Events

Deadline: March 1st, 2020 Payment: Contributors Copy Thurston Howl Publications is now accepting submissions for its fourth volume of its HOWLERS series, Nefarious Nature. Deadline: March 1, 2020 Word count: 2,500-8,000; a little above and a little below will be acceptable People versus nature has a long tradition in horror genre. This anthology seeks to celebrate and transform that narrative trope. Categorized into six different parts, the stories in this anthology will tackle the many ways Mother Nature can be a horrific...well...force of nature. Below are the six parts of the anthology and examples of how the element manifests in horror literature. Please note we are a progressive press and do not publish any conservative works. Examples in film and literature: Fire: Stephen King’s Firestarter, Freddy Kreuger’s entire backstory, Clive Barker’s “The Forbidden” Water: Black Water, Peter Benchley’s Jaws, Open Water Earth: any of the premature burial stories, any of the Medusa stories, Blood Beach Wind: The Fog, Snakes on a Plane, The Wind, Sharknado Plants: The Ruins, Little Shop of Horrors, R. L. Stine’s Stay Out of the Basement Animals: Stephen King’s Cujo, Edgar Allan Poe’s “Rats in the Walls,” Arachnophobia We will NOT accept: Racism, sexism, or discrimination presented in a positive light. Pedophilia or sex with characters under the age of 18 presented in a positive light. Rape, torture, dubious consent, forced seduction presented in a positive light. Snuff or Necrophilia presented in a positive light If you are in doubt, ASK. Better to ask then to get a straight up rejection! If you are unsure, just shoot me an email at [email protected].(restrictions borrowed from Voice: https://t.co/MWykJ6RY36) You can submit up to three stories, but we will only accept one per author (if any). Reprints are fine, but you have to own full permission of the work in...

Deadline: March 2nd, 2020 Payment: $5 Theme: Work meant to honor and value the life perspective and worldview of underprivileged individuals by serving to validate, recognize, and share the value of those who are oppressed. UPDATED GUIDELINES FOR THE 6TH COLLECTION & AFTERWARDS BEGINNING JANUARY 2019 SUBMISSIONS TO THE WIRE’S DREAM MAGAZINE TWD Magazine accepts original, unseen creative work in the following categories: Fiction Creative Nonfiction Poetry Art Photography Combined Work Work must be original and unseen. Please do not send work that has already been published or is pending publication. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. There is no creative limitation on the style of work submitted. There are no fees for submission. NEW: Accepted Contributors will receive a $5 payment for their work. A max of 2 Contributors per category will be featured. GENERAL GUIDELINES Submissions are accepted through Submittable. Submission Period: January 1st to March 1st (Summer Issue) Reading Period: March 2nd to April 30th Tentative Digital Magazine Release: June 30th** July 1st to September 1st (Winter Issue) Reading Period: September 2nd to October 30th Tentative Digital Magazine Release: December 31st** **Dates are subject to change due to volume of submissions received; may be delayed by a week or two. Cover Letter Subject: Name of Category, Your Full Name (Or Pen Name) Body: Brief introduction, short bio (300 words max) with publication links (if applicable). No bio picture. Please indicate if your submission is simultaneous and at what date it was first submitted elsewhere. Address to Accept $5 Payment: If work is accepted, please be prepared to provide a full valid address where you would like to receive your payment. PO Box addresses are acceptable. Complimentary Close: Your full name declares that your submission adheres to TWD Magazine submission guidelines. Attachments: Please read specific category guidelines. SPECIFIC CATEGORY GUIDELINES Fiction 1 – 2 pieces per submission...

