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Taking Submissions: Cryptids Emerging: Tales of Dark Cheer

May 1, 2021

Deadline: May 1st, 2021
Payment: 0.05¢ American per word
Theme: A cryptid from legend or make one up, we want a strange, spooky, alluring, sweet, and/or funny story of emerging. Whether that’s your cryptid coming out of hiding, a human being true to themselves, or a cryptid/human pairing falling in love, the heart of your tale is about rising, changing, growing.

Cryptids Emerging: Tales of Dark Cheer

Cryptids: they’re sea monsters and tooth fairies, jackalopes and bigfoot. Cultures worldwide have stories of their own, from Ireland’s fae to Puerto Rico’s chupacabras, Scotland’s Nessie to the Congo’s Mokele-mbembe, cryptids are creatures from folklore, they’re rumours, or in the case of this anthology…real.

That’s what our call for submissions is for: contemporary supernatural or historical fantasy about cryptids living with humans, or just at the edge of our vision, stories of what the world would look like if cryptids were real.

What We Want

Pick a cryptid from legend or make one up, we want a strange, spooky, alluring, sweet, and/or funny story of emerging. Whether that’s your cryptid coming out of hiding, a human being true to themselves, or a cryptid/human pairing falling in love, the heart of your tale is about rising, changing, growing. We’d especially love LGBTQIA+, disabled, Black, Asian, neurodiverse, and other minority characters, as well as Own Voices, so if you’re Latinx, for example, we’d adore a story set in Latin America.

What We Don’t Want

Violence, pain, and misery. Yes there can be a whiff and whisper of those in your tale, but we don’t want that front-and-center. We want just what the title says, dark cheer, which means creepy but kind, eerie but elegant, it means generally-positive stories of weird beings coming into their own. So we don’t get four stories about Nessie, look at the links below for something diverse, or check with us (no werewolf or vampire stories please, there are plenty elsewhere).

We pay 0.05¢ American per word for stories up to 5,000 words, and the deadline is 1 May 2021. Please send your story with 1.5 line spacing, in Times New Roman.

Here are a few links to get you going, but don’t worry if your cryptid isn’t found on Wikipedia’s cryptids page or their legendary creaturesurban legends, and cryptozoology pages.

For any questions or to submit your story to Atlin Merrick, email: [email protected].

Via: Improbable Press.

Details

Date:
May 1, 2021