Events

Taking Submissions: Havok: October: Skeletons, Slashers, and Succubi

Deadline: July 27th, 2018 Payment: $0.02 per word via PayPal and a contributor's copy October: Skeletons, Slashers, and Succubi   Featured Author: TBA Submission Deadline: July 27, 2018 Sub-genres – Horror, suspense, supernatural We’re going back to the basics of classic Halloween horror stories. Monsters, witches, creepy crawlies, things that go bump in the night, and all things terrifying are what we’re seeking in this issue. Make our skin crawl with undead delight! Submission Guidelines Splickety fills gaps in the modern reader’s day with concise, poignant fiction under 1,000 words. We want stories that hit fast and strike hard––stories that, no matter the genre, can cut through the day’s troubles and grip readers with short attention spans. The most basic way to improve your chances of getting published with us is to adhere to the following submission guidelines: LENGTH: Your well-edited story should be between 300 and 1,000 words long and it should fit one of our scheduled Upcoming Themes. Each magazine will feature one Nano-fiction story of 100 words or less in our Nano Corner. If you can write a complete story in 100 or fewer words that fits with one of our magazine’s themes, send it to us. HINT: Due to design and layout restrictions, we can only publish a few stories longer than 700 words per issue. If you want to increase your chances of getting published with us, send us stories that are 700 words or less! In other words, we acquire for each issue approximately 12 stories, with the breakdown as follows: 701 – 1,000 word stories — 2-3 stories acquired 500 – 700 word stories — 8-10 stories acquired < 100 words — 1 story acquired FLASH FICTION RESOURCE & SAMPLE ISSUE: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction is the...

Taking Submissions: Cross+Decay Issue #2

Deadline: July 28th, 2018 Payment: Prose- $0.02/word, $0.01/word after 500 words., Poetry- $0.50/line, $0.25/line after 20 lines. Cross + Decay is now accepting work for Issue 2: (How To Survive In) The Woods. The deadline is May 28 2018. Submission Guidelines: Cross+Decay is a literary and art magazine, welcoming poetry, prose, and artwork. The work must adhere to the issue's theme, but it is up to the interpretation of the creator to decide what work best fits that theme and would be most relevant. Prose can be fiction or non-fiction, 500-1000 words (maximum 1000). Prose must be clearly formatted, and fully edited, including spell-checking and proper grammar. Previously published work is welcome, as long as rights have reverted back to the writer. Work exceeding 1000 words will automatically be rejected. Visual art can be of any medium, including photography and photographs of three-dimensional work. Work must be attached as .jpegs. Artists can submit their work with watermarks or as lower quality files, but the images must represent what the work would look like in print, and must be able to be sent as a high quality .jpeg if accepted (300 dpi, and at least 2000 pixels square). Creators are welcome to submit multiple works, but they must all be submitted at the same time, and within the same email. Payment: Accepted creators will be paid for their work. Prose- $0.02/word, $0.01/word after 500 words. Poetry- $0.50/line, $0.25/line after 20 lines. Artwork- $15/selected digital file. All creators will continue to have full rights to their work. Please email submissions to [email protected], with full name, a short bio, and information relevant to understanding the work (if needed). If you have any further questions, please send an email to the above address. Submissions close May 28 2018 at 11:59 PM MST. Late submissions...

Taking Submissions: ‘Haunted House’ And ‘Cosy Crime’

Deadline: July 29th, 2018 Payment: 6 cents per word. We're excited to open for submissions to the first two of four anthologies set for publication in 2019: Haunted Houseand Cosy Crime. These will join a thriving list of Gothic Fantasy titles, including Supernatural Horror, Robots & Artificial Intelligence, Dystopia Utopia, and more. Again, we are looking for around twenty to thirty short stories by contemporary writers to complement a selection of classic tales in these anthologies. We are keen to encourage new writers, without prejudice to age, background or previous publication history. It’s the story that matters, and the quality of writing. Submit by email to [email protected] The New Volumes Haunted House: The creaking floorboards, the children hiding in the mirror, the spirits that rake across the flesh of the mind, tell us your stories of hauntings and mansions. Oh, what is that sound within the walls? Now accepting submissions for this anthology. Cosy Crime: The armchair detectives, the murder in the vicarage, the family secrets unravelling in gossipy ears, such are the ingredients of a genteel bloodbath in an otherwise delightful village. Do you have any stories that might fit? Now accepting submissions for this anthology. Formal Call for Submissions (2018) We are looking for new and recent short stories. We do not require exclusivity. You hold copyright, licensing us just for this publication. We don’t mind if your story has been previously published online or in print (though we do need to know publication and date). Simultaneous submissions are fine, but you must have the right to license your story in an anthology. Word length is most likely to be successful at 2000–4000, but we will still read stories slightly outside this range.  Submit stories for 'Haunted House' and 'Cosy Crime' by email to [email protected] Fees, Copyright and Other Terms We pay Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) rates of...

