Category: Pro

Pro Rates

Audio / Events / Flat Amount / Pro / Reprints Allowed

 by 

Taking Submissions: The Cast of Wonders: Banned Books Week (Early)

Submission Window: June 1st – 14th, 2023
Payment: 8 cents/word for originals, $100/short story or $20/flash piece for reprints
Theme: Guiding Sparks Between the Words: How Stories Illuminate the World Around Us

Every year in September, Cast of Wonders celebrates Banned Books Week, an annual international event celebrating the freedom to read and raising awareness of the immense social value of free and open access to information.

Joining the editorial team for this year’s call is Cast of Wonders Associate Editor, Simon Pan. Thank you, Simon, for the wonderful theme this year!

Guiding Sparks Between the Words: How Stories Illuminate the World Around Us

In times of conflict, division and change, it is more important than ever to build bridges of understanding.  We most commonly encounter the stories of others through news articles or in classrooms, kept at a scholarly or journalistic distance and often biased to favour privileged perspectives. Our own truths may also remain unvoiced and unknown, misunderstood even by those around us.

When it comes to illuminating these truths, stories have a key part to play: they help us to learn and appreciate things from perspectives we might never otherwise consider, and allow us to reshape our own experiences within the transformative lens of fiction. When we share our stories, we guide sparks of kinship and understanding, using narrative and emotion to help others experience a small window into another’s reality.

For Banned Books Week 2023, we want to see stories of discovery, of learning, of misconceptions unraveled, and how stories can serve as a guiding light to help us understand a new perspective, or to teach us valuable lessons when all other methods fail us. What that something is…well, that is up to you!

At Cast of Wonders, we welcome stories that portray the full spectrum of human experience. We don’t challenge stories; we want stories to challenge us! Cast of Wonders looks for stories that evoke a sense of wonder, have deep emotional resonance, and have something unreal about them. We aim for a 12-17 age range: that means sophisticated, non-condescending stories with wide appeal, and without gratuitous or explicit sex, violence, or pervasive obscene language.

Preference for this submission window is under 5,000 words with an absolute limit of 6,000 words. Flash submissions under 1.5k are also very welcome!

Submissions must adhere to Cast of Wonders guidelines.  Submissions will be accepted from June 1 to June 14 through our Moksha Portal – we can’t wait to read what you send in!

(more…)

Events / Flash / Magazine / Pro

 by 

Taking Submissions: If There’s Anyone Left Volume 4 Window

Submission Window: June 1st, 2023 – July 15th, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word
Theme: Science fiction and speculative fiction
Note: Open to writers that are marginalized members of the sci-fi/spec community

GENERAL (i.e. non micro-fiction) GUIDELINES

We are currently closed to GENERAL flash submissions. We will open June 1, 2023 for Volume 4 submissions and remain open until July 15, 2023.

We want science fiction and speculative fiction. So long as it falls into one of these categories, we will happily read it. If other elements are present, that is fine, but it must include science or speculative fiction.

  • No more than 1000 words. This is a firm limit. Please no queries about longer pieces.

  • NO AI-GENERATED/ASSISTED STORIES

  • Pay rate is professional – $0.08 US/word

  • This is for marginalized members of the sci-fi/spec community—this includes people of color, the LGBTQ2S+ community, members of marginalized genders, and disabled and neurodiverse people. If you are not a person of color, LGBTQ2S+, neurodiverse, disabled, or of a marginalized gender, please DO NOT send us your work. Authors of all accepted pieces will have the option to include a short bio in the anthology. We understand the sensitive nature of gender identity and sexual orientation, so if you wish this status to remain unwritten and/or if you prefer to be anonymous, we will print only what you wish to be printed. If you would like your piece published under a pseudonym, please indicate this on your submission. If you would like your pronouns included, please indicate those as well.

  • DO NOT send us anything hateful. No gratuitous violence, torture, rape, or any work that promotes an ideology unbecoming of an inclusive society – no stories supporting racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, or any other of the many forms of hate.

Minutiae

(more…)

Events / Magazine / Pro / Reprints Allowed / Semipro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores June 2023 (Early Listing)

Submission Window: June 1st-2nd, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints, For artwork: $10 for the non-exclusive right to use each image, for as long as the site is online.  If we publish a print collection we will pay a pro-rata share for each image used.
Theme: Well written original work in science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form, and from around the world.
Note: Reprints welcome

 

 

Submissions Schedule

We have a new submissions schedule as of June 1, 2020:
The first and second day of every month, 12 am of the 1st to 12 am of the 3rd, E.S.T.
Only one submission per person.

For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers.

We pay 8¢ per word for new fiction, 2¢ per word for fiction reprints, 2 – 6¢ per word for new fact-based work, 1- 4¢ per word for reprinted fact articles.
For new poetry, we pay $1 a line, reprints would be 50¢ a line, up to 40 lines. We’ll look at longer poems but that would be a hard sell, and words over 40 lines would be paid at 6¢ per word.

We began The Kepler Award to recognize and encourage writers of excellent science fiction and fantasy stories that creatively extrapolate on known science in constructive and exciting ways. You can learn about The Kepler Award here.

