Events

Deadline: November 5th 2013 Payment: $20.00 his is how the world ends. This is how the world ends. This is how the world ends. Not in a bang, but in a book. … with a dinosaur … a comment … a storm … an arguing man … an unhelpful computer Show us your moment from the end of the world. Show us the tragedy, the beauty, and, of course, the horror. Whether cold war style button pushing. or sailing off the edge of the world, this anthology is open to all dark tales of the final days. We won't say "NO ZOMBIES", but we will say that we've read a lot of those, and yours needs to be great to get in This is QuickLLI anthology, as such will have 52 (give or take, apparently) stories. Maximum of 500 words. You may submit up to three (3) stories; however the plan will be to only accept one story per author. For queries, please email [email protected] READING PERIOD: October 5th 2013 to November 5th 2013 PAYMENT: $20.00 flat rate RIGHTS: non-exclusive print and electronic rights FORMAT: please use standard manuscript formatting, for more information see: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html Submissions will be done through Submittable (Link coming soon) REPRINTS: Unpublished work will get first consideration. Any submitted reprint must not have been published within the last 12 months, and the author must retain all applicable rights. All previous publication information (for the submitted story only) must be disclosed. RESPONSE TIME: 60 days or less.   Source: Apokrupha.

Deadline: November 10th 2013 Payment: The winners will be in a limited holiday booklet, and will receive 5 copies each. Locals get a spot on the open mic at the event. This is a challenge for visual and flash fiction. We all know the carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas. …what happens at night? What happens on those dark, cold nights of December? Seeking submissions, due November 10, for visual art and written pieces of 500 words or less, exploring the dark side of Christmas. Your launch point is one of the Twelve Days. We will pick the single best entry for each of the Twelve days. Please post your entry in the comments below, if you’d like others to see it or email it to [email protected]. The booklets will be available at Belsnickle Faire and afterwards. The winners will be in a limited holiday booklet, and will receive 5 copies each. Locals get a spot on the open mic at the event. This is a lighthearted look at the darker side of the season. Have fun!! Source: Poshrat Productions.

Deadline: November 15th, 2013 Payment: Exposure Only The Day the Zombies Ruled the Earth. Micro (100-500 words), Flash (500-1K) and Short Stories (1k up to 2500 words). Drabbles considered. A general zombie themed issue. Send me any general zombie stories. Extra credit brownie points for genre-blenders, as usual. Zombies in unusual places and circumstances also win a special place in my editorial heart. Deadline: November 15th, 2013. Submissions should be sent to [email protected] Copy and paste your submission in the body of an email. Attachments will not be opened. No exceptions. Please do NOT format your stories in blog-format style. Format it as you would for a regular print submission. Formatting blog-style (no paragraph indents, spaces between paragraphs) causes me horrible headaches when I try to load the stories onto a post. Spaces between paragraphs adds more than one extra space on the post, due to the HTML horror known as a div tag. I truly hope the son of a bitch who came up with that rots in hell. WordPress automatically inserts a crapload of div tags whenever it encounters space, adding even more space. (I know, WTF? Right?) I am a college student and I don’t have time to take out extra space, which would really make your stories look horrible if left in. But please DO indent paragraphs. If you don’t, I won’t know where new paragraphs begin and will have to reject your story just because of that.   Please include with your submission a 50-100 word author bio. You can include a brief publication history and any web/social media links you’d like readers to know. For the subject line, follow the directions listed for each issue on the Call for Submissions page. The basic format is: NAME OF ISSUE-TITLE OF YOUR STORY. In all caps. Easier to...

Deadline: November 15th, 2013 Contest Winner: ten dollars and have their story featured produced in audio form on the Human Echoes Podcast In 1845 Sir John Franklin left the ice-bound hulls his ships, the Terror and the Erebus, and led his men into the arctic wilderness carrying a sled-load of button polish, handkerchiefs, curtain rods and a writing desk. Why? One theory posits that the men of the expedition were poisoned by the lead solder used on their canned food, and became completely delusional. Imagine it. You're cut off from the world you know, pushing forward into a hostile and alien landscape, exploring territory never before mapped...and then you start seeing things. Without the grounding of familiarity how would you know what was real and was was illusion? That's the essence of this challenge. Write a story in less than a thousand words about someone losing their grip on reality in a place where they can't be sure what reality is. Send submissions to hepodcast @ gmail.com with "On the Frontiers of Madness" in the subject line with the story attached (we prefer .doc files if possible). We also prefer double spaced and with a clean font. Comic sans will get you an instant rejection. The contest winner will be awarded ten dollars and have their story featured produced in audio form on the Human Echoes Podcast. Check out some of our other audio stories to get a feel for what we like. The contest will end on November 15th, 2013. Via: Human Echoes Podcast.

