Category: Flat Amount

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

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Taking Submissions: Family, Fae, Fiend, Friend, and Foe

Submission Window: June 1st – July 31st, 2025
Payment: $10 or a contributors copy
Theme: Speculative stories featuring a family with at least one type of supernatural family member

THREE COUSINS PUBLISHING, an imprint of WEST MESA PRESS, will be accepting submissions for its fourth annual anthology with the working title, Family, Fae, Fiend, Friend, and Foe from June 1, 2025 until midnight July 31, 2025. Stories submitted before or after the submission period will not be considered.
This is a themed anthology and stories that don’t fit the theme will be rejected. Submissions must be speculative and feature a family with some type of supernatural family member or members. Vampires and fairies, gnomes and zombies, leprechauns, bigfeet, ghouls, and poltergeists are all welcome. Horror, humor, fantasy, science fiction, or even an entertaining, but bizarre mashup of genres that we haven’t considered. Your characters may be young or old and the time frame may be from the dawn of mankind to the far future. Here’s the short list of guidelines. Pay attention, please. These are important.

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Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Online / Royalties

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Taking Submissions: Short Story Substack June 2025 Window

Submission Window: June 1st – 30th, 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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Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine / Non-fiction / Poetry

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Taking Submissions: The First Line – Fall 2025

Deadline: August 1st, 2025
Payment: $25.00 – $50.00 for fiction, $5.00 – $10.00 for poetry
Theme: Story must begin with: Her truck took the sharp turns of the mountain road with ease.

Fall:
Her truck took the sharp turns of the mountain road with ease.
Due date: August 1, 2025

We love that writers around the world are inspired by our first lines, and we know that not every story will be sent to us. However, we ask that you do not submit stories starting with our first lines to other journals (or post them online on public sites) until we’ve notified you as to our decision (usually four weeks after the deadline). When the entire premise of the publication revolves around one sentence, we don’t want it to look as if we stole that sentence from another writer. If you have questions, feel free to drop us a line.

Also, we understand that writers may add our first line to a story they are currently working on or have already completed, and that’s cool. But please do not add our first line to a previously published story and submit it to us. We do not accept previously published stories, even if they have been repurposed for our first lines. And, just to be clear, we do not accept simultaneous submissions.

One more thing while I’ve got you here: Writers compete against one another for magazine space, so, technically, every literary magazine is running a contest. There are, however, literary magazines that run traditional contests, where they charge entry fees and rank the winners. We do not – nor will we ever – charge a submission fee, nor do we rank our stories in order of importance. Occasionally, we run contests to help come up with new first lines, or we run fun, gimmicky competitions for free stuff, but the actual journal is not a contest in the traditional sense.

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Artwork / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Magazine / Poetry / Reprints Allowed / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Radon Journal October 2025 Issue

Submission Window: May 1st – August 31st
Payment: Fiction: 2¢ per word for original, 1¢ per word for reprints. Poetry: $20 per original poem and $10 for reprints. Artwork: $100 for issue cover art, $30 for back cover art, and $20 for art used on our site
Theme: Stories and poetry containing elements of science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, or dystopia.
Note: Reprints Welcome

Radon welcomes short stories and poetry containing elements of science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, or dystopia.

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We publish quality literature the first of every February, June, and October.

  • Submissions are accepted year-round.

  • Simultaneous submissions are welcome.

  • Reprints no longer accepted as of 2025.

  • AI submissions are not allowed at Radon.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: Fearmoji: Queer Emoji Horror

Deadline: August 1st, 2025
Payment: $25 USD and a contributors copy
Theme: Adult queer body horror that somehow strongly incorporates the use of emoji

 

Emojis carry a lot of weight in contemporary societies drenched by social media interactions. This theme is very open, but must feature emojis as the primary driving force of the narrative. Give me sentient emojis, cursed emojis, a secret combination of emojis that unlocks a demon, a serial killer whose signature is the love heart reaction, disaffected youths whose use of the shrug emoji comes back to haunt them, a coder with an emoji axe to grind… The potential here is limitless.

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Anthology / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: Stellar Parallax: Hope in A Grimdark World

Deadline: June 30th, 2025
Payment: $50
Theme: Science fiction that follows the title of the book

We at Inked in Gray Press are excited to announce a new anthology in collaboration with AJ Van Belle!

STELLAR PARALLAX: HUMAN HOPE IN GRIMDARK WORLDS.

Let’s not sugarcoat it — things are rough, and we don’t know what the next year or even month will bring.

This is why we need stories in which hope shines through the darkness. Give us your grimdark in space, in a near-future dystopia, in a far-future galaxy, or in a sci-fi version of the present day.

This anthology will feature gritty sci-fi in which the personal message is hopeful while the external world is dark. We want world-building that’s vivid, immersive, and believable, with the focus on the characters’ direct experience. Sweeping spans of time and vast civilizations aren’t necessary here, nor are nifty tech or clever political machinations — but feel free to include any of these if they serve the story.

Regardless of scale or time period, show us the characters’ sensory perceptions, physical experience, and emotional arc. Sci-fi is a genre uniquely equipped to allow expression of character growth because it lets us explore universal human experience within specific, sharply imagined futures.

STELLAR PARALLAX will sit at the place where seemingly impossible circumstances meet the inventiveness of human agency, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Online

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Taking Submissions: Something Old, Something New

Submission Window: June 1st – 30th, 2025
Payment: Stories under 5,000 words will receive $10. Stories up to 10,000 words will be serialized over 2 months and will receive $20
Theme: Speculative Fiction that fits the vibe of unreality, suggest reading previous work from the publisher before submitting
Note: Reprints are acceptable if the story is not freely available online

Our Ko-fi minizine for subscribers

Submissions for this call will be OPENING for the month of June 2025.

The Pink Hydra is starting a Ko-fi minizine!

This is a way to build a subscriber base and steady income without sacrificing our commitment to accessible fiction. Starting July, every ‘off’ month when we’re not publishing The Pink Hydra, we will post a new, exclusive short story on our Ko-fi, paired with a piece of classical artwork, and accompanied by short reviews of stories or books The Pink Hydra loves. For this eclectic mix of classic and new elements, the minizine will be known as Something Old, Something New.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: Lesser Cryptids of Appalachia

Deadline: September 15th, 2025
Payment: $50 and 2 contributors copies
Theme: Lesser known (lost or undiscovered) cryptids of Appalachia

Cicada Books / Brood XIV Books is planning a horror anthology about the lesser (lost or undiscovered) cryptids of Appalachia. We are seeking stories about lesser known creatures from regional authors: no Mothman or Bigfoot, please.

If you are a new or established fiction writer we invite you to submit your original short fiction (3-5k words) for inclusion in this anthology. We are seeking thrills, suspense, and horror! We would add weird, but it feels unnecessary for cryptid tales.

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