Events

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: $10.00 USD “The Future is Broken.” – Black Mirror What horrors will our technological hubris bring us in the future? When technology takes over more of our lives, what will it mean to be human, and will we fear what we have created? Artificial intelligence, robotics, bionics and cybernetics, clones, and virtual reality. These are a few of my favorite things. The technological singularity is fast approaching, and post-humanity is a frighteningly dark future. First and foremost, your submission must be a horror story and contain something emotionally, physically, or mentally horrifying. Secondly, the technology should be front and center, not just a deus ex machina. Whether it be a modern technology we are creating now with a purpose yet fully realized, or some new horror as yet to be discovered. We are looking for stories in the same vein as NETFLIX’s Black Mirror. Post-apocalypse is welcome, as are dystopian societies, but technology must have brought them about. Supernatural elements are welcome in conjunction with the technology. What we don’t want is aliens attacking humanity as the core conceit. What qualifies as “modern” technology is debatable; anything from the Cold War is the farthest back we’ll consider. Manuscript Format: *Font: either Courier or Times New Roman. *Double spaced, font 12 point. *Your manuscript must be in either DOC or RTF format. *Do not place your name in the manuscript, just the title.** *Following pages header to state: author name, story name, and page number. **This year, we are doing blind submissions. Wow us with your story.** In the body of the email: *With no header on the MS, the header info should be in the email as such: author name, mailing address, email address, and word count. *100 words or less biography about you. *One sentence explaining the story...

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: 5 contributor's copies Critical Blast Publishing is taking submissions for the anthology GODS & SERVICES. This anthology will be a collection of modern and post-modern fantasy stories revolving around the trope of the mysteriously appearing and disappearing shop. It settles onto any street as though it's always been there. The plate glass window hosts a letterboard sign advertising "GOODS & SERVICES."  The first "O" has fallen and lies stuck in the bottom of the letterboard.  The proprietor sells bric-a-brac to unsuspecting customers, which releases or puts them into contact with a god from any time or place in mythology or history. Chaos ensues as the protagonist gets the god he or she needs -- or deserves (and "deserves" can be widely interpreted).  Think along the lines of Tony Randall and Burl Ives in THE BRASS BOTTLE meets TWILIGHT ZONE and NIGHT GALLERY. Stories should be between 2000 and 10,000 words, submitted in manuscript format to [email protected] a Word attachment. Feel free to query the address to clarify and ask questions. For published pieces we ask for First Serial Rights. Understand most publications will not publish pieces that have been published in print, eBook, or on the web; as such, once your work is published by Critical Blast Publishing, it can only be marketed as a reprint, severely limiting the number of markets that will accept it, and could drastically reduce future potential pay rates. It is up to you, the author, to decide if publishing your work in print and/or eBook formats and/or on the web, giving up your First Publishing Right for a token payment, is really what you want to do. Payment: 5 copies of printed book. Deadline for submissions is October 31, 2018. Via: Critical Blast.

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: One penny Sterling per word, with a minimum payment of £10 Sterling for poems and very, very short stories, I am looking for stories and poems for a new anthology that involves British Folklore. The stories may be short or long, even as long as a novelette. The stories or poems can be of horror, humour or psychological. But, I don’t want any twee stories. I will pay one penny Sterling per word, with a minimum payment of £10 Sterling for poems and very, very short stories. For illustrations, I will pay £30 for ‘header’ illustrations to a story, £100 for full page illustrations and £200 for the cover illustration. All rights are reserved by the author and the artist. If your story, etc. has been published elsewhere, please let me know where and when the work was published. I would like to have all the material in by Halloween this year as I would like to have enough to keep me busy over Christmas. The anthology, hopefully, will be ready for release by February/March 2019. Contact me by email ([email protected] or [email protected]) or by post to Jon Harvey, 56 Mickle Hill, Sandhurst, Berkshire, GU47 8QU, UK. The following is a list of festivals, people and creatures of British folklore that I can think of. There are likely to be numerous others that either I don’t know or have forgotten about: There are festivals like Beltane (the Gaelic May Day festival), Samhain (the Gaelic celebration of end of the harvest) normally held on the night of the 31st October and there are other festivals held in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, such as Lughnasadh, which is similar to Samhain. There are folk such as the ‘The Green Man’, ‘John Barleycorn’, ‘Wayland Smith’ and ‘Herne the Hunter’. There’s the ‘Wild Hunt’ or the ‘Eternal Huntsmen’....

