Events

Deadline: September 1st 2018 Payent: 3 cents/word Furry: ‘noun informal 1.an enthusiast for animal characters with human characteristics, in particular a person who dresses up in costume as such a character or uses one as an avatar online.’ Furry can also mean actual anthropomorphic animal characters. Real animals acting like people (ie. WATERSHIP DOWN) or half-human/half-animal hybrids (ie. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). We’re looking for stories from the dark underbelly of Furry life. The Pooka who is not only invisible to everyone but Elwood Dowd (“Harvey”), but who is also slaughtering the neighborhood pets. The talking porcupine who uses an ancient form of acupuncture to mind-control the humans into a sex/blood cult. The couple who dress up as wolves, go to Furry cons, and actually eat people dressed as prey animals. You get the idea. Show us the corruption of innocence. Give us fur matted with blood. Make us squirm as we read. But, please, make sure you have a story to go with your gory. Please include a plot with your cum shot. If it’s all shock and no substance, we’ll likely pass. What we’re looking for: Genres: All sub-genres of horror accepted—extreme, bizzaro, erotic, new weird, splatterpunk—if it’s dark and it’s furry, we want it! Stories must be previously unpublished in any form Email:  [email protected] Length: 1,500 words up to 7K Deadline: September 1st 2018 Multiple Submissions: No Simultaneous Submissions: No Payment: 3 cents/word Editor: Ken MacGregor Publisher: Blood Bound Books Via: Blood Bound Books.

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: 5 cents per word The anthology Release the Virgins! is now open for submissions. Through a kickstarter campaign, we were able to raise enough to go ahead with this project, and we have confirmations from authors David Gerrold, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Jody Lynn Nye, Allen Steele, Steve Miller, Sharon Lee, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Gail Z. Martin, Cecilia Tan, Patrick Thomas, Shariann Lewitt, Alex Shvartsman, Hildy Silverman, and Daniel M. Kimmel. We should have room for a few extra stories as well. But only a few. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYWGqegtzrU Submissions are open for short stories that include, somewhere in the story, the phrase “Release the Virgins.” The story should be no more than 5,000 words. This should be sufficient for what should most likely be a somewhat humorous tale. The payment is 5 cents a word. Do not take this as an invitation to pad your story in order to earn a few more bucks. If your story is complete at 3,000 words, then end it. A good but padded story may get rejected over a concise, fast-moving one, because we want to fit in as many stories as possible. Unpublished authors are encouraged to submit, but will still face the same standards for submissions as the published authors. (Hint: Don’t send me a submission full of spelling and grammatical errors.) An email proposal is required to make sure you are not duplicating an idea already reserved by one of the accepted authors. Send to [email protected]. Once that is approved, your story should be double-spaced in rtf format with 12 point Times Roman font. There should be no spacing after the paragraphs. The first page must contain the name of the story, the word count, and your name, address, email, and phone number. Your cover letter should list any previous publications. The deadline...

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: $0.06 per word Radix Media is proud to present the next project in our publishing program: Futures, a series of short stories that will explore critical contemporary issues and their human ramifications in a science fiction setting. What would climate change look like in the future? What about policing? Labor issues? Immigration? The human cost of technology? By using science fiction as a means through which to unpack these issues, we hope that the stories will allow for a better understanding of our world and give us more tools in our struggle to make it better. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES We are looking for unpublished short stories that could be described as “literary science fiction.” The work should be about more than just rayguns and spaceships. (But there’s nothing wrong with those things!) They should explore the human element of science fiction, ask tough questions, and examine what it would mean to be alive in a future that is yet unwritten. We believe that good science fiction reflects the dreams and nightmares of the present day. Pieces should adhere to the following guidelines: Cover Letter Please submit a cover letter with your submission to [email protected], listing: Your contact information The title, word count, and a summary of the submission If you have been published in any major publications or won any awards Any association or relationship with a worker at Radix Media or a guest editor Manuscript Guidelines Between 5,000 and 10,000 words Typed, double-spaced pages Numbered pages Attach your submission as a .DOCX file. No .DOC or PDF files. Deadline is September 1, 2018. CONTRIBUTORS & PAYMENT Contributors to Futures will be paid at the rate of $0.06 per word. Payment for finished pieces will be issued within 30 days of publication. If you are a person of color, queer, trans, disabled,...

Deadline: September 1st 2018 Payment: 4¢ per word, if funded Tales From the Old Black Ambulance — a horror anthology that we will be attempting to fund via a Kickstarter campaign. This anthology has an open call for manuscripts and will pay at least 4¢ per word, if funded. Word count guidelines 5-10k, for a total anticipated length of 100k. Open for horror and weird stories about graveyards, cemeteries, mausoleums, morgues, funeral homes, funerary rites, and, of course, hearses. Juried. Deadline for submission is September 1st 2018. Accepted authors are expected to participate in anthology promotion during the Kickstarter campaign. Via: Prospective Press.

