Category: Events

Taking Submissions: Short Story Substack February 2025 Window

Submission Window: February 1st – 28th, 2025
Payment: $100 for the chosen story + 50% of subscription revenue
Theme: Any genre, short story

Mission = Revive the art of the short story, support artists, and produce something wonderful.

Payout = Base Pay of $100 for the chosen story + 50% of subscription revenue to be sent by Paypal, Zelle, or check.

Wait, you mean if this substack gets thousands of subscribers, the winner would get thousands of dollars?

Yes! The New Yorker pays roughly $7,500 per story and I sincerely hope to go way past that.

What does the timeline look like?

Submit stories by the end of the month, winner to be announced on the 15th. There is ONE story that wins and receives the full payout.

Where do I send submissions?
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Taking Submissions: parABnormal Magazine 2025 – First Call

Submission Window: February 1st – March 31st, 2025
Payment: Fiction: $25.00 for original stories, $7.00 for reprints, $6.00 for each poem, $20.00 for original articles, $6.00 for reprints. $7.00 for reviews and interviews.
Theme: Paranormal – this includes ghosts, spectres, haunts, various whisperers, and so forth. It also includes shapeshifters and creatures from various folklores.

Submissions are accepted Feb 1 – Mar 31, Jun 1 – Jul 31, Oct 1 – Nov 30.

Anything submitted outside those periods will be deleted unread.

We no longer accept simultaneous or multiple submissions.

No matter how far we move forward as humans, we are still bound by the instincts and ancestral memories of our animalistic past. None of these are so strong as the fight or flight response. However, there are times when we seem to be perfectly safe, completely at ease and comfortable, when that urge to run from something sneaks up on us. What causes these sensations? Is there something lurking in the darkness? Why is that man giving you the creeps, he’s not even looking at you? And yet, there is something odd. Something instinctual, something you know without fully understanding. We may have moved on, we may have forgotten and left behind those old stories and legends of beasts, voracious monsters, and dark spirits… But they have not forgotten or left us…

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Taking Submissions: Shenandoah Valley Fantastic

Submission Window: February 1st – April 30th, 2025
Payment: $20
Theme: Speculative fiction that takes place in the Shenandoah Valley (defined as the Virginia counties of Augusta, Clarke, Frederick, Page, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, and Warren; the West Virginia counties of Berkeley and Jefferson; the independent cities of Harrisonburg, Lexington, Staunton, Waynesboro, and Winchester; The Shenandoah National Park; The George Washington National Forest.)

What We Want: Shenandoah Valley Fantastic seeks strange and wondrous speculative fiction that transforms our beloved region into a realm of mystery, magic, and the unexpected. From witches haunting Winchester’s historic alleys to spectral happenings on the Field of Lost Shoes, we invite you to re-imagine the Valley’s rich landscapes and legends.

Envision Shenandoah National Park as a forbidden, fey-infused forest, where wayward travelers encounter creatures older than the hills. What if Duke Dog Alley were a portal to another world? Suppose Cooter’s become a crossroad for supernatural beings—a place where ghosts and wanderers alike grab a bite before moving on to unknown realms. Picture the storied halls of Washington & Lee as a secret training ground for the next generation of spellcasters, with campus traditions hiding dark rites and hidden powers.

Let your imagination run wild with stories that blend the supernatural with our natural splendor. We welcome tales of magic and mystery, terror and transformation—grounded in the historic sites, natural wonders, and quirky landmarks that make the Shenandoah Valley unforgettable. If your story will make readers see the Valley in a new, eerie light, we want to read it.

What We Don’t Want:Your trunk stories with a couple of references to the Valley bolted on.

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Taking Submissions: Foofaraw 2025

Deadline: March 31st, 2025
Payment: Fiction: $0.01 per word, Poetry: $5.00
Theme: Stories inspired by either of the definitions of “foofaraw”: A great fuss or disturbance about something very insignificant OR an excessive amount of decoration or ornamentation, as on a piece of clothing, a building, etc.

Guidelines

The Anthology is an annual print-only hardcover anthology based on the definition of “foofaraw.” It is split into two parts based on these two definitions:

  1. a great fuss or disturbance about something very insignificant.
  2. an excessive amount of decoration or ornamentation, as on a piece of clothing, a building, etc.

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Taking Submissions: Waystation Issue #2

Deadline: February 28th, 2025
Payment: $10
Theme: Space Opera

WAYSTATION is an amateur magazine that seeks to discover, inspire, and publish emerging authors who are enthusiastic about the tradition of “space opera.” Space opera is a pulp genre of science fiction, known for grand, epic adventures, interstellar empires, and complex character relationships. Set against a vast cosmic backdrop, space operas explore themes of heroism, warfare and militarism, political intrigue, and occasionally elements of cosmic horror, as seen in the Aliens movies or fictional universes such as Warhammer 40k. Classic authors include C.L. Moore (Northwest of Earth stories) Isaac Asimov (Foundation series), E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith (Lensman series), Frank Herbert (Dune series), Leigh Brackett (Sword of Rhiannon), and Joe Haldeman (Forever War). These works captivate readers with thrilling journeys through the numberless stars, weaving human drama into the sublime vastness of the cosmos. Published by Spiral Tower Press.

