Events

Deadline: August 21st, 2020 Payment: $100 and royalties Theme: This anthology is looking for stories set on or around Halloween Note: Reprints welcome Halloween: a night when the dead roam freely among the unsuspecting living; when the boundary between reality and fantasy, between this world and the next, is as thin as paper mache; when monsters both human and daemonic stalk the shadows, seeking easy prey… All Hallow’s Eve: a night to hide behind your best mask, lock your doors, and keep your Jack-o’-lantern burning till dawn. Because Something is knocking at the door, boys and girls… And it’s hungry. DEMON’S DREAMING PRESS PRESENTS: SOMETHING GOOD TO EAT Guidelines: What I’m looking for: Great horror, well written. Send me literary horror, pulp, dark fantasy, gore, magical realism – whatever suits you as a writer so long as your story is set on or around Halloween, or relates in some way to the holiday and its customs. Give me your Samhain-inflected stories of vampires, witches, werewolves, ghouls, zombies, ghosts, serial killers, aliens, revenge from beyond the grave, mirrors at midnight, etc. Or maybe something more personal, more idiosyncratic – experimentation and uniqueness are always a plus! For an idea of the sort of tone I’m looking for think classic E.C. Comics (Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror) Creepshow, Tales from the Darkside, Trick ‘r’ Treat, Monsters, The Twilight Zone, etc. What I’m not looking for: homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism or any other ism free of narrative context. No rape, excessive torture or sexual violence (especially toward children). How to Submit: Please send all submissions to [email protected] in either a .docx or .rtf file. Include the word Submission in subject, as well as your name and the title of your story. Include a brief bio in the body of your e-mail...

Deadline: August 22nd, 2020 Payment: $10-20 Theme: Cosmic horror that celebrate the ideas of H.P Lovecraft Sentinel Creatives has opened up for submissions for the "LOVECRAFT IN A TIME OF MADNESS" anthology. If you're unfamiliar with Sentinel Creatives, we're an indie publishing and production house based in Cape Town, South Africa. Though our focus is on books and ebooks, we also do audiobooks, and will be doing audio dramas in the near future! WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR As the title suggests, we're looking for stories of cosmic horror that celebrate the ideas of H.P Lovecraft! While it is not necessary for submissions to form a part of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, or other works, it is necessary for there to be some connection to the ideas and themes he grappled with in them. While Lovecraft is known for, among other things, his own particular writing style, we're not looking for stories that try to mimic his prose! Nor are we looking to play a game of "Lovecraft Bingo"! Rather, we're looking for stories that are faithful to the spirit of Lovecraftian horror. Show us to the dark corners of the earth, and the mind, but show us your particular take on it! These stories need not be set in our past, present or even our future. If you think you can do justice to a retelling of folklore or legend, go for it!  We'd love to see stories about King A'rtur'og and his knights of the non-Euclidian table, or Sir Gawain and the Eldritch Knight! Got a story about Anarchists v the Cult of Cthulhu in London during the industrial revolution? Let's see it! SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Send your submissions to: [email protected] with the subject "Lovecraft Submission". All manuscripts should be sent as a word document. Our preference is for Times New Roman, or another...

Deadline: August 25th, 2020 Payment: $5 for anything under 5000 words. $10 for anything over 5000 words. Theme: New tales of cryptid legends Note: Reprints welcome For generations, stories of mythological beasts have captivated the imaginations and nightmares of cultures all around the world. From Bigfoot to the Ahool, from the Chupacabra to the Giant Squid, we want your most creative cryptid stories. Whether on land or at sea, chill us to the bone with your wild imaginations. So many cryptid legends exist across the world and maybe you have a local cryptid you want the world to explore, like the Beast of Bray Road or the Loveland Frogman. Feel free to make it scary, gory, dark, or if you so desire, throw us a curveball and provide us with a scary monster that truly has a heart of gold. The only limit is your imagination…and that it must feature a cryptid, of course!  Submission Deadline:  August 25th, 2020  Word Count: 2,000 - 8,500. A little over or under is fine. Payment: $5 for anything under 5000 words.                                        $10 for anything over 5000 words. Important Bits Include a bio or greeting with your email. We don't need a lot, but at least let us know who you are. Please send all submissions as a .docx or .rtf attachment with the subject line of your email as: DBND -  CryptidChronicles  - Story Title  Stories sent after the submission deadline will be rejected unread. Multiple submissions welcome. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please keep us updated on the status if your story is picked up elsewhere. No extra lines between paragraphs. Reprints will be considered. Don't sit on your submission! If we reach the word count for the anthology, we will close submissions early. Send submissions to: [email protected]  Via: DBND Publishing.

