Events

Submission Period: December 26, 2013 and January 10, 2014 Payment: $25 and a contributor's copy WRAPPED IN WHITE Thirteen Tales of Spectres, Ghosts, and Spirits Here is your chance to be a WRAPPED contributor! We are very excited to have several up-and-coming authors featured in this anthology and we look forward to filling the other available slots through open-call submissions.You may submit your story as an attachment to [email protected] between December 26, 2013 and January 10, 2014. Remaining contributors will be announced by February 2. Expected release date for Wrapped in White is March 2014. Original stories only please. No reprints. Any submissions or inquiries sent anywhere other than [email protected]  will be deleted. Submissions received before or after open call dates will be deleted. Stories should range from 4,000 to 6,000 words. In your email, make sure to include your full name, the title of the work you are submitting, and a word count. A short Bio will be requested upon acceptance of story. Please spend time proofing and editing your submissions before sending them. Submissions with incorrect grammar, misspellings or formatting will be automatically excluded from the review process. Those submissions that are accepted must be open to receiving minor editorial corrections. If your story is chosen, payment includes $25 within 30 days of acceptance/signed contract and one print copy of WRAPPED IN WHITE within 90 days of publication. Publisher will retain first worldwide publication rights for one year from publication date. Good luck Submission Guidelines: TITLE Author Name Word count e-mail address 12pt Garamond or equivalent Single Spaced Do not use TAB key. New paragraphs should be formatted with a 0.3 indent. Do not use symbols such as # or * between sections. A single blank space is sufficient. Now go write a ghost story! Via: Sekhmet Press.

Deadline: January 15th, 2014 Payment: Exposure Only The Shadows Only Hide the Monsters: A Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Micro (100-500 words), Flash (500-1K) and Short Stories (1k up to 2500 words). Lovecraft and Poe style horror stories. Special win for a good-old Poe style detective stories (it has to have monsters, though) and new takes on the Cthulhu Mythos. Deadline: January 15th 2014. 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...

Deadline: January 15th, 2014 Payment: 2c/word or a percentage of net sales Note: The publisher doesn't list 'horror' as a theme so I'd keep this in the light horror or suspenseful to most likely have a shot. Just a thought and not advice you need to listen to. Local Magic This is your opportunity to add a little magic to the past. Tell me the tale of a real place, in a real time, but with a fantastical science element. The story must feature a real geographic place, a building, a street. It doesn’t have to exist now, but it has to have really existed. A lake? A saloon? An alley? Stories we will be including in this anthology should include: 1 part Magic Your choice of wizards, artifacts, monsters or the like. 1 part Science The magic component above is fueled by Science! 1 part Local History Set your story in a real place that you know well. The location is not just window dressing. The location should be integral to your story. Culture and geography and real world history have conspired to create events that could have occurred no where else. Email submissions to: [email protected] Subject ATTN: LOCAL MAGIC Word count: short stories of 3,000 to 5,000 words, novelettes of 7,500-10,000 words. Pay: 2c/word or a percentage of net sales. This is going to be a digital-only publication. Your story should arrive in Microsoft Word and be formatted in the industry standard (or come so close that no one will notice: i.e. Times New Roman or Courier, double-spaced). Antimatter Press welcomes submissions from all people, regardless of age, color, religion, gender identity or writing experience. Deadline is January 15, 2014. Via: Antimatter Press.

