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Taking Submissions: The Librarian
June 30, 2022
Deadline: June 30th, 2022
Payment: 8 cents per word
Theme: The Librarian travels the multiverse (along the timeline – past through the future – and across planetary systems and universes) helping out people, societies, and those in need, with their questions, problems, and research (as librarians do). Looking for positive, hopeful stories with positive endings, and narratives that celebrate librarians.
Note: Apologies for the late posting, we didn’t see an e-mail with this call when it went live as we normally do.
We are seeking stories for an anthology to be titled The Librarian which will collect stories about one Librarian’s adventures roving through the multiverse. To be published in the winter of 2022 by the Air and Nothingness Press.
Theme:
The Librarian travels the multiverse (along the timeline – past through the future – and across planetary systems and universes) helping out people, societies, and those in need, with their questions, problems, and research (as librarians do). Looking for positive, hopeful stories with positive endings, and narratives that celebrate librarians.
In the interest of assembling the book as a coherent whole, here are some guidelines concerning The Librarian as a character
(not hard and fast rules as such, but helpful suggestions):
1. The Librarian is always a force for good, for knowledge and learning, and for science.
2. When visiting a particular location in the timeline, planet, or alien culture, The Librarian has the ability to appear as that culture’s conception of their idealized ‘librarian’. Though sometimes they may choose to appear in a contrary or different form for reasons of their own. Therefore The Librarian may be a him, her, it, they, xer, sentient rock, etc… Author’s choice.
3. The Librarian can appear under many guises but they are always helpful, cheery, and maybe they have a bit of good natured snark/sense of humor about who they are. They might even help people pay their overdue library fines if the situation warrants.
4. The Librarian might carry a well-worn satchel (or cultural equivalent) which always contains just the book/media object/microfilm/quantum bio-crystal chip needed at that given time (think D&D Bag of Holding) though (idea credit – Cameron E. Quinn) perhaps the satchel is sentient (AI, magical, etc…), has its own sense of humor, and might communicate by giving the Librarian a different research resource just for fun or to be annoying/smarmy.
5. Stories can concern global events or be about one person interacting with The Librarian.
6. All stories should have a positive ending. This is to be an anthology of hope and knowledge.
Authors may explore any genre with their stories and we encourage a wide variety of ideas and interpretations.
Submission Dates
Submissions open: May 1, 2022
Submissions close: June 30, 2022
Reading/Review begins: July 1, 2022
Reading/Review ends: September 1, 2022
All authors will be contacted by: September 15, 2022
Download the complete OC submission PDF here.
General Submission Information
We like to seek out new authors and book ideas ourselves rather than be contacted directly because we are a small, self-funded press, and only publish 4-5 books a year. We usually offer open call submissions on anthologies we decide to do, or we contact authors directly if we have particular needs.
Ideal story lengths are between 1000-3000 words. We pay upon $0.08/word for the stories we publish. Most of our books are limited editions of between 100 and 125 copies and we prefer to print physical books over creating ebooks.
All potential book slots are currently filled for 2022.
- About the Author
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Stuart Conover is a father, husband, published author, blogger, geek, entrepreneur, horror fanatic, and runs a few websites including Horror Tree!