Events

Deadline: May 31st, 2023 Payment: USD $0.08 per word for original fiction. USD $100 per story for reprint fiction. Theme: Science Fiction Note: Reprints Welcome Escape Pod is a science fiction market. We are fairly flexible on what counts as science (superheroes! steampunk! space opera! time travel!) and are interested in exploring the range of the genre. We want stories that center science, technology, future projections, and/or alternate history, and how any or all of these things impact individuals and society. Escape Pod leans in the direction of escapism, hopepunk and optimism rather than grimdark and gloom. We love to see funny stories, which can include dark humor that doesn’t punch down, and satire that isn’t painfully bleak. Remember that the failure mode of irony is sincerity, so if you’re mocking something, be sure you’re hitting the right target. We’re not interested in stories that contain sexual assault, rape, child abuse, animal cruelty, gore, or horror. We also do not want to see stories that treat the hardships of marginalized people or groups as thought experiments. While we may have published stories with that type of content in the past, they are not currently a good fit for Escape Pod. Our primary audience is adult listeners and readers. Strong language and sexual situations are fine, but we are not an erotica market. We publish our stories in text and audio, but audio is our primary format. Because our audience cannot easily reread or skim, we prefer stories of high clarity and tight pacing. Complex syntax, elaborate structures and typographic novelties (e.g. footnotes) are difficult for us to publish. When in doubt, query us! Please visit PseudoPod for horror, Cast of Wonders for young adult, and PodCastle for fantasy fiction. Wordcount: Short stories – original fiction: 1,500-6,000 words (sweet spot: 2000-4000) Short stories – reprints ONLY: 1,500-7,500 words (sweet spot: any)...

Deadline: June 1st, 2023 Payment: 50$ payment and contributors copy Theme: Stories based on the work of Gemma Files and her Classic novel, Experimental Film From some of the writers and editors who helped to bring you A Walk in A Darker Wood and the recently published A Walk in a City of Shadows comes a new terrifying collection based on the work of one of Horror’s greatest living authors, Gemma Files! This is the second collection titled Experimental Files is being brought to you by Alien Sun Press and we are super excited about it! With the incredible John Langan set to write the foreword, this anthology is a tribute to not only to the work of Gemma Files but is in particular based off of her classic work, Experimental film. This collection will have illustrations from Sarah Walker and others as well as a cover done by the incomparable Dan Sauer. So here are the particulars…. What we want: - Stories based on the themes set out in Gemma Files’ classic work, Experimental Film. What does that mean? Well, firstly make sure you have read her work first and then send us something that is… -Unique and clever Horror stories involving cursed or dangerous film. These tales can be from the point of view of anyone involved in cinema from the visual artists all the way to the directors, to the actors or even the audience. Play around, try something new! -Stories with a strong Gemma Files feel about them- characters that are complex and encompass sometimes contradictory character traits- ‘evil’ that is done for good, etc. Use of myth, use of evocative scenery and a general spooky haunted vibe. -Weird Fiction style tales! -Poetic language with a dark bent -Creative takes on folklore -Well written leaning into...

Submission Window: April 1st, 2023 to June 1st, 2023 Payment: $0.01 per word Theme: Short horror stories in the 2,500-7,000-word range written in epistolary format—meaning, stories written as letters, journal entries, transcripts of radio broadcasts, newspaper clippings, text messages, etc. Edited by Jacob Steven Mohr   From Jacob Steven Mohr and Crystal Lake Publishing comes Dead Letters: Episodes of Epistolary Horror, a new anthology set to debut (tentatively) February of 2024.   As the name betrays, we’re looking for short horror stories in the 2,500-7,000-word range written in epistolary format—meaning, stories written as letters, journal entries, transcripts of radio broadcasts, newspaper clippings, text messages, etc.   Furthermore, each story should include some mention of how its manuscript was “discovered.” A letter found in a historian’s archive, for example. Or emails saved as part of a missing persons investigation. Or an audio file recovered from a dead podcaster’s PC. Push boundaries and play with the format—and above all, be scary!   Some comparable titles: Dracula, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Carrie, House of Leaves, and World War Z.   We will be accepting approximately 10-15 stories from this open call. Accepted tales will appear alongside original yarns from invited authors, who include Gemma Files, Ai Jiang, Red Lagoe, J.A.W. McCarthy, Scott J. Moses, and Gordon B. White. Submissions Open: April 1, 2023   Submissions Close: June 1, 2023   Length: 2,500 – 7,000 words   Payment: $0.01 per word   Format: Stories should be formatted in 12 pt. Times New Roman, double spaced.   Rights: Exclusive First Worldwide Publication, Print and Electronic Rights for 1 year (from date of publication), and non-exclusive rights thereafter.   Contributor Copies: 1 paperback and 1 eBook copy.   Simultaneous Submissions: Allowed. But please promptly withdraw your story if it is accepted elsewhere....

Deadline: June 1st, 2023 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...

