Events

Deadline: May 2nd, 2020 Payment: .10/word Theme: Horror and dark fantasy, cosmic horror, swords and sorcery, dark science-fiction, and downright weird. Stuff that doesn’t really fit elsewhere. Cross-genre stories welcome. Stories that define ‘weird’. Our next issue will be out this summer and we’re starting work on the issue after that. Although we have a solid roster of amazing talent, I’m holding ONE slot for open submissions. Here are the submission guidelines. THEME: Horror and dark fantasy, cosmic horror, swords and sorcery, dark science-fiction, and downright weird. Stuff that doesn’t really fit elsewhere. Cross-genre stories welcome. Stories that define ‘weird’. EXCEPTIONS: No gratuitous sex (story appropriate sexuality is okay). Harsh languages is not a problem. LENGTH: 5-8k words. No exceptions. PAYMENT: .10/word on acceptance FORMAT: Word document only (no RTF or PDF) Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced. Standard 5-7 character indent on paragraphs; no extra spaces between paragraphs except to indicate specific breaks in the story. No exceptions. MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS: Yes, but as separate emails. SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS: No. REPRINTS: No. We are only considering original works. FIRST PAGE: Include your name, address, email address, and word count on the first page of the story. No additional title page. SUBMISSION DATES: The window for submissions will be open for ONE WEEK, from Sunday, April 26, 9m Eastern time to Saturday, May 2nd, midnight Pacific Time. SEND TO: [email protected]  Put WEIRD TALES OPEN CALL in the header (without that the story will not be read). IMPORTANT NOTE: Please follow the submission guidelines. -Jonathan Maberry Editor, WEIRD TALES MAGAZINE -Dana Fredsti Submissions Editor Via: Weird Tales.

Deadline: May 4th, 2020 Payment: $30 for each accepted submission Theme: Digital Fingers, Digital Roots, Digital Families SUBMISSIONS FOR OUR FOURTH ISSUE, COMMUNITY THROUGH TECH, WILL OPEN APRIL 20TH AND WILL CONTINUE THROUGH MAY 4TH. Digital Fingers, Digital Roots, Digital Families In times of crisis, certain parts of us are put on hold, and other pieces may begin to come into play. Families crop up where they need to, communities fill new space. One thousand pairs of hands clap in unison and you step onto the narrow flap of a sun-starved balcony for one of only a handful of times. Turns out there are stars in this city, odors of plant-life rising from the tiles. Roads become rivers you cannot ford, the light from the window opposite feels further away than the world’s first telephone call. But we can still synchronize; we are still mass movements, one hopeful world of applause in the night. Our digital selves are never met with solitude; our digital selves are held by others’ digital arms, nets that buoy us when, otherwise, we might feel most alone. Many of us live online. We are the internet, an uprising of webpages tugging and turning us into new formations. What are we making with it, with each other? How many interiors can we unite within these collective spaces? Issue 4 of Kanstellation asks for reflections around the theme of what digital families and communities mean to you. How do you express and define your selves within and through the digital roots you’ve found or inherited? General Submission Guidelines Rights By submitting to Kanstellation Magazine, you are agreeing to grant us First Electronic Rights and Non-exclusive Archival Rights if your work is accepted. All other rights remain with the author. After that, republishing with attribution is welcome. All submissions...

Deadline: May 5th, 2020 Payment: 2 cents per word Theme: Black market businesses during a pandemic The COVID-19 quarantine has us all shut up in our homes. Businesses have ground to a halt, the economy is slowed to a snail’s pace, and nobody is entirely certain how long it is going to last. In the middle of all of this, black market businesses have begun to operate: underground hair salons, photography studios, businesses once completely legitimate and now illegal simply for operating. If I’d written this call a year ago, it would stop there–but that’s no longer speculative fiction. That’s happening. So instead, Impulsive Walrus is asking for stories about the long haul. What does our world look like if the quarantine just…stays? We’re looking for near-future science fiction stories exploring the comedy, horror, and human drama of a life spent six feet away from each other, and a world where our interaction is done digitally, lest we be ravaged by disease. Impulsive Walrus Books will be paying a semi-pro rate of two cents per word. Reading period will begin on May 5, 2020, and will end when the anthology has hit its goal of 80,000 words. Looking for stories of between 2,000 and 8,000 words. Please submit by e-mailing a .doc or .rtf file to [email protected] with the subject line GOING VIRAL SUBMISSION. Via: Impulsive Walrus Books.

