissions are open on an ad hoc basis.

khōréō is a quarterly publication of stories, essays, and art: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and any genre in between or around it, as long as there’s a speculative element. We’re especially interested in writing and art that explores the impact of human or cultural migration, whether voluntary or forced. Examples include themes of immigration, diaspora, and anti-colonialism, as well as more metaphorical interpretations of the term. Most importantly, we’re a new magazine and we’re still finding our identity: therefore, please don’t self-reject because you’re not sure if your work is a good fit. We won’t know until we see it, so please give us a chance to look!

khōréō is dedicated to diversity and amplifying the voices of immigrant and diaspora authors and artists. We welcome, but do not require, a brief description of the author’s/artist’s identity in their cover letter.

We invite you to submit if you identify as an immigrant or member of a diaspora in the broadest definitions of the terms. This includes, but is not limited to, first- and second-generation immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, persons who identify with one or more diaspora communities, persons who have been displaced or whose heritage has been erased due to colonialism/imperialism, transnational/transracial adoptees, and anyone whose heritage and history includes ‘here and elsewhere’. We especially encourage BIPOC creators who identify as the above to submit their work.

When reading submissions, we take in good faith that you identify as an immigrant or member of a diaspora as described above. If you still aren’t sure if you should submit, please email [email protected].

We kindly request individuals who do not identify as such to support the magazine by reading our stories, subscribing, and helping spread the word instead.

What we want

We are looking for short fiction under 5,000 words. Because we are a new journal, we have a stricter budget and therefore prefer stories under 3,500 words. Anything over 5,000 words will be rejected without being read.

Stories must contain a speculative element in order to be considered; if there isn’t some element of fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc. in the story, it’s not for us. The speculative element should be integrated into the piece—a random mention of a ghost on page 12 of 16 isn’t going to be the right fit.

Please submit stories through our Moksha system. Please submit based on length — stories ≤1,500 words should go into our flash queue, while stories 1,501-5,000 words should go into the short story queue.

UPDATE 10/2022: We now allow authors to submit one story each to the short story and flash queue. We do not allow authors to submit more than one story every submission period to a given queue.

Please format your story using the Shunn modern manuscript format (details at this link: https://www.shunn.net/format/story/). Authors are not expected to provide their mailing address until acceptance.

Cover Letters

Cover letters aren’t mandatory, but there are a few things that are really helpful for us to see from you.

  • Submission status: If the piece is a simultaneous submission, please let us know in your cover letter and withdraw the piece immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. Being a simultaneous submission won’t impact whether or not we accept the piece.
  • Content warnings: Please include content warnings in your cover letter and in the text of your piece. Content warnings will not impact whether or not we accept your piece; we’ve published some really dark stories. However, they do let us assign stories to our First Readers more thoughtfully. More on content warnings in the next section.
  • Genre: Please include the general genre of the piece in your cover letter (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc.); this makes it easier for us to assign it to our First Readers according to their preferences. Submissions that omit this won’t be penalized — it’s just a little more convenient for us. 🙂
  • Feedback preference: We can’t provide feedback on every piece we receive, but we try where we can. If you do not want feedback, please let us know in the cover letter! We’ll respect your wishes.
  • Author bio: Tell us a bit about yourself! This can include, but is not limited to, your identity; past sales; inspiration for the piece or particular qualifications for writing it (e.g., if you are an internationally renowned chess player and your story is about chess, tell us!).

Content Warnings

If your story requires a content warning, please include a brief description below the title of your piece as well as in your cover letter. In addition, please check the box indicating that your story has content warnings on the submission form. Including content warnings will not negatively impact your chances of getting accepted—in fact, noting them where they are warranted actually helps your chances, since that means we can get the story to the right First Reader!

If you’re not sure if your story requires content warnings, it’s better to err on the side of caution. We’ve included a list below for some ideas of what could constitute a content warning, so just flip through it and see if your story contains any of the terms.

If you are fundamentally against the concept of content warnings and refuse to include them on principle, then we are not the right venue for you and we wish you the best of luck submitting your work elsewhere.

  • Sexual Assault
  • Abuse
  • Child abuse/pedophilia/incest
  • Animal cruelty or animal death
  • Self-harm and suicide
  • Eating disorders, body hatred, and fatphobia
  • Violence (specifying graphic, against children, domestic violence, etc. is helpful)
  • Pornographic content
  • Kidnapping and abduction
  • Death or dying (specifying death of a parent, child, etc. can be helpful)
  • Pregnancy/childbirth
  • Miscarriages/abortion
  • Blood
  • Illness (e.g., cancer, seizures)
  • Mental illness and ableism
  • Racism and racial slurs
  • Sexism and misogyny
  • Classism
  • Hateful language directed at religious groups (e.g., Islamophobia, antisemitism)
  • Transphobia and transmisogyny
  • Homophobia and heterosexism

Source: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/inclusive-classrooms/an-introduction-to-content-warnings-and-trigger-warnings/

What we don’t want

Please do not send us stories with gratuitous gore or violence; fridging (where a character dies or undergoes pain in service of the protagonist’s story or to serve as character development); overwhelming racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc. elements that are not subverted or challenged; clichés; “it was all a dream” endings; stories where a person from a non-marginalized group experiences life as someone from a marginalized background.

We are currently not accepting novelettes or novellas, but hope to expand in the future. We may also consider serialized stories one day.

We do not accept multiple submissions, unsolicited resubmissions, or reprints.

Please do not withdraw and resubmit the same story in one submission window; stories that are caught doing this will be rejected. Stories are assigned to first readers at least once per day and usually read quite quickly.

Stories over 5,000 words will be rejected without being read. Please don’t try to “trick” us.

Submission Process

Each story is assigned to a first reader, who reads the piece in its entirety before scoring it and providing an initial recommendation (reject or pass up to editors). This step is usually complete within a couple of days.

Regardless of score, an editor reviews each story before finalizing the decision. While most stories have their first read complete within a couple of days, this second step tends to be our bottleneck, since there’s just a small team reading the Fiction stories, and we usually get ~400/window.

Therefore, having a high queue number does not mean your story hasn’t been read already. For this reason, please do not withdraw and resubmit the same story in one submission window; stories that are found doing this will be rejected.

If you made a truly horrific mistake (like, you submitted the wrong file), reach out to [email protected] when you make the discovery and we’ll figure out if there’s a way to make things right.

A typo does not count as a horrific mistake; we haven’t rejected a single story because of a typo. Realizing you could have rewritten a few sentences or added/killed a paragraph does not count as a horrific mistake either, and stories that are accepted go through a revision process; however, please make sure your story is ready and final before submitting it.

What we offer

Payment at SFWA pro rates ($0.08/word $0.10/word).

What we ask for

At a high level, we ask for:

  • Non-exclusive, non-assignable, non-transferrable first-world English-language rights to publish in digital, ebook, and print
  • Right to republish in an anthology of stories that have previously appeared in the magazine within 24 months of initial publication in our magazine
  • Nonexclusive, non-assignable, non-transferable license to archive the story on our website for at least 36 months
  • Nonexclusive right to record audio and share it on our website for at least 36 months

Any rights not granted explicitly to us by the contract are retained by the author.

Via: khōréō.