Category: Anthology

Anthology / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: Hellbound Highway

Deadline: August 31st, 2025
Payment: $15
Theme: Road trip terror

Are you brave enough to take a ride on the Hellbound Highway? HellBound Books is seeking short horror stories for an anthology on the theme of bad trips, which will be curated and edited by the double-trouble partnership of veteran horror writers Jane Nightshade and Ann O’Mara Heyward. We want road trips, sure, but also airplane journeys, ship crossings, railroad passages, heck even cattle drives–as long as it’s a trip and it’s B-A-D.

What if a family like the Griswolds from National Lampoon’s Vacation were zombies? What if a weary business traveler waits for the red-eye in an airport that is literally a portal to hell? What if the night manager of the local Greyhound bus station was a vampire who feeds off of the poor and desperate? What if a crook on the lam checks into a cheap motel and discovers that the usual cockroaches are mutants with deadly powers? What if someone stopped at a cafe in the middle of nowhere, and slowly realized that they were the special on next day’s menu?

These are the types of scenarios we are looking for, so let your creepiest imaginings run wild. Scary horror, psychological horror, or comedy horror are all welcome–it just has to be GOOD.

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Anthology / Events / Flash / Flat Amount / Token Payment

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Taking Submissions: Hellbound Books’ Anthology of Pandemic & Outbreak Horror

Deadline: June 30th, 2025
Payment: $5
Theme: Plagues, pandemics, original takes on zombies, outbreaks, and everything related!

The HellBound Books team felt enough time has passed since the COVID-19 pandemic to warrant an appropriately themed anthology. We are looking for horrific tales of diseases ravaging mankind, viruses, bacteria, and fungal spores infecting and threatening to eradicate all of humanity – and, yes, we would love to see your terrifying, unique takes on the zombie trope!

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Anthology / Events / Royalties

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Taking Submissions: It Came From the Trailer Park: Vol 5

Deadline: July 1st, 2025
Payment: Royalties
Theme: Creature feature horror comedies that have redneck heroes

After the success of the previous Trailer Park anthologies, we’ve decided to bring it back for another release of fun Creature Feature Horror.

Stories should be original creature-feature, horror-comedy with the same feel as The Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Shaun of the Dead, or Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. And of course, our heroes winning the day in all of their redneck glory.

The added challenge this year, should you choose to accept it, volume 5 submissions should have a “Creep Killer Clown” twist to it.

 

Not sure what we’re looking for? Think Pennywise, Killer Clowns from Outerspace, or John Wayne Gacy.

 

  • Genre: Horror Comedy / Creature Feature
  • Word Count: 5,000 – 10,000
  • Opening Essay by: TBD
  • Edited by: William Joseph Roberts
  • Anchor Author: TBD
  • Due Date: July 1, 2025

Email submissions to: threeravenspublishing @ gmail dot com with “Trailer Park” in the subject line

Payment: Stories selected for publication in the upcoming Anthology(ies), will receive a percentage of sales divided equally between the contributing authors.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: The Joining: Scenes of Wedding Terror

Submission Window: January 1st – March 1st, 2025
Payment: 2 cents per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Mixing horror and weddings

From Jacob Steven Mohr and Crystal Lake Publishing comes The Joining: Scenes of Wedding Terror, a new anthology set to debut (tentatively) September of 2025.

We’re looking for stories between 2,500 and 5,000 words in length concerning the rite of matrimony. Weddings are unusual events, bringing together masses of humanity that might never interact under any other circumstance, requiring them to travel great distances or take part in bizarre rituals ranging from the solemn to the frenzied and sometimes even dangerous…

But: stories submitted to The Joining need not concern only the event itself. They might take place at any time, so long as nuptials are central to the narrative. Imagine it: proposals gone wrong, literal bride-zillas, unsettling in-laws, bachelor parties that end in bloodshed—and of course, trips to destination weddings held just north of Hell itself…

We will be accepting 10-15 stories from this open call. Accepted tales will appear alongside original yarns from a cast of invited authors, including Gemma Files, Joe Koch, J.A.W. McCarthy, Gordon B. White, Jack Lothian, Rae Wilde, and Scott J. Moses… and one mystery guest, as all weddings should no doubt have!

