Category: Events

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: Best of British Science Fiction 2023

Deadline: December 17th, 2023
Payment: 1p a word up to £50.00 and a contributors copy
Theme: Science fiction stories published by British authors in 2023

Best of British Science Fiction 2023
is now open for submissions.
We are seeking science fiction stories (not fantasy or any other flavour of genre in this instance) that were first published during 2023. Authors must be British, Irish, British-based or ex-pats.
This is a reprint anthology, so we are not interested in seeing previously unpublished work on this occasion.

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Taking Submissions: The Map of Lost Places (Early)

Submission Window: December 1st – 31st, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Stories about places where weird things happen

Editors Sheree Renée Thomas and Lesley Conner are looking for stories about places where weird things happen. Places that have strange histories, their own traditions and customs, their own dangers. These can be based off real folk tales or old wives tales – think the Mothman in Point Pleasant, WV – or ones that you come up with all on your own. But your story should tell of someone going to one of these places – either intentionally or they just stumble across it – and what happens when they encounter the frightening/strange thing that is in or occurs in that location.

Depending on the Map of Lost Places Kickstarter funding level, we expect to fill the anthology with eight to twelve original stories selected from an open reading period. The Kickstarter will launch on October 10 – click here to be notified as soon as it happens!

In order to avoid duplicates in the open submission call, locations already chosen by the featured authors are listed below. This list will be updated as the authors make their decisions, so be sure to check back!
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Ongoing Submissions: The Cosmic Background

Payment: 8 cents per word, 3 cents per word for reprints
Theme: Slipstream fiction

We want the single best piece of flash fiction you have that comes from the places in-between. We are primarily a slipstream publication — that means we like your stories that don’t make a ton of sense. We want your giant talking frogs. We want your people with unexplained, never commented-upon eyes in their fingertips. We enjoy character-focused writing, with an emphasis on voice. We love Kelly Link, George Saunders, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Sarah Pinsker, Shingai Njeri-Kagunda, Christopher Rowe, and Kate Folk. 

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Taking Submissions: The Quiet Ones October 2023 issue (Early)

Submission Window: August 13th – September 10th, 2023
Payment: $25
Theme: The End

Accepting:

  • Short Stories up to 3000 Words
  • Flash and Micro Fiction up to 1200 Words
  • Narrative Poetry/Stories in Verse up to 1200 Words

Author Compensation: $25.00 (USD) per piece

Rights: We request first worldwide and digital rights for four months following publication. Thereafter all rights revert to the author. All copyright remains with the author.

Issue Theme: “The End”

Call Status: CLOSED

Publication: Digital Format (PDF)

Submission Period: August 13th, 2023 – September 10th, 2023

Decisions By: October 1st, 2023

Release Date: October 26, 2023

What We’re Looking For: Quiet Horror and Dystopian genre works. You may be as creative with your interpretation of the theme as you like as long as your submission fits the genres we publish (see our FAQ page for more on how we define Quiet Horror and Intimate Dystopia).

EMail Submissions To: [email protected]

Continue below to read our submission rules and guidelines…

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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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Taking Submissions: Diabolical Plots July 2023 Window

Submission Window: July 17th-31st, 2023
Payment: 10 cents per word
Theme: science fiction, fantasy, horror (everything must have a speculative element, even horror).

Our planned windows are:

  • July 17-31, 2023: General submission window

David Steffen is the editor, who you may also know from reading The Long List Anthology series or from the Submission Grinder, which you can use to find markets for your writing and track your submissions.  Diabolical Plots is a SFWA-qualifying market, so if you have a personal goal to join SFWA, making a sale here would help you toward that goal.

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