Deadline: March 9th, 2020 Payment: £25 Theme: Other Worlds Note: Women only ISSUE 86: OTHER WORLDS The theme for Issue 86 is ‘other worlds’ – the mysterious space/time realms of the scientifically plausible: the ‘dust’ of Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials, the time-travelling TARDIS, the alternate realities of Schrödinger’s cat… Deadline: 9 Mar 2020 Twice annually we ask for themed poetry and prose submissions for the Showcase (previously New Writing) section of the magazine. Winners are selected by our Guest Editors (in the past they have included Julia Blackburn, Nicci Gerrard, Pascale Petit, Rachel Cusk and Sarah Dunant) and are published in the magazine. We also make a small payment for most submissions we publish. We look for stories of up to 2,200 words, poems of up to 40 lines, and short scripts (for theatre, radio or film) of up to 1,000 words (including character names and stage instructions). Please note: we only accept up to four poems, two short stories and two short scripts per entrant. Submitting your work Entries are judged anonymously, so please put your name on a separate cover sheet and omit your name from your poem or story. To send us your submissions online, fill in the form below and upload your submission document . To send your entries by post, write to Mslexia Publications PO Box 656 Newcastle upon Tyne NE99 1PZ. If you would like an acknowledgement of your submission’s arrival, please include a SAE. If you have any questions regarding your submissions, please read the Themed Writing FAQs. In the unlikely event your query is not answered there, please email us or call 0191 204 8860. Good luck with your writing! Via: Mslexia.

Deadline: March 10th, 2020 Payment: 50% of the sales will be split between each author of each particular book after printing costs Theme: Horror To submit your short story to the Bi-Monthly Breaking Rules Publishing Horror Anthology, starting in January 2020 - released by the end of the month - please send an email to [email protected] by the 10th of the book release month. ​ In your email - please include your contact information, including location in the body of your email, as well as a "Word Doc" attachment of your work. We will confirm your submission within 24 hours, as well as get back to you within one week on the possibility for publishing options. All submissions must - Be sent in a "Word Doc" - 8.5 x 11 format - a clean, edited story with the authors name and title at the top of the page - please, no special margins - your story should be indented properly - single spaced - in a 12 font - no double spaces between paragraphs - and no headers or footers. Page limit is 30 max  - 15 min - all submissions but be sent in by the 10th of the book release month. Publishing starts January 2020. Work that is sent incorrectly will be sent back. We sincerely appreciate your interest in Breaking Rules Publishing but also don't want to add additional work for our formatting team. ​Editing: By submitting you agree to allow Breaking Rules Publishing to provide a light edit, spell check, formatting, appropriate grammar, to all stories published. Copyrights: The author retains all copyrights to the submitted work. With your consent, BRP may publish of your work in future journals and publicity pieces, and other formats or contexts determined by, and at the discretion of, Breaking Rules Publishing. Please note that other publications may not accept...

Deadline: March 15th, 2020 Payment: 8 cents per word Theme: Positive futures, SF, urban fantasy. Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses - Positive futures, SF, urban fantasy. The future we all want. Examples might include effects of technology on the young (online learning, socialization), climate mitigation and adaptation, new opportunities to boldly go where none have gone before The untented Kosmos my abode, I pass, a willful stranger My mistress the open road And the bright eyes of danger (Robert Louis Stevenson, Youth and Love) Reading period: February 15 - March 15, 2020 Writer deadline: March 15, 2020 Publication date: June 1, 2020 Third Flatiron Publishing is based in Boulder, Colorado, and Ayr, Scotland. We are looking for submissions to our (approximately) quarterly themed anthologies. Our focus is on science fiction and fantasy and anthropological fiction. We want tightly plotted tales in out-of-the-ordinary scenarios. Light horror is acceptable, provided it fits the theme. Please send us short stories that revolve around age-old questions and have something illuminating to tell us as human beings. Fantastical situations and creatures, exciting dialog, irony, mild horror, and wry humor are all welcome. Stories should be between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Inquire if longer. Role models for the type of fiction we want include Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur C. Clarke, Dan Simmons, Connie Willis, Vernor Vinge, Iain Banks, Alastair Gray, and Ken Kesey. We want to showcase some of the best new shorts available today. For each anthology, we will also accept  a few very short humor pieces on the order of the "Shouts and Murmurs" feature in The New Yorker Magazine (600 words or so). These can be written from a first-person perspective or can be mini-essays that tell people what they ought to do, how to do something better, or explain why something is like it is, humorously. An SF/Fantasy...

