Events

Deadline: August 31st, 2016 Payment: Contributor's Copy I am also a writer and I understand that some of the guidelines today are broad and vague with lots of voids. I shall attempt to strip away the excess fat and leave you with my guidelines. For cover contest submissions, follow link. First thing’s first: THERE IS NO SUBMISSION FEE! **Submissions will be open through August 31st, 2016.** *We are hoping to publish in time for Halloween 2016* We are only accepting previously unpublished work. NO REPRINTS. Simultaneous works are accepted, please notify us in cover letter and if accepted elsewhere. We are all adults and the stories are meant for adults. I am not worried about language and sex and such, as long as it’s done tastefully and assists the story, not overpower the story itself. Genre: This is a horror anthology. Make it speculative, make it sci-fi, make it funny, whatever, as long as horror is the overall theme. Gore does not guarantee acceptance; a story that hooks us as readers and leaves us pondering our existence does. Only one story per submission, 1-3 stories of flash fiction (no more than 4k words total). I will accept simultaneous submissions, just please notify me in the cover letter. If it is accepted elsewhere, please have the courtesy to notify me promptly by e-mail so that the submission can be withdrawn. No reprints. Please add brief bio in the cover letter. Word Count: Nothing more than 5k words, anything more shall be rejected without reading. Somewhere in between 2k and 4k would be that one taboo spot that makes nuns say four Hail Marys and two Our Fathers, but, ultimately, let the story decide. Anything below 2k will be considered as flash fiction. Rights: I ask for first world publication rights without any contract....

Deadline: August 31st, 2016 Payment: $50.00 and 2 paperback copies We are currently accepting submissions for the 2017 Anthology. Deadline extended! Submissions close at 11:59PM on AUG 31st! 2017 Anthology Theme: Songs Have you ever listened to a song and wondered what the lyrics are really about? Perhaps you’ve imagined a story inspired by a song. We are looking for Speculative Fiction stories inspired by a song, in which: the lyrics and title of the song DO NOT appear in the story; and the story is NOT a literal translation of the song. For example: If your inspiration song is “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” do not use that title anywhere in the story and do not submit a story about a person tiptoeing through a flower garden. Our intent is to have a collection of stories that move beyond the obvious. Contributors will add an “author’s note” after their story that explains how the song inspired their story. Story Length: Your polished submission’s word count should be between 8,000 – 10,000 words. Eligibility: Published and unpublished authors are welcome. Middle grade or erotica stories will not be accepted. Submissions must be original, unpublished works. This means submissions may not have been previously published or accepted for publication elsewhere in any format including: self published or independently published published in other anthologies, magazines, e-zines, or websites Submissions must not be simultaneously submitted to other publications. Entrants may submit as many separate entries as they like, so long as they each meet the submission guidelines. Potential contributors must accept the Wicked Ink Books Anthology Publishing Agreement before their submissions will be eligible for publication. Timeline: May 15, 2016: Submissions open. August 31, 2016: Submissions close at midnight. September 30, 2016: All selections will be finalized and all entrants will be notified via email. Spring...

Deadline: August 31st 2016 Payment: $50 Notes: Sorry that the publisher only included their guidelines in an image We are now accepting short stories up to 8,500 words for our fall anthology. The details: Stories should be new and NOT published elsewhere Submissions will be considered through August 31st The anthology will be published in October 2016 All stories selected for the anthology will be paid $50 All stories will be entered for a Readers’ Choice Award. The winning prize is $100, Runner-up is $50 If we are interested in your story, we will send you a contract and additional details about edits, payment, and final due dates Send submissions to [email protected], and we will respond within 2-4 weeks. We look forward to hearing from you! Via: Owl Hollow Press.

Deadline: July 31st, 2016 Payment: $25 and contributor's copy Update: August 31st THE ANATOMY OF MONSTERS (For Lycan Valley) collected by Robert Teun (Twitter: @RDTEUN) $25.00 PLUS COPY MIN WORD COUNT: 3,000 MAXIMUM WORD COUNT: 10,000 CONTACT EMAIL: [email protected] PLEASE SEND ALL ENTRIES SEND AS AN ATTACHMENT. What is the biography of Frankenstein's (monster) body parts? What unholy pact did the very first vampire make to become what they are now? How did Werewolves become slaves of the moon? Who was the first Ghost in the world and how did they react? The Mummy, The Hunchback, The Phantom Of The Opera, The Invisible Man, and even The Creature From The Black Lagoon... How did they come to be? How do they deal with their new nature? And who suffers because of it? GIVE ME NEW ORIGINS OF OLD MONSTERS! This is will NOT be your usual submission call. Submissions will be in rounds. This is so you don't have to wait for ages for a response. (ALL COMPLETED STORIES MUST BE IN BY DEC 1st 2016) ROUND ONE will be the FIRST 200 words of the story, you have this to grab my attention. If you do, you'll go through to the second round. (THIS ROUND CLOSES JULY 31st) ROUND TWO will be the first 1,500 words of the story. If you're still engaging me, you get through the last round. (THIS ROUND CLOSES SEPTEMBER 30th) FINAL ROUND The decider. The final yay or nay. (THIS ROUND CLOSES DECEMBER 1st) ALL REJECTIONS AND ACCEPTANCES WILL BE KNOWN BY JAN 3rd AT THE LATEST UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED. ALL SUBMISSIONS will be blind. That is to say, all details will have all the details stripped from them in the interest of equality. I won't know if you're male, female, or giraffe. I...

