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Taking Submissions: Lit Mag

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: $1,000 for fiction or nonfiction. $250 for a poem, a group of short poems, or (the rare) short short. What We Publish LITMAG PRINT Fiction Short stories, novellas Nonfiction Creative nonfiction; essays on literature, art, culture, and music; biography, memoir Poetry No restrictions on style or form LITMAG ONLINE Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry Up to 4,000 words. LITMAG CONTESTS LitMag‘s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction  First Prize: $3,500, publication, and agency review by Sobel Weber Associates (clients include: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Richard Russo, Laura Lee Smith). The contest is now closed. Winner and finalists will be announce on March 31, 2018.  Full contest guidelines will again be available again on Submittable when the next contest period opens. Full guidelines are also available on our blog. What We Look For  Work that moves and amazes us. We are drawn to big minds, large hearts, sharp pens Word Count Limits Print: 15,000 words Online: 4,000 words What to Send One story or essay at a time, up to five poems. Please wait until you have heard back from us before submitting again. Previously Unpublished We do not consider work that has previously been published either in print or online (including personal blogs etc.) What We Pay LitMag Print: Upon acceptance, we pay $1,000 for fiction or nonfiction; $250 for a poem, a group of short poems, or (the rare) short short LitMag Online: Upon acceptance, we pay $250 What We Acquire LitMag acquires First English-language print and electronic rights. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. When to Submit Regular submissions: Fiction is open: 10/1/17 to 11/30/17; 2/1/18 to 7/31/18* Poetry is open:  9/1/17 to 11/30/17; 3/1/18 to 7/31/18 Nonfiction is open: 8/1/17 to 11/30/17; 1/1/18 to 5/31/18 LitMag Online is open: 9/1/17 to 11/30/17; 2/1/18 to 6/30/18 *There is a submission fee for fiction only. There will be a window of...

Taking Submissions: Innsmouthbreathers: Cautionary Fables of Mythos Fandom!

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: .03CAD per word and a contributor's copy There are folks for whom the question of whether Cthulhu has two eyes or six is a vitally important one. Individuals that believe, somehow, that a dinner of tinned spaghetti and ice cream with a reanimated H. P. Lovecraft would be the height of both culinary and intellectual pleasure. Scholars who feel that The Horror at Red Hook is a timely warning about, well, you know… those other people. Esteemed biographers of weird fiction luminaries who reveal their foaming insecurity at the changing of the guard, or the form of a literary award. Entities who dissolve with glee at the slapping of some tentacles on a meme, thus rendering it “Lovecraftian”. Yes, they’re out there, in their seeming thousands, trolling social media, fawning over the dead, podcasting their paranoia. Yes, they are slouching roughly towards Arkham and Providence and fabled Y’ha-nthlei, to dwell in fossilized canon and geeky glory, forever.   INNSMOUTHBREATHERS.   Martian Migraine Press announces an open call for submissions to our latest anthology project, INNSMOUTHBREATHERS: Cautionary Fables of Mythos Fandom! We are looking for humourous stories of a certain kind of Cthulhu Mythos fan: the rabid Lovecraft worshipper, the defender of the outmoded and outclassed, the pulp reader for whom Weird Fiction peaked somewhere in the middle of the last century. (The 20th, for those keeping track of such things!) We’re looking for tales that pit Innsmouthbreathers against all manner of real and imagined horrors: shoggoths with Social Justice agendas, politically active Deep Ones, enlightened Mi-Go, and Nick Mamatas*. Make them lovable, make them loathsome, make us feel their triumphs and defeats! Put us in their basements, their garrets, their comic shops and conventions and pop-culture covens, and put us in their Cthulhu parody t-shirts while you’re at it. Mmm, is that a...

