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Taking Submissions: Reanna the Red

Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: Royalties Theme: A Collection Of Viking Tales A Collection of Viking Tales Zimbell House is holding open submissions for short Viking tales that feature Reanna the Red. These tales must be about her leadership, heroics, and survival of her people. Your point of view character can be a bard telling of her exploits, her second in command explaining why they follow her, Reanna herself, or anyone that has witnessed her actions. However, once you pick a POV do not change it. Let your imagination roam and put our readers in the middle of the action. Our readers want to feel the cold, smell the sea-spray, hear the village sounds. Our readers want to understand the gods that are worshipped, have a true sense of what daily life is like and what the stakes are. Please keep foul language to a minimum-it loses its punch if over-used. Dialogue needs to be believable, and please keep dialects/slang to a bare minimum if you must use them. No head-hopping or POV changes. Pick one point of view and stick with it. Please show more of the action than just telling the reader what happens. Submissions of both short stories and novellas to this anthology are welcome, please keep in mind the minimum word count is 4,500 and the maximum word count is 19,500. This anthology is a great opportunity to showcase emerging writers and allow them to build their professional platforms. Submission Deadline: August 31, 2020, with a targeted release date of late October 2020. Submit your best work. Poorly formatted and unedited work will be turned down. Please use Americanized English spellings. We will be doing light editing as necessary to fit the standards we strive to maintain. Submission Guidelines: Any work under 4,500 words will be automatically disqualified for this anthology. The...

Taking Submissions: Spawn: Weird Horror Tales about Pregnancy, Birth and Babies

This is a full color digital illustration of a book cover depicting skeletons. Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: 6c per word for original stories, 2c per word for reprints Theme: Speculative fiction about Pregnancy, Birth and Babies Note: AUS Authors only Note: Reprints accepted Deadline: 31 August 2020 Payment: 6c per word for original stories, 2c per word for reprints (Australian currency) Publisher: IFWG Publishing Australia (co-published in North America through the IFWG Publishing International imprint) Note: Open to Australian writers only (citizens, residents and ex-pats) To be edited by award-winning author Deborah Sheldon, Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies will comprise stories from Australian writers obtained via commission and open callout. The commissioned writers are the multi-award-winning and bestselling authors Isobelle Carmody, Jack Dann, Kaaron Warren and Sean Williams. On-spec submissions are welcome from Australian writers of every persuasion including non-parents. Ideally, stories should be between 1500 and 5000 words, give or take. (Stories significantly longer than 5000 words would have to be outstanding.) Reprints will be considered, but must not be available for free anywhere online—the anthology will have only a small number of reprints, regardless. Artwork by commissioned Australian artists will complement selected stories. The anthology will be a visceral, frightening read. Each story must nominally tick the box of “body horror” but there is no restriction on subgenre: anything from sci-fi to fantasy to gothic to supernatural to psychological and beyond will be given equal consideration. Feel free to play with the theme and not take it too literally. Ideally, your story should make the reader feel uncomfortably aware of their physicality, morbidity or mortality. While graphic violence and swearing are acceptable, submissions must have a literary bent. Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies aims to deliver an elegant—and elevated—anthology of body horror. What to avoid: Gratuitous...

Taking Submissions: Liminality Poetry Magazine

Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: $10 Theme: We’re looking for speculative literary poems that touch the heart as much as the head; poems of the liminal, the fluid, and the fantastic. In anthropological terms, liminality is the midpoint of a ritual: the threshold where a person is no longer quite who they were, not yet who they might become. In between masks, what face might you have? What might you be in transit? Where will you go? Everything is possible in that moment; change is its own goal. Liminality is the space between. Liminality is an online quarterly magazine of speculative poetry edited by Shira Lipkin (co-founded and co-edited through our third year by Mattie Joiner). We are very pleased to meet you. We’re looking for speculative literary poems that touch the heart as much as the head; poems of the liminal, the fluid, and the fantastic. We’d love to see work that shifts shape, refuses to be to be easily pinned down or categorised. We actively welcome diversity; we want to hear new as well as established voices. Tell us tales we thought we knew, the way only you can tell them. Give us new myths. Liminality pays $10 per poem, for first worldwide publication rights and non-exclusive anthology rights. We will be open: January 1-February 28 April 1 – May 31 July 1 – August 31 To submit, send up to five poems to liminalitypoetry AT gmail.com with the subject line “SUBMISSION – ”. Please include your poems in the body of the e-mail; if you have formatting that makes that untenable, you may attach the poem as an .rtf. You may send up to five poems per reading period. We do not accept reprints or simultaneous submissions. (If the poem has been publicly viewable online, yes, it would be a reprint.)  “Dear Editor”, “Dear Shira”, and “Dear Mx. Lipkin” are...

