by Stuart Conover | Oct 15, 2018 | Events, Flat Amount, Magazine, Royalties
Deadline: December 1st, 2018
Payment: $10 Token payment via Paypal and 60% of net earnings divided evenly among the authors.
Announcing call for submissions for PSYCHO HOLIDAY (tentative title)
All Submissions should meet this criteria:
Works: short stories and flash fiction
Genre and theme: Horror and dark fiction about demented psychopathic killers with a winter holiday setting
Deadline: October Dec 1st
Format: Attach the .RTF, .DOC, or .DOCX
Word Count 5k – 7k words approx. for short stories, no limit for flash.
Payment: $10 Token payment via Paypal and 60% of net earnings divided evenly among the authors.
Multiple Submissions okay.
Submit a brief bio, we don’t care if you have no work history, give us a brief bio of yourself.
Send submission to
[email protected]
Via: Deadman’s Tome.
by Stuart Conover | Oct 9, 2018 | Contest, Events, Flat Amount, Novel, Royalties
Deadline: January 11th, 2019
Payment: The winner will receive an advance against future royalties of $10,000. Read on for more details.
Rules for the 2019 St. Martin’s Minotaur/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition
Sponsored by Minotaur Books and Mystery Writers of America (MWA)
1. The Competition is open to any writer, regardless of nationality, aged 18 or older, who has never been the author of any Published Novel (in any genre), as defined by the guidelines below, (except that authors of self-published works only may enter, as long as the manuscript submitted is not the self-published work) and is not under contract with a publisher for publication of a novel. Employees, and members of their immediate families living in the same household, of Minotaur Books or Mystery Writers of America (or a parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of either of them) are not eligible to enter. Only one manuscript entry (the “Manuscript”) is permitted per writer. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.
Please read all of the rules and guidelines before submitting your entry.
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by Stuart Conover | Oct 3, 2018 | Anthology, Events, Flat Amount, Reprints Allowed, Royalties
Deadline: December 21st, 2018
Payment: 10% of royalties earned through Kindle, Nook, and print on demand sales OR a one time payment of $25
Note: Reprints allowed
Lustcraftian Horrors: Erotic Stories Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft will be the first multi-author anthology from Infernal Ink Books and it is now open for submissions.
The submission period will run from August 20th (H. P. Lovecraft’s birthday) until December 21st (Very Scary Solstice) 2018.
Guidelines:
We are looking for erotic stories inspired by the mythos, characters, and stories that were created and written by H. P. Lovecraft. Both the erotic elements and connection to Lovecraft’s work should be strong and clear. We don’t want the reader to have to be a Lovecraft scholar in order to get the connection, nor do we want them left scratching their heads wondering what was suppose to be so erotic about what they just read. Our triggers do not need to be warned, but the reader’s triggers should be. The “erotic” in Erotic Horror is defined here very loosely. The sex can be either horrifying or titillating…or both.
Stories should be between 2,000 and 10,000 words. Some wiggle room will be allowed, but we’re looking for stories with some real body and depth to them. No flash fiction.
Reprints will be considered, but previously unpublished work will be favored. You must hold or have retained all the rights required to submit your work and enter into a publishing contract with us at the time of submission.
Simultaneous submissions are discouraged. If you have a piece you would like to submit to us for this anthology that is already out to another publisher being read, let us know as soon as possible if your work has been accepted elsewhere. Otherwise, please, wait to hear from us before submitting a piece we are reading to another publisher. We aim to have as quick of a turn around time on submissions as possible, with our goal being to have our choices made and the contracts signed no later than the end of January 2019.
We’re not super picky about formatting, but all submissions must be made via email as a .doc, .rtf, or .docx file attachment. Submissions sent in the text of the email or by other means will not be read or considered.
Submissions must be sent to [email protected] with the subject line LUSTCRAFTIAN SUBMISSION.
In lieu of a traditional author’s bio, we would like each author to write a brief explanation (a paragraph or two) detailing specifically which Lovecraft characters, story, or mythos inspired their work. This should be written in the first person and MUST be included along with the submission.