Deadline: March 15th, 2020 Payment: 8 cents/6 pence for each word (SFWA qualifying market rate) and 6 cents/4 pence for reprints. Theme: The Lovecraft Mythos, more details below! Note: Reprints accepted Lovecraft Mythos Anthology Featuring a foreword by Ramsey Campbell, this offering of H.P. Lovecraft's shared universe will be a thrilling immersion into the world of Old Ones and the Elder Gods, an ancient race of terrifying beings. In Lovecraft's vision we live in a deep, but fragile, illusion unable to comprehend the ancient beings, such as the Cthulhu who lies dead but dreaming in the submerged city of R'lyeh, waiting to rise then wreak havoc on our realm of existence. Lovecraft used the mythos to create a background to his fiction, and challenged many writer companions to add their own stories. Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner were amongst the first but over the years many others such as Ramsey Campbell, Lin Carter and August Derleth added their voices to the many mythic cycles, developing themes and new fictional pathways for the town of Arkham, and the creatures Azathoth and Nyarlathotep. The Lovecraft Mythos is fertile ground for any writer of supernatural, horror, fantasy and science fiction, so for this edition we are opening our submissions for brand new stories, many published here for the first time, to continue expanding the shared universe. Word count is 3000 - 7000 and submissions will be accepted between 24th February and 15th March - please send to [email protected]. Payment will be 8 cents/6 pence for each word (SFWA qualifying market rate) and 6 cents/4 pence for reprints. If your story is a reprint please let us know in your submission email. Multiple submissions are accepted. We will aim to read each story and confirm its status within 4 months of the...

Deadline: March 15th, 2020 Payment: $10 Theme: 90s erotic horror Deadline: March 15, 2020 Word count: 2,000-8,000; a little above and a little below will be acceptable There’s a club on the outskirts of town. The neon lights outside flicker over silhouetted forms smoking. Inside, a rat bartender watches forms dancing, glares exchanged, and drinks sloshing. The bass is loud, and the dancers strip more and more...and more. Welcome to the Electric Sewer. This anthology is set in a neonpunk world in the 90s. You can take your characters anywhere. This is pretty open world! The only rules are these: 1. It has to be furry erotic horror. 2. You have to at least mention the nightclub Electric Sewer, even if no one goes there! 3. Carlos is the name of the pink rat bartender and owner of the Electric Sewer. He can be in your story, but just know his personality is stoic, more of a sinister watcher than a participant in what goes on at the club. Other than those three things, you have free reign! What is neonpunk? First of all, think of what cyberpunk is and does. It’s often progressive and alternative and based on a digital sci fi technological world. Now, move that world backward in time to the 80s/90s. So examples aesthetically would be Stranger Things, Caravan Palace’s Lone Digger music video, the neon chapter of the video game Infamous Second Son, elements of the music video Into the Night by Nero, etc. In a nutshell, it has this neon aesthetic, and characters can be whatever species and whacky colors you want! It has a setting in the 80s / 90s. And it’s still punk! Possible stories might include things like this: a slasher is killing strippers at the club and a gay gang...

