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Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $50 and royalties Theme: Fantasy stories that are, first and foremost, drag Note: For authors with a real connection to the drag community (see below for details) Fantasy Is a Drag! is a drag anthology. We’re looking for original, previously unpublished, fantasy stories that are, first and foremost, drag.  This is an anthology where those of us in the drag community can gather and tell the stories that we’d never be able to publish anywhere else.  Stories up to 10,000 words will be considered. Publication date is sometime in 2025. Submission Deadline: December 1, 2024 What we don’t want: • Stories by straight people who think drag performers are cute, funny, scary, etc. and have no real connection to the drag community or drag rhetoric. (We, of course, are cute, funny, scary, etc., but there’s an ineffable deeper element that those of us who are drag get and others don’t.) • Stories by LGBT+ people who think drag performers are cute, funny, scary, etc. and have no real connection to the drag community or drag rhetoric. (Or, if you think of people who do drag as “them” and not “us,” I’d prefer if you let “us” have a room of our own.) • Stories by members of the drag community that were written for the straights and have nothing drag about them at all.  You may certainly send us your drag stories that were written for the straights or your stories that are written for us in the drag community.  But they must be drag stories not just by someone who does drag. • Look, I don’t have the money to take on Disney, Warner, the Tolkien estate, or J.K. Rowling.  If it’s set in someone else’s intellectual property, I can’t use it.  The day I have the money...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: Royalties Theme: Ride along with illegal street teams and see the criminal underbelly of the Autoduelling world Genre: Car Wars GameLit Fiction Theme: Ride along with illegal street teams and see the criminal underbelly of the Autoduelling world. Concept: We’re looking for stories about illegal racers, races, and the dirty dealings that happen outside of the arenas. We want plenty of high-intensity action and carnage possible, backed by compelling character-driven stories. Word Count: 5,000 – 10,000 (standard word count) Opening Essay by: TBD Edited by: William Joseph Roberts Anchor Author: TBD Due Date: December 1, 2024 Email Submissions to: [email protected] with “Nightside” in the subject line Payment: Stories selected for publication in the upcoming Anthology(ies), will receive a percentage of sales divided equally between the contributing authors. We are looking for amazing stories from any genre that are fun to read and will take us on an adventure of epic proportions. Please download our standards template by clicking here ***NOTE*** We publish genre fiction with aspects of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. If your work does not include one of these aspects, we are less likely to pick up the title unless it is of exceptional quality.   What we are NOT currently accepting: Poetry Single-author collections of short stories. Hard and fast rules of what not to send: Fan-fiction: Just simply don’t. It will be immediately deleted or tossed into the recycle bin. Gratuitous Sexuality: (i.e. smut, softcore porn) (Please, we know that there is a market out there for stories in this genre, but it’s not for us. Contact our affiliate, Tanglewood press for submissions in this genre at tanglewoodromance (at) gmail.com Gratuitous Abuse/Violence: While we at Three Ravens Publishing understand that graphic situations can alter or otherwise move the plot forward in ways that the...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $10 and a contributors copy Theme: Inantimate objects that are living nanimate Things: Volume Two.  With the success of Volume One, we decided to do it again! We are looking for horror short stories between 1500 and 6,000 words in length (can go over a little bit, we aren’t too particular. Just not shorter than 1500 words) about inanimate things that are living. It could be a doll, the dead flesh of zombies, or your Ford F-150. The story needs to involve this subject in some way…and be scary too. Payment: Authors shall receive a payment of $10 along with a copy of the anthology once it’s completed. Rights: First Print and Electronic Publication rights, the non-exclusive rights to include the story in a print, audiobook, and digital book, and a one-year (12 month) period of exclusivity from the date of publication. All other rights remain entirely with the author. OTHER STUFF: No poetry or reprints. No novel extracts. Authors are welcome to submit more than one story for the anthology (no more than two per author though) but please submit them in separate emails. Submission Deadline: December 1, 2024. Expected Publication Date: April 15, 2025. Email submissions to [email protected] with a story either: 1) attached in Microsoft Word; or 2) with the entire story pasted inside the body of the email. Either one is fine. We try to reply and let you know if we are not using your submission within 4 weeks…but if you do not hear from within four weeks from submission (check your Spam folder) then we did not accept it. Please put EXACTLY the following in the subject line: ATTN: SUBMISSION FOR INANIMATE THINGS.  Via: Burial Books.

