Events

Deadline: September 30th, 2020 Payment: $5 Theme: Erotic Halloween with a happily ever after Halloween at home. Curled up on the couch with the lights down low. Mini horror movie marathons. Sexting with your partner(s) instead of Netflix and chill. It’s all going to look a little different this year. Too early, you say? Never. Halloween is every day for this editor. So in the spirit of getting a jump on things – pun intended – I’m putting out the 2020 Circlet Press Halloween Microfictions call for submissions a little early this year. The same rules apply with one little twist. Since everything is a hell fire this year let’s try and keep things positive. That means every submission needs to have either a HEA (Happily Ever After), or at least hint at an HEA. But they must still fit into the theme of Halloween/Autumn/October/Horror, and also be erotic as well as story/character driven. If you are unfamiliar with Circlet Press please have a look around our website to get a sense of what we do. As always, I especially encourage marginalized voices to send a submission. BIPOC, disabled, neurodivergent, and LGBTQ+ folks especially, though all are welcome to submit. Word count limit is 1,500. No fan fiction. No reprints. All characters must be of legal age to consent and consent must be clear within the story. Multiple submissions are okay. Please send as a Word doc or RTF (or in the body of the email) and follow standard manuscript formatting guidelines. The deadline is September 30th. Payment will be $5 and the author retains all rights. Please include a short bio with your submission. Send submissions to [email protected] Via: Circlet Press.

Deadline: September 30th, 2020 Payment: Roughly $25 for stories under 1,000 words, $50 for stories between 1,000 and 5,000 words, $75 for stories between 5,000 and 7,500 words and $100, for stories of 7,500 words and over. Theme: sword and sorcery Heroic Fantasy Quarterly will be OPEN for submissions in September, 2020! Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is generally open to fiction and poetry submissions four months per year. The months you can submit are: March June September  December  If you submit fiction or poetry in any other month, you will receive an auto-response and your tale will not be reviewed. * * * As its name suggests, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is a quarterly ezine dedicated to publishing heroic fantasy — in both prose and poetry. We are unrepentant in our goal of elevating unapologetic sword and sorcery to a rightful high place. We pay $100 for stories and $25 for poems, upon publication.  (Scroll down for info on art submissions.) We purchase first world English language electronic rights, electronic rights for 90 days, archival rights for twelve months, and excerpt rights. Our fiction word limit is a soft 10,000 words, although we are willing to serialize at a maximum of 50,000 words over four issues. You may submit up to three poems, with a cumulative maximum of 30 pages.   No simultaneous submissions, please. While we don’t have iron-clad rules regarding our fiction payment, we roughly pay $25 for stories under 1,000 words, $50 for stories between 1,000 and 5,000 words, $75 for stories between 5,000 and 7,500 words and $100, for stories of 7,500 words and over. Tolkienesque (as in really long) poetry epics/sagas/vedas will most likely be treated — and paid — like fiction. Similarly, prose pieces of fewer than 1,000 words will be paid at poetry’s standard rate of $25. Art: HFQ is looking for quality...

Deadline: September 30th, 2020 Payment: $75 Theme: The holiday season In Krampus Tales: A Killer Anthology, the holidays have lost their cheer. Evergreen boughs hang brown and brittle. Sweets taste bitter. The little ones are restless and will not sleep. There’s something stirring in the dark, but only the bravest writers will explore what horrors stalk across the rooftops. It could be a tempestuous ghost seeking its stolen past. Maybe it’s a malevolent shadow come for its sworn promises. Krampus might be lying in wait for his chance to punish the wicked children. The only way to find out is to brave the dark and tell the story of what you find. We will be accepting the twelve best submissions for inclusion in this anthology. Stories must take place during the holiday season and be part of the horror genre, but no excessive gore or adult content. Think YA or PG-13 horror rather than adult or R-rated horror. Please carefully consider your submission before you send it to us. Check for simple errors. Have a beta reader comb through it. Do everything you can to make us say yes. We are looking forward to seeing what you found in the dark. Submission Guidelines 1. Submissions are due on or before 11:59 a.m. PST on September 30, 2020. Please submit all stories to [email protected] with subject line JHP Krampus Tales Anthology and the title of your work. 2. All submissions must be in English and double spaced with 12-pt TNR font. 3. Please submit your story as a .docx file. Your name, the work’s title, and the work’s word count must be on the front page. Please also include a 50- to 100-word author’s bio with your submission. 4. Story length is 6,000 to 9,000 words. Your story must meet the minimum word count. Submissions below 6,000 words...