Taking Submissions: The Modern Monarchist: 80s in Blood!

Deadline: July 30th, 2018. Payment: $5 for stories up to 1000 words, and $10 for any story 1001-2000 words. Note: Reprints allowed The 80s represented a time of commercial indulgence and general cultural insanity. It is the decade in which weird and gross became mainstream. Excess was the hallmark of Hollywood. Blockbusters, shoot-em-ups, futuristic dystopian wastelands, mutants and beastmen and cyborgs, and everything was covered in slime from gumball machines. It was a great time to be alive. It was an even greater time to be a kid. 80s in Blood aims destroy conventional nostalgia and publish fiction that takes the 80s beyond the 80s. We seek the 80s version of the 80s: how characters in an exaggerated 80s movie might have envisioned an idealized 80s. If you have seen The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, Brain Damage, Steel Dawn, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Terror Vision, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Repo Man, Miami Connection, Howard the Duck, Big Trouble in Little China, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and you thought, “These movies just weren’t ridiculous enough for me,” that’s what 80s in Blood is looking for. Stories that examine the day-glo New Wave experience, or the Satanic Panic heyday of Heavy Metal, or the robotic grooves of Electro, or universes built around idolizing Madonna and Prince. The Cold War. WWF Wrestling. The Drug War. Monster Trucks. Break Dancing. Saturday Morning Cartoons. Lawn Darts. Jelly Bracelets. Mr. T. Cabbage Patch Kids. Video Arcades. Skate Boarding. Anything 80s is totally fair game for these absurd, weird, and gonzo spoof-homages. DEADLINE: July 30, 2018. SUBMISSION Guidelines: We are seeking only the finest FLASH FICTION, PROSE-POEMS, or ABSURD ARTICLES 2000 words or less. If we receive a submission that is over 2000 words, we will not only delete the submission unread, we will also delete the author...

Taking Submissions: Crypt-Gnats: Horror you’ve been itching to read

Deadline: July 30th, 2018 Payment: $5.00 Jersey Pines Ink is pleased to announce our first anthology, Crypt-Gnats: Horror you’ve been itching to read. It will be published as both a print and an e-book. Stories must be fiction and totally of your own creation. Stories should/could involve cemeteries or other forms of deceased placements including graveyards, mausoleums, cremations, mysterious disappearances, etc. Your imagination is the limit. Please heed these guidelines: Stories can be no longer than 3,000 words.  Flash is acceptable. Minimal graphic violence… very little gore… prefers suggested blood and guts to detailed.  No detailed rape scenes, or abuse to children. Standard manuscript format. We do not accept multiple, simultaneous or unsolicited reprint submissions. Submit doc, docx, and rtf only. Your name and contact information must be at the top of the first page of the story. Name, title, and page numbers should be in the top header on following pages. Manuscripts not following the guidelines will be deleted unread. Payment: $5.00 (PayPal). Submission window June 1 to July 30, 2018 Return time: Three months after the anthology closes, (October 31) Submit to: [email protected] This email address will become inactive July 31, 2018 Any changes or news will be listed at https://www.jerseypinesink.com Via: Jersey Pines Ink.

