Deadline: January 1, 2014
Payment: Royalties

Submissions are now OPEN for Big Bad 2 – An Anthology of Evil Volume 2

The immediate success of The Big Bad has been mind-blowing, and Dark Oak has signed us on to do it all over again! Emily Lavin Leverett and I are back to create another anthology of the greatest bad guy stories we can find. This is a mixed anthology, which means that there have been some folks invited to participate, and we will accept some stories through open calls. The invitations have gone out, and we have ten open slots, so we expect the competition to be fierce.

Send us your best short story (3,000 – 9,000 words, if it has to be longer contact me first) that features a bad guy or evil character as the protagonist. It can be fantasy, urban fantasy, superhero, sci-fi, horror, whatever. Just send us your best bad guy story. We’re taking ten. That’s right, there are only ten slots available in this anthology.

Email submissions to johnhartness AT gmail DOT com, as a .doc or .docx attachment. Include a brief author’s bio, please. Please do not send RTF files. I hate them and will delete them unread. Please single-space in Times New Roman 12 point. Please label the file NAME.TITLE.doc and include “Big Bad Submission” in the email header.

This is a royalty-based anthology, with exclusive rights for one year. This is not a “for the love” antho – Dark Oak is a real publisher that sends out real royalty checks. I should know, I’ve already received one for Big Bad 1. After the first year we retain rights to publish electronically in the anthology only, and in print in this anthology only, but you can take it and sell it somewhere else, or sell it yourself as a standalone.

Deadline is January 1, 2014.

No reprints.

Some people have emailed me questions – so here are some answers.

No

Yes

No

No

Maybe

Anyway, here’s a realistic response to some questions.

1) We will not start reading until the submission period closes. There is limited space and limited money to pay for stories, and we don’t want to run out of acceptances before November 1.

2) While nothing is off limits, there are things that Emily and I as editors  will not publish.We will not publish work that glorifies racism or race/gender/creed/religion/sexual-preference-based crime. You can have characters that are racist, sexist, homophobe, whatever. They are supposed to be evil. But if the tone of the piece is “INSERT CLASS OF PERSON HERE deserved it because they are a member of that class” then it probably won’t get bought for this anthology.  We will also not publish anything that glorifies rape or sexual assault, and if you have to harm animals or small children, there’d better be a damn good reason. We do not want this book to promote hate in any way.  Just to celebrate and embrace the bad guy. Or question what is bad. If you think it’s over the line, let me know. If I have time, I’ll read it early and tell you if it’s over the line. Then I promise to re-read it when I’m doing my selections.

3) No flash. Nothing under 3,000 words. Seriously.

4) No, there is not an age limit. If you can write, you can submit.

5) No, there is no need for an agent.

6) Please email any questions to me at johnhartness AT gmail DOT com. I’ll then update this FAQ and reply to you via email.

Via: John Hartness.