Deadline: June 1st, 2023 Payment: Royalties Theme: Horror Note: Reprints Welcome M Presents is looking for submissions for their next Enter Madness anthology, Rising Dark, to be released later this year. Stories should be horrific, deal with the mysterious, and avoid the use of anything that could be considered socially unacceptable (violence toward children, unnecessary gore, sex for the sake of sex, erotica). I am only a single person so I will try my best to respond to all submissions. Stories must be fewer than 5,000 words, payment is a percent of royalties based upon the total number of words published. Open: March 1, 2023. Deadline: June 1, 2023. To submit: fill out the form at the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfl_yivMcFrhyXs1sJal_Alu6yV-SIP-Qj__rGJf1X1EjksYw/viewform?usp=pp_url On Royalties: You'll get payments to Paypal via DriveThruFiction/Onebookshelf (printer), accounts to both are FREE, if the email you provided differs, enter than email below. Payments will be made approximately 30 days after purchase unless requested otherwise. Note: Paypal takes a $1 processing fee for all transactions made directly from Onebookshelf, the more transfers then the more fees (example: if Paypal makes the payment to me then I am charged a fee, and an additional fee is paid if I personally transfer the royalty money to you; so you'll make more with an active account from DriveThruFiction). Via: The Enter Madness Contact Form.

Submission Window: May 1st - June 1st, 2023 Payment: 8 cents per word Theme: Souls-like" fantasy for this issue: things that remind you of Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Blasphemous and so on. Old Moon Quarterly is opening to general submissions on May 1, 2023, and the call will last until June 1, 2023. 1000-6000 word limit, 8c a word. We published dark fantasy and weird sword-and-sorcery. We are looking for what we might call "Souls-like" fantasy for this issue: things that remind you of Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Blasphemous and so on. We want dying earths and strange vistas. We want knights fighting against the rotting corpses of their god. We want witches struggling with the decay of memory and the mutability of identity. We want baroque prose, and spare prose, and everything in between, so long as it is melancholy, and tragic, and bloody. What  We  Want Old Moon publishes character-focused, weird sword-and-sorcery: stories of a dark and transgressive nature, set in a secondary or historical-paranormal (“our” reality, but with a twist, if you will) world, with a focus on rounded characters undergoing some sort of conflict, resolved (though not always successfully!) by the might of their main or mind. ​ We love stories that combine that sense of action and adventure with well-rounded characters who make us question our own realities and perceptions. We love to see the gothic, the baroque, the eldritch, and we love to see it hit with an axe. Weird fiction and sword-and-sorcery can both be slippery terms. That is part of the fun! But, for our purposes we know it may help prospective writers if we list a series of authors and their stories we feel encompass (at least in part) what we love about the borderland of sword/sorcery and weird fiction: Laird Barron ("Oblivion...

Submission Window: May 19th - June 1st, 2023 Payment: 8 cents per word Theme: "An effusively enthusiastic or ecstatic expression of feeling" in the SF, fantasy, space opera, hopepunk genres Theme: Rhapsody of the Spheres – SF, fantasy, space opera, hopepunk The dictionary defines a rhapsody as “an effusively enthusiastic or  ecstatic expression of feeling.” In ancient Greece, a rhapsody was also part of an epic poem of a suitable length for reciting. Edie Brickell waxed rhapsodic about a smile on a dog, and Queen and Liszt gave us their musical Bohemian and Hungarian rhapsodies, respectively. Please give us a speculative fiction story or poem about what would make us happy right now. Reading Period (open): May 19 – June 1, 2023 Writer Deadline: June 1, 2023 Publication Date: August 2023 Submissions Guidelines As of: March 3, 2023 We do themed anthologies. We are not currently accepting unsolicited reprints. We have also discussed the types of stories we prefer in an interview (note that the pay rate has increased) at D.L. Snell’s Market Scoops. We are temporarily closed for submissions. Stories should be submitted in either Microsoft Word (using double spacing), RTF,  or plain text. They should be between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Be sure they are the final version (any Review comments removed). Flash humor pieces (Grins and Gurgles) should be short, around 600-1,000 words. Please don’t send simultaneous or multiple submissions. If a story has been rejected, you can then send another (limit 2 per reading period). Please verify that your story is original, unpublished, and not written using AI. Submit by email to [email protected] either as an attachment (Word, RTF) or in the body of the mail (text). In the Subject: line of the email, please put flatsubmit:Title_of_Your_Work to avoid being deemed a canned meat product based on ham. If the work is for the humor...

Deadline: June 1st, 2023 Prizes: 2 novel winners and 2-3 novella winners: The prize for a novel is $1000 and a novella $250. Theme: Original fiction that "doesn't fit anywhere else" What’s special about the word “ofic” is that it’s short for “original fiction,” but only in contrast to fanfiction. The fanfic/ofic divide dichotomizes fiction into two categories: work that openly acknowledges the canon from which a work was transformed, and everything else. OFIC Magazine is a quarterly publication with a simple goal: to promote the original work of fanauthors whose aesthetics and interests may not align with the genres of traditional publishing, but whose work still aspires to literary aims—work that may be dark or grotesque, unabashedly joyful, or just too filthy for the general population. We publish work that can’t fit anywhere else. The OFIC Press Prize will be awarded to up to 2 novels and up to 3-4 novellas, which will be published in 2024. The prize for a novel is $1000 and a novella $250. Novels will be published as standalone books and novellas will be compiled into an anthology. We're looking for manuscripts that don't really fit in a traditional publishing category, maybe because they're too romance-y for general or literary fiction, and not romance-y enough for romance. Or maybe there's just a truly tasteless amount of smut. What we value most is an earnest portrayal of character, interesting relationship dynamics, and well-crafted prose that prioritizes clarity and voice. We can guarantee the winners their prize money, thorough editorial feedback, professional cover design, and digital publication. We plan to run a Kickstarter to fund a physical print and distribution. Should our Kickstarter succeed, you'll also receive 10 copies of your book/anthology. We'll do a print of 100 copies to sell in our online store in...