Category: Flat Amount

Contest / Events / Flat Amount / Poetry

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Taking Submissions: The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls 2023 Contest

Deadline: March 1st, 2023
Prizes: $50 to the and $10 to honorable mentions
Theme: Poetry with a theme of: Seasick

the theme for this year’s contest is seasick. with global greenhouse gas emissions climbing, we want poetry that examines the way human activity is affecting the ocean. we want your drowning islands, your melting glaciers, your bleached coral. we want your hurricanes, your flooding, your erosion. we want your seasick.

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contest submissions will remain open from november 1 to march 1. winners will receive a $50 prize and publication. honorable mentions will also be published and receive a $10 prize. all decisions will be announced in early april and made by our editing staff. to get a feel for what we publish, we’d encourage you to scroll through our archives.

do beware that our publishing software doesn’t handle formatting very well, so think twice before you submit a work heavily dependent on visual presentation. for an example of what the display would look like, we’d encourage you to look at the page of “ghost ship” by charlotte oliver. (thetiderises.org/read/ghost-ship)

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Anthology / Events / Flash / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: The Devil Take You

Deadline: April 15th, 2023
Payment: $125 – $200
Theme: Original weird tales set in the medieval period that explore the human (and inhuman) experience through the lens of horror.

Sentinel Creatives has opened up for submissions for our “THE DEVIL TAKE YOU: TALES OF MEDIEVAL HORROR” anthology.

Deadline for Submissions: 15 April 2023
Wordcount: 3,000 – 6,000
Remuneration: $125 – $200
Simultaneous Submissions: Yes

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

We’re looking for original weird tales set in the medieval period that explore the human (and inhuman) experience through the lens of horror.

Some clarifications:

Weird: The term “weird” should be understood to mean a certain sense of breathless and unexplainable dread, of outer, unknown forces present, a suggestion of the defeat or suspension of the laws of nature which have hitherto served to protect our minds and bodies (and souls) from the assault of chaos. By its very nature, weird fiction should invoke in the reader a sense of profound uneasiness and dread, it should hint at the inability of the human mind to comprehend the true nature of existence, and it should cause us to question the stability of our faith in the established laws of nature.

Medieval: The term “medieval” denotes the period in Europe lasting from around 500AD to 1500AD and is typically divided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. There is a temptation here that often proves too powerful to ignore, to view Europe through a monist lens: to see all of Europe as Christian, white, and “Western”. But this is a strange way to view a continent and a period that saw so much strife and upheaval precisely because of the differences of those living within its borders. These are the differences—the tensions—that create the opportunity for compelling storytelling.
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Events / Flat Amount / Novella / Royalties

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Psychopomp Is Open To Novellas

Deadline: April 30th, 2023
Payment: An advance against royalties of $750, as well as 25% of net net receipts
Theme: speculative fiction or literary novellas

Psychopomp.com publishes otherworldly novellas about death, multiverses, time travel, and other strange lands.

Open Call For Novellas

We are currently open to otherworldly novella submissions.

Please read the guidelines thoroughly before submitting.

What We’re Looking For:

We are looking for speculative fiction or literary novellas between 20,000 to 40,000 words that fall under one (or some!) of the following themes:

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Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine / Non-fiction

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Taking Submissions: Cunning Folk #6

Deadline: March 1st, 2023
Payment: £100 per article, interview or short story and £50 for poetry and rituals
Theme: The Vampire

We are open to non-fiction pitches and short fiction and poetry submissions for issue 6 until 1 March 2023. The theme is THE VAMPIRE.

“Vampires are so nearly human that they are excellent to think with.”

–Professor Nick Groom, author of The Vampire: A New History

Vampires charm and terrify us. We fear them, envy them, and pity them, eternal witnesses to the passage of time, conquerors of impermanence, and creatures of the night. The vampire is a symbol of the shadow side, of the old world meeting modernity, and of the 19th-century preoccupation with mesmerism and blood; the vampire eludes, too, to the pitfalls of aestheticism, for behind this creature’s seductive glamour lies a ruthless – often narcissistic and nihilistic – consumer. Of course, the vampire also has roots in older, Eastern European folk beliefs, such as the Romanian strigoi – which had much in common with the witch of the witch trials – and this supernatural being converges with many other cultural beliefs around the undead. The modern vampire continues to haunt our collective imagination, from Count Dracula and Carmilla to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and True Blood, exposing our basest impulses and thoughts, and forcing us to confront the personal and collective shadow. Why does this monster appear to us in dreams and sleep paralysis? Why are we scared of – and fascinated by – the liminal space between life and death? What even is death? What is it to live forever? And what does the vampire’s infinite quest for blood tell us of our own lives? Are we, too, a little vampiric? How can we fend off the vampires exterior and interior to ourselves? We want your articles, interviews, rituals, poetry and short fiction pertaining to the vampiric, that intersect with our other themes and that shine light on what lies behind the vampire’s shiny façade – and what that tells us about the current age, the unconscious shadow and humanity. This question can be explored via journalism, art, literature, science, pop culture and the personal.

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Anthology / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Token Payment

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Taking Submissions: Jane Nightshade’s Serial Encounters

Deadline: August 30th, 2023
Payment: $5
Theme: Short stories about casual encounters of fictional people with serial killers

Have you ever wondered about the ordinary people who came in contact with famous serial killers before everyone knew them for their depraved, murderous acts?

What did Jeffrey Dahmer’s plumber experience when he unclogged the notorious cannibal’s toilet? Or how about the guy who worked in the music shop where Charles Manson had his guitars strung? The girl who waited on Ted Bundy at his favorite coffee shop? Jack the Ripper’s neighborhood bartender? How about one of the kids who had John Wayne Gacey perform as a clown at their birthday party?

For this anthology, we’re looking for short stories about casual encounters of fictional people with serial killers, that turned creepy or deadly. Stories can be straight crime/thriller stories or ones with a supernatural bent (haunted objects, ghosts, demons, etc.).

Characters and victims, aside from the serial killers, must be fictional—real names of victims or family members can not be used. Also, feel free to use lesser-known killers like Richard Speck or The Boston Strangler, in case the Bundy and Manson stories start piling up like the bodies of their victims…

Note: Stories should not lionize or celebrate the serial killers, or promote racism, bigotry, or depictions of violence against children.

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Artwork / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine

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Taking Submissions: Electric Spec May Issue 2023

Deadline: April 15th, 2023
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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Events / Flat Amount / Online

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Taking Submissions: Short Story Substack February 2023 Window (Early Listing)

Submission Window: February 1st – 28th, 2023
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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Anthology / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: Colp: Desert/Dessert Theme

Deadline: March 31st, 2023
Payment: AU$5.00 for stories under 2500 words / AU$10.00 for anything above 2500 words
Theme: Desert/Dessert Theme

Colp is our ‘anything goes’ genre-free anthology collection.

Expect to see a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Current theme:

DESERT/DESSERT

Desert: a waterless, desolate area of land with little or no vegetation, typically one covered with sand.

Dessert: the sweet coarse eaten at the end of a meal.

We are currently looking for stories that feature deserts and/or desserts, so whether it is a tale about a journey into the Sahara or one about the lemon meringue pie that just wouldn’t quit, please feel free to send your work through.

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