No poetry.
No art, illustrations, or photography.
LGBT characters and authors are welcome.
Authors must be 18 years of age or older.
Payment will be 10% of royalties earned through Kindle, Nook, and print on demand sales OR a one time payment of $25, paid at the time of publication. It will be each individual author’s choice which they will receive. This decision must be made at the time the contract with us is signed. All funds will be paid via PayPal in US Dollars.
Via: Infernal Ink Books.
by Stuart Conover | Oct 2, 2018 | Anthology, Events, Royalties
Deadline: January 20th, 2019
Payment: 5% of the gross profit will be paid for each accepted story. These payments will be issued to you at quarterly intervals. Stories under 1,500 words will only receive 4% of the gross profit.
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s ….Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
General Carl von Clausewitz devised Absolute War. A war single-mindedly focused on the destruction of the enemy and attainment of a political victory (or conquest) by pure force.
Von Clausewitz rejected the theory.
But intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic have higher regard for Absolute War, and wage it in their devastation of the Earth…
War of the Worlds: Absolute War is a collection of short stories expanding on H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Generally, we’re seeking to show the entire world’s response to the Invasion.
WHAT WE WANT
It’s possible to read The War of the Worlds and assign it to any number of dates within a nearly 30 year period. We’ll be working from the assumption that the Martian Invasion occurred in June, 1896. So far as fitting the novel into a real-world context, consider the narrator of The War of the Worlds to have been H.G. Wells himself, the narrator’s wife to be Amy Wells, and the narrator’s brother to be Frank Wells. The book detailing Wells’ perspective of events was subsequently released in 1898.
Please don’t rehash H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. We have had countless adaptions, sequels, and “stories behind the story,” which have copied Wells beat for beat. While we are treating Wells’ account of the invasion as “canon” for every story, find new things to do within the context of The War of the Worlds.
For example, do not consider yourself bound to the invaders’ total domination of earth militaries. History brims with technologically-disadvantaged cultures surviving invaders, and making them pay for every mile in blood. The British military, so far as the battles Wells was aware of, lost by trying to wage an expected and conventional war. Other countries may have fared better. This is well worth exploring.
Preference will be shown to stories set outside the United Kingdom. We want to see the world at war, and a truly international invasion.
May I use Public Domain Characters? Yes.
Am I strictly bound to science fiction, or can I use magic, etc.? You may use magic and other historical fantasy/urban fantasy tropes, but please be creative. We’re more likely to take something along the lines of The Royal Occultist or Manly Wade Wellman—with gentle, background, hidden, subliminated, or possibly false magic—than Lord Darcy or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
May I use the Cthulhu Mythos? Yes, but I strongly encourage, and prefer, fresh takes. Show us something new. The more it feels like a copy/paste of Lovecraft (or previous stories mixing The War of the Worlds and Mythos fiction), the less interested I’ll be.
Do you take reprints? Yes. Just let us know in the submission (this will not count against you).
What genre are you looking for? Surprise us. While you’re bound to the outline of history and the canon of Wells’ text, you’re free to explore historical fiction, military science fiction, fantasy, occult horror or detection, mystery, adventure, pulp, or literary. We’re more concerned with receiving good, creative stories working from these guidelines than their specific genre. Variety makes a great collection.
STORIES I ESPECIALLY WANT
(DOING ONE OF THESE, AND DOING IT WELL, IS AN ALL BUT GUARANTEED ACCEPTANCE. PLEASE QUERY WITH A FULL PITCH AND THE FIRST 500-1K WORDS. THIS LIST WILL BE UPDATED AS AUTHORS RESERVE CONCEPTS. PLEASE HAVE YOUR PITCH PROVIDED BY DECEMBER 1ST, 2018.)
- Theodore Roosevelt, police commissioner, preparing New York City for the Invasion.
- Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo must try to manage a war from his exile on the island of Saint Helena, trying to bind the divided Zulu people together to defend the remains of their land from Invaders (this could also neatly set up that, later, he would be blamed—seemingly falsely—for commanding the Bambatha Rebellion from exile).