Deadline: January 14th, 2014 Payment: In most cases payment will be 5 cents per word within 60 days of acceptance and a contributor's copy within 30 days of publication. Debuting in 2014 Jamais Vu - The Journal of Strange Among the Familiar is a new pro journal from Post Mortem Press, set to feature the absolute best in dark fiction, poetry, factual morsels, criticism, and more. Issue Two is scheduled for release April 15, 2014. Submission Window is open December 1, 2013 - January 15, 2014. Decisions will be made no later than March 1, 2014. The title comes from the French--The strange among the familiar--and is as close to a "theme" as we're looking for. Confused?  Think Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Neil Gaiman. Specifically, we're a horror/thriller market, but are open to crossing genres, given that one of the crossed genres is horror/thriller (no western-romance, or science fiction-mystery, okay?) Language and violence are not a problem if both components are integral to the plot, dedicating 3,000 words of your 4,000 story to the graphic depiction of human mutilation would have a hard time. The tropes--vampires, zombies, serial killers, werewolves--will have also struggle to get noticed unless the writer presents them in a completely new light. Stories that really work to act out your latent parental issues or your insecurities with the opposite sex are best given to your therapist, not us. Stories which exist solely to depict the abuse of children, women, or animals will be rejected outright.  Similarly, NO torture or splatter-punk. More concise than we could ever put it, the folks over at Strange Horizons have compiled a list of "Horror Stories We've Seen Too Often".  Check it out: http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common-horror.shtml  Granted, some of these things offer an interesting premise within which a brand new and different story can be written, but if your story...

Deadline: January 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: January 31st 2014 Payment: One electronic copy of the publication (due Spring 2014) and one electronic copy of Matt Leyshon’s The Function Room: The Kollection Take a hike. Seriously, I’ll know if you haven’t. I want stories that feel authentic and capture the mystery of the countryside. Befriend a hedgewitch, take up twitching, gather some mushrooms… Do whatever it takes to transport your readers from their homes and into the fields. Then send them running home to book a long course of trauma counselling! Resist the temptation to write another sequel to The Darling Buds of May or a James Herriot spin-off; the atmosphere in your story should be less than comfortable. Morpheus Tales is Britain’s most controversial horror magazine afterall - so do not feel obliged to spare the scythe. I won’t be offended by the spilling of sap, though I might be more impressed by a subtle sense of unease or strangeness. The following are a few examples of what I consider to be good horror tales that are set in rural Britain: Arthur Machen’s The White People, The Woodwitch by Stephen Gregory, The Rain Horse by Ted Hughes. The Wendigo and The Willows by Algernon Blackwood are not set in the UK, but they are also a good indication of what I’m looking for. Your story must be set in the countryside or within a rural community. It does not have to be set in the British countryside, though I might show a preference towards those tales that are. I’m looking for stories of around 3500 words. Submissions over 5000 words won’t be read. Morpheus Tales’ usual formatting guidelines apply. The deadline for submissions is 31/01/14. Send submissions to [email protected] with “Rural Horror Submission” in the subject. Payment will be one electronic copy of the publication...

Deadline: January 31, 2014 Payment: Contributor's copy and unnamed token amount LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND AUTHORS OF ALL AGES ... GOOD MORNING CIRCUSPUNKS!! I am pleased to announced that Chupa Cabra will be publishing my Circuspunk book Bumping Noses and Cherry Pie. Editing and artwork are in progress now. Look for it around the beginning of the year. Now we move on to Circuspunk 2.0. Now I want to hear YOUR strange and bizarre tales of the world of the circus, carnivals, side shows, magic shows etc. Bring me your freaks, your bearded ladies, your tightrope walkers, your magicians, your lions and tigers and bears (OH MY!). I want it all. I will be editing a book that Chupra Cabra has already agreed to publish. It will be called The New Whakazoid Circus - The Greatest Show on Paper. And I want to hear from YOU. Circuspunk can be anything from bizarro to scary and everything in between. Got a favorite author? Write a circus story in their style. ANYTHING GOES in the world of Circuspunk! Not sure what Circuspunk is exactly? This is my listing at Urban Dictionary "Circuspunk is a new sub-genre of punk/bizarro literature scene created by Charie D. La Marr aka Persiphone Hellecat aka Kotton Kandy - a former professional clown. The genre includes stories that take place in circuses, carnivals, midways, sideshows and also includes stories of birthday party clowns, freaks, magicians and costumed characters. With some elements taken from her experiences in the world of clowns (she won't tell which are true and which aren"t) the genre is a blend of truth and fantasy that takes in the usual bizarro mixture of fun, sex, satire and splatter. Also included in the genre are dark stories, Lovecraftian stories, noir stories and other variations and combinations...

