Category: Contributor’s Copy

Contributor’s Copy Only

Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events

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Taking Submissions: Dark Decades – 6 Anthologies

Deadline: October 1st, 2023
Payment: Contributor’s Copies
Theme: Six calls set in different decades with different themes that all have 4 requirements that you can see below

Most people would agree that technical advancements have made our lives easier or, at the very least, more entertaining. But, what about the flip side? What horrors were unleashed for the sake of creation? What monsters emerged as technology evolved?

We invite you to travel back in time with us as we discover the dark side of six decades.

Get creative with the themes. Bring us thrills and chills. Just remember to adhere to the basic guidelines. We can’t wait to experience it.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Royalties / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Hidden Villains: Betrayed

Deadline: August 31st, 2023
Payment: 2 cents per word and royalties and a paperback for US authors
Theme: Bold, imaginative fantasy, horror, and sci-fi sculpted to thrill and entertain readers with the bizarre or delve into the shadows. Finish it off with a twist of betrayal!

Our 2024 edition. Submissions open on June 1, 2023.

Theme: Hidden Villains: Betrayed– Bold, imaginative fantasy, horror, and sci-fi sculpted to thrill and entertain readers with the bizarre or delve into the shadows. Finish it off with a twist of betrayal!
Betrayed- double-cross, fail, deceive, cheat, sell-out, let down, stitch up, rat out, turn traitor, rat on, expose, reveal, lay bare, stab in the back.

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. Suspense and thrillers are encouraged over horror for this anthology, but a great horror story will rise to the top.
Stories that contain infanticide, rape, or gratuitous gore will not be accepted.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Dracula Beyond Stoker Issue #3

Submission Window: May 15th to June 30th, 2023
Payment: 5 cents per word plus contributor’s copies
Theme: Lucy Westenra/Bloofer Lady

Issue 3: Lucy Westenra/Bloofer Lady: (To be published November/2023)
What’s your take on Miss Lucy? Innocent and pure? Promiscuous Tease? How about her time as the Bloofer Lady? You can romance us or scare us, just be sure to intrigue us.

Submissions open May 15, 2023-June 30, 2023. Submissions received earlier will be read and considered but will not be responded to until the window opens.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Flash / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Unnerving Books Untitled Crime Anthology

Deadline: May 15th, 2023
Payment: 1 cent per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Crime Fiction

In the near future, Unnerving will be dipping its claws into CRIME fiction, and to launch into this avenue, I’m compiling an anthology. Meaning, I need stories. Short ones: 1,500-8,000 words, preference being 2,500-4,000 words in length. Renumeration is $0.01/word USD + a paperback copy. I’m asking for six months exclusivity. Reprints are okay, as long as they were last printed more than five years ago (personal collections excluded in this period) and are not available to read online (Audio excluded from this request).

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Open All Night

Deadline: June 30th, 2023
Payment: 3 cents per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Horror and fantasy that deals with the theme of “Open All Night”

For Open All Night, I want horror and fantasy (and all and any assorted sub- and cross-genres) based around the theme of “open all night.” While not strictly necessary, I’ll definitely be looking for retail and service industry-based stories. Give me graveyard shifts, overnight inventories gone bad, and haunted diners, shit so sordid and spooky that even the most seasoned of waitresses can’t handle what’s happening.

No nonfiction here, but if you want to deviate from the above genres, a little or a lot, that’s cool with me. I’m never going to turn down Clerks set in the commissary of a spaceship. Just make sure it sticks to the theme.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Greater Than His Nature

Deadline: June 30th, 2023
Payment: $.03 per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Short stories based around the theme of “mad science.”

For Greater Than His Nature, I’m looking for short stories based around the theme of “mad science.” Cackling Victorian scientists, giant atomic monsters, and Cronenbergian body horror are all fair game. I’m even open to the right piece of nonfiction for this one.

I’m especially interested to include stories from disabled and chronically ill writers. You don’t need to self-identify if you don’t want to or give me any information you don’t feel comfortable with; just know that, if you’ve got some medical trauma you need to work through with monsters and mayhem, I’m here for you.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: The Monsters Next Door

Deadline: June 30th, 2023
Payment: $20 and a contributors copy
Theme: Monsters that live next door!

The reading period is now open for our next anthology, THE MONSTERS NEXT DOOR.

Theme: Exactly what the title indicates. The setting is real world, suburbia, inner city, farm country — with the exception that there are monsters next door. We are open to horror, science fiction, comedy, tragedy, whatever your story needs to get it told, so long as it fits the theme of the anthology. Did Dracula move into the apartment next to yours? Does Cthulhu have a summer house in the country? Are there zombies on the cul-de-sac now?

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Contributor's Copy / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine

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Taking Submissions: The One Percent: Tales of the Super Wealthy and Depraved

Deadline: May 1st, 2023
Payment: $35 or $25 with a contributor copy.
Theme: Taking a look at the super Wealthy and Depraved

Issuing layoffs from their yachts. Making idiotic business decisions while others pay the price. Keeping their riches via tax loopholes for the super wealthy. Profiting from the hard work and suffering of others. Sending dick-shaped rockets into space. Evading punishment.

It goes on and on. The details range from the banal to the scandalous. The uber wealthy play an outsized role in our society — determining or demanding too much and contributing too little.

With The One Percent: Tales of the Super Wealthy and Depraved (our previous working title was Rich People Being Shitty, so that should give you a target to aim for), Rock and a Hard Place Press changes it up a little bit from their established pattern. Instead of stories about desperate protagonists in tough positions, we’ll explore the privileged and elite, and how they traffic in, revel in, and benefit from the desperation that they cause. Hopefully, some of these characters get the comeuppance they so richly deserve . . . but we wouldn’t count on it.

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