Deadline: August 31st, 2016 Payment: $30 Lit Select publishes multiple anthologies each year for our Love Slave and Legendary Stories Imprints. Here you will find our most recent Submission Calls. For our Standard Formatting Guidelines, please click here. Please submit stories through our new Online Submission Manager Submissions that do not follow Standard Formatting or do not include all necessary elements will be deleted without being read. Please no simultaneous submissions. Lit Select does not take queries for novels, novellas, or other original fiction works at this time. Legendary Stories: Enchanted Forests Call Open: August 1- August 31 Payment details: $30 per story Word count: 3000 - 8000 (flexible, but the longer the story the stronger it must be) Theme: Enchanted Forests Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy/Speculative (please no horror) Submission limit:One story per author max Please no simultaneous submissions. Take us deep into the forest and show us what we'll find within. Whether it's leafy branches hiding elfin lords or a steampunk graveyard covered in mechanical vines, we want to know what's hidden inside the forest and what dragons (or rogue robot monsters) our heroes will have to slay to make their way through. Paint us a vivid world that makes us want to explore the realm you create. Give us new heroes to love and villains we love to hate. We're looking for an eclectic mix of stories that give us a new view of the forest and features smart storytelling.  Please no: Explicit violence or sex for shock value.  Established authors welcomed, newcomers encouraged. All submissions acknowledged within 5 days and acceptances notified by August 15.  We look forward to reading your work. Please submit stories through our new Online Submission Manager VIa: Lit Select.

Deadline: August 31 Payment: $50 – $100 and a contributor's copy of each edition Shadows & Tall Trees Vol. 7 is now open for submissions. Deadline August 31. Based on the number of subs already received in the first few hours, (and the terrific writers submitting wok) I am going to be rather busy, and also will likely have some hard decisions to make. SHADOWS & TALL TREES, VOL. 7 (Undertow Publications) Open to submissions from August 1 to August 31 only! (Standard Manuscript Format) – I want literary horror, weird fiction, strange tales, à la Robert Aickman. – Original, previously unpublished fiction only, please. – Manuscripts should be 2500 to 8000 words – Payment is a princely $50 – $100 and a copy of each edition, for first English-Language rights for Hardback, Trade and eBook editions. – No overly long and effusive cover letters. I don’t read them. – No simultaneous or multiple submissions, please – No familiar tropes. i.e. vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Ghosts, though? Hell, yes. – No science fiction, high fantasy, or poetry please Stories, in standard manuscript format, as attachments, are to be sent to this address only: [email protected] Full guidelines: Quiet horror and weird fiction. Fiction that is offbeat and eclectic; dark, bizarre and psychological. Stories both subtle and prosaic. Weird, strange tales. Shadows & Tall Trees is an anthology of the dark and fantastic, with mainstream sensibilities. I am seeking low-key, literary work. Voice is very important. Volume 6 was a World Fantasy Award, and Shirley Jackson Award Finalist. Several stories published in Shadows & Tall Trees have been selected for reprint in various “Best Of” anthologies. Peter Straub has declared it “A beautiful and courageous volume.” I am looking for stories that share the same weird and strange sensibility experienced in the...

Deadline: Best Story = $100, First Runner Up = $50, Second Runner Up = $25, All other accepted authors = $10, All accepted authors will receive 4% of sales. Winners selected through a double-blind process. Payment: August 31st, 2016 It’s All Trumped Up Trump’s dramatic entrance into American politics sets the stage for global tragedy. His life, a maelstrom of petty lies, construction supplies and gold bricks is Shakespearean. Daily he is the buffoon—representing the absolute worst in us, a cowardice that denies us the better parts of ourselves as Americans. Writers have a long history of holding the idiotic and powerful accountable. When the mainstream media fails, it has been the brave poets and novelists who have skewered the gilded.  Now is the time to wield the pen. We are seeking speculative fiction that explores what four years of a Trump presidency would do to America and the world. Writers should submit stories ranging from depictions of his absurdity to the impact of his politics on the disenfranchised, our international friends, and world peace. We strongly encourage submissions from outside the United States. Feel free to submit a story in a language other than English. We will do everything we can to get it translated. But, if you’d like to submit the story in your native language and provide a translation, we would super love that! Deadline: August 31, 2016. We will review submissions, as they are received. Word Count: 3,000 words. Stories should be short and sweet. Submissions: Compensation: Best Story = $100 First Runner Up = $50 Second Runner Up  = $25 All other accepted authors = $10 All accepted authors will receive 4% of sales. Winners selected through a double-blind process. Book Details: 10 stories with a foreword and an afterword. Storied will be selected with a...