Deadline: January 31st 2014 Payment: An eBook copy will be sent to all contributors and up to 5 paperback copies per author will be available to purchase at cost plus shipping. 50% of the royalties will be distributed between all contributors This is a Horror Anthology. What are we looking for? Let's equate it to the red-headed stepchild of the family. What does that mean? It means we're looking for stories of horror that may be perceived as a bit odd or different from the rest. Tales that take two steps to the left of normal instead of one. Peculiar yarns just bizarre enough to straddle the line. We're not just looking for odd - we're looking for good stories with a unique spin. No horror trope is too tired for this one as long as it's strange enough to grab our attention. Intrigue us with your eccentric imaginings, and we may adopt your tale as a part of our family of offerings.   Submission Deadline: January 31, 2014 Word Count minimum: 4,000 words - nothing less will be reviewed; no reprints considered. Submission guidelines:Submission Deadline - January 31, 2014Word Count: 4,000 - 8,000 words. Please submit your manuscript as a *.doc or *.docx file (all other formats will automatically be rejected. Contact us prior to submitting if this presents an issue for you.) Font and formatting: Please submit in Times New Roman, 12 point font; single line spacing with a 0 point definition above and below each line. Please format the document to 1st line indentation of .5" (1.27cm), do not space or tab to indent the line. The page margin should be set to .5" (1.27cm) on all sides. Graphic gore must be kept to a minimum unless it is integral to the story; absolutely no incestuous or sexual abuse...

Deadline: January 31st 2014 Payment: $25 USD and contributor's copy A new anthology is open. We are looking for stories that are between 3,000 to 6,000 words. This is a speculative fiction anthology for dark tales. Bugs and Creepy-Crawlies focuses on all sorts of organisms with six, eight, and millions of legs. Themes range from swarms of bees that kill, alien bugs that cause havoc to the ecosystem, robotic bugs and nanotechnology that scientists lose control of, mosquitos that spread illness to thousands, spiders that lay their eggs on the human body. We want original tales that will scare and creep out a reader. Great fiction, well written, and enjoyable to anyone that loves the weird tale. Get your writing hats on and start producing. We look forward to your submissions. Full guidelines can be found here.

Deadline: January 31st, 2014 Payment: $100 flat rate per each manuscript accepted into the anthology Now Accepting Short Story Submissions What happens after death? That’s the question Grey Matter Press would like you to answer. For our next anthology–working title “Death’s Realm”–we’re looking for dark, horrifying tales exploring themes from “the great beyond.” We do not want to limit your creativity with a narrowly themed collection, so “Death’s Realm” will include works of truly terrifying dark fiction that investigate the concepts of hauntings, spirits, life after death, ghostly encounters and just about any other subject that pertains to the afterlife and the horrifying things that might reside just beyond the veil. Be prepared to scare the hell out of us. Please review our Submissions Guidelines below, and feel free to contact us here on the site with any questions. or send a message to [email protected]. We thank you for your interest in considering Grey Matter Press as a potential home for your work. *”Death’s Realm” is a working title. Grey Matter Press reserves the right to change the title as necessary.   GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS Word Count: 3,000 – 10,000 words Deadline: January 31, 2014 Payment: $100 flat rate per each manuscript accepted into the anthology Formats: *.doc, *.docx, *.txt, *.rtf Contact Address: [email protected] Acceptable File Formats: Grey Matter Press wants to make your submission process easy and painless. We accept manuscripts that are *.doc, *.docx, .txt or .rtf file formats. If you have any questions about the formatting of your manuscript, feel free to contact us directly [email protected] Digital Submissions: Unfortunately, we cannot accept manuscripts of previously published pieces. (Published work includes work that have appeared online in magazines, journals and/or personal websites.) Only previously unpublished work will be accepted. We will accept your submission via email at [email protected]. Subject lines should...