Taking Submissions: Lit Mag

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: $1,000 for fiction or nonfiction. $250 for a poem, a group of short poems, or (the rare) short short. What We Publish LITMAG PRINT Fiction Short stories, novellas Nonfiction Creative nonfiction; essays on literature, art, culture, and music; biography, memoir Poetry No restrictions on style or form LITMAG ONLINE Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry Up to 4,000 words. LITMAG CONTESTS LitMag‘s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction  First Prize: $3,500, publication, and agency review by Sobel Weber Associates (clients include: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Richard Russo, Laura Lee Smith). The contest is now closed. Winner and finalists will be announce on March 31, 2018.  Full contest guidelines will again be available again on Submittable when the next contest period opens. Full guidelines are also available on our blog. What We Look For  Work that moves and amazes us. We are drawn to big minds, large hearts, sharp pens Word Count Limits Print: 15,000 words Online: 4,000 words What to Send One story or essay at a time, up to five poems. Please wait until you have heard back from us before submitting again. Previously Unpublished We do not consider work that has previously been published either in print or online (including personal blogs etc.) What We Pay LitMag Print: Upon acceptance, we pay $1,000 for fiction or nonfiction; $250 for a poem, a group of short poems, or (the rare) short short LitMag Online: Upon acceptance, we pay $250 What We Acquire LitMag acquires First English-language print and electronic rights. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. When to Submit Regular submissions: Fiction is open: 10/1/17 to 11/30/17; 2/1/18 to 7/31/18* Poetry is open:  9/1/17 to 11/30/17; 3/1/18 to 7/31/18 Nonfiction is open: 8/1/17 to 11/30/17; 1/1/18 to 5/31/18 LitMag Online is open: 9/1/17 to 11/30/17; 2/1/18 to 6/30/18 *There is a submission fee for fiction only. There will be a window of...

Taking Submissions: Innsmouthbreathers: Cautionary Fables of Mythos Fandom!

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: .03CAD per word and a contributor's copy There are folks for whom the question of whether Cthulhu has two eyes or six is a vitally important one. Individuals that believe, somehow, that a dinner of tinned spaghetti and ice cream with a reanimated H. P. Lovecraft would be the height of both culinary and intellectual pleasure. Scholars who feel that The Horror at Red Hook is a timely warning about, well, you know… those other people. Esteemed biographers of weird fiction luminaries who reveal their foaming insecurity at the changing of the guard, or the form of a literary award. Entities who dissolve with glee at the slapping of some tentacles on a meme, thus rendering it “Lovecraftian”. Yes, they’re out there, in their seeming thousands, trolling social media, fawning over the dead, podcasting their paranoia. Yes, they are slouching roughly towards Arkham and Providence and fabled Y’ha-nthlei, to dwell in fossilized canon and geeky glory, forever.   INNSMOUTHBREATHERS.   Martian Migraine Press announces an open call for submissions to our latest anthology project, INNSMOUTHBREATHERS: Cautionary Fables of Mythos Fandom! We are looking for humourous stories of a certain kind of Cthulhu Mythos fan: the rabid Lovecraft worshipper, the defender of the outmoded and outclassed, the pulp reader for whom Weird Fiction peaked somewhere in the middle of the last century. (The 20th, for those keeping track of such things!) We’re looking for tales that pit Innsmouthbreathers against all manner of real and imagined horrors: shoggoths with Social Justice agendas, politically active Deep Ones, enlightened Mi-Go, and Nick Mamatas*. Make them lovable, make them loathsome, make us feel their triumphs and defeats! Put us in their basements, their garrets, their comic shops and conventions and pop-culture covens, and put us in their Cthulhu parody t-shirts while you’re at it. Mmm, is that a...