Deadline: March 25th, 2020 Payment: $50 Theme: Poetry, Short Essays, Fiction, and Art by those affected by gun violence. Swallow Publishing, in association with Mythic Picnic, is soliciting works for HUMANS IN THE WILD: Reactions to a Gun Loving Country. The anthology features Kathy Fish, author of Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild, and we will choose approximately 30 additional works from other authors, artists, and people at large. Submissions must be original, but may be previously published works, and should be no more than 2,500 words in length. Selected authors will be paid $50. The anthology will be sold in print and eBook. We will be donating a percentage of net proceeds from sales to charity, and encourage you to donate to a charity of your choice as well. If you choose to donate your $50, please tell us about your chosen charity and why you choose to donate. Though the editors of HUMANS IN THE WILD prefer donations to anti-gun violence charitable organizations, we understand there are many problems in the 21st century that may be nearer to your heart. And if you’ve lost faith in charities, you can tell us about that if you want to as well. An index at the back of the anthology will include a bio on each contributor, including your explanation of where the $50 is going and why, but only if you wish to include that information. Paste your submission into the body of the email, or attach as a PDF/Docx/JPG. Include your contact information in the body of your email, your bio, and remember to tell us about your preferred charity, your reason for donating, or your reason for choosing not to donate. Donation, and explaining your donation, is totally optional and is not a requirement for acceptance. Please send submissions to [email protected]. The last day for...

Deadline: March 28th, 2020 Payment: $3 Theme: Ideas: April Fool's Day, Passover, Easter, Tax Day, Earth Day, World Immunization Week We are looking for some suitable stories for April 2020, including: April Fool's Day Passover Easter Tax Day Earth Day World Immunization Week The deadline for these stories is March 27, 2020, at the end of the day (11:59 PM Pacific Time). Writing Guidelines Every Day Fiction is looking for very short (flash) fiction, of up to  1000 words. There’s no such thing as too short — if you can do the job in 50 words, have at it! — but our readers prefer pieces that tell or at  least hint at a complete story (some sort of action or tension rising  to a moment of climax, and at least a clue toward a resolution, though  it doesn’t have to be all spelled out). All fiction genres are acceptable, and stories that don’t fit neatly into any genre are welcome too. While personal experiences and other  non-fiction can be great sources of inspiration, please turn them into  fiction for us, or send them elsewhere. Our readership is adult, so children’s stories are unlikely to be accepted unless they are relevant to adults as well. On the other hand, we are not impressed by gratuitous sex and violence, or pointlessly foul  language; edgy content should be necessary and appropriate to the plot  and characters. It ought to go without saying that any story submitted to Every Day Fiction must be your own unpublished original creation. If  you publish a story on a blog, even your own personal blog, or any  website accessible to the general public (i.e., if the story can be  found and read online without a password or friend status or other  limitation), it is considered published and therefore inappropriate for...

Deadline: March 28th, 2020 Payment: 6 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints Theme: Well written original work in science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form, and from around the world. Note: Reprints welcome Submissions Schedule We have a regular submissions schedule, easy to remember and plan for: four times a year, one week each time, midnight E.S.T. to midnight E.S.T., at the beginning of each season of the year: March 21 - 28, June 21 - 28, September 21 - 28, December 21 - 28 We began <a href="https://cosmicrootsandeldritchshores.com/submissions/the-kepler-award/">The Kepler Award</a> this spring.  The purpose of the award is to recognize and encourage writers of excellent science fiction and fantasy stories that creatively extrapolate on known science in constructive and exciting ways. You can learn about <a href="https://cosmicrootsandeldritchshores.com/submissions/the-kepler-award/">The Kepler Award here.</a> We pay 6¢ per word for new fiction, 2¢ per word for fiction reprints, 2 - 6¢ per word for new fact-based work, 1- 4¢ per word for reprinted fact articles. Reprints must not have been published elsewhere within the past year or be available for sale online. For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and 'forget password' have a captcha compatible with screen readers. &nbsp; Writers Guidelines We accept new work as well as reprints, anywhere from 1000 word flash fiction on up, but all else being equal, shorter pieces will be favored. We also accept poetry.  We have tough standards but only care about the quality of the writing, storytelling ability, characters, plot, and ideas, not whether you're new or established.  Submit only work you are proud of -- if you don't love it, neither will our readers!  If in doubt, edit it down further.  And further. For the many writers who valued our...