Taking Submissions: Mardi Gras Mystery Anthology

Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: $5, royalties, and a contributors copy Theme: All stories must be centered around Mardi Gras and contain a crime. Back by Popular Demand: Mardi Gras Mysteries, a new Mardi Gras mystery anthology for 2021. All stories must be centered around Mardi Gras and contain a crime, up to and including murder.  Supernatural/occult content is allowed, as long as the story is a mystery. Please refrain from being too explicit with sex or gore in your story, although some detail is acceptable. The focus should be on the holiday and the mystery or crime. Women flashing their breasts for beads is one thing; detailed sexual acts are another. Man waking up naked in bed next to a dead body is acceptable; having sex with it 'on-screen' is not. Story length should be 2000-5000 words. The submission window is July 1st - August 31st, 2020. Please do not sub sooner. Publication of Mardi Gras Mysteries will take place in late December 2020/January 2021.  Send your submissions to [email protected] with “Mardi Gras Mysteries” in the subject line. If we buy your story, you will receive a free print copy of the book and a $5 USD advance on royalties. For further information on royalties and publishing rights, please go to our Submission Guidelines page.  Via: Mystery and Horror LLC.

Taking Submissions: Strange Aeon: 2020

Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: $20 and contributors copy Theme: Lovecraftian Tales The guidelines are simple. The working anthology title is Strange Aeon: 2020 (Lovecraftian Tales). That alone tells you most of what you need to know. I want good, solid Lovecraftian stories. I specifically say Lovecraftian rather than Cthulu because I’d like stories across the entire Mythos including additions by the original group of Mythos authors like Robert Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. Likewise, specific Mythos references are not as important as getting the right style and tone. For example, I would happily take Smith’s Seed From the Sepulcher over a Deep One tale. This style preference also applies to gore and sex: think early Weird Tales. Having said that, science fiction horror is strongly encouraged; this is not an anthology of period pieces. For this anthology I’m asking for non-exclusive rights and will happily take reprints. Simply tell me the publication history so that I can give proper copyright acknowledgement. Simultaneous and multiple submissions are acceptable (please do so in a professional manner.) Though I am not especially interested in non-fiction or poetry, I will consider it. At most only one non-fiction piece and one work of (long) poetry will be used. I’m not overly concerned about length. 2,500 to 10,000 words is preferable but I also know from personal experience that horror doesn’t always lend itself to a strict word count. I don’t care about submission formatting as long as it’s legible, clean copy. Electronically, I need the story either in the body of an email or an as RTF file. Please submit to the email address mkeatonauthor (at) gmail (dot) com with the word Submission in the header. The goal is a final book with about ten stories averaging 5,000 words apiece. I be receiving submissions...