- Nellie Bly getting into the thick of the invasion to report on it, possibly while doing a piece on the recently-defeated Warriors of Dahomey.
- Bass Reeves, late in his career, trying to pursue a murderer across suddenly Martian-infested land (or, truthfully, anything featuring Bass Reeves).
- Raffles the Amateur Cracksman having the heist of his life, as guards are gone and all he has to dodge are war machines, black smoke, and heat-rays. Comparatively easy, surely! [Claimed.]
- Moses Angel and his Jewish Free School doing relief work in London (possibly alongside Charles Spurgeon).
- Stories set in Tibet.
- Stories set in Japan. [One accepted.]
- Stories set in Mongolia.
- A story set in the Arctic Circle or northern Canada with Inuit (and other) peoples dealing with this invasion. How well do the Invaders adapt to the cold?
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR IN SUBMISSIONS
- A complete, well-structured story.
- Competent characters acting in competent ways. Challenge the characters by putting them in situations where their competency doesn’t necessarily apply (easy to do in a Martian invasion), forcing them to work out a creative solution. Don’t let anyone act the fool for convenience.
- Creative uses of the Martian war-machines, as well as stories featuring their less-explored technology.
- Set during the Martian invasion of June, 1896 (as described in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds).
WHAT WE DON’T WANT
HISTORICAL INACCURACY
That’s the big one. Nothing will make us pass on a story faster than historical inaccuracy. We’re willing to work with authors on such things as culture, clothing, food, and general language. The background history of a story is easiest to fix, and we’ll love talking about it with you.
But inaccurate attitudes are a sort of historical inaccuracy that will make us immediately pass on a story. This often leaves stories unfixable.
Bigotry is not the default of history. While you are welcome to explore such things, keep in mind, this should be treated meaningfully rather than as extraneous, exploitative, or a given. Presenting all—or the majority of—your characters as racist, sexist, or the like is one of the fastest ways to the reject pile. We’re far more interested in nuanced portrayals of people than stock types.
People in the 1890s held a wide variety of opinions.Reflecting this, instead of repeating the same stock figures, massively increases your chance of acceptance.
UNACCEPTABLE APPROACHES
The following will be immediately rejected:
- Jack the Ripper.
- Victorian governments or scientists developing a nuclear bomb or WMDs.
- Warfare waged against Mars itself.
- The Martian invasion leading into an alternate history scenario—or alternate history scenarios themselves.
- Killing or significantly altering the lives of historical figures.
- H.G. Wells-focused stories (unless requested).
- Parody
- A murder covered-up by the Invasion’s chaos.
COMMON HISTORICAL ERRORS TO AVOID
- Corsets were not uncomfortable, or dangerously binding.
- The Victorian English were not deeply repressed, and most “Victorian sexuality” commentary has no basis in reality (what does, only applied to upper-class Americans in New England). Most jokes about “Victorian sexuality”—such as skirts on piano legs and the insistence on the word “limbs”—were started by the English, about Americans.
SUBMISSION DETAILS
Payment: 5% of the gross profit will be paid for each accepted story. These payments will be issued to you at quarterly intervals. Stories under 1,500 words will only receive 4% of the gross profit.
Rights: First World Digital and Print.
Deadline: January 20th, 2019
Word Count: 4,000-20,000
How to Submit your Story:
- All stories should be sent, as an attachment, to [email protected].
- The file must be formatted in .doc or .docx.
- The interior of the document must be in double spaced Times New Roman (12 point font).
- Indents must be placed through your system’s Paragraph function; do not set indents by pressing tab or space. If you already have tabbed or spaced indents, please remove them first. Please use full em dashes (—).
- At the top of your document, please include William Shunn’s submission header.
- Tell us a bit about yourself in the body of your email. Don’t stress this, it won’t make or break your submission. Please include your word count and bio.