Deadline: May 10th, 2020 Payment: $20 per piece of fiction / creative non-fiction between 1000-3000 words and $30 per piece between 3001-6000 words. We offer $20 per poem. Theme: Pieces related to all things love, sex, and eroticism.  **Submissions for UnSung Volume II Close May 10th** ​ Submissions should be sent through the submission page, but any inquiries or concerns can be sent to:    [email protected].  Share Your Sauciest UnSung Literary Magazine is accepting pieces of poetry, micro or flash fiction, and short creative non-fiction. We would also like to feature visual artists, and are accepting illustrations and photography. ​ UnSung Literary Magazine is choosing to focus on marginalized voices; priority will be given to artists and authors who are Black/POC, LGBTQ, or identify as womxn.  ​ We are looking for pieces related to all things love, sex, and eroticism. But, we want to see your sensual expressions living within intersections. Have a piece about a Black, Queer AFAB (assigned female at birth) late- night tryst? Maybe prose detailing your attraction to another lesbian with masculinity similar to yours? Show us the tender poem of how his hand grazing yours first time made your heart flutter. We want to know how the moonlight looked reflecting off of their dark skin that night at the lake. Formatting and Correspondence ​ If submitting poetry, multiple pieces are allowed, but please no more than 5 at a time; if poems are each longer than 2 pages, submit no more than 3. Not all submitted may be accepted. For prose, we're looking for flash (included micro) fiction, so please limit submissions to 3000 words. Please put SUBMISSION: – – – in the header to help us weed out spam. ​ Example: SUBMISSION: – – – We invite you to add a cover letter detailing your publication history (if any, non-mandatory) and any relevant details. These...

Deadline: May 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: May 14th 2020 Payment: 0.08/word for original fiction, $0.03/word for reprint fiction. Theme: Science Fiction and Fantasy Note: Reprints Welcome Cossmass Infinities is OPEN for submissions. Submissions are open until May 14th 2020. Cossmass Infinities is a Science Fiction and Fantasy short story magazine edited by Paul Campbell. Please read and follow the instructions below before submitting to Cossmass Infinities. Submissions must be made using this form. Incomplete forms will be automatically rejected. We are looking for original science fiction and fantasy short stories. We are also interested in previously published stories. We are looking for short stories between 2000–10,000 words. We pay $0.08/word for original fiction. We pay $0.03/word for reprint fiction. The rights we wish to obtain are listed in the sample contracts for original fiction and reprint fiction. Simultaneous submissions are accepted. Multiple submissions are not accepted and will be rejected automatically. However, once you have received a rejection, you may immediately submit another story. Your manuscript should be a plain document, containing ONLY the story title, author by-line, and the complete text of the story. Do not use underlining in your manuscript for emphasis. Italics and bold are sufficient. File formats must be either Word (.docx) or OpenDocument Text (.odt) file formats. Files in other formats will be rejected. Payment is through Paypal. Submit only complete stories. An email confirming receipt of your submission will be sent within 20 minutes of us receiving it. Note that your submission is sent via a email from the form processor service (formspree.io) which may occasionally take longer than 20 minutes. If you haven’t received a notification after a day then either resubmit your story or contact us. Please allow 3 months for a decision, then feel free to reply to your notification email to enquire as to the status of your story. Cossmass Infinities will be published...

Deadline: May 15th, 2020 Payment: $5 USD Theme: "Most" Speculative fiction, read below for specifics. Note: Open only for women-identified authors. Simply follow the schedule below to be notified when we close and open for submissions. Criteria Luna Station Quarterly publishes speculative fiction written by women-identified authors. We think women write awesome characters and really cool stories and we want to show it to the world. We will consider stories submitted by any woman writer, regardless of experience or writing resume. If you consider yourself on the woman end of the gender spectrum in any significant capacity, you’re welcome here! Stuff we want: Fantasy Science Fiction Space Opera New Fairy Tales (not retellings) Some creepiness Stories that explore the nooks and crannies of an original world Big events from the everyman perspective Unique settings and storytelling forms Well written stories with strong characters Stuff we don’t want: Anything biased toward any religion, race or moral preference Extreme gore or sexual content, in particular no explicit rape or sexual assault. (everything in moderation) Bizarro fiction Poetry Fan Fiction (original stories only, please) Bad grammar/punctuation (please proofread and watch your sentence structure!) Plagiarism A further note about sex and violence in submissions. Science fiction has a long-standing tradition of pushing boundaries and asking difficult questions. It is meant to challenge us and ask us to look at ourselves and how we treat each other and the world around us. That said, LSQ is centered on uplift and so any story that contains explicit sexual situations or violence especially toward women will be considered more carefully than other stories and the content must be justified within the story’s arch. Format and Details Stories should be 500 to 7000 words in length. We may publish longer or shorter works, but the greater your story is...

