Deadline: July 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)

The glories are gone. No-one remembers the madman who stitched a new man together, corpse by corpse by corpse, into a living symbol. No-one remembers the sage of Baker Street, who solved the entire universe between puffs of his cherrywood. No-one remembers the metal men who punched evil whilst only wearing pajamas.

They are forgotten. Not forgotten in the way one forgets about Athanasius Kircher, but forgotten in the malacious way that finds Watson’s memiors rebound as fiction and TV shows chronicling our modern legends spring up like the weeds afront an abandoned house. Each legend is forgotten in their own way, by a force that would like the world to remain mundane and hidden.

They are the conspiracy. And they would much rather the world continues to be quiet here.

Write a story telling how some fictional object, character, or what-have-you ended up in the hands of the global conspiracy responsible for keeping the magic of the world secret. Think of the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but all extensive—every bit of magic and the exceptional in the world is collected, filed away, and either locked up or used for the expansion of the conspiracy’s activities.

In this anthology, you’re encouraged (nay, required) to use characters from other fictional works in order to tell your story. It’s part of the charm.

You may NOT break copyright in your story. You’re very welcome to tell the story of how a mysterious and perhaps magical wardrobe came into the conspiracy’s possession; but you may not tell a story about a lion-god named Aslan. You may write about a crippled old detective whose life was ruined by a statuette of a falcon; but you may not call him Sam. You may write of the true state of the magical schooling system in jolly old England; but you may not have a magical boy with a scar traipsing down his forehead like lightening, nor may you have a disgusting seven-souled man who lacks a nose.

The goal is to write a commentary on the fiction you’re examining, not write a fanfiction. Think of the relationship between A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Crying of Lot 49. Both are entangled, with ASOUE serving as a proper sequel, yet each are works in their own right. Tell us about the tropes, take the story apart, but don’t just leave us with another fanfiction. Break new ground. Think of how The Wide Sargasso Sea changes Jane Eyre, or how Tarzan Alive forces one to reconsider all they thought they knew about Tarzan. Dig deep, be creative, make us think about the fiction we’re all so invested in (while still telling a smashing tale!).

Think in terms of Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald.”

Semi-exception: public domain characters may be used with abandon. Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein and his Monster, Cthulhu and his tentacled buddies, little Alice and the forces of Wonderland, and so on. They are toys waiting the craft of your fingers and keyboards.

Over the millennia, the conspiracy has gone by thousands of names. Feel free to play with this or ignore it as you choose.

If you write a story about the occult, do a good job of research. This editor will get very pissy-pants if magic gets all mussed up.

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.
Deadline: Submissions open until July 1st, 2013
Rejections/Acceptances will be announced by the end of August, 2013.
Word Count: 4000-25,000 (No flash stories).
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.

[via: a href=”http://18thwall.wordpress.com/submissions/” target=”_blank”>18’th Wall.]