Events

Taking Submissions: Chiral Mad 2

Deadline: November-ish, 2013 Payment: $0.05 US per word, $0.025 US per word, by invitation only, or if queried first and accepted. VIRAL INVITATION Written Backwards is accepting submissions for Chiral Mad 2, an anthology of psychological horror. While the first two anthologies by Written Backwards were open to submissions following initial invites, Chiral Mad 2 is by viral invitation only. What does that mean? Well, if you can read this, you are invited. It’s that simple. You know someone or heard about this incredible opportunity by someone, or read a thread on Facebook, or twatted a tweet on Twitter, or found out somehow on one of the other social media outlets, or you possibly know a highly-respected acquaintance of yours truly, and here you are. Personal email invitations were sent to a select few prior to this page going live, like before, but you are now reading this, and this will soon go viral, so, well, you are invited to submit a story. Who’s the editor? This anthology will be edited by Michael Bailey, creator of the Chiral Mad and Pellucid Lunacy anthologies, and author of Palindrome Hannah, Phoenix Rose, and the upcoming Psychotropic Dragon. He has a few collections as well (Scales and Petals and the upcoming Inkblots and Blood Spots), and has appeared in some other books and magazines. You may have heard of him, maybe not. What really matters is this next book. Why should you submit? To date, Chiral Mad and Pellucid Lunacy have raised over $6,500 for Downs syndrome charities, with a majority of that donated to the Down Syndrome Information Alliance (DSIA). That’s why. Well, that’s the main reason. There are other reasons: both have received nothing but positive reviews, critical praise, and some awards. Pellucid Lunacy, during its run, won the International Book...

Taking Submissions: Angels Versus Zombies

Deadline: November 1st 2013 Payment: Exposure Only Quick Snippets: Genre -- Horror Word Count -- 2k to 4k Payment -- None Story Status -- Unpublished Submission Period -- August 1st through November 1st (not before) Illustrations -- Please Reading Period -- November 1st through January 1st Response Time -- 30 days after end of submission period Publication Target -- First quarter 2014 STORYLINE Angels versus Zombies - one would assume what we are looking for and you would be right. Give us angels and give us zombies, pitted against one another in any format you want. Horror, fantasy, Weird, erotic, romance ... go ahead, use your imagination. FORMATTING We prefer standard manuscript formatting (good example: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html). FIRST PRINTING RIGHTS Bear in mind that most publications will not publish pieces that have been published in print, eBook, or on the web, so for all intents and purposes after your work is published by us it can only be marketed as a reprint, which severely limits the number of markets that will accept it, and drastically reduces the pay rate it can receive. It is up to you, the author, to decide if publishing your work in print and/or eBook formats and/or on the web, giving up your First Publishing Right for no and/or a token payment, is really what you want to do. Format MS Word (.rtf .doc .docx) WORD COUNT Our target is ten to fifteen short stories composed of two- to four-thousand words each. We may accept slightly longer or shorter stories if they appeal to us, so don’t feel that you need to drastically shred your story or add unnecessary material to fit the qualifications. ILLUSTRATIONS Love to see what you have - please do so in JPG/JPEG format and follow the storyline! SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS Sorry, are not...

Taking Submissions: Of Devils & Deviants: An Anthology of Erotic Horror

Deadline: November 1st 2013 Payment: 1p (2¢) per word. Accepted authors will receive three hardcover copies of the anthology, and will also be able to purchase further copies at cost (not including shipping). Payment will be made within 30 days of publication. Of Devils & Deviants: An Anthology of Erotic Horror We are pleased to announce that a new anthology, Of Devils & Deviants, is now open for submissions. Please make sure you read all of the information provided. Submission Guidelines What We Are Looking For Of Devils & Deviants will be a literary anthology, released as a hardcover book and a digital book, of around 90000 words with the theme of erotic horror. Your submission must contain elements of both to be considered. We want stories that will make us think, we want tales of the flesh, of the lengths people will go to for gratification. Think Cronenberg and Lars Von Trier; Clive Barker and HR Geiger. We want beautiful prose and originality. Most importantly, we want the darkest, creepiest story you’ve ever conceived. What We Don’t Want We don’t want slasher horror; a naked woman getting hacked to death will not be considered for this collection. We will reject any stories that contain rape, and the abuse of minors. We will be looking for originality, so stories featuring well-worn tropes (vampires, zombies, werewolves) will almost certainly be rejected. We don’t want gore for the sake of it, and we don’t want something that could be used as an adult-film script. Submissions Submit your work in Standard Manuscript Format to [email protected] with Fiction Submission: Your Story Title in the subject line. Attach your story as a DOC, DOCX, or RTF file. Include a brief cover letter in the body of your email stating your name, story title with word...

Taking Submissions: Fur & Fang

Deadline: October 5th 2013 to November 5th 2013 Payment: $50.00 flat rate   Call for Submissions Have you been thinking of adding more monster sex into your life? Of course you are. Who isn’t looking for furrier and fangier sex these days? If you haven’t thought about it, we are betting you are now. Boy meets vamp, girl meets werewolf or even monster on monster, there are no holds (holes) barred in this anthology. We are looking for the best horrotica stories out there. Add a dash of romance or maybe some comedy, whether it’s dramatic or “climactic”, we want new and original stories that will make us blush… Never mind making us blush, if we have to read your story with two hands, it probably won’t make it into the anthology. All participants in your story must be 18 or older, we only want monsters of legal age. READING PERIOD: October 5th 2013 to November 5th 2013 PAYMENT: $50.00 flat rate RIGHTS: non-exclusive print and electronic rights LENGHT: 2000 words to 4000 words FORMAT: please use standard manuscript formatting, for more information see: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html All submissions will be done through Submittable (Link coming soon) Please include your full name, contact info, and word count in the document and cover letter (the cover letter is part of the Submissions Manager, not a separate file). 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.

Taking Submissions: Vignettes from the End of the World

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.

Taking Submissions: Twelve Nights of Christmas Contest

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.

Taking Submissions: The Day the Zombies Ruled the Earth

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...

Taking Submissions: Flash Fiction Challenge – On the Frontiers of Madness

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.

Taking Submissions: 713 Flash – Outlaws

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...

Taking Submissions: Far Worlds: The Third Bolthole Anthology

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...