Submission Guidelines for Confounding Cupids: When Love Goes Awry

CONFOUNDING CUPIDS

When Love Goes Awry

Submissions Open August 31–October 7

Love is in the air…or is it? Sometimes Cupid’s arrow finds the wrong target, or the right target at the wrong time. Those stupid Cupids can sure make a mess of things!

Freefall into a world where love, magic, and wonder can devolve into chaos and confusion. Confounding Cupids: When Love Goes Awry is your chance to take aim at your favorite romance tropes and have a fantastical time.

Romance can blossom in an ancient castle, at a local café, or on an interstellar generation ship. What happens when a love story suffers from hexes, alien technology, or missed connections? How do you file a complaint with Cupid? Who do you call when you’re ghosted by a ghost? What if your spouse turns out to be a changeling? Is the meet-cute not so cute?

Maybe your Cupid isn’t traditional. What if an arranged marriage gets twisted when they both fall for the matchmaker? What happens when an AI dating service intentionally causes romantic mayhem?

Look past Cupid’s bow, and show us the beautiful chaos of love. Confound your Cupids with unexpected results, hilarious mistakes, and terrifying consequences.

Central to your story should be a match or matches full of paradoxes and delightful disorder. And please note, we aren’t expecting all stories to have an actual Cupid, so get creative and have fun with it!

Confounding Cupids: When Love Goes Awry. This wasn’t what the plan was, but the story might be better that way.

Edited by Kevin J. Anderson and Allyson Longueira with an editorial team provided by Western Colorado University Graduate Program in Creative Writing, Publishing MA students. Anthology made possible by a generous contribution from Draft2Digital.

PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES CAREFULLY

Genre: Original stories and poetry in the genres of fantasy, science fiction, humor, and romance, appropriate for up to a “PG-13” audience. A happily-ever-after ending is encouraged but not mandatory. Diverse cultures, LGBTQ+, and non-traditional relationships are welcomed. No explicit sex, rape, incest, or graphic violence.

No copyrighted characters. Previously unpublished stories only (this includes independently published versions).

Length: up to 5000 words (firm limit)

Rate: 6¢/word on acceptance.
Rights: First Anthology Rights, print and ebook, and audiobook. Rights revert to author one month after publication; publisher retains non-exclusive right to include in the anthology as a whole.

Due: We are open to submissions from August 31 through October 7, 2024.  Final acceptances or rejections will be made by December 2024.

Submit: A Microsoft Word or RTF file in standard manuscript format to https://wordfirewestern.moksha.io/publication/confounding-cupids-when-love-goes-awry.  If you don’t know what standard manuscript format is, review, for example, https://www.shunn.net/format/classic/#google_vignette Submissions not in standard manuscript format may be rejected without being read.

One submission per person at a time, please. And NO Simultaneous Submissions—that means, if you send a story to us, DO NOT send it to another publication at the same time.

AI Policy: AI offers tools that many writers find useful, but YOU MUST WRITE YOUR OWN STORY. Your work cannot contain an appreciable amount of AI-generated content and must be fully copyrightable, per the US Copyright Office. See www.copyright.gov for details. You will be required to attest to this in the submission process.

PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES CAREFULLY. If you want to increase your chances and avoid mistakes, please read Slushpile Memories: How NOT to Get Rejected by Kevin J. Anderson