- Place the collection you’re submitting to, your name, and your story title in the subject line of your email. For example, “War of the Worlds: Absolute War / H.G. Wells / The Crystal Egg”
Special Thanks to Sophie Iles for the Banner Art (http://www.sophieiles.co.uk/)
The PDF contains extra information about the Martians and their technology from H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, to assist authors as an at-hand guide.
Via: 18th Wall Productions.
by Stuart Conover | Sep 27, 2018 | Contributor's Copy, Magazine, Ongoing Submissions, Royalties, Token Payment
Payment: At least $1.60 / page. You will also receive a free copy of the publication and royalties
Submission Guidelines
Please send your submissions to [email protected]. We prefer attached Word Docs or Google Docs.
General Guidelines
We seek exciting stories that our readers will speed through. Our main goal is always to entice our readers to pick up the next issue of SERIAL. We accept all genres, however we specialize in genre fiction like action-adventure, science-fiction, mystery, fantasy, horror, thriller, and romance. While “exciting”, “entertaining,” and “fun” are the main qualifications for a SERIAL story, we also appreciate stories that manage to communicate a positive message as well. We want stories that make readers feel good…even if they’re a little dramatic, crazy or suspenseful.
The reading level for your story can be whatever you see fit, however the content of your story must be suitable for young adult audiences. We will not accept submissions that have explicit sex scenes or use known racial or LGBTQIA+ slurs. If your sci-fi or fantasy story is an allegory for issues surrounding these minority groups though and you’ve made up your own unique slurs, then send it in and we’ll see if it’s a good fit!
If your submitted work has been published before, please let us know where. We accept previously published work, however we want to make sure that we’re truly helping you gain more exposure. SERIAL stories are published under a non-exclusive publishing agreement. We do not require copyright transfer, exclusivity, or first rights.
SHORT STORIES:
We accept short stories that are 500-10,000 words.
NOVELLAS, NOVELS, SERIALIZED FICTION
We publish serialized fiction. The word count for each “chunk” or chapter of fiction must be 7,500 – 10,000 words. There’s some wiggle room there, but that’s what you should be aiming towards. In order to be accepted, we require that you submit two chunks of the story and an outline of the remaining story with an estimate of how many chunks remain. We ask that serial fiction writers commit to publishing at least one chunk a month. We also ask that writers keep in mind that each chunk should end on a mild to extreme cliffhanger.
Genre Specific Guidelines
Below are a couple notes to keep in mind for specific genres.
SERIAL MYSTERY, HORROR, AND THRILLER
- For these genres in particular, please make your outline extremely thorough. Include every red herring, scare, and twist you plan. The more, the better. We want to know exactly how you’re going to keep the suspense going.
ROMANCE
- It’s said that romance can’t be romance without a Happily Ever After ending, but we’re totally okay with you blowing that idea up. We love unexpected endings, romances that dip into melodrama, or even romances that completely switch genres midway through. Romance-horror anyone? Traditional romances will be accepted too of course, but if you want to have fun with the genre, you are welcome here.
Illustrations and Comics
We also accept black and white illustrations and comics that fit within our genres. While we love the aesthetic of vintage pulp fiction magazines, we’re open to all styles.
What to Expect
After we receive your submission, a few things will happen.
- You will receive a response within 10 days with constructive feedback.
- If we plan to move forward with your piece, two things may happen:
- We may make line edits to your piece and ask you to approve them.
- We may ask you some follow up questions in order to draft a quick contract.
- You will be sent a contract that explains your rights, our rights, and your payment.
- Before the magazine sale date, you will receive a payment of at least $1.60 / page. You will also receive a free copy of the publication.
- Every 20th of the month, you will receive a royalties payment if applicable. This payment is calculated by # of issues sold x net revenue per issue (typically $1.00 or more) / 2 x the percentage of pages you contributed to the issues sold. Essentially 50% of our revenue goes to our writers and 50% goes to covering business expenses. We keep our back issues (up to a certain point) in stock, so writers may continue to earn on old issues.
Via: Serial.
by Stuart Conover | Sep 5, 2018 | Anthology, Events, Royalties
Deadline: December 1st, 2018
Payment: Royalties