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Taking Submissions: Modern Mummies

Submission Window: Feb. 1st – Feb. 28th, 2025
Payment: 5 cents per word for original fiction, 1 cent per word for reprints
Theme: New horror related to the sub-genre of Mummies in horror
Note: Extended submission window exclusively for BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, Disabled, Neurodiverse, and other underrepresented voices: March 1 – March 15, 2025
Note: Reprints Welcome

Modern Mummies Anthology

Open call submission window: Feb. 1 – Feb. 28, 2025

Extended submission window exclusively for BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, Disabled, Neurodiverse, and other underrepresented voices: March 1 – March 15, 2025

The Prompt

Modern Mummies is a new horror anthology looking to update the “mummy genre.” The anthology’s title has several possible interpretations to help guide submissions.

First and foremost, it means stories that take place in the reasonably understood present day. That means a world in which the internet, social media, industrialization, urbanization, etc. exist. Sure, some elements can be fictionalized to make a story work, but we don’t want period pieces that take place in the 1920s or in the far-flung past.

“Modern mummies” has other meanings to us too. In the short story “Asleep on the Job” by Scott Parson, mummies were described as time travelers in a sense. Through the preservation of their bodies, these characters awaken to find all that they had known and loved gone, replaced by some modern-day other. While time is certainly a key element of the equation, we also want you to think about space. Mummies all over the world are likely to find themselves in radically different locales than where they were originally buried. With these ideas in mind, we’re curious what you think a mummy might have to say about modern-day living. What might they have to say about their new surroundings and the colonialism that brought them there? How might these things influence their actions over the course of the story?

Modern mummies could also mean a modern-day person being mummified and its ramifications. We’d like you to think about how social media or our politics might react to a “new wave” of mummification. And what does that say about death in the modern era?

We are also keenly interested in seeing:

  • Mummies as heroes AND villains

  • Diverse characters with agency (we’d love to see stories with gender-inclusive, BIPOC, queer, and/or disability visibility)

  • Mummification from around the world (i.e. not just Egypt)

  • Non-human mummies

  • Unique, modern settings (museums are not off-limits, but we do foresee quite a few stories taking place in that setting.)

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Taking Submissions: Elder Things Expeditions

Deadline: March 31st, 2025
Payment: Fiction: 8 cents per word for the first 3000 words and 3 cents per word thereafter., Artwork: $100 per piece accepted
Theme: Stories about the exploration of Antarctica in three time periods (past/present/future) that deal with Lovecraftian themes

Open period: January 1, 2025 – March 31, 2025

Elder Things Expeditions is the seventh in our Lovecraftian anthologies. In it, we explore three sections of time in exploration of Antarctica leading to revelations about the nature of the denizens, normal and paranormal, residing there. Reference can be made to funding by Miskatonic University, but be careful how you deal with the names and events that may be protected by copyright.

If you need an idea of what we’re looking for, we refer you to Lovecraft’s story At The Mountains of Madness. Full text of the story can be found at “www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx”. There are multiple videos on YouTube and other outlets with narrative versions.


The Past

From 1700 to 1960, multiple expeditions by several organizations ventured into the Antarctic wilderness with mixed success. We want your take on an expedition not previously known. References to previously published material in the Mythos is acceptable, but avoid plagiarism. This will be monitored closely for copyright protection issues

The Present

From 1960 to 2100, expeditions have been and will be sent to the white wasteland. Bases will be constructed, developed, and possibly destroyed. We want your ideas on how this was or will be accomplished and the ultimate fate of such.

The Future

2100 and on will see a continuation of explorations and probably eventual settlement of Antarctica through technological advancements. How will this turn out? Will there be a final confrontation with the Elder Things that inhabit the mystery continent or will humanity meet its end?

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Taking Submissions: Behind the Shadows III: Dark Secrets

Deadline: March 31st, 2025
Payment: $20.00 and Royalty Share
Theme: Horror of all speculative fiction genres

Behind the Shadows III: Dark Secrets – our horror anthology

Behind the Shadows III: Dark Secrets– This is horror. Humor and mystery beats are welcome.
Express yourself as the theme moves you.
There is no restriction as to how you incorporate the theme into your story as long as the genre falls within Speculative Fiction, including Sci-Fi or Fantasy. We encourage you to weave the theme into an engaging story with well-developed characters and deep emotion.

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