Deadline: December 15th, 2017
Payment: $0.02 cent a word paid on publication + shared royalties.
B Cubed Press is accepting short story submissions for “After the Orange,” an original science fiction and fantasy anthology about the post-Trump world.
The Premise:
The Trump Presidency has come and gone. Has this invoked the Trump Dynasty or has it spawned a return to core values, a hedonistic paradise or what? Truly, what does the future, the post Trump future hold?
What We Want:
We are looking for near- or farther-future stories, society as it is AFTER 2032 – at least two presidential election cycles after Donald Trump’s last eligibility. Show us America or the world in a new era, or look at world politics changed by the actions of US policies and people. Or go beyond.
Stories may present an optimistic or pessimistic, utopian or apocalyptic visions of the future, with some clear connection to current events and the world as it is in 2017. Political shenanigans would be interesting, as well as romance, spooks, robots and evil overlords, satire or parodies. But remember, the world has moved on. The editors generally favor character- and/or plot-driven stories.
Payment: $0.03 (NZD) per word (.02 USD at time of posting.)
If you’ve ever finished reading a story and thought, “Well, that was unusual,” then you’re only a block away from Black Dandy. In this corner of the neighbourhood, we’re looking for fiction that grips readers with vivid characters under unusual pressures. Bizarre, dreamy, unsettling.
Although we like a slow burn, we want stories to intrigue us from the start. Set the tone early, even if the story’s unusual nature takes time to unfold. Magic realism, gothic, and surrealist are compass points. Perhaps your most compelling character is a place, a meadow, a stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. Or perhaps your characters believe that all is normal while the world around them spins out of control – how do they go about their affairs in such a world? Your story will leave us feeling jarred, shaken by the collision of the familiar and unfamiliar.
Fiction we can’t forget:
Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Witi Ihimaera
Rene’s Flesh, Virgilio Piñera
Already Dead, Denis Johnson
Mrs God, Peter Straub
Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury
Maldoror, Comte de Lautréamont
Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella
Encounters, Juan Garcia Ponce
The Master & Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
Black Dandy pays $0.03 (NZD) per word for stories between 2,500 and 7,000 words. Our turnaround time for decisions is from one to three months.
Submit manuscripts to [email protected] in Word or RTF format, using some variation of a standard manuscript format. In the body of your email, tell us a bit about yourself.
We do not accept simultaneous or multiple submissions.
Author’s rights: Use of the author’s work by Black Dandy entails the assignment of First World Anthology Rights, for publication in the English language anywhere in the world. Black Dandy may use the author’s work only in the above-mentioned Anthology – both paperback and electronic editions – and re-printings of it, and the author shall retain all other rights to his or her work not specified here.
Giles Press is currently seeking submissions of the following works for their Gallows Hill Magazine:
FICTION
Horror, thriller, dark fantasy, psychological, black humor.
Length: flash fic to novellas; up to 15,000 words.
(Note: we reserve the right to serialize any submission over 9,000 words.)
POETRY (up to 5 poems at a time)
Same general genres/themes as fiction.
Length: up to 80 lines.
COMICS
Giles Press is always looking for talented artists who thrive on the strange and unsettling. From illustration to full comics, we would love to work with you to publish your work. For this magazine, however, we are only looking for freelance illustrations. If we believe that your style has potential, we will contact you about publishing stand-alone works.
GENERAL NOTES
Fiction and nonfiction manuscripts should include an exact word count; poetry manuscripts should include an exact line count. Please include your contact information (phone, email, and mailing address) as well as a brief author bio.
Please allow up to 3-6 weeks response time.
If we accept your submission, we will notify you via an acceptance letter detailing payment and rights information and any revisions we would like you to make. We withhold the right to make line edits as needed, and will provide you with a copy to approve. Once we have your approval, it will be kept on file until it is assigned to an issue. Depending on how far out we are working, your submission may be placed as far as two issues out.
RATES
Since we are currently in the process of starting up, we cannot guarantee our ideal rates. Depending on our how much we are able to raise, rates may rise. Final rates will be given in your acceptance letter, but the minimum rates will be:
Fiction: up to $50
Poems: up to $15
Artwork: negotiable
Deadline: December 31st, 2017
Payment: 5 cents a word, 2 cents a word if a reprint.
