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Taking Submissions: Madame Gray’s Vault Of Gore

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: $5.00 for First Rights Theme: The weird, the gruesome, and the downright shocking are welcome. A happy ending is not required, but a twist ending is a big plus. Madame Gray is back and looking for blood-drenched tales of terror to add to her Vault of Gore. The weird, the gruesome, and the downright shocking are welcome. A happy ending is not required, but a twist ending is a big plus. Compiled and edited by Gerri R. Gray (Madame Gray's Creep Show, Blood & Blasphemy) and published by Hellbound Books, this anthology is open to all categories of horror. Undiscovered writers, as well as established voices, are welcome to submit their work. Contributors are invited to send a bio (up to 250 words) with their submission. Multiple and simultaneous submissions are okay. PLEASE read and adhere to our submission guidelines...  * Word format saved in .doc, or .docx * 12 pt times new roman * Double spaced * Absolutely NO extra lines between paragraphs! * 2.5K - 8K word count * Write 'MADAME GRAY GORE' along with your name and story title in the header of your email *The body of your submission email will be considered the cover letter. * The submission documents are to be separated and Word (.doc or .docx) documents are to be attached to your submission email. To submit, email your polished story to [email protected] - Make sure that you check your mss for grammar and punctuation, use our guidelines to help you: DOWNLOAD YOUR HBB GUIDE TO GRAMMAR HERE (PDF) Deadline: September 1st, 2021 NO REPRINTS - ORIGINAL UNPUBLISHED WORKS ONLY Payment: $5.00 for First Rights Capped at 120K words in total. Via: Hellbound Books Publishing.

Taking Submissions: Moonflake: October 2021 Issue

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: £25 Theme: Escapism PRINT ISSUE - October ​ Current Theme: E S C A P I S M (This can be escaping worlds, cities, identities or however else you interpret it.) ​ POETRY ​ Format; 12 pt, Baskerville Old Face font (or similar) You can rhyme or not, we don’t mind. No longer than 2 pages. Maximum 3 poems per writer. ​ PROSE ​ Format; 12 pt, Arial font (or similar) Minimum 100 words Maximum 2500 words Any use of non-English words is fine, just pop the English meaning in a footnote for us. ​ DEADLINE: 1st SEPTEMBER 2021 ​ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ​ PAYMENT DETAILS ​ ONLINE ISSUES ​ We pay £5 for each story/poem we publish in our online issues. ​ We are currently only able to pay via Paypal! ​ PRINT ISSUES ​ We pay £25 for each story/poem we publish in our print issues. ​ We are currently only able to pay via Paypal! Via: Moonflake Press.

Taking Submissions: The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: $130, and 2 print copies of the book. Theme: Non-fiction, true crime accounts of unsolved criminal cases and mysteries that can take place anywhere in the world and be from any time period Writers Call for Submissions: True Crime/Non-Fiction   Author and anthology editor Mitzi Szereto is currently seeking original true crime stories for the sixth volume in her true crime franchise, THE BEST NEW TRUE CRIME STORIES: UNSOLVED CRIMES & MYSTERIES.   (https://mitziszereto.com/call-for-submissions/) Seeking non-fiction, true crime accounts of unsolved criminal cases and mysteries that can take place anywhere in the world and be from any time period. Material can cover a wide range of criminal activity. First-person accounts are especially welcome from writers with a connection to their cases. Add something new to the story, a different viewpoint or angle. Material must be meticulously fact-checked before submission, including dates, names, locations, etc. This is a non-fiction book; everything must be 100% correct. To get an idea of the quality and variety of material I accept, please refer to the previous books in The Best New True Crime Stories series. Criminal subjects already covered in these volumes cannot be considered. Original material only; no reprints or fiction. Important: Writers must contact me in the first instance with a brief pitch for their story idea. (Note that acceptance of a proposal does not guarantee acceptance/publication of material.) Word count: 4,000-7,000 words One-time payment per story: USD $130, and 2 print copies of the book. Contributor fees paid approximately one month following publication. (Preferred payment method: PayPal.) For: Non-exclusive rights, with one-year’s exclusivity from date of publication. Final deadline for submissions: Sept. 1, 2021 (Submissions may close earlier. I select material on an on-going basis; those who submit work in advance of the deadline usually have a better chance of acceptance.) Email: TheBestNewTrueCrimeStories @ gmail.com (not case-sensitive) Submission requirements: Format: double-spaced Arial...