Deadline: November 20th, 2013 Payment: $10 per story   Each monthly flash fiction call has a theme. We ask you to write an SFF story (SciFi, Fantasy, Horror, or related sub-genres) that fits the theme in some way. You’ll find a list of upcoming themes below. Please only submit a story for a particular theme during that theme’s submission period. Stories submitted during the wrong submission period will be deleted unread. Though this is a flash fiction contest, we’re still looking for stories with a strong narrative arc. We want stories that introduce us to character, world, and conflict in the opening 1-2 graphs. (Conflict isn’t just a fight, by the way.) We want a middle free of too much backstory; we want forward momentum. Last, we want an ending the resolves the plot, directly or subtly. We only want stories between 500 and 1,000 words, inclusive. We pay a flat rate of $10 per story, regardless of length. Now, without further ado, let’s showcase the themes, shall we?   Send your submission in an email to kazkasubsgmail.com. Attach your file to the email. Don’t forget to include your cover letter in the body of the email. Subject Line: Flash Fiction Contest (e.g. “Flash Fiction Contest ” for the ‘Sax & Violins’ prompt). Imprecise subject lines may result in lost submissions. Here are the rules and details. Word Count: We’re looking for a piece of flash fiction that is between 500 and 1000 words long. Thus: 499 < YOUR STORY < 1,001 We won’t publish stories north or south of this mark. Deadline: At midnight, as the 20th rolls into the 21st in California, we’ll stop accepting submissions for the current month’s contest. All dates and times relate to California time (Pacific PST/PDT). Manuscript & Cover Letter: Please get close to standard manuscript formatting. However, we’ll be formatting your...

Deadline: November 20th for synopsis, December 15th for first draft Payment: A portion of the book's royalties The Premise: Out in the universe, there is predicted to be millions of planets harbouring sentient life, thousands of civilisations of sapient races, going about their lives; struggling, fighting, maybe loving, having adventures, maybe suffering under dystopian tyrants, or in societies of harmony and peace and complacency. These worlds, due to the nature of the speed of light and relativity, will never meet each other in person across the vast stretches of space, and any messages or signals sent between them wouldn’t reach their destinations for millions of years, long after both civilisations are gone. The premise of our anthology is themed very specifically towards being an anthology which collects stories from these diverse worlds and settings. Each short story would be a snapshot of that location and time. The only motif linking the stories will be the mysterious Drift Engine; an outwardly-featureless cylinder exactly one kilometre long, and one hundred metres in diameter; a strange wandering machine from some forgotten corner of the universe, travelling the universe, searching out and documenting these settings. Writer Guidelines What we want from any writers looking to contribute to the anthology is both very broad and very specific (if such a thing is possible). We want people to submit any kind of short story. Any genre you can think of. Techno thrillers, horrors, political dramas, tragic romance stories, comedies, hard sci-fi, space operas, high fantasy stories, low-fantasy stories, utopias, dystopias, stories of exploration or discovery; literally any genre you like. In fact, the more diverse and different synopses we get, the better. However, there are three cast-iron stipulations; breaking any of them means your synopsis cannot be accepted. They are as follows: 1) Your story cannot...

Submission Period: September 1st 2013 - November 30, 2013 Payment: 5 cents (CAD) per word and two contributor copies Silvia Moreno-Garcia will be editing Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse, an anthology of Canadian post-apocalypse stories for Exile Editions. The editor is interested in stories from 2,000 to 10,000 words. Stories must be set in Canada and written by Canadian authors. Canadians living abroad must indicate their status in their cover letter. Please indicate if you consider yourself any of the following in the cover letter: Aboriginal writer, culturally diverse writer, Francophone writer, new generation writer (definitions below). What is the post-apocalypse? By post-apocalypse we refer to fiction set after a great disaster such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, ecological collapse, etc. Mary Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man is considered the first work of modern apocalyptic fiction, but many have followed in her footsteps in both print (The Hunger Games, I Am Legend, The Road, Oryx and Crake, etc.) and film (Mad Max, Waterworld, The Book of Eli, etc.). Fractured is interested in the Canadian post-apocalypse. Will the waters rise and swallow Vancouver? Will Nunavut become a jungle? Will Toronto be under the rule of our new robot overlords? Caveat: I won’t say no to zombie stories, but if you sent me a story for Dead North I don’t want to see it again. Sorry. Must the stories be bleak? No! The post-apocalypse could be very good for some people. If we had another ice age, for example, the Inuit might adapt and survive it better than people in the south. Remember that in The Day of the Triffids people went blind because they stared at the meteor shower? But if you were already blind, wouldn’t you have an advantage, then? What do you want to see? Stories that explore a diversity of scenarios and settings, from small rural communities to...

