Deadline: August 1st 2013
Payment: 20% of the total profit will be paid for each accepted story (at quarterly intervals; if
more than five stories are accepted, they will be placed in another anthology in this series. We’d
dislike reducing your pay)

Read the giant quote. It’s required.

“Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold. . .
.The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of
beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an
enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a
man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and
strangeness tie the tongue of a traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is
dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys lost.”—
J.R.R. Tolkein, “On Fairy-Stories”

See that quote?

I could go on for a dozen pages, pussy-footing ‘round what we want; but there, in Tolkien’s
seven lines of text, is exactly what we want in every way—the adventure, the fantastic, the allencompassing sehnsucht. The tone and style. Everything we wish is hidden there.
We aren’t looking for a Tolkien rehash, mind. We want stories that comfortably fit into the subgenre made up of Silverlock, Stardust, Watership Down, Wind in the Willows, Labyrinth, G. K. Chesterton’s entire output from The Innocence of Father Brown to Orthodoxy, Gaiman’s The
Sandman, The Hobbit, The Silver Chair, the first few chapters of The Last Unicorn (before
everything descends into fairy tale questioning madness—for when fairy tales are questioned,
there is nothing left but barbarities), Tangled, and Anastasia, among others.
We are not looking for retellings of fairy tales (though fresh-spun tales are welcome), nor are we
in search of Lord of the Rings-esque stories.
If these guidelines seem flimsy, it is only because we want to grant you supreme storytelling
freedom. Every door which we have not expressly locked is open to you. Write something
amazing.

Payment: 20% of the total profit will be paid for each accepted story (at quarterly intervals; if
more than five stories are accepted, they will be placed in another anthology in this series. We’d
dislike reducing your pay)

Rights: First World Digital and Print.

Deadline: Submissions open until August 1st, 2013

Rejections/Acceptances will be announced by the end of August, 2013.
Word Count: 4000-25,000 (No flash stories; going a bit over is fine, going a bit under won’t
kill you, but makes the editors vaguely uncomfortable).
How to submit your story:
(While we will not reject stories for failing to conform to proper formatting, proper formatting
makes editors very, very happy. And happy editors are your friends.)• All stories to be sent as an attachment to: [email protected]
• Tell us a bit about yourself and your story in the body of the email. Don’t stress about this, it
won’t make or break your submission.
• The file format must be in a .doc or .docx.
• Place your name / story title / word count in the subject line. For example
“Edgar Allan Poe / The Fall of the House of Usher / 7,300.” Word counts should be
rounded to the nearest hundred.
• Inside the document, please use Times New Roman in 12 and double spacing.
• At the top of your document, please include your name and email address.
 If you write a story about the real-world occult, do a good job of research. This editor
will get very pissy-pants if magic gets all mussed up.