Taking Submissions: Life After All

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: $150.00 and 2 contributor's copies Life After All — an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic/pastoral apocalyptic LGBTQIA+ anthology — The end of the world is a dark, bleak place. Life is full of grit, misery, and barely scraping by. But if humans excel at anything, it’s making the best of a bad situation, and the end of the world would be no different. Less Than Three Press invites you to submit stories about life after the end of the world being far from bleak and hopeless. We want to see stories of hardened apocalypse survivors building new lives and homes with their found families; gentle robots terraforming the ruined remains of the Earth; your post-Earth space settlers slice-of-life. THE DETAILS: Deadline is July 31, 2018. Put SUBMISSIONS: TITLE (where TITLE is your title) in the subject line. Stories should be at least 8000 words and should not exceed approx 15000 words in length. Stories must be about a post-apocalyptic society. Stories must have a happily ever after (HEA) or happy for now (HFN) end. Any sub-genre is gladly accepted: sci-fi, mystery, contemporary, steampunk, etc. LT3 always welcomes representation of all genders and nonbinary or agender characters. All usual LT3 submission guidelines apply. Life After All is a general release anthology, which means authors will receive a flat payment of $150.00 once LT3 has a signed contract. Examples: Enchanted Soles, To the Victor. Authors will receive one copy each of the ebook formats LT3 produces and two copies of the paperback compilation. Stories should be complete before submitting, and as edited as possible—do not submit a first draft. They can be submitted in any format (doc, docx, rtf, odt, etc) preferably single spaced in an easy to read font (Times, Calibri, Arial) with no special formatting (no elaborate section separation,...

Contest: Deathscribe 2018, the 11th Annual Festival of Horror Radio Plays

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Winner: $100 and the coveted Bloody Axe Award Note: This only has 1 winner which we usually wouldn't fit but these guys do a GREAT show. The submission window for Deathscribe 2018, the 11th Annual Festival of Horror Radio Plays, is NOW OPEN. Submissions are accepted through our online submission form until July 31st. Every year we seek 10-minute audio drama scripts that are genuinely scary, imaginative, chilling, intelligent, suspenseful, horrific or downright grotesque. Writers may submit up to two audio drama scripts to Deathscribe in any given year. Five scripts will be selected from all submissions. These five pieces will be performed on stage in front of a live audience. The writer of the winning piece, chosen by a celebrity panel of judges, will receive the coveted Bloody Axe Award, as well as a $100 cash prize. Click here to SUBMIT Guidelines: PDF format is strongly preferred. If PDF is not possible, then only MS Word please. All scripts must have a title page with all contact information, but NO identifying information should appear anywhere else in the document. Scripts must be no more than TEN MINUTES in length, and should follow audio drama format. An example of proper audio drama format can be found here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/bbcradioscene.pdf The Deathscribe experience includes performing the pieces on stage with Foley artists and a band creating the sound effects and music live. Therefore, scripts must be ready to produce, including direction for sound and music cues. Sorry, but submissions cannot include usage of copyrighted music. Writers may submit up to two (2) scripts for Deathscribeconsideration in any year. NO SCREENPLAYS. SCREENPLAYS WILL BE DISCARDED. WE KNOW THEM WHEN WE SEE THEM. (Nothing against screenplays. But this is a radio play festival.) DO NOT submit full-length plays for consideration in Deathscribe. They will be discarded. If you wish to submit a full-length horror...

Taking Submissions: Mysterion

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: 6 cents per word for original work and 3 cents per word for reprints. Note: Reprints allowed We are looking for speculative stories--science fiction, fantasy, horror--with Christian themes, characters, or cosmology, and for artwork for this site. Fiction Guidelines Technical details Stories can be up to 8000 9000 words (thanks, Patreon supporters!). This is a hard limit--our submission system will enforce it. We pay 6 cents/word for original stories (or original translations of stories that have not previously appeared in English), and 3 cents/word for reprints. Authors are paid once we've agreed on edits and signed a contract, prior to earliest publication (generally on our Patreon page). We are seeking 6 months' exclusive worldwide publication rights for original works (with exceptions for established Best of the Year anthologies), and non-exclusive worldwide print and electronic rights thereafter for both original works and reprints. We want to publish your story online in our webzine and keep it there indefinitely. We're also acquiring the right to offer ebook versions of the stories we publish, as Patreon rewards or for purchase; and to publish a print and ebook anthology of all the stories that appeared in the webzine over a given 1- or 2-year period. For original fiction, we want to be the only place publishing it for the first 6 months; after that, you're welcome to publish it anywhere else in any format you like. No multiple or simultaneous submissions. Don't resubmit a story we've rejected unless we request revisions. However, if we rejected a story of yours for the Mysterion anthology, you can send it to us again, once, if we held your story for further consideration, or we rejected it with specific critiques of the story and you revised the story to address those critiques. (But if we've already rejected your story twice, it's probably not worth sending it to...