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: $20 per author per issue “Turning words into art is unnatural. It begins with a contrary attitude. It says, I am unhappy with the way things are and desire to make things different. Rather than represent the world, I will make something wildly and savagely new. I will defy logic. I will invest in new perceptions. I will combine and recombine and fabricate and juggle until something that I have never experienced is experienced. The process is alchemical. The process is violent. It goes to the heart of creativity. It disrupts and shatters. It is splendid with provocation. It is an aggression against banality. It is sharp and loud like a janitor scraping frost from a window. The hectic bounce of steam on a street after a truck roars by. The anarchy of waters, the comedy of the face, dangerous feelings vented from a cage of skin.” ~ John Olson Poetry — We believe poetry is contrary by nature, always defying, always tonguing the tang of novelty. We look especially for plurality of meaning, for dual reverberation of beauty and concern. Contrary’s poetry in particular often mimics the effects of fiction or commentary. We find ourselves enamored of prose poems because they are naturally contrary toward form – they tug on the forces of exposition or narrative – but prose poems remain the minority of all the poetic forms we publish. Please consider that Contrary receives vast amounts of poetry and that we can publish only a small percentage of that work. Please submit no more than three poems per issue. Our poetry editor is Shaindel Beers. Fiction — We ask our fiction writers to imagine their readers navigating a story with one finger poised over a mouse button. Can your story stay that finger to the end? We have published long...

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: Stories that are up to 5,000 words will receive $50.00, above 5,000 words will receive $100.00 It's dark... You’re tired. Not thinking straight. It’s the worst time of all for you to make decisions, and maybe that’s why you take a…WRONG  TURN. CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS We want your detective stories, your noir, your thrillers/mysteries. Any story you want to tell, any way you want to tell it…with the theme of WRONG TURN. Your story will be published in audiobook first, followed by paperback and ebook. We purchase the rights for this anthology, but authors retain their rights and are welcome to use their stories in any way they choose after publication. Payment: Stories that are up to 5,000 words will receive $50.00 Stories above 5,000 words will receive $100.00 Guidelines: Please submit your original story: Double spaced 12-point font Word document Basic formatting only Word count: up to 15k Previously published stories are okay if you own the rights   Submissions due: September 1, 2018 Email submissions and/or questions to: [email protected] Via: Blunder Woman Productions.

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: $0.06 per word for original fiction, $100 for reprints, and a $20 flat rate for flash fiction reprints (stories below 1,500 words). Note: Female authors only Note: Reprints Welcome In March 2019, Escape Artists will bring you ARTEMIS RISING for a fifth year. This special month-long event, across all four Escape Artists podcasts, is a celebration of stories written by women, in the broadest definition of the word. This year, Cast of Wonders is excited to introduce guest editors Amy Brennan and Karissa Sluss, with assistant editors Katherine Inskip and Alexis Goble. ARTEMIS RISING specifically highlights women in genre fiction, a demographic that has been underrepresented until recent years. This showcase helps to address that historical imbalance and correct the impression, which continues to persist in some social circles, that women cannot write excellent genre fiction. Who Can Submit Submissions are open to anyone who identifies as a woman to any degree. In past years, we have specifically included the term “non-binary” in our Artemis Rising submission calls — you may notice it is missing this year. English is flawed in its ability to accurately represent the breadth of human genders, and as such the language we use is always evolving. We respect the feedback that we’ve received regarding our use of “non-binary” as a catch-all: that it erroneously tilts the perception of non-binary people in a feminine direction. In a continuing effort to support diversity and inclusivity, we’re changing the language of our ARTEMIS RISING call. Non-binary authors who identify as women are welcome to submit. Your gender is for you to determine, and we support you and take you at your word. If you feel you have a story that helps cast light on the multitudinal existence that is womanness, please don’t self-reject....

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: Unknown for another month, likely pro rates Note: Sorry for the short window, was just e-mailed about this one last night. FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology will be published monthly on this site for a single year starting in January 2019 and ending December 2019, and will feature stellar YA stories from established and emerging authors. Each issue will feature three stories, one of which will be from a new voice specially selected by a beloved author. DEADLINE TO BE CONSIDERED FOR OUR FIRST ISSUES OF 2019: SEPT. 1, 2018.   WHAT WE’RE SEEKING: We are seeking original YA short stories. Please see our FAQ for what we mean by YA or young adult; stories that are not YA will not be passed along to our team of readers for consideration. Stories should be between 2,000 and 7,000 words. We especially encourage submissions from underrepresented voices, including people of color and Indigenous writers; LGBTQIA+ and gender diverse writers; writers with disabilities; and religious, ethnic, and cultural minorities. NEW VOICES: Every issue of FORESHADOW will feature a short story from a “new voice”—a writer who is very early in their career, and this story will be selected and introduced by a beloved, established author. New voices guidelines: Writers being considered as a new voice in our serial anthology cannot have a previously published: A young-adult, middle-grade, or adult book-length work of fiction. A full-length poetry collection. More than a few short stories, whether in print or online—we will look closely at the markets where they’ve been published to decide (e.g., someone with three stories in the New Yorker would not count as a “new voice”). Writers also, at the time of submission, cannot have a YA, middle-grade, or adult book of fiction under contract that will be published before January 2020. Writers who have...