Taking Submissions: The Mercy Seat: Stories From Death Row

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: 5 cents per word Theme: Empathetic short stories that fall into the crime fiction genre told from the perspective of people on death row. No government should have the right to murder another human being. I don’t think that is a crazy statement to make, yet here we are, a mere fifteen days into 2021, and already the United States has executed two of its citizens: Lisa Marie Montgomery (52) and Cory Johnson (52). It should not matter whether or not they were guilty of their crimes. Capital punishment solves nothing. It never has, and it never will. Please check out the following information, from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP): Death sentencing and executions in the United States have steadily been declining in recent years. Despite these trends, death sentences continue to be imposed in a handful of states while the flaws and failures of this system are more apparent than ever. Racial Bias: Racial discrimination pervades the U.S. criminal justice system, resulting in disproportionate death sentences for people of color, especially African Americans. Read More  Innocence: There are numerous cases of individuals who have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt. Read More Cost: By eliminating the death penalty, states would have millions of dollars a year to invest in programs that are proven to prevent violent crime, create safer communities and support those who are harmed by crime and violence. Read More Victims: Any policy debate or criminal case dealing with capital punishment begins with the agonizing fact that someone in a family and in a community has been killed. A murder causes immeasurable suffering by victims’ families. Read More  Harm to Prison Workers: The system of imposing the death penalty for crime has unintended — and largely unspoken — consequences for those who work in corrections. Read More ...

Taking Submissions: Contrary Autumn 2021 Issue

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: $20 Theme: 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? “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...

Taking Submissions: Books and Bikes in Space

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: Minimum of $50 each, more depending on Kickstarter, and a contributor's copy. Theme: Original short fiction about bicycling and books, from a feminist perspective It’s time to start planning the tenth volume of the Bikes in Space feminist bicycle science fiction anthology! The theme for this one is books. Submissions are now open for original short fiction about bicycling and books, from a feminist perspective. These elements need to be intrinsic to the story. Send your most creative tales of bicycle-powered interlibrary loan on the moon, characters who literally leap out of books and go for a ride, a two-wheeled revolution sparked by seditious literature, the competing stories of steampunk velocipedists, a manual for futuristic bike messengers, a literal rewriting of gender norms… Have fun with this one! I especially welcome #ownvoices submissions and work by first-time writers. Genre: Stories can be in any speculative or fantastical genre—hard science fiction, space opera, epic fantasy, alternative history, paranormal romance, hope punk, modern fairy tales and anything around or in between. No fanfic, poetry, or erotica, please. Word count: 1,000 – 6,000 words Format: Google doc, MS word, Pages, text document, or PDF. Comics submissions of up to 6 pages can be submitted in thumbnails. Payment: A portion of profits after expenses from the Kickstarter project used to fund this book is split between contributors, with a guaranteed minimum of $50 each, plus copies of the book. Deadline: September 1, 2021 Send your submissions to elly at microcosmpublishing dot com I respond to all submissions and share my reading notes on request. Via: Elly Blue Publishing.