Note: Reprints Allowed
edited by Steve Berman
Avarice and a fealty to Mammon are elements of this forthcoming anthology slated for January of 2018. Lethe is seeking weird and eerie stories of people consumed by wealth. Each tale must be suffused with the trappings of the well-to-do. Decadence should be paramount. However, we do not want these tales to be moralistic; we’re celebrating those who can buy the finest things in life…they just happen to be the leads in a horror story. The better stories will incorporate status and wealth as both character traits and elements of the plot. For an excellent example, we recommend “Dirty American” by Lara Elena Donnelly or “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” by Poppy Z. Brite. Our preference is for stories that are contemporary but we are willing to read and purchase a few historical tales. No vampire or zombie tales.
Stories should be from 4,000 to 14,000 in length. Original fiction is more important to us, but we will make an offer on exceptional reprints. Payment for reprints is 2 cents per word. Payment for original fiction is 5 cents a word. All payment is upon publication in Summer of 2018. We’ll be doing a lovely, off-set, hardback edition of this book, perhaps a trade paperback, digital and audiobook versions.
Deadline is January of 2018. Please submit to Steve Berman at lethepress @aol.com with the Subject line of Midas Clutch Submission. Include an embedded copy letter with biographical details, if the story is original, and some sense of prior publications (if any).
Basic Submission Guidelines
If you would like to submit a manuscript to Lethe Press here are our guidelines:
We seek manuscripts that are a minimum of 45,000 words but no more than 135,000 words (and we are very, very selective on submissions more than 100,000 words).
We are primarily interested in queer speculative fiction. That is our specialty. We are willing to read and consider other genres (however, we have more resources to apply to such titles).
Currently we are only interested in reading poetry manuscripts for our Tincture imprint.
When submitting, please email to Steve Berman (at [email protected]) a synopsis of your ms. and the first three chapters as a RTF file or MS Word document. Please include a cover letter (you may list previous publications) and give us a sense why you have chosen to submit to Lethe Press.
Obviously we will not consider any title that has a negative perspective of LGBT individuals.
Please allow us 120 days to respond to your query; we do not consider simultaneous submissions.
First, we strongly suggest you read a copy of Shoreline of Infinity to see the kind of stories our readers like. You can download a copy or order a print copy over there on the right.
We are looking for a good science fiction story. Something that gives reality a tweak on the nose. An idea that makes us stop and think.
But more than that, we want your story to be populated with characters we want to meet and have a drink with or from whom we want to run screaming away; we want characters to hug to ease the pain; we want to read the stories of heroes; we want to be your character.
Make us want to nudge our sleeping partners at 3am in the morning and say: “you should read this!”
Broaden our horizons – look beyond the Shoreline.
We told you, we’re looking for a good story.
If you can include all that in one tale as seen through the powerful lens of science fiction, so much the better.
Length
From Issue 8 onwards we will be publishing one story of up to 10,000 words, otherwise it’s a maximum of 5,000 words.
What we Offer and Rights
We offer £10/1000 word at the moment.
We retain the right to continue selling back issues of Shoreline of Infinity and Shoreline anthologies containing your story (royalties are paid for republishing in collections).
We buy first digital and print world rights in English, but your rights are returned to you after 6 months of original publication (digital or print), and you are free to publish how or wherever you like. However, it would be splendid if you could acknowledge first publication in Shoreline of Infinity.
What to Submit
We accept simultaneous submissions, but do tell us immediately if you want to withdraw a submission. Submit a neatly formatted manuscript set in Times 12 point and double spaced in Word format ( doc/docx). Please use the submission process here – emailed manuscripts will be ignored.
Submit only one story.
Response Time
We will reply as soon as we can after your submission, but do contact us if you have not heard within 3 months. We know what it’s like to be kept waiting, but we are only human (mostly).
Payment: .02/word with a $20 minimum for previously unpublished work. Reprints $10 per piece.
Note: Reprints Allowed
Blue Monday Review is a quarterly publication that draws inspiration from the works of Kurt Vonnegut. He was a man who knew how to craft great stories that celebrated truth and beauty while maintaining a sardonic wit that makes our hearts swell with bitterness and joy. If your work can stir up even a sliver of that feeling, we want to see it.