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: $10. 13 Postcards from Hell (partnered with The Bold Mom) This anthology is a PAID anthology ($10 plus e-copy of the book or audiobook, paid on publication) due to the level of difficulty. All stories are due by Halloween and the book will be released on Xmas. Also keep in mind, this will be an audiobook. What it is about: The theme behind each story is that Satan has decided t deliver postcards from 13 evil people condemned to Hell to someone who is living. Each story is made up of three stories. 1) First story: How did the bad guy die? 2) Second story: What did he encounter in Hell? and 3) Third story: The postcard, which is a message to anyone they believe is still living (can’t be someone who is dead and in heaven, I have a feeling God won’t let him deliver the correspondents) and the person’s reaction to the postcard. Each story can be anywhere from 300 to 7,000 words (they obviously don’t need to be the same length, the post card, most likely will be the shortest piece). I’m looking for extreme horror, but no violence against animals, no ….. Now, I know this is limiting, but I’m hoping this will bring out the creativity in the writers. After all, there is still a wide range of possibilities. How did the guy die? Natural causes, killed by a victim defending themselves, stupid accident, cops shoot him? Why did he get sent to Hell? What happened in Hell? Is it his worst nightmare or is he enjoying himself? Is he being tortured or he the one giving out the torture? Does he/she know they are in Hell? Also…has he/she escaped from Hell…I said condemn, never said they were still in...

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: Royalties and a contributor's copy Off the Beaten Path Press is proud to announce a call for submissions for a brand new anthology titled "HEROES OF THE APOCALYPSE". We're looking for submissions in the 5,000 - 15,000 word limits with stories of the end of the world. You pick the way. Whether it be natural disaster, zombies, pandemic, alien invasion, space asteroids, killer AI, supernatural demons or ghosts, giant monsters, nuclear war, or however you envision the end of everything coming for civilization. The only thing that these stories need to share are the heroes who fight against all odds to prevent the end (either in success or failure). This is what the stories need to be all about. The human response to the end. So even if you have a 1000 foot Lovercraftian demon stomping on major cities, we need to see the courage on the ground before the boot goes to ant. Please send your story copied into an email with your contact info to [email protected]. We're looking forward to seeing what you've got. Payment will include royalties paid for sales and a copy of the print version of the anthology. Close Date: Oct 31. Thanks!

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: Fiction - 1 cent a word, to a maximum of $20. Poetry - $5 per piece. Note: Must be a NZ or Australian author We publish SF, horror and dark fantasy short fiction from NZ and Australian authors. We publish bimonthly and open for submissions for the month prior to release. Our submission periods for 2018 are as follows: Issue #08: August (to publish in September) Issue #09: October (to publish in November) Issue #10: December (to publish in January 2019) In the Zine All work must be original and previously unpublished. We pay for first worldwide publication rights for six months and nonexclusive reprint rights. Copyright belongs to the author or artist. We simply ask for you to credit Breach as the site of first publication if your work is then subsequently reprinted elsewhere (after the six month exclusive period). Stories between 500 and 2000 words, in doc format. Poetry of a page length, doc format. Cover art in A4, 600dpi, RGB. Payment Short stories: 1 cent a word, to a maximum of $20. Poetry: $5 per piece. Cover art: $20 per piece. Via: Beach Magazine.

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: $0.01 per word Note: Non-audio reprints allowed Note: They love speculative fiction but aren't looking for horror, make sure to read the guidelines. The Overcast is currently open to submissions three times a year, during the months of January, April, and October. (Note we are no longer reading during July. Our summers have just gotten too hectic. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for understanding.)   What We Want We are interested in speculative fiction, whatever that means to you, be it Science Fiction, Fantasy, Steampunk, Magical Realism, Slipstream, or an as-yet-unnamed genre. Anything that looks at the world and life from an unexpected angle. We want the original vision of William Gibson. The magic and beauty of Erin Morgenstern. The uncompromising voice of Margaret Atwood. The technical brilliance of Ted Chiang. We want to read stories that transport us to places that we've never imagined. We want to still be thinking about a story days after reading it. Be original. Be amazing. We are based in Portland, OR, and shine a spotlight on writers hailing from, living in, or connected in some way to the Pacific Northwest, as loosely defined by the bioregion of Cascadia. We feel there is an exceptionally strong talent pool of speculative writers in Cascadia, and we want to celebrate and promote them to a larger audience. Roughly half the stories we publish are by PNW writers. That said, we are not exclusive, and the other half of our stories come from authors all over the globe. So no matter where you live, send us your stories. If they make us laugh, cry, or turn cartwheels of astonishment, preferably all at once, we will find a place for them on The Overcast. This is an audio format publication. We feel...