Submission Period: August 23, 2020 to August 27, 2020 Payment: 12.5 cents per word Theme: Fireside has two goals: to find and publish great stories regardless of genre, and to pay our writers and artists well. Fireside holds a submissions period for each upcoming issue of Fireside Quarterly. In 2020, Fireside will be open to submissions for short stories during the following periods: August 24, 2020 to August 28, 2020 Submissions period for the Summer 2021 Issue November 30, 2020 to December 4, 2020 Submissions period for the Autumn 2021 Issue During open submissions periods, there will be a form on this page for uploading your submission. We have no further submissions dates to announce for the moment. Please subscribe to our newsletter if you’d like to be the first to find out about our future submissions dates. Guidelines We welcome previously unpublished work (‘published’ includes work posted on Patreon or on a blog) in English or Spanish from all writers anywhere in the world, and we are interested in seeing work from people of color, LGBTQIA people, disabled people, members of religious minorities, and people outside the United States. We strongly encourage submissions from people of those backgrounds, and all others whom traditional publishing has historically excluded. If you have any questions about how to submit, please email us at: [email protected]. Accessibility We use an online form to gather submissions, but we understand that this may not be universally accessible to disabled people. If you have questions related to accessibility, please email us at [email protected] with the subject line: Accessibility Query. Accessibility Queries should only contain a request to submit by alternate means, and should not include a submission. Any submissions sent via email will be deleted unread. Short Stories We accept short stories up to 3,000 words. Our budget allows us to pay for...

Deadline: August 28th, 2020 Payment: 6¢ a word Theme: Must be set in Motherland, a landyke community, details below. During a panel discussing a number of topics, including queering weird fiction, editor and publisher Steve Berman recalled an article in the New York Times: "Why Doesn’t Anyone Want to Live in This Perfect Place?" The notion of a dying lesbian community instantly seemed an ideal setting for weird fiction. And so Lethe Press is accepting submissions for Motherland. All stories must be set in Motherland, a landyke community founded on the Delmarva Peninsula in 1968 by Ida Marmer and Robinia Atwell. We are currently working on more details about Motherland that authors can include in their story. Please check back to this listing and page. Stories can be set during any time period, from the founding of Motherland to the current day. All stories must feature lesbian or bisexual protagonists. We recommend authors read the NY Times article and the book Landykes of the South before writing their submission. Deadline is August 28, 2020. Stories should be between 2,000 and 10,000 words. Payment is 6¢ a word, split between a sum upon acceptance (up to $100) with the remainder upon publication. Email stories as attachments (MS Doc or RTF files only) to [email protected] with the Subject Line: MOTHERLANDSUBMISSION. Include in the body of your email a brief synopsis of the story and a couple lines about yourself. Via: Lethe Press.

Deadline: August 28th, 2020 Payment: Royalties Theme: Some real-world social issue where denial is causing great harm. Because we had such success and are so proud of our anthologies Strongly Worded Women and Shout, we want to do it again. Co-editors Zack Dye and Benjamin Gorman will be compiling another anthology for publication in the winter of 2020/spring of 2021. This time, the theme will be: Denial Kills. Your story or poem could be about some real-world social issue where denial is causing great harm. Denying global climate change? The dismissal of real news as "fake"? Ignoring the benefits of vaccines? Refusing to acknowledge the world is round and four and a half billion years old? Or it could be more personal. One character refusing to recognize something about her partner? About herself? These can serve as powerful allegories for those other issues without ever mentioning them. And of course your story doesn't need to be set in our world at all. Spaceships and black holes? Wizards and orcs? Fairies and vampires? Bring it! The stories do need to be fictional, though. We're not knocking journalism, long form essays, memoirs, or online rants, but there are other places for those. We want to create a space for fiction and poetry (ideally an equal amount so they can trade off and converse with one another). Short Stories: 2000 to 3500 words Poems: Up to 350 lines, max, for a single poem Multiple submissions accepted. Due date: Friday, August 28th Send your poem or short story to:  [email protected] with the subject line: Denial Anthology Submission from _your name__ Reading fee: Zero dollars and zero cents Payment is in the form of royalties, depending on sales of the anthology. All authors included will divide the profits evenly with the editors and the publishing company. Via: Not A Pipe Publishing.

Deadline: August 30th, 2020 Payment: $20 Theme: Must include some aspect of death, "Ghosts, ghouls, possession, ritual, cultural beliefs, the paranormal, monsters, the occult" etc Death. What would horror be without a little sprinkle of death? Yet it’s not the act of dying that creates the evergreen mystery surrounding the finality that comes with loss of life, it’s the enigma that follows the question: what comes next? The Other Side is a horror anthology which explores the great beyond. We’re looking for stories that tackle the world beyond the living. Ghosts, ghouls, possession, ritual, cultural beliefs, the paranormal, monsters, the occult, this anthology will collect the greatest stories that answer the age-old question: When we breath our last breath, where do we go? Submission deadlines: Sunday 30th August, 2020 Word count: 5,000–10,000 words. Payment: $20 Submission Guidelines A submission Word template is available for download HERE. Stories slightly over or under the word count will be considered Stories must be saved as a Word document, PDFs will not be accepted Times New Roman Size 12 font 1.5 paragraph spacing Place your name, the title of the anthology for which you are submitting, and your preferred contact email address in the header of the document Sex, violence, and coarse language are accepted as long as they serve the story No hate speech or fan fiction Multiple submissions welcome Reprints will be considered Payment for accepted stories will be made within 7 working days of confirmation of entry. Failure to adhere to submission guidelines will result in immediate rejection from the anthology. SUBMIT MY STORY Via: Devil's Rock Publishing.