* Please note, we tend away from political satire and any work that is misogynistic, racist, homophobic, etc.
We like get-up-and-go in our prose. We want a complete story, not a premise; rounded characters, not caricatures. Past that, what trips our trigger is the peculiar and off-center. We love anything that’s absurd, experimental, quirky, satirical or surreal while still retaining its humanity. We want to lose track of ourselves in the beauty or horror or wildness of your story.
By all means, experiment with form and genre, but first make sure your story engages. If your story wanders off into the corner to mumble to itself, be damned sure you’ve made us want to follow and listen in.
All of the above applies to nonfiction, too. Your work should extend past personal experience to seek a deeper truth. Finally, keep it literary in tone. Right now, we don’t do book reviews, academic essays, travelogues, etc.
Your poetry should send our minds reeling, but make sure you give us substance to sink our teeth into. Make us want to climb into your poem and live there for a while. Your poetry should highlight the peculiar and the off-center and pull us in.
We love prose poetry but are open to all styles. We will freely admit to a bias against purely pastoral/nature poetry and poetry that rhymes. That said, we also like being proven wrong. Please send no more than 3 poems in a single document.
ETC.
FICTION & CREATIVE NONFICTION
POETRY
Got something that’s not really poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or artwork? We want to see it! We’re talking one-acts, comics, screenplays, photo essays, fake advertisements, whatever. Just keep it literary in tone and make sure it fits in with our general style guidelines.
3500 words max, please query if longer.
No more than 3 poems or 3 flashes (1500 words apiece). Submit these as a single document. For Express Lane submissions, each individual piece must be submitted separately.
Edit your stuff! We hate to see typos and sloppiness. Also, ensure your fancy stuff (accent marks, special formatting) makes it through on your final document.
Use Times New Roman, 12 point font. Double space your prose and single space your poetry. We prefer .doc or .docx.
Leave your name and other personal info off your work. That information belongs in your cover letter. Your submission may be immediately rejected if you fail to follow this.
VISUAL ART
No more than 5 pieces, please. Submit them in a .zip folder.
Put your last name in the file title.
The higher the resolution, the better. 300 dpi and 1500 pixels on the shortest edge is an optimal minimum.
Cover art should be colorful, with a peculiarity that captures attention and stirs the imagination.
Interior art should be in black and white. We like pen & ink, brush & ink, B&W photos, stuff like that. We especially like work in a series, so send us multiple samples, especially if you do cartoon art.
No fucking clowns.
From our Art Director: “The tragicomic human condition is what moves us, rather than opinion, polemic, or social commentary. We gravitate towards artwork that is edgy. Nature-centric art and pictures of your cat rarely fulfill this deep internal need of ours.”
One submission at a time, people! If we decline you, go ahead and re-submit whenever; we just really hate seeing 15 pieces in a row by the same person. We try our best to get back to you within 3 months or less, but feel free to contact us if we’re running behind on your submission.
Feel free to send your work to other publications, but please let us know if your submission becomes unavailable to us for any reason. To withdraw only one piece of several or if you want to change your status from “unpublished” to “previously published,” just leave a note in the Submittable system or shoot us an email.
One last thing: Please don’t plagiarize or violate someone else’s copyright. We won’t print your fanfiction or anything that utilizes characters/universes you didn’t create. We also don’t dig work that features public personalities because we hate getting sued.
Failure to strictly adhere to our stated guidelines may result in a submission being immediately declined. If you have any questions about this, please query us first.
COMPENSATION
We believe in paying contributors for their work. It is work, after all. Contributors whose work is selected will receive the following compensation along with one free contributor’s print copy.
We reserve one-time and anthology rights, all other rights revert back to the author upon publication.
Fiction, creative nonfiction, and ETC. work is compensated at a rate of .02/word with a $20 minimum for previously unpublished work.
For reprints, we pay a flat amount of $10 per piece.
Poetry is compensated at $10 for previously unpublished work, $5 for reprints.
Art is compensated at a flat rate of $20 per accepted piece.
Anything we forgot to mention? Feel free to contact us.