Taking Submissions: And the walls Came Crashing Down

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: $15 Theme: Stories taking place at the Rangeley Park which all of the details are below. There's hardly a mansion in New England that's been spared the aesthetic travesty wrought by the march of time. Ivy carpets stone; paint peels and shingles crack. And weeds force asunder the masonry. No longer home to families who command pocketbooks big enough for their upkeep or who can afford to house and employ a cadre of servants, the stately old homes of centuries past, the pride of the towns in which they sat, a beacon of wealth and power, today stand abandoned and in ruins. Or, worse still, have been crudely apportioned into apartments, populated by drunken students with no regard for the lifetime of attention and energy countless maids, who must surely now lie spinning in their graves, dedicated to keeping their rooms spic-and-span. In other cases, it is not educated men who hold the world in their fingertips who tread the squeaky floorboards of stately parlors, once symposiums that rivaled Socrates' himself, but dentists, who encourage their patients to spit in the open, utterly in contrast with the rules of social decorum. Perhaps more lucky are the homes that don't have to live with the indignity of such decay, but which burned down long ago. Now nothing more than stone-walled skeletons of their former selves, they ensnare the imagination and seem to command a much more romantic aura than their subdivided architectural brethren. Their charred remains engender, not pity, but compassion for tragedy. One cannot help but try to complete the picture of the house that once stood, or imagine the people who must have inhabited it. Were they, those lucky few who lived with such luxury, content? Or did they crack under the pressure and...

Taking Submissions: TexArcana

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: $10 Theme: Magical or fantasy stories set in Texas We’re accepting short stories for a new anthology, TexArcana! Basically, we’re looking for magical or fantasy stories set in Texas, any time period. Stories should be from 1,000 to 10,000 words. We’re looking for a sort of PG13 vibe, so no ultra-violence, no erotica, and no pro-confederate stories. We can’t pay very much, but we can offer a token payment of $10 for accepted stories. We will consider reprints, but only if you own all the rights, and please let us know where the story was previously published. You can email submissions as to [email protected]—please use doc, docx, or rtf files please. We prefer stories in Standard Manuscript format (see William Shunn), and welcome submissions from authors of all races, genders, ages, and sexual orientations. Submissions are due by September 1, 2021. Via: Lunarian Press.

Taking Submissions: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: Equal split of $500 between all accepted authors Theme: short parenting stories—CNF or fiction—that incorporate the weird, the surreal, or the speculative into the parenting narrative in some way. You know those personal parenting essays you read in The New York Times? We don’t want those. We want your short, short parenting stories—CNF or fiction—that incorporate the weird, the surreal, or the speculative into the parenting narrative in some way. We want ghosts and robots and Children of the Corn. We want angry shouts into the void. We want deep love that withstands tidal waves. We want small, everyday moments that turn inside out. We want to be disturbed, to laugh, to whimper, to gasp at the audacity of a parent telling us THAT. Are you not a parent, but you are or were put into a parent-like role and something unexpected and/or creepy and/or mystical happened? We want to read your story, too. We want exceptional writing. We want purposeful prose. We want you and your words! Parenting Stories Gone Speculative No poetry, please! Fiction or creative nonfiction only, and no need to tell us which genre your prose falls under. This hybrid collection is about the story! We welcome parenting-related stories from all types of parents and child-raising caregivers. We are extremely interested in publishing pieces from BIPOC+, LGBTQIA+, and parents of all dis/abilities. Stories will not be read anonymously for this anthology because it’s extremely important to the editor to create and publish a collection that includes a wide variety of parenting voices. Must be at least 18 to submit. All work must be the author’s own, in English or accompanied by an English translation. Single pieces by multiple authors considered. A maximum of 750 words, and preference will be given to shorter pieces....

