Deadline: September 30th 2016
Payment: one penny/word for stories and essays up to five thousand words long, and twenty-five cents a line for poems up to 60 lines long

We will be open to submissions from September 15^th to September 30^th for fiction, poetry, and essays. After September 30^th, we will close in order to be able to read and digest whatever comes in during that time. We will reopen for submissions again at a later date.

Before you hit ‘Send’ on your email, please read and if necessary, re-read the guidelines below, as they will vastly increase your chances of being read by Mark, Chris, and Jeff, and possibly published in a future issue of Skelos.

What We Are Looking For

Skelos is interested in original flash fiction, short fiction, poetry, and essays in the following genres:

• Weird Fiction, particularly any kind of updating on the classic “weird tale.”
• Dark Fantasy, whether high or low or somewhere in between.
• Horror, anything that turns convention on its head.
• Sword and Planet, especially an updating or reworking of the genre.
• New Weird, in that broad, dark, magical realism sense of the term.
• Slipstream, preferably flavored with one or more of the above genres.

Skelos wants material that exemplifies the above genres, not typifies them. Genre subversion is always a good thing. Anything that surprises us will be welcome as we try to redefine the Weird Tale for the 21^st century.

Material can be graphic, as needed, but we are not interested in erotica, hardcore sex, or romance writing. Werewolves and vampires are fine, provided you do something new and radically different with those old chestnuts. Please do not send game fiction or fiction based on another intellectual property. If you have doubts, questions, or uncertainties about any of the above, please query us first.

What We Buy

Skelos pays one penny/word for stories and essays up to five thousand words long, and twenty-five cents a line for poems up to 60 lines long. If you have a longer work that you would like considered, please query us first. We buy first North American printing rights and electronic publishing rights for one year. Stories, poems and essays bought during this time will not be scheduled before Skelos 4, in the Spring of 2017.

What to Send

• Please Include a Cover Letter with your name, email, phone number, the Title of your Story, approximate word count, and if applicable, any other markets or awards you’ve had success with. Attach this to your manuscript.
• Double space your manuscript, with 1” margins, and a Serif font that is both normal and readable. Number your pages. In short, please prepare a professional manuscript for consideration. There are many websites that can help you with formatting if you have questions.
• Send your submission as an attachment, in either .docx or .rtf format. Do not send a PDF file. Also, do not send your story in the body of the email. All entries must be sent via email. No snail mail entries will be accepted.
• Please only send one story, essay, and poem at a time. Multiple submissions will be discarded, unread.

All queries, samples, and stories that meet the above criteria are to be sent to [email protected]. We will contact you within 90 days regarding our decision one way or another.

Via: Skelos Press.