Taking Submissions: Mindscapes & Mysteries Unimagined

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: $25 Left Hand Publishers announces their new call for submissions for Mindscapes Unimagined and Mysteries Unimagined. Submissions open in early June, and close at the end of July. Do not submit before the submission date stated in the call (see below). Mindscapes Unimagined will focus on the supernatural, horror, fantasy, urban fantasy, and any speculative fiction. Mysteries Unimagined is much as it seems: spotlighting mysteries, thrillers, crime drama, and unanswered questions. All short stories submitted MUST have a twist toward the end that catches the reader off guard and surprises them with more than a touch of irony or shock. No simultaneous submissions, please. We ask that you do not submit a story to us and to another market at the same time. This has come up a number of times. It wastes your time and ours if we read, edit, review, and possibly accept your short story only to have it be accepted somewhere else at the same time. In order for our titles to be unique and original, we insist that all submissions be previously unpublished works and properly formatted. Please read and adhere to ALL the guidelines. Mindscapes & Mysteries Unimagined In our Call for Submissions for our anthologies we accept only short stories. Novels, novellas, and short story collections (as an entire book) should be submitted to https://lefthandpublishers.com/open-call-for-submissions/. We will review your submission and contact you on the viability of Left Hand Publishers accepting it to be published. Please use this form to submit your manuscript. If you do not receive a receipt of your submission within 72 hours, please email us at [email protected] to confirm that we have received your document. WIN A FREE AUTHOR WEBSITE Submitting your story automatically registers you in our Register To Win contest where you could win a FREE author website (some restrictions apply). It does NOT register you in our Win A Free Kindle contest. In...

Taking Submissions: New Myths

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: 1.5 cents/word with a minimum payment of $30 Submission Guidelines:  New Myths will no longer consider submissions of fiction, nonfiction and poetry outside of specific reading periods. These periods run from June 1-July 31 and from January 1-February 28. Artwork, requests for book reviews, and other correspondence can still be submitted at any time.   No Multiple Fiction Submissions Please do not send more than one fiction submission at a time. Wait until you receive an answer before sending a second story. No more than three fiction submissions total from any one author will be considered during a given reading period.    Poetry is different. See below. Contact information:   Please send fiction, nonfiction and poetry to [email protected].   Please send queries for book reviews to [email protected]   All other correspondence, including art submissions, to [email protected] NewMyths.com publishes speculative fiction of every stripe except graphic horror. We like each issue to have an eclectic variety of stories:  funny, frightening, hard and soft sci-fi, adventure, thoughtful, etc. Every issue includes at least one nonfiction piece dealing with some aspect of science, myth, folklore, or literature as it relates to speculative fiction, usually of the well-researched essay variety rather than opinion or editorial. Speculative poetry is welcome. We tend to receive a lot of free verse and not enough "form" poetry. We also buy one piece of artwork per issue, and occasionally commission one. We publish book reviews of recent releases about every two weeks. If you have written a review, or have a book coming out soon, please contact us. Reading an issue is the best way to know if your submission is a fit for NewMyths.com or not. Responses take 60-90 days on average. Feel free to send a follow-up query after that point. Submissions...

Taking Submissions: Diabolical Plots

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: 8 cents per word NOTE: During past submission window there were some problems with email notifications getting through to users.  If you think of it when submitting, write down the tracking number shown in your browser; you can use that to check the status at any time.(normally that would also be emailed in an auto-notification).  If you didn’t write that down, you can query, preferably by just letting us know your submitting email address. David Steffen is the editor, who you may also know from using the Submission Grinder writing tool or reading the Long List Anthology series.   Last year Diabolical Plots became a SFWA-qualifying market, so if you have a personal goal to join SFWA, making a sale here would help you toward that goal.   FICTION OVERVIEW Genres: science fiction, fantasy, horror (everything must have speculative element, even horror). Word count: 3500 words or less. This is a firm limit.  If you submit a longer story, it will be rejected unread and that will count as a submission. Do not query to ask permission to submit something longer–the answer will be no. Pay rate: 8 cents per word (more than the minimum professional rate as deemed by SFWA) Multiple submissions: A total of TWO submissions per author during this submission window.  You don’t have to wait for one response to send the second one–you can just send both whenever you want during the window.  We’re aiming to publish a couple stories of complementary length per month–one very short with one longer or two middling length ones–so I suggest that it would be a good idea to submit a short and long yourself if you have them available. Simultaneous submissions: No.  We understand we are tying up your story while you wait, and so we strive to respond as quickly as possible.  While each...