Deadline: August 31st, 2016 Payment: £10 and an illustration of your flash This month we’re asking you how the world would be if it were missing something we all take for granted. The colour Blue, the ability to freeze ice, the world was just one continent, etc, etc, etc. The attached videohttps://www.facebook.com/zeroflash.org/videos/1222498304449900/ is just a little fun, but imagine if Sharks lived in Duck Ponds! That’s right. It doesn’t have to be serious but if that’s your thing. Go for it! For those of you that would care to submit, we’re looking for stories of anywhere up to300 words. We’d love a beginning, are partial to a middle and if you could see your way clear to adding an ending, we’d be ever so grateful. Other than that, any genre, any style, any tone, any language. Fill it with character and description and make us think and cry and laugh and gag and stuff. Just the one submission each per month, please. Deadline is Midnight GMT on the final day of the month. Please allow Zero Flash the first opportunity to publish your work. Once the competition is over, feel free to publish anywhere else you like. Do your best to format as Times New Roman and 12 points please. Every month we will decide on the best story and make a showing of it for the world to see. We’ll tell everyone that it’s great and they should admire and praise it…and then we’ll start all over again. PRIZE: An original illustration of your winning entry from artist-in-residence, Sophia Johnson (illustrator of Zeroflash Logo fame) and £10 from my back pocket. If you do decide to grace us with your prose, there’s a good chance that at some point (probably a year down the line) we might use it...

Deadline: September 1st Payment: $15.00 Submissions Before you submit to Goblin Fruit, there are a few things you might find useful to know; for instance, the submission guidelines. If any question you have has not been addressed below, feel free to query at goblin.fruitgmailcom, and please do read our Frequently Implied Questions for additional information. What is it we want? We want poetry that we can call "of the fantastical", poetry that treats mythic, surreal, fantasy and folkloric themes, or approaches other themes in a fantastical way. Re-write a fairytale, ponder an old story, consider history from an unusual perspective — really, it's up to you, so long as the fantastical element is there. Since what qualifies as "the fantastical" is easily debatable, however, here's what we're not interested in: science fiction poetry (it's not you, it's us), horror for horror's sake, and poetry that's self-consciously gothic. We have no prejudice against traditional poetic forms, rhyme, or meter. We'd like to stay that way, so please let the form serve the poem, not the other way around. Prose poems will be harder to sell, mainly because so many of them straddle the flash fiction line. How much do we pay? Beginning in January 2016 we will be paying $15.00 USD on publication for original, unpublished poems, and $5.00 for solicited reprints. If you'd like to submit a poem that has been published elsewhere, please query first with the poem's title, where it was originally published and when. We purchase first North American serial rights and first Worldwide Electronic rights for three months; after that rights revert to the author, although we do request permission to keep the poem in our archives indefinitely. When can I submit? We are accepting submissions during the following times: April 9th - June 1st July...

Deadline: September 1, 2016 Payment: $10 and a contributor's copy Open Submissions: July 1 – September 1, 2016 Theme: This horror/dark fantasy anthology will be centered in a nefarious motel established in the 1960s by the devil himself, some say. Each story needs to take place in a room of the motel. Stories can begin in another location and arrive at the motel or bleed out into the parking lot, but the bulk of the tale should be in the room. Writers can get creative with their stories and the design of their rooms, but the main lobby and innkeeper needs to be consistent if referenced. Name of the Motel and Description: Located in a poor, decimated, part of Atlanta, the Kretcher Motel is a two story construct, with peeling mauve paint on the outside. Inside, the lobby looks bright from harsh yellow lighting. It has a mini fountain with no water that sits in the middle of the sticky, dirty, tile floor. Only the counter seems immaculate with a polished mahogany counter. The elevators are filled with graffiti, smell and are missing panels on the ceiling. The halls are ominous and dark, with flickering lights, and grimy diamond patterned carpet. The motel is in the vicinity of several dilapidated buildings, overgrown shrubbery, and a 24 hour gas station sits directly across from the motel. Although it sells little gas, it is frequented by prostitutes, hustlers and drug dealers who make use of its restrooms for their services. Other desperate individuals down on their luck can be seen standing, leaning against or walking by the hotel as they wait for their miracle or enjoying the many snacks to be purchased there. Name and description of the Innkeeper: Sybline Kretcher is an ageless Black woman who could be anywhere from 35-70,...