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: 15GBP Theme: Found Footage (Vol 105) FOUND FOOTAGE, 1st December 2024 Bring us stories from lost tapes, forgotten diaries, old film, banned video games, or wherever else you might find strange echoes in lost media. If you think you’ve got what it takes to terrify, scar and haunt our audience of 10,000 daily listeners, then we want your stories! If accepted, we'll get our fantastic narration team to lend their voices, our editor will sprinkle some magic pixie dust on the track, and you could have your story heard by thousands of listeners each week. *** WHEN WILL I HEAR IF MY STORY HAS BEEN ACCEPTED OR NOT? We carefully review every single submission that comes through our door. If you’ve submitted a story to us, please be patient. We WILL let you know if your submission has or hasn’t been successful. Having said that, if you haven’t heard anything up to twelve weeks after the deadline has passed, feel free to ping us an email to check in on it. Submission Guidelines • Stories must be 2,000 (10% tolerance +/-) • Save stories in a Word document - Times New Roman font, size 12 • Include a 1-2 sentence log line for your story at the end of the document • Ensure that your name and an email address are somewhere on the document • Stories must fit an upcoming theme • By submitting your story to us, you are confirming that you are the original creator of the story • We will consider entrants whose work has been entered and published elsewhere, however please ensure you state where and when your story has been used elsewhere on the document • You will be allowed to place one call-to-action for your own work at...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $50 Theme: Writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in. Schedule We publish two issues a year, September 1 and March 1. We accept general submissions for poetry, nonfiction, and fiction between two reading periods, and the first 300 submissions to each are free. We also run a collaborative writing contest in August. We also accept visual art all year. General Submissions: March 1 – May 1 General Submissions: October 1 – December 1 Collaboration Contest: July 15 –  August 31 Payment We are thrilled to finally be able to say that, starting with issue 17, we will be able to offer our contributors a small payment of $50 upon publication. A Note on Our Aesthetic We believe there is beauty in scars on smooth skin, in the small fissures where things begin to break apart. Sundogs are not the sun itself but phantom stars appearing on the horizon, illusions produced by the play of the sun’s heat with crystals of ice. They shed their light all the same. Many are tinged with color. We look for this same quality in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We want writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in. We seek a diversity of voices speaking from visceral, lived experience. We like truth we can stare at until our eyes water, words so carefully chosen we want to reread them as soon as we have finished. Practical Matters We are grateful to be a part of a literary community that is taking action against systemic racism. We will also be donating submission fees from our current...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $.08 per word up to 1,000 words; $.01 per word for longer submissions; $50 flat rate for poems, essays, articles and reviews. Theme: Speculative Fiction of Caribbean Pantheology (see description below) by Caribbean people or anyone with ancestral or migratory ties to the region OD Ekpeki Presents is accepting submissions of fiction, poetry, essays, articles and reviews till December 2024 for The Passage To Caribbean Pantheology, a speculative fiction anthology, edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Tonya Liburd, E.G. Condé and Fabrice Guerrier. Publication date is in 2025. The anthology will be co-published by OD Ekpeki Presents and MV Media, run by Milton Davis. Call: We define Caribbean Pantheology as stories spoken, sung, or written that evoke the wonder, horror, and joy of the Caribbean experience. Caribbean Pantheology will receive, read, translate and publish stories in all varieties of English (including Creole and Spanglish), Spanish, and French that engage with the diverse spiritual traditions of creators living in the Caribbean or its many diasporas. Between myth and legend, the fantastical and the speculative, the supernatural and the real, we seek stories that defy genre boundaries (fantasy, magical realism, surreal, the weird, speculative, science fiction) and the colonial borders that have long divided our islands into “Anglophone”, “Francophone”, and “Hispanophone” communities. Like the Caribbean, our pantheology is a meshwork of continents, deities, and languages, forged in the violence of colonialism, chattel slavery, and indentured labor. More than our scars, we Caribbean people are foundries of creativity and revolution. Like the maroon refuges built by our ancestors, we are spun from Indigenous (Garifuna, Guanahatabey, Kalinago, Taíno), African, Asian, and European traces. As such, we welcome stories that confront the spiritual wounds of our pasts, celebrate the rich traditions of our present, and imagine our flourishing futures. Send us your archipelagic tales of Soucouyants...