You can read a copy of our standard contract here.   It can be varied as needed to include the rights of translators, voice actors, etc.

(more…)

Anthology / Events / Pro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Rhapsody of the Spheres (Early Listing)

Submission Window: May 19th – June 1st, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word
Theme: “An effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling” in the SF, fantasy, space opera, hopepunk genres

Theme: Rhapsody of the Spheres – SF, fantasy, space opera, hopepunk

The dictionary defines a rhapsody as “an effusively enthusiastic or  ecstatic expression of feeling.” In ancient Greece, a rhapsody was also part of an epic poem of a suitable length for reciting.

Edie Brickell waxed rhapsodic about a smile on a dog, and Queen and Liszt gave us their musical Bohemian and Hungarian rhapsodies, respectively.

Please give us a speculative fiction story or poem about what would make us happy right now.

Reading Period (open): May 19 – June 1, 2023
Writer Deadline: June 1, 2023
Publication Date: August 2023

(more…)

Anthology / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Poetry / Pro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Qualia Nous Volume 2

Deadline: July 31st, 2023
Payment: 10 cents per word up to 3,000 words, $500 for novelettes, $50 for short poems, $100 for longer poems
Theme: Qualia: instances of subjective, conscious experience; the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena; the way it feels to have mental states. Nous: intellections; awareness; perception; understanding; reason; thought; intuition; the faculty of the human mind; having the ability to understand what is true or real; practical intelligence.

The first volume of Qualia Nous (2014), edited by Michael Bailey, won the Benjamin Franklin Award for science fiction and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology. It was a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year finalist in horror, science fiction, and a bronze winner for anthologies, as well as a silver medal finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Awards, a finalist for the Indie Book Awards, and a winner of the International Book Award. It was also the first Written Backwards anthology (of eventually many) to contain work by Stephen King.

Usman T. Malik’s “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” was a finalist for the Nebula Award and tied to win the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction with Rena Mason’s “Ruminations.” And Marge Simon’s poem “Shutdown” (the only poem in the anthology) won the Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. So, a second volume of Qualia Nous was inevitable, albeit 10 years later, and will again not only feature legends of the craft but showcase today’s emerging talent.

What does the title mean? It’s up to interpretation.

Qualia: instances of subjective, conscious experience; the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena; the way it feels to have mental states.

Nous: intellections; awareness; perception; understanding; reason; thought; intuition; the faculty of the human mind; having the ability to understand what is true or real; practical intelligence.
(more…)

Artwork / Events / Flash / Magazine / Poetry / Pro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Cosmic Roots And Eldritch Shores May 2023 (Early Listing)

Submission Window: May 1st-3rd, 2023
Payment: 8 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints, For artwork: $10 for the non-exclusive right to use each image, for as long as the site is online.  If we publish a print collection we will pay a pro-rata share for each image used.
Theme: Well written original work in science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form, and from around the world.
Note: Reprints welcome

 

 

Submissions Schedule

We have a new submissions schedule as of June 1, 2020:
The first and second day of every month, 12 am of the 1st to 12 am of the 3rd, E.S.T.
Only one submission per person.

For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers.

We pay 8¢ per word for new fiction, 2¢ per word for fiction reprints, 2 – 6¢ per word for new fact-based work, 1- 4¢ per word for reprinted fact articles.
For new poetry, we pay $1 a line, reprints would be 50¢ a line, up to 40 lines. We’ll look at longer poems but that would be a hard sell, and words over 40 lines would be paid at 6¢ per word.

We began The Kepler Award to recognize and encourage writers of excellent science fiction and fantasy stories that creatively extrapolate on known science in constructive and exciting ways. You can learn about The Kepler Award here.

You can read a copy of our standard contract here.   It can be varied as needed to include the rights of translators, voice actors, etc.

(more…)

Contest / Events / Flash / Magazine / Pro

 by 

Taking Submissions: Elegant Literature: Shadows & Knives

Deadline: April 30th, 2023
Payment: 10 cents per word
Theme: Shadows & Knives, and a crow
Note: There is ALSO a contest you can enter your work into instead of a magazine for a chance to win $3,000. However, it is pay to play on the contest.

Write a story involving Shadows & Knives, and a crow.
$3,000 grand prize.

Hurry down the street as night falls. Is that movement in the shadows? Don’t look back. Dark figures block your path, steel glinting. No time to think. Do you run, fight, or scream?

Murder is as old as time. The lights come on and someone’s dead. Everyone’s a suspect. The genius detective plays cat and mouse with a meticulous villain. Bodies, blackmail, and bloodstained letters. The cozy mystery is anything but for the victim. Prepare your alibi, avoid suspicion, and hope the trail of bodies leads back to the butler. The investigator has a secret, and the killer is working with the police. Conspiracies, confessions, and court intrigue. Assassins and bloody night raids—danger lurks in the dark. So accept the invitation, gather round the campfire, and hope the train doesn’t go through a tunnel. It’s a mystery, and we’re all gathered for the big reveal.

This contest invites you to explore shadows and knives, whatever that means to you. Fantasy, contemporary, romance, crime. All genres are welcome.

Submissions close April 30th at 11:59 pm EST. Contest only open to new writers

(more…)