Taking Submissions: Life After All

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: $150.00 and 2 contributor's copies Life After All — an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic/pastoral apocalyptic LGBTQIA+ anthology — The end of the world is a dark, bleak place. Life is full of grit, misery, and barely scraping by. But if humans excel at anything, it’s making the best of a bad situation, and the end of the world would be no different. Less Than Three Press invites you to submit stories about life after the end of the world being far from bleak and hopeless. We want to see stories of hardened apocalypse survivors building new lives and homes with their found families; gentle robots terraforming the ruined remains of the Earth; your post-Earth space settlers slice-of-life. THE DETAILS: Deadline is July 31, 2018. Put SUBMISSIONS: TITLE (where TITLE is your title) in the subject line. Stories should be at least 8000 words and should not exceed approx 15000 words in length. Stories must be about a post-apocalyptic society. Stories must have a happily ever after (HEA) or happy for now (HFN) end. Any sub-genre is gladly accepted: sci-fi, mystery, contemporary, steampunk, etc. LT3 always welcomes representation of all genders and nonbinary or agender characters. All usual LT3 submission guidelines apply. Life After All is a general release anthology, which means authors will receive a flat payment of $150.00 once LT3 has a signed contract. Examples: Enchanted Soles, To the Victor. Authors will receive one copy each of the ebook formats LT3 produces and two copies of the paperback compilation. Stories should be complete before submitting, and as edited as possible—do not submit a first draft. They can be submitted in any format (doc, docx, rtf, odt, etc) preferably single spaced in an easy to read font (Times, Calibri, Arial) with no special formatting (no elaborate section separation,...

Contest: Deathscribe 2018, the 11th Annual Festival of Horror Radio Plays

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Winner: $100 and the coveted Bloody Axe Award Note: This only has 1 winner which we usually wouldn't fit but these guys do a GREAT show. The submission window for Deathscribe 2018, the 11th Annual Festival of Horror Radio Plays, is NOW OPEN. Submissions are accepted through our online submission form until July 31st. Every year we seek 10-minute audio drama scripts that are genuinely scary, imaginative, chilling, intelligent, suspenseful, horrific or downright grotesque. Writers may submit up to two audio drama scripts to Deathscribe in any given year. Five scripts will be selected from all submissions. These five pieces will be performed on stage in front of a live audience. The writer of the winning piece, chosen by a celebrity panel of judges, will receive the coveted Bloody Axe Award, as well as a $100 cash prize. Click here to SUBMIT Guidelines: PDF format is strongly preferred. If PDF is not possible, then only MS Word please. All scripts must have a title page with all contact information, but NO identifying information should appear anywhere else in the document. Scripts must be no more than TEN MINUTES in length, and should follow audio drama format. An example of proper audio drama format can be found here: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/bbcradioscene.pdf The Deathscribe experience includes performing the pieces on stage with Foley artists and a band creating the sound effects and music live. Therefore, scripts must be ready to produce, including direction for sound and music cues. Sorry, but submissions cannot include usage of copyrighted music. Writers may submit up to two (2) scripts for Deathscribeconsideration in any year. NO SCREENPLAYS. SCREENPLAYS WILL BE DISCARDED. WE KNOW THEM WHEN WE SEE THEM. (Nothing against screenplays. But this is a radio play festival.) DO NOT submit full-length plays for consideration in Deathscribe. They will be discarded. If you wish to submit a full-length horror...

Taking Submissions: Mysterion

Deadline: July 31st, 2018 Payment: 6 cents per word for original work and 3 cents per word for reprints. Note: Reprints allowed We are looking for speculative stories--science fiction, fantasy, horror--with Christian themes, characters, or cosmology, and for artwork for this site. Fiction Guidelines Technical details Stories can be up to 8000 9000 words (thanks, Patreon supporters!). This is a hard limit--our submission system will enforce it. We pay 6 cents/word for original stories (or original translations of stories that have not previously appeared in English), and 3 cents/word for reprints. Authors are paid once we've agreed on edits and signed a contract, prior to earliest publication (generally on our Patreon page). We are seeking 6 months' exclusive worldwide publication rights for original works (with exceptions for established Best of the Year anthologies), and non-exclusive worldwide print and electronic rights thereafter for both original works and reprints. We want to publish your story online in our webzine and keep it there indefinitely. We're also acquiring the right to offer ebook versions of the stories we publish, as Patreon rewards or for purchase; and to publish a print and ebook anthology of all the stories that appeared in the webzine over a given 1- or 2-year period. For original fiction, we want to be the only place publishing it for the first 6 months; after that, you're welcome to publish it anywhere else in any format you like. No multiple or simultaneous submissions. Don't resubmit a story we've rejected unless we request revisions. However, if we rejected a story of yours for the Mysterion anthology, you can send it to us again, once, if we held your story for further consideration, or we rejected it with specific critiques of the story and you revised the story to address those critiques. (But if we've already rejected your story twice, it's probably not worth sending it to...