Submission Period: September 1 – November 30, 2013 Payment: $10 and paperback copy of the anthology   Anthologist: Rhonda Parrish Have you ever noticed that, despite the name, there is often a conspicuous absence of fairies in fairy tales? Historically speaking fairies have been mischievous or malignant. They’ve dwelt in forests, collected teeth or crafted shoes. In Fae, we want stories that honor that rich history but explore new and interesting takes on fairies as well. We want urban fairies and arctic fairies, steampunk fairies, time-traveling and digital fairies. We want stories that bridge traditional and modern styles and while we’re at it, we want stories about fairy-like creatures too. Bring us your sprites, your pixies, your seelies and unseelies, silkies, goblins or gnomes, brownies and imps. We want them all. We’re looking for lush settings, beautiful prose and complex characters. Rights and compensation: Payment: $10 and paperback copy of the anthology from World Weaver Press. We are looking for previously unpublished works in English. Seeking first world rights in English and exclusive right to publish in print and electronic format for six months after publication date, after which publisher retains nonexclusive right to continue to publish for life of the anthology. About the anthologist: Rhonda Parrish is a master procrastinator and nap connoisseur but despite that she somehow manages a full professional life. She has been the publisher and editor-in-chief ofNiteblade Magazine for over five years now (which is like 25 years in internet time) and is the editor of the forthcoming benefit anthology, Metastasis. In addition, Rhonda is a writer whose work has been included or is forthcoming in dozens of publications including Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. Her website, updated weekly, is at http://www.rhondaparrish.com Open submission period: September 1 – November 30, 2013 Length: Under 7,500 words....

Deadline: November 30th 2013 Payment: We pay $0.02 per word up to $150   FICTION Genres and Content: Betwixt publishes speculative fiction of all sorts—fantasy, science fiction, speculative horror, slipstream, weird fiction, steam/diesel/cyber/etc.punk, you name it. We particularly like stories that smash genre boundaries to smithereens, but we also love fresh takes on established genres and in-depth explorations of ultraspecific niches. Experiments in form and style are welcomed enthusiastically—but a straightforward narrative with tight, crisp language is just as beautiful. When it comes down to it, we want stories that will amaze us, astound us, provoke our thoughts, and boggle our minds. Betwixt supports diversity in speculative fiction and welcomes stories by and about individuals of all ages, classes, disabilities, ethnicities, genders, nationalities, races, religions, and sexual orientations. Please don’t send multiple or simultaneous submissions, stories that have been published previously, or poetry. We are not seeking unsolicited nonfiction at this time. Length: Stories of 4,000 to 7,000 words are ideal, but we will consider a range from 1,000 to 30,000 words. Rights: Betwixt purchases first worldwide English-language serial, electronic, and print rights. Stories will be published on betwixtmagazine.com, in electronic and print-on-demand quarterly issues, and in electronic and print-on-demand yearly anthologies. We may also excerpt stories for promotional purposes. The author retains all other rights. We do not publish unsolicited reprints, and we ask that stories we publish not appear anywhere else for three months after publication. For example, if a story is published in the January issue, we ask that it not appear elsewhere until April—although we would be delighted to make exceptions for extraordinary circumstances! If you have questions about specific rights or contract terms, please feel free tocontact us at [email protected]. (Please don’t send submissions to this address.) Payment: We pay $0.02 per word up to $150, payable upon receipt of completed contract and...

Deadline: November 30th, 2013 Payment: Unlisted Note: Permuted Press RARELY opens anthology calls these days and you should jump on this one! An anthology of unexpected survivor stories from the apocalypse. The collection will include stories that tell the tale of the losers, the geeks, the freaks and the sad-sacks. It could also include stories of the differently abled, or anyone lacking skills, physical ability, education, resources so common in many zombie survival stories. These are the survivor stories of the people you never expected to survive the end of the world. Tell us an engaging story of how your protagonist is making it through the end of the world. What makes them special? What challenges are they facing now? We are looking for stories that will disturb, amuse and above all entertain. Make us cheer for your unlikely hero, or revel in their gleeful villainy. The specific requirements are: An apocalypse (including, but not limited to a wide-spread epidemic of the dead returning to life and wanting to kill the living). Fast zombies, slow zombies, space viruses, genetic engineering. Global Pandemic, asteroid impact, global warming, alien invasion - the details are up to you. But it must be recognisable as an apocalyptic event. The complete collapse of the modern world and the struggle to survive. Adult content and language are fine. However we’re not looking for adult content or stories that are primarily erotica. Stories should be between 3,000 and 10,000 words. Submission period is from 30th September – 30th November, 2013. Stories should be sent as an attachment to an email sent to: [email protected] Subject line: Fat Zombie Submission. Attachments can be in RTF, DOC or DOCX format. Include word count, contact details and title in the attachment. In the body of the email include a brief biography...