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $1,500 USD and a contributors copy Theme: Horror from emerging North American Indigenous writers Never Whistle at Night, Part II: Back for Blood invites emerging Indigenous writers to submit their horror stories for the sequel to the international bestseller. This next anthology, featuring 20+ terrifying tales, focuses exclusively on horror and continues our mission of creating opportunities for Indigenous voices. About half of the stories will come from this open call, while the other half will be contributed by established names: some of whom aren't typically known for horror or even conventional narrative writing. Published by Vintage Books in the US and McClelland & Stewart and Random House Canada up north, this collection will explore the dark and haunting dimensions of Indigenous cultures across North America. Part II has an expected release of Fall 2026. Submission Window: September 1 at 9am Pacific to December 1 at 11:59pm Pacific. (Please check your local time. This is a hard deadline. No exceptions.) Submission Guidelines for Never Whistle at Night, Part II   We are seeking boundary-pushing horror stories from Indigenous writers of North America. Our anthology aims to showcase fresh, original voices in Indigenous Horror, and we encourage submissions that explore new and innovative themes. To ensure your story stands out, we advise all open-call writers to review our first anthology, Never Whistle at Night, to avoid duplicating plots or themes that we’ve already published.   Eligibility Criteria: You must be an Indigenous person of North America. You must be an emerging writer. What does "emerging" mean for this specific anthology? A writer that has never been published. A writer that has only published short stories in magazines, anthologies, etc. A writer that has published no more than one novel or fiction collection through a traditional publisher by the time they submit. A traditional publisher is defined...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Payment: $5 Theme: Fortune and Luck Winter Solstice 2024: Fortune and Luck. Submission Period: 1 November to 1 December 2024. Improbable events. Random associations, positive and negative. Is it chance or is it divine intervention? Send us your best poems, short stories, and essays about fortune and luck — good and bad — from a Pagan/polytheist, witchy, or mythological point of view. Send us poems about leprechauns, the Goddess Felicitas, the wheel of fortune, the cornucopia. Send us short stories about a man losing his luck to a cunning fae, the opening theme of Carmina Burana, the asteroid 19 Fortuna, and the wheel of fortune tarot card. Send us essays about the history of the four leaf clover, the adoption of feng shui in western interior design, and the evolution of the Goddess Fortuna into the medieval Lady Fortune. EHS is an ezine dedicated to 1) original poetry and 2) short fiction about the Gods and Goddesses and heroes of the world’s many Pagan/polytheist traditions. We feature 3) reviews of books, graphic novels, academic journals, magazines, movies, plays, and so forth which have a Pagan focus, or which otherwise might interest our Pagan readership. And 4) interviews with established and new Pagan authors, or authors of texts that interest a Pagan audience. And finally, 5) essays concerning the Gods, Goddesses, heroes, myths and folklore of the world. What do we mean by “original?” The submission must not have been previously published in hardcopy, or on another ezine, or website, or blog. Since people often discuss their writing on email lists and messageboards, we do not consider that previous publication. That is, if your poem or story or review has only appeared on email lists or messageboards, we still consider it original. Submission Guidelines We’re looking for hymns...

Deadline: December 1st, 2024 Prizes: $50 for each of the 3 category winners, $35 for each piece accepted (Technically pro-rates with the word count.) Theme: Flash fiction of no more than 350 words that’s both about Christmas (or any other winter holiday) and simultaneously weird am not dead. Nor have I given up the contest. I’m just late. Very late. Months late. But that means that this year, I won’t be announcing the contest when it’s unbearably hot, even though now it’s unbearably hot all the way through September. Climate change and the threat of ever-increasing summer just means I’ll be happier when it finally comes time to die for real. At least death seems colder. Cooler, at least, than Chicago in September. But you don’t care about me. You care about weird Christmas stories! And that’s a good thing, so let’s get one step closer to them! This is indeed the SEVENTH year of doing my little conceived-with-no-forethought concept that continues to eat up my entire November and December, but which I’m still lovingly devoted to! And it’s time to get to the nitty gritty of this year’s seed-planting. This is a contest for flash fiction of no more than 350 words that’s both about Christmas (or any other winter holiday) and simultaneously weird. Exactly what that means is, of course, up to you because you’re the one with literary pretentions and a damaged psyche. All you have to do is make something about the Christmas season seem new and unsettling with a bit of that grinning like you’re not sure if it’s funny or creepy, and you make your fellow co-conspirators in this hell of existence a bit more bearable. I’m changing things up a bit this year. In the past, I’ve given out an overall winner, but...