Events

Deadline: November 1st, 2020 Payment: $10 Theme: A school of magic that accepts, promotes, and celebrates diversity. We want characters of racial, disability, gender, and sexuality diversity in this anthology. It doesn’t matter where your Dogbumps location is, and you can name the teachers and schoolmaster what you will. Note: Reprints welcome Editor: Jonathan W. Thurston Word count: 2,500-8,000; a little above and a little below will be acceptable “Welcome to Dogbumps Academy of Wayward Wixards. We have locations across the globe and maybe even multiple in your country. We take in all types: Latinx, trans, disabled, lesbian, black, gay, etc. We are pleased to have you enrolled at our school and even more pleased to give you, whom society has deemed 'lesser,' a place where you can be celebrated just as you are.” Wayward (adj):  difficult to control or predict because of unusual or perverse behavior Hell no, we won't be controlled. Or silenced. It’s time for a school of magic that accepts, promotes, and celebrates diversity. We want characters of racial, disability, gender, and sexuality diversity in this anthology. It doesn’t matter where your Dogbumps location is, and you can name the teachers and schoolmaster what you will. The genre or type of narrative is completely up to you. Whether spell students are trying to research a forgotten curse or the alchemy instructor is exploring polyamory with two non-witches outside the school, it’s up to you! The rating of this anthology can go up to R, but nothing X or higher. So basically, no explicitly described sexual scenes although sex can happen. We don’t want this to be an erotic book. Also, watch that you don’t use any copyrighted characters, names, places, spells, or ideas in your story! World notes: The school is called Dogbumps Academy of Wayward...

Deadline: November 1st, 2020 Payment: $0.01/word Theme: The darker side of baked goods ​Sliced Up Press is looking for short stories involving cake for its debut horror fiction anthology, Slashertorte: An Anthology of Cake Horror, edited by Ben Walker. Delicious as cake might be, we want you to bring out the darker side of baked goods and give us something scary, disturbing or just plain wrong. What we’re looking for: All submissions must be in the horror genre. While bizarro, splatterpunk and extreme horror are welcomed, we will not consider stories involving rape. We are especially interested in stories from under-represented groups in horror i.e. women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors. All submissions must be original. We will not accept reprints, or stories published elsewhere including on blogs, social media etc. No reworked pizza stories please. Submit your best work in standard manuscript format, as an MS Word .doc or .docx attachment. Authors may submit one story maximum for consideration. Do not re-send rejected stories. No simultaneous submissions. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES & TERMS: Please email submissions to [email protected] using the following format in the email subject line: Submission: – – . (so your email should look like this: Submission: Joe Bloggs – Cake or Death – 1,500 words) In the body of the email, please include an author bio of 3-4 sentences maximum. Payment: $0.01/word Length: 2,000 words maximum – longer pieces will not be considered. Deadline for submissions: 1st November 2020, or until filled Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by 30th November 2020 at the latest. If you have not heard back by the closing date of 30th November 2020, your story has been rejected. If you do receive a rejection, it will be a form letter – we will not critique your story. Please do not email to enquire after your submission, unless you...

Deadline: November 2nd, 2020 Payment: 6 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints Theme: Well written original work in science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form, and from around the world. Note: Reprints welcome     Submissions Schedule We have a new submissions schedule as of June 1, 2020: The first and second day of every month, 12 am of the 1st to 12 am of the 3rd, E.S.T. Only one submission per person. For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers. We pay 6¢ per word for new fiction, 2¢ per word for fiction reprints, 2 – 6¢ per word for new fact-based work, 1- 4¢ per word for reprinted fact articles. For new poetry, we pay $1 a line, reprints would be 50¢ a line, up to 40 lines. We’ll look at longer poems but that would be a hard sell, and words over 40 lines would be paid at 6¢ per word. We began The Kepler Award to recognize and encourage writers of excellent science fiction and fantasy stories that creatively extrapolate on known science in constructive and exciting ways. You can learn about The Kepler Award here. You can read a copy of our standard contract here.   It can be varied as needed to include the rights of translators, voice actors, etc. Writers Guidelines We accept new work as well as reprints, prose and poetry, anywhere from 1000 word flash fiction on up, but all else being equal, shorter pieces will be favored.   We have tough standards but only care about the quality of the writing, storytelling ability, characters, plot, and ideas, not whether you’re new or established.  Submit only work you are proud of —...

Deadline: November 2nd, 2020 Payment: 8 cents per word for original work, $100 flat rate for short story reprints, and $20 flat rate for flash fiction reprints Theme: Horror: dark, weird fiction. We run the spectrum from grim realism or crime drama, to magic-realism, to blatantly supernatural dark fantasy. Note: Reprints welcome PseudoPod is always looking for quality fiction to feed our listeners. If you’re a writer with a short horror story that you’d like to hear narrated by one of our talented performers, we’d like to see it. Probably. When we’re open, you can send it to us through our Moksha portal. Check to see if we’re open by reviewing our schedule. Multiple and Simultaneous Submissions For the submission period in 2020, we will consider one original and one reprint per author. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable WITH DISCLOSURE. Let us know that you are submitting this to multiple markets simultaneously. We’ll be transparent with you, and expect the same level of professionalism in return. The only exception to this is simultaneous submission of a particular story to multiple Escape Artists podcasts (Escape Pod, PodCastle, Cast of Wonders, and PseudoPod), which we ask that you avoid. When submitting to one Escape Artists podcast, please wait to hear back about it before submitting the same story to another. What We Want PseudoPod is a genre magazine in audio form. We’re looking for horror: dark, weird fiction. We run the spectrum from grim realism or crime drama, to magic-realism, to blatantly supernatural dark fantasy. We publish highly literary stories reminiscent of Poe or Lovecraft as well as vulgar shock-value pulp fiction. We don’t split hairs about genre definitions, and we do not observe any taboos about what kind of content can appear in our stories. Originality demands that you’re better off avoiding vampires, zombies, and other recognizable horror...