Deadline: July 31st, 2025
Payment: Royalties
Theme: Lovecraftian horror

Cthulu: Dreams – our Lovecraftian anthology

Cthulu: Dreams–

This is horror.
Express yourself as the theme moves you.
Incorporate the Lovecraftian theme as you will into your horror story. Not all need contain an eldritch horror, remember The Alchemist. Good writing will triumph over concepts tightly aligned to a perception of the theme. We encourage you to weave the theme into an engaging story with well-developed characters and deep emotion.
Stories that contain infanticide, or rape will not be accepted. Consideration might be made for gratuitous gore, if the story calls for it.

Submission Period: May 1, 2025 to July 31, 2025

Submissions: No AI, 1 per author; no simultaneous submissions, no reprints;

Submission Cost: Free

Word Limit: 2,000 to 7,000 words

Submission Guidelines: Anonymous submission with no author name in document; 12 pt Times or Arial; .Doc or .Docx; double-space; first line indent; no tabs used.

Genres: Horror

Anticipated Pay: Royalty Share of D2D sales and Kickstarter Share

Each story will receive A D2D royalty share from the sales on the D2D platform and a percent of the Kickstarter. This does not include: wholesale to authors; or non-D2D retail outlets. Links will be available to direct your customers to D2D outlets.

Timeline Projections:
Submissions close: July 31, 2025
Review: Aug 2025
Acceptance / Rejection: Sep 2025
Edits: Oct 2025
Production: Oct 2025
Kickstarter: Oct 2025
Published: December 2025

Upon acceptance, the author is expected to work with the editor on at least one round of revisions in MSWord. Our publication goal will be the late fall of 2025; however, the extensive time needed to review and edit submissions may vary depending upon the submitted works and author’s response times. Inkd Publishing LLC will hold first publication rights for four months after publication and the continuing non-exclusive right to reproduce the work in Cthulu: Dreams.

Authors must provide assurance that their story submission is an original, previously unpublished work, was not generated by AI, is not currently under consideration elsewhere, and that it will not be submitted for publication elsewhere prior to receiving notification that it has not been accepted for inclusion in Behind the Shadows III: Dark Shadows.

D2D royalty sharing is ongoing financial compensation from Draft 2 Digital for stories published in the anthology. An account with Draft 2 Digital will be required to provide royalty share payments. US authors will also receive one complimentary paperback copy of the printed anthology, other shipping destinations can provide a US address.

Via: Inkd Publications.