Deadline: January 1st, 2023
Payment: 5 cents per word
Theme: Supernatural Stories – Ghosts, Cults, Hauntings, Etc

GrendelPress accepts short story submissions that fit into our chosen genres of Dark Fantasy, Horror, and Romance.
We will develop themes for each genre as submissions accumulate.

Unpublished short stories must be 3,000-7,000 words and if approved, will be featured in our anthologies consisting of ~65,000 words each. Approved stories will be published in English ebook and print. If approved, you will be notified when the anthology has received the perfect combination of stories to publish and it’s expected publication date.

Current Themes

• <Not Titled Yet> – Supernatural Stories – Ghosts, Cults, Hauntings, Etc

Compensation

We pay .05 per word in exchange for rights to publish your original stories in a seasonal anthology. No reprints, these stories must be unpublished elsewhere. We may be running multiple themed anthologies at a time, so feel free to submit one story per theme only.

Exclusivity Terms & Author Rights

What We Want

• Unpublished short stories with 3,000-7,000 words (we will consider stories that are slightly outside the word count range)
• We go for stories that are dark and deep; we are looking for the stories that stick with you long after you go to sleep.
• Stories with a depth of character that explore the mind as much as the monsters.
• Stories that show more than tell and build suspense before shock factor.
• Easily readable. It’s wonderful to craft a gorgeous story, but if people need a dictionary to understand it, we cannot accept it.

What We Do Not Want

• Stories published elsewhere
• Shorts without properly formatted dialogue or containing too many spelling and grammar errors. These stories may be returned to you with a request to clean them up and resubmit.
• Stories that are not Dark Fantasy, Horror, or Dark Romance
• Fan fiction or anything that may cause copyright issues.
• Sex is fine, but plot should come first.
• Stories that include intolerance of a person or group’s race, religion, nationality, physical or mental ability, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
• Gratuitous gore and violence with no purpose – blood and guts are fine as long as there’s something more going on than the shock factor.
• Stories that glorify, minimize, or inaccurately represent child abuse, animal abuse, or sexual assault.

Deadline & Schedule

We are always accepting submissions, but our first deadline will be January 1st, 2023. We will notify of your acceptance or denial via the email you provide in your submission. You have a chance at that time to consider our agreements and specify your method of payment.

This plan may change as unforeseen issues arise.
Phase One – Screening Stories
– We will cut off submissions for the four current anthologies on Jan 1st, 2023.

Phase Two – Correspondence
Jan 1st – Jan 31st
– Send initial acceptance/denials.
– Send separate email with the editing/publishing schedule going forward to the Accepted Queue.

Phase Three – Edit-Pocalypse
Feb 1st – April 1st
– We begin the process of editing the accepted stories and corresponding with the authors to polish the stories.

Phase Four – Cover Art & Marketing Materials
Feb 1st – April 1st

Phase Five – Begin Preorders and Launch Countdown
April 1st – July 30th

Simultaneous Submissions

To qualify your submission to us, your story must not have been published elsewhere. If you submit your story to another publication, please notify us of your withdrawal via email at [email protected]

Multiple Submissions

You may submit multiple stories of multiple genres to us! We will be taking submissions and crafting them into anthologies based on subject and theme. You may submit two completely different stories and have them published in completely different anthologies. We will communicate with you directly if your stories are accepted as to what anthology they will be published.

Manuscript Format

• The manuscript must be understandable by a mixed audience. Any English is fine as long as the average joe can understand all of the references and it follows basic grammar rules.
• 12 pt. Georgia or Times New Roman font, normal margins, and double spaced
• Do not use any special formatting like headers, page numbers, images, and page/section breaks
• Include your author’s name, title, and word count on the first page
• Indicate scene breaks with three stars, no space (***)
• Indicate the end of the manuscript with three stars, with spaces in between (* * *)
• Submission must be in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
• Save the file name in this format: Title of Story_Author’s Full Name
• You may use a penname as your author name, but please include your full legal name in the form submission box for payment purposes.

Send your Submissions

Via: Grendel Press.