Deadline: August 30th, 2020 Payment: 3000+ words is $125, Under 3k words is $75, $50 for reprints Theme: Horror by black authors Note: Reprints Welcome if not previously published in audio We will be open August 1-30, 2019. Are you Black? It doesn't matter what part of the world you're from, or where you are now–as long as you're Black and you write horror, you are welcome to submit! Here's what you need to know: Story submissions should be no longer than 10,000 words. We may occasionally do short fiction episodes for stories less than 3,000 words, so feel free to submit shorter stories–it just may be a bit longer before your story airs. Please send only one submission to us at a time. Simultaneous submissions (sending the same story to multiple publications) are okay. We respond within 4-6 weeks. If you found another home for your work, let us know ASAP. We do give personalized feedback, so long as your submission falls within our submission guidelines. If we reject your story, you can submit a different story at any time, but you'll only get feedback for stories submitted 12 months after the rejection. We pay for exclusive audio (first world) and electronic publishing rights for 6 months after the air date. We also reserve the right to continue to broadcast, promote, and/or link to your story on our website/podcast, but after six months, you can publish your story in any format elsewhere. We only accept reprints that have not been published in audio format previously. Just let us know your story has appeared elsewhere and where so we can credit properly. We do have plans to eventually publish “Best Of” anthologies. Should we decide to include your piece, we'll ask your permission first and you'll be paid for inclusion. If you have...

Deadline: August 30th, 2020 Payment: $40 Theme: It needs to evoke a sense of wonder and be appropriate for a YA audience. With a whisper of magic, the portal begins to open. Travel through, fellow wanderers, and tell us of the stories you find. Submissions for Cast of Wonders’ Flash Fiction Contest will run from August 15-August 30th, 2020, via Moksha. To be a valid submission to the contest, each story must adhere to the following rules: The story must be no more than 500 words long, not including its title. Do not use the title to skirt around the word count. Word count will be determined using MS Word. The story must adhere to the general Cast of Wonders Submission Guidelines. Most importantly, it needs to evoke a sense of wonder and be appropriate for a YA audience. We aim for a 12-17 age range: that means sophisticated, non-condescending stories with wide appeal, and without explicit sex, violence or pervasive obscene language. The story must be original and previously unpublished. Stories will be posted on a members-only portion of the Escape Artists forum, so first publication rights will not be spent if your story does not win. The person submitting the story must be the story’s author (or acting for the author with express permission) and hold full publishing rights to the story. A story that is derived from a previously published work in another format (i.e. not a short story) may be fine, assuming doing so isn’t in violation of copyright, obviously. This is a grey area – a retelling of a classic tale, or popular culture references, are likely to be fine, but other forms of fanfiction would probably not be appropriate. If in doubt, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “QUERY” and ask before submitting....

Deadline: August 31st, 2020 Payment: Royalties Theme: A Collection Of Viking Tales A Collection of Viking Tales Zimbell House is holding open submissions for short Viking tales that feature Reanna the Red. These tales must be about her leadership, heroics, and survival of her people. Your point of view character can be a bard telling of her exploits, her second in command explaining why they follow her, Reanna herself, or anyone that has witnessed her actions. However, once you pick a POV do not change it. Let your imagination roam and put our readers in the middle of the action. Our readers want to feel the cold, smell the sea-spray, hear the village sounds. Our readers want to understand the gods that are worshipped, have a true sense of what daily life is like and what the stakes are. Please keep foul language to a minimum-it loses its punch if over-used. Dialogue needs to be believable, and please keep dialects/slang to a bare minimum if you must use them. No head-hopping or POV changes. Pick one point of view and stick with it. Please show more of the action than just telling the reader what happens. Submissions of both short stories and novellas to this anthology are welcome, please keep in mind the minimum word count is 4,500 and the maximum word count is 19,500. This anthology is a great opportunity to showcase emerging writers and allow them to build their professional platforms. Submission Deadline: August 31, 2020, with a targeted release date of late October 2020. Submit your best work. Poorly formatted and unedited work will be turned down. Please use Americanized English spellings. We will be doing light editing as necessary to fit the standards we strive to maintain. Submission Guidelines: Any work under 4,500 words will be automatically disqualified for this anthology. The...