Category: Semipro

Deadline: June 30th, 2023
Payment: 3 cents per word
Theme: A look at the south of the United States through the lens of speculative fiction

B Cubed press is proud to announce our latest Open Call:  Alternative Truths. Southern Edition: Bless their Hearts (working title).

Edited by K.G.  Anderson and Bob Brown and the next in B Cubed Press’s best-selling Alternative Truths series.

This book will examine the South, a place where politicians and their followers compete to peg the outrage meter. Why—and how—are they turning the United States into a cauldron of bigotry and hate?

• They are banning books.
• They are controlling free speech (“Don’t Say Gay”).
• They have placed bounties on abortion seekers.
• They have declared war on Mickey Mouse.
• They promote state takeovers of local prosecutors’ offices, election boards, college governing boards, and school curricula.
• They think no one is too young or too unbalanced to have a gun and are In full retreat on gun-safety laws.
• They would make your gender identity a crime.

It goes on and on.

This book will look at the mindset behind these and other efforts to bring back the Old South, a mythical place and time when everyone knew their place.

We want you give us stories that speak to the consequences of such a mindset and where it may be taking us as individuals and  as a culture. What, if left unfettered, would they make of America, the world, and the future. And more important, how will we fight to stop them.

 What we are looking for:
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Deadline: August 1st, 2023
Payment: $.03 per word
Theme: Alternative Leadership

B Cubed Press is pleased announce an Open Call for Alternative Leadership.   

An anthology about leadership. Leadership by the under-represented, by those too often forced to watch as those less qualified, less capable rise in a system that cannot see the value of diversity and change.

We’re looking for broken barriers of all kinds.  Can a man lead the National Organization of Women? Can a woman lead the NFL Players Association?  Not in our current world, perhaps, but maybe in alternative worlds?

This will be a book about those things, in government, in the PTA, in the Horde, in the town or village.  In the world. About the Orc would be King of the Goblins, the woman who would be Pope.  The only limits are those of your own imagination.

So understand there is no magic formula for sex, orientation or race of your protagonist.  We want our readers to enjoy the story, sometimes laugh, but always think.

The Alternatives series often uses humor and satire as a way of looking at issues.  You don’t have to write satire or humor to sell us a story, but it sometimes helps.

We are unabashedly social justice fans and love redemption.  Your story doesn’t have to reflect progressive perspectives, but again, it helps.

But most of all, we want our readers to think about the story after they’ve put down the book.

We are looking for good writing, first and foremost. We also want imaginative scenarios, and a good bit of humor in stories, essays or poetry is always appreciated.

Write of successes.

Write of failures.

Write of the perfect, the imperfect, the noble, and the wretched.

Write the story of the person who said, “I can be more.”

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Submission Window: May 1st – 31st, 2023
Payment: Short Fiction: .05 per word (up to .08 if stretch goal is met) Poetry: $1 per line up to 50 lines (up to $2 if stretch goal is met)
Theme: Horror telling a tale of music

Submissions for Playlist of the Damned, the 2023 Kickstarter anthology from Weird Little Worlds Press will open on May 1^st, 2023. This anthology is the third Kickstarter anthology from WLW Press, and features authors such as Gemma Files, Philip Fracassi, Lisa Morton, Eric LaRocca, Hailey Piper, Premee Mohamed, Craig L. Gidney, and more. The press will take 9 additional stories and poems from its open submissions period, with a potential to take more, depending on the Kickstarter’s funding.

Weird Little Worlds Press has become one of the strongest publishers of short horror fiction, with Humans are the Problem: A Monster’s Anthology (2021) and Mother: Tales of Love and Terror (2022) both being recognized on the Bram Stoker Award® Preliminary Ballots. Stories from the press’s anthologies have also appeared on the yearly Pseudopod fiction highlight roundup as well as Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year anthologies. The 2022 Mother is also on the final Stoker ballot for Excellence in an Anthology, and the co-editors of this year’s Playlist, Jessica Landry and Willow Dawn Becker, are both Stoker-nominated editors (Landry, There Is No Death, There Are No Dead; Crystal Lake Publishing, 2021)(Becker, Mother: Tales of Love and Terror; WLW Press, 2022).

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