Taking Submissions: It Came From Her Purse

Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: Original Stories: $25.00, Reprint Stories: $15.00, Flash Fiction: 1 cent/word, Poems: $5.00 (for minimalist poetry such as scifaiku, etc., the rates for Scifaikuest apply) Theme: Original stories with plot, tension, suspense, conflict, and character development. Note: Reprints welcome IT CAME FROM HER PURSE is a paperback anthology of stories, poems, and art, and will be published by Hiraeth Publishing. Editors for IT CAME FROM HER PURSE are Terrie Leigh Relf and Marcia Borell. IT CAME FROM HER PURSE is open to submissions as of 1 May 2020. We expect to close on 31 August 2020. We expect to publish on 1 January 2021. IT CAME FROM HER PURSE wants original stories with plot, tension, suspense, conflict, and character development. Remember, if readers do not care what happens to your main character(s), they won’t read the story. The narrative should maintain a sense of wondering what’s going to happen next; of what’s lurking just around the corner. Showing is better than telling. Frex, instead of telling the reader that it’s cold, show your character shivering, stomping feet, or having ice form on beard or hair. The inner thoughts and emotions of your character(s) are just as important. ​ IMPORTANT NOTE: “Purse” is not limited to a bag one carries around. It can be a wallet, a billfold, a coin pouch, a sachet. It can even refer to the prize for winning a horse race. Avoid getting hung up on a bag with a strap. If you’re looking for inspiration, think Roger Corman and what he might have done with this. If you saw the movie My Step-Mother is an Alien, remember the purse in that one, which carried a living computer shaped like a snake. Stories submitted to IT CAME FROM HER PURSE should be between 4K...

Taking Submissions: Strangely Funny VIII

Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: $5, royalties, and a contributors copy Theme: A story that must be funny and have supernatural/paranormal elements. This annual collection of funny paranormal stories is the press' flagship series. Your tale must be funny and have supernatural/paranormal elements. Examples of stories from previous collections: Homicide is summoned to a halfway house for the undead, a finger transplant from a serial killer leads to hilarious consequences, a mummy regrets hiring a cheap embalmer. Lovecraft humor is welcome; shaggy dog stories are not. Story length should be 2000-5000 words. If you sub something longer or shorter, it better be really funny. The submission window is August 1st - August 31st, 2020. Please do not sub sooner. Publication of SF VIII will take place in April/May 2021.  Send your submissions to [email protected] with “Strangely Funny” in the subject line. If we buy your story, you will receive a free print copy of the book and a $5 USD advance on royalties. For further information on royalties and publishing rights, please go to our Submission Guidelines page. Via: Mystery and Horror LLC.

Taking Submissions: Apparition Lit Magazine (Short Window!)

Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: $0.03 per word, minimum of $30.00 dollars for short stories. $30 per poem Theme: Satisfaction Note: This call doesn't officially open until the 15th but is going live early due to the short submission window Apparition Lit is open for poetry and short story submissions four times a year. February 15-28 May 15-31 August 15-31 November 15-30 Submissions received outside of posted open dates will be deleted unread. Our themes for 2020 will be: Experimentation (Submission period November 15-30, 2019 CLOSED, Published January 2020) Transfiguration (Submission period February 15-29, 2020, CLOSED Published April 2020) Redemption (Submission period May 15-31, 2020, CLOSED Published July 2020) Satisfaction (Submission period August 15-31, 2020, CLOSED Publishing October 2020) Our previous themes for 2019: Resistance (Published January 2019) – Ambition (Published April 2019) – Retribution (Published July 2019) – Euphoria (Published October 2019) for 2018: Apparition (Published January 2018) – Delusion (Published April 2018) – Vision (Published July 2018) – Diversion (Published October 2018) Apparition Lit also holds monthly flash fiction contests. These stories are published online only. We accept submissions for the flash fiction contest between the 1st and 15th of each month. Stories must be under 1k words and based on the theme for that month. You can see each month’s theme, and guidelines, in the flash fiction drop down below. For detailed submission guidelines, please see each category drop down below. PAYMENT: Apparition is a semi-pro rate magazine, paying $0.03 per word, minimum of $30.00 dollars for short stories (excluding flash contest. See details in the Flash Fiction dropdown for flash rates) and a flat fee of $30 per poem. If we accept your story, we are purchasing the right to publish the story online and in the quarterly edition. Rights will revert back to the artist after one year. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR: (Click on the sections to see detailed guidelines for each classification.) SHORT FICTION SHORT FICTION: We will only accept stories between 1000-5000 words. If the story is complete with...