Taking Submissions: In The Shadows of the Horns: A Black Metal Horror Anthology

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: .02 cents/word up to $100 Theme: Horror fiction focused on the atmosphere and themes of black metal. Satan, Occult, Violence, Pessimism, Chaos, Death, The Sublime, Nature, Paganism, Antinatalism, etc. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: We are looking for horror fiction focused on the atmosphere and themes of black metal. Satan, Occult, Violence, Pessimism, Chaos, Death, The Sublime, Nature, Paganism, Antinatalism, etc. are all elements that are essential to submissions. We are not offended by anything. Nothing is safe. Write with passion and invoke chaos. We do not care about your ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. We welcome all those devoted to the heinous path and negative existence. Please be familiar with the genre before submitting.  Don't be a poser. It will be obvious. The following authors' and works are of especial interests to the editors: H.P. Lovecraft Clark Ashton Smith Robert E. Howard Thomas Ligotti Robert W. Chambers Edgar Allan Poe Laird Barron Ambrose Bierce Robert Bloch Michael McDowell T.E.D. Klein Eugene Thacker Arthur Machen Algernon Blackwood Bentley Little   PAYMENT: Word Count: 1000 - 10,000 .02 cents/word. MAX PAYMENT: $100 (paypal/venmo)   DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 1st 2021   All submission must be in MANUSCRIPT format. If you need help with that. Go here https://www.shunn.net/format/classic/ Acceptable file format: .DOCX File SEND ALL SUBMISSIONS TO [email protected] Via: Gravely Unusual.

Taking Submissions: The Quiet Ones October 2021

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: $25 Theme: Ghosts of The Ruin Oct 21 Theme: Ghosts of The Ruin Publication: Digital Formats Deadline: September 1, 2021 Short Stories up to 5,000 words Flash and Micro Fiction up to 1,500 words Poetry Author Compensation: $25.00 (USD) per piece Rights: We request first worldwide and digital rights for four months following publication. Thereafter all rights revert to the author. All copyright remains with the author. Guidelines For all open calls, submit your work by email to [email protected] with the subject line formatted as such: “ ” (ex.“October 2021 – The Sinkhole – David Fey – Adult”). Please submit your work as an email attachment in .doc/.docx format. Authors may submit up to three pieces per issue. We request that each piece be submitted via its own individual email. You are welcomed to interpret each issue’s theme however you like. Ensure your document contains your story title, your name (or pen name), and an approximate word count. In the event that your story is selected for publication, we will need your legal name for the contract. Please include a header on each page of your document with your surname, title and page number. Your document should be formatted in Times New Roman, 12pt., with double line spacing and indented paragraphs. We do NOT accept simultaneous submissions. In case of acceptance, please also include a brief biography in the third person of approximately 75 words, a high-resolution headshot (optional), and any personal social media links (such as a Twitter or personal website) that you’d like to share. For a more detailed look at classic manuscript formatting, please refer to this article by WILLIAM SHUNN. Via: We Are The Quiet Ones.

Taking Submissions: Vautrin Magazine 2021

Deadline: September 1st, 2021 Payment: $130.00 and two contributor’s copies for fiction over 2,000 words., $65.00 and two contributor’s copies for fiction under 2,000 words., $50.00 and two contributor’s copies for literary essays. Theme: Gritty urban fiction, Crime/Mystery Fiction, Ghosts. The Supernatural, and Literary Essays We are open to submissions until September 1, 2021. Gritty urban fiction.  Jim Gavin’s Middle Men, Mary Miller’s Always Happy Hour, or Becky Mandelbaum’s Bad Kansas are good examples of what we mean by this. If you’ve written a compelling short story, though, no need to worry too much about “gritty” or “urban.”  You may submit the story. Crime/Mystery Fiction. Genre fiction is a fit at Vautrin. But if you’ve written a good short story with crime fiction elements that doesn’t necessarily seem like genre fiction, it could still be a fit. Ghosts. The Supernatural.  Balzac wrote The Wild Ass’s Skin, after all.  If old Honore tried it, so can we. And Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of our favorites. A crime fiction story with supernatural elements might hit the mark.  Or any mix of the above. Literary Essays. We’re interested in essays that talk about contemporary crime fiction, or essays that walk the path between, say, 19th century fiction and fiction in the here and now. We like symbolic inquiry.  If you’ve written something interesting and would like to publish it in Vautrin, you may submit it. If you’d like an inside track on the type of fiction we tend to publish, the most recent issue of the magazine is available here: Fiction should be no longer than 6,000 words. Essays should be no longer than 5,000 words. No flash fiction. No reprints. Limit one short story or essay submission per writer. $130.00 and two contributor’s copies for fiction over 2,000 words. $65.00 and two contributor’s copies for fiction...