Deadline: May 15th, 2020 Payment: 3¢ per word, $150.00 max, 1¢ per word for reprints Theme: Not locked to a genre and love “The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits” Note: Reprints accepted We are a literary magazine of dark fiction, both short stories and flash fiction. We want your best. But then, doesn’t everyone? No specific sub-genres or themes, just good stories. For inspiration, we suggest “The Twilight Zone”, “The Outer Limits”, and LampLight, Vol1 Issue 1 which is free. We go for stories that are dark, literary; we are looking for the creepy, the weird and the unsettling. We do not accept stories with the following: vampires, zombies, werewolves, serial killers, hitmen, excessive gore or sex, excessive abuse against women, revenge fantasies, cannibals, high fantasy. Writers We have published writers of all backgrounds from all over the world in LampLight, but not everywhere, nor all shapes and sizes of writers. Help us to shine a light on greater diverse writing and keep LampLight a showcase of the best dark fiction out there by submitting and encouraging others to as well. Edition and Rights The quarterly is published as print and ebook, and at the end of the year all the quarterlies are bound together in an annual collection. We are asking for non-exclusive, worldwide, serial rights to your work for both electronic and print. We want to publish it, we don’t want to own it. We will take reprints, provided you have the rights we are asking for. We will not consider reprints that are currently available for free online. If you have already been in LampLight, we ask you wait until the next volume to submit again. Payment We accept originals and reprints up to 7,000 words (firm). Payment in USD. Unpublished Fiction: 3¢ per word, $150.00 max Reprints: 1¢ per word...

Deadline: May 16th, 2020 Payment: $30 Theme: The theme of ultimate sacrifice as key to heroism. A Heroic Anthology of Sacrifice Not every hero survives. All heroes pay a cost, some the ultimate sacrifice. We're examining that theme of ultimate sacrifice as key to heroism. Not only the willingness to sacrifice all, but the act of sacrifice for the greater 'cause,' whatever that may be. These are tales of loss. Death can be a cost of heroism--but it might not be the greater loss come story's end. Heroes die. And they lose things greater than life: Family. Freedom. Innocence. Faith. Ideals. Drastic change must happen to your hero by story's end. But this is not just a book of dead heroes. Death does not have to mean defeat. Loss does not always equal failure. We want stories across the spectrum, stories of apotheosis and of nihilism and of what lies between. Heroes die and legends are born. Or nothing changes and it is all moot. A battle is won, while a war lost . . . or a battle lost to win a war. This is character-driven storytelling, and we want to read it in all the 'Sword-and-' genres: Sword & Sorcery, Sword & Planet, Sword & Sandal, Sword & Soul, Sword & Six-gun. 11 week submission period. We will be accepting 13-15 stories, and stories should be 2k-9k words in length. Nothing shorter will be read, and our sweet spot is in the 5k-7k range. Publication is intended for Christmas 2020. Payment of $30 flat per story shall be rendered after publication, and authors will receive electronic copies and permanent discount on print purchases from RBE. Cover photography from Peter Gnas. As inspired by and foreword to be written by David Pitchford. Click the cover to enter the RB Submittable platform....

Deadline: June 30th, 2020 Payment: $100 Theme: Must take place in Omnipark (details linked below.) House Blackwood is putting together a brand-new anthology of original fiction, set in the world of OmniPark. This anthology will feature stories from Brian Evenson, Gemma Files, Orrin Grey, Jesse Bullington, and other leading lights of the weird fiction community. The deadline is June 30, 2020. You’ll find much more background information on the OmniPark Wiki, which documents all the park’s original Realms and attractions, as well as many of the personalities who shaped its development. We are paying $100 for short stories of 2,000 to 5,000 words, set in and around OmniPark. Send submissions as Word (.doc) files, formatted according to Shunn manuscript format, to: tales from omnipark @gmail.com (remove spaces) Only manuscripts submitted as Word docs, following Shunn format, will be considered. Via: House Blackwood.