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Flash

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Taking Submissions: Trash Tales

Deadline: December 31st, 2024
Payment: Contributor’s copy
Theme: The stories must be ‘trashy’ in some way (ideas below.)

Deadline for submissions: midnight, 31 December 2024

We are excited to invite submissions for a new anthology of trashy fiction – TRASH TALES – due to be published in August 2025!

All profits (after expenses) will be donated to literacy charities in the UK and US.

The full submission guidelines are available below.

The collection will be produced by me (CriminOlly) and Alex from micro press Kilter and Rammel. Check out Kilter and Rammel’s site here.

We’re looking for short story submissions, no longer than 5000 words and previously unpublished. It can be in any category or genre you like, as long as it’s what we might all consider of a trashy nature!

Some ideas (this list is non-exhaustive):

  • Naughty nurses and sexy shifters: spicy or sweet category romance
  • One man armies: men’s adventure
  • The Wild, and sometimes Weird West: westerns
  • Trashy Tales of Terror : cheesy horror fiction featuring creepy kids, killer animals, mutants and monsters, etc.
  • Science Fiction Shenanigans: Alien invaders, technology gone haywire
  • Crime, Pulp, That Sort of Thing: Gritty detective fiction, real world or with an added twist of the supernatural/paranormal/occult
  • Mystery-solving Moggies: Cosy crime involving animals, baked goods and such like
  • Level Up: LitRPG (Literary Roleplaying Game) stories.

So get thinking up those trashy stories, and we look forward to seeing what you’ve got for us to read!

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

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Taking Submissions: Spoon Knife 10

Deadline: July 31st, 2025
Payment: $30 plus 1 cent per word and a contributors copy
Theme: Genre-bending stories that feature Polarities

Autonomous Press is now accepting submissions of short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry for the 10th volume of Spoon Knife, our annual genre-bending lit anthology.

Please read this whole page carefully before submitting; some details have changed this time around!

Theme

The theme for Spoon Knife 10 will be Polarities.

Polarities: pairs of opposite forces or qualities or tendencies. Good and evil. Love and hate. Life and death. Heroism and villainy. Feminine and masculine. Night and day. Vice and virtue. Old and new. Order and chaos. The public persona and the hidden shadow self. The mundane everyday world and that which lies beyond.

What polarity lies at the heart of your story? In what ways does it manifest? What happens when the two sides of the polarity come into contact or conflict, or when one transforms into the other?

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Anthology / Events / Royalties

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Taking Submissions: Broken Highways

Deadline: August 1st, 2024
Payment: Royalties
Theme: Car Wars GameLit Fiction

Genre: Car Wars GameLit Fiction

Theme: Have you ever looked at someone, and just know that they have one hell of a tale to tell? First-hand accounts from the road, told by the bounty hunters, highwaymen, and Federal Marshals out there in the mix.

Concept: We’re looking for stories from those trying to make a difference out there in the wastes. No matter if they are upholding the law, or tending to their small flock of survivors, these are the stories that inspire others to get off their tail and get something done. We want plenty of high-intensity action and carnage possible, backed by compelling character-driven stories.

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Anthology / Contributor's Copy / Events / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Eat The Rich

Deadline: April 30, 2024. Submissions will be kept open for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, chronically-ill/disabled, and writers from other historically marginalized groups until May 15, 2024.
Payment: $.05 per word and a contributor’s copy
Theme: Speculative fiction about billionaires being eaten

Submissions will be open from April 1 – April 30, 2024. Submissions will be kept open for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, chronically-ill/disabled, and writers from other historically marginalized groups until May 15, 2024.

The Rules

Eat the Rich is a speculative fiction anthology of billionaires being eaten. That’s it, full stop. Give us carnivores, cannibals, kaiju, cryptids, and, of course, capitalist comeuppance. So long as some kind of obnoxiously wealthy fuck gets eaten — somewhere, somewhen, somehow — the sky’s the limit.

*we’re looking for interpretations of literally being eaten, but what that means is entirely up to you
*billionaires are the cause of 9 out of 10 problems, but if you want to set your sights on lower-tier wealth, go ahead

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