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: $0.06 and $0.08/word DreamForge Magazine is now open for limited submissions. We’re a new and exciting magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Our first issue is scheduled for publication in early 2019. Limited Submissions? If you’re reading this page, it’s probably because: We have sought you out in the hope you would consider submitting a story for one of our early issues. One of our friends or contacts has passed this link on to you. If, after you review what we’re looking for, you know a writer whose work might be a good fit for us, please feel free to share a link to this page. By Tithi Luadthong That said, we are not open to general submissions, so we ask that you not post this link to social media, your website, or otherwise generally broadcast. It will only lead to disappointment for us all. An Overview of DreamForge Magazine At DreamForge, our goal is to publish positive science and fantasy fiction. You can gain some sense of what we mean by this in reading our Rules of Fiction page. While we agree there will always be new and often tremendous struggles for humankind to overcome, we do not subscribe to hopelessness or futility as a vision of the future or of any setting or situation. DreamForge is about the triumph of reason and of humane-ity. Submission Guidelines By SFIO CRACHO To aid us in reviewing (and hopefully working with) your manuscript as efficiently as possible, it would help for you to read and follow our guidelines as presented here. Once you have everything in order, submit an electronic file in Word DOC or RTF format to [email protected] One submission at a time, please, but simultaneous submissions are OK. Our Current Submission Deadline: October 31,...

Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Payment: $15 In our stories, we crave the wild, weird, wonderful, and witty. Make us laugh, make us cry, surprise and shock us. Make us feel something. After all, isn’t that what writing is for? We are currently accepting submissions for our debut online literary magazine, Winter Solstice, which will be published on December 21, 2018. Submissions will close on Hallow’s Eve – October 31, 2018 Our next reading period will run from January 5, 2019 to May 18, 2019 for Summer Solstice, Volume 1 exclusively featuring writers between the ages of 13-20. We pay $15 per piece, and we buy first North American serial rights. Payments are made through PayPal on the date of publication. All rights revert to the author upon publication. Pieces and bios accepted for publication will be edited for any grammatical errors. We do not charge submission fees. Multiple submissions are allowed, but they must be in different genres. For example, you may not submit two fiction pieces, but you may submit a piece of fiction and a poem. If you are submitting more than one piece, please send each document in separate emails. Details for genres are listed below. We allow simultaneous submissions. Please inform us if your piece is accepted elsewhere. Work must be your own and not previously published, including on personal blogs. TO SUBMIT Email all submissions to [email protected] in docx format. For visual art and cartoon submissions, send in jpeg, jpg, png, or pdf. Put your name, title of piece, and category in the email subject line. Submissions will be read blindly, so please make sure your name does not appear anywhere on the document. Include your short bio and PayPal email address in the body of the email. We do not accept mailed submissions. We...

Icarus with broken wings Deadline: October 31st, 2018 Prize: $300 The Contest: Write a story of 5,000 words or less about the myth below. Deadline: October 31 by midnight Entry Fee: FREE! Prize: $300 * To understand Icarus, let’s start with his father, Daedalus, and the mess he got himself into on Crete. Because this whole Cretan mess might inspire your story. (If you want to skip the Cretan mess and get right to Icarus, scroll down to the heading that says GET RIGHT TO ICARUS.) Daedalus was blessed by Athena, goddess of wisdom, strategy, and craftsmanship. He came from “a noble Athenian clan called the Metionids,” and he was renowned throughout the Ancient world for his ability to come up with fantastical, innovative feats of architecture, engineering, and design—and for actually being able to pull these visions off. He wasn’t just an idea man. Daedalus got things done. * HERE’S WHERE THE CRETAN MESS STARTS. The King of Crete was really proud to be the King of Crete, and he declared that he’d been granted this position by the gods. He further declared that anything he prayed for would be granted, because he was so favored by the gods. So what did he pray for? A bull to come out of the sea. Obviously. He declared, “When this divine bull appears, I shall sacrifice it to Poseidon to prove my devotion to the gods!” He’d been pretty confident in himself so far, but I think he might’ve been a little shocked when a white bull actually did come out of the sea. Then the King was like, “Ohh, umm . . . that’s actually a pretty badass looking bull . . . if I could keep it, I could really enrich my own herds . . . and really, it’d be a shame to sacrifice...