Deadline: September 30th, 2020 Payment: £10 Theme: Genies G is for Genies – Submissions open August 1st. Deadline September 30th. Forget the Genie from Aladdin. Think about wishes gone wrong, a disobedient genie, or even from the perspective of a disgruntled Djinn. SUBMISSIONS OPEN FOR A-Z OF HORROR We are currently calling for submissions for a series of horror anthologies – The A-Z of Horror. The series will be based on a variety of themes and will consist of twenty-six books in total. We are looking for short horror stories, between 4000 and 8000 words, on each of the themes listed below. You may submit to more than one book, but we will only include a maximum of one story from each author, in each book. Being accepted into one book does not guarantee acceptance into one of the others. The story must be your own work, to which you hold the rights. The story must not be available elsewhere and, if accepted, we will hold the rights to it for three months from the date of publication. After that time, you may use the story however you wish. Any sub-genre of horror is suitable, even extreme, so long as the story fits the theme of that book and does not include anything which may unnecessarily cause offence (glorification of child abuse, rape, etc.). Payment for the story will be £10, to be paid by PayPal, as well as a contributor’s e-book of the finished book. Please send submissions in a Word document (ideally Times New Roman 12pt, single spaced) to [email protected] with the title of the book you are submitting to in the subject line. Please ensure you have included your name on the Word document. If you have any queries, feel free to get in touch using the Contact page. We...

Deadline: October 1st, 2020 Payment: Royalties Theme: Horror! - shipwrecks, your lost passengers and mysterious creatures. Tantalize me with gripping tales of horror and drown me in tears of sorrow as we discover what lies within the deepest crevasses of the ocean or in the innocent creek. It Calls From The Sea Submission Open: July 1, 2020 Submission Close: October 01, 2020 2:00 a.m. EST Publishing timeline: December 2020 Theme: Bring me your shipwrecks, your lost passengers and mysterious creatures. Tantalize me with gripping tales of horror and drown me in tears of sorrow as we discover what lies within the deepest crevasses of the ocean or in the innocent creek. ​ As with all our "It Calls From" Series this one is HORROR, so I want to be scared. Be it real or mythological creatures of lore that attacks, make our hearts race and our nightmares come alive. We also want it to be within our reality, so please keep your stories on our earth. If you are doing a future earth story, we would still like it within our relative timeline, so don't go too far into the future. ​ The ocean is deep, dark and vast. There are real dangers lurk not only below but above. Raging storms or unrelenting heat can create madness. ​ Storm drains and murky creek beds are also a great source of inspiration. ​ Word count: 1000 - 10000 (preferably over 2k under 8k but we will read all within these) ​ Compensation: Equal royalty split per story. Digital copy emailed to you. ​ Formatting guidelines: See our Submission Format guide below All fiction manuscripts should be in standard manuscript format. Most important: Pen name, title and email on top, double-spaced, 12 pt standard font (e.g. Times, Arial, Courier), and page numbers. ​ How to submit: CLICK THE VIA LINK BELOW AND USE...

Deadline: October 1st, 2020 Payment: One cent U.S. per word ($2 minimum) Theme: Fantastic Fiction You really NEED to read the description below. The Cafe Irreal is a quarterly webzine that presents a kind of fantastic fiction infrequently published in English. This fiction, which we would describe as irreal, resembles the work of writers such as Franz Kafka, Kobo Abe, Clarice Lispector and Jorge Luis Borges. As a type of fiction it rejects the tendency to portray people and places realistically and the need for a full resolution to the story; instead, it shows us a reality constantly being undermined. Therefore, we're interested in stories by writers who write about what they don't know, take us places we couldn't possibly go, and don't try to make us care about the characters. We would also suggest you take a look at the current issue, archives, and theory (especially the essay, "What is irrealism?") pages on this web site. We accept unsolicited fiction up to 2,000 words in length. Translations are welcome. There is no minimum length. We accept only electronic submissions via e-mail at [email protected]. We cannot, due to the various computer viruses and worms, accept attachments anymore, so please paste your story into the body of the e-mail. Also include your name, address, e-mail address, and a short bio in the text of the submission; please put the word "submission" in the subject heading of the e-mail to ensure that your submission doesn't get lost among all the spam. We pay an honorarium of one cent U.S. per word ($2 minimum) to buy first-time internet rights (the story will then be archived). Payment is made upon publication. PLEASE NOTE THAT WE DON'T ACCEPT SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS and are only interested in reprints in unusual cases (e.g., the story has appeared in print but...

Deadline: October 1st, 2020 Payment: 5% of the gross profit will be paid for each accepted story. These payments will be issued to you at quarterly intervals. Stories under 1,500 words will only receive 4% of the gross profit. Theme: Cthulhu Mythos stories set in the Arthurian world. Note: Reprints welcome “They were the pointed Saxon minuscules of the eighth or ninth century A.D., and brought with them memories of an uncouth time when under a fresh Christian veneer ancient faiths and ancient rites stirred stealthily, and the pale moon of Britain looked sometimes on strange deeds in the Roman ruins of Caerleon and Hexham, and by the towers along Hadrian’s crumbling wall.” —H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward   The stars are right over Camelot. Despite Merlin’s arts, and the goodness of the land, the stars are right. Dread things rise up from the sea, worse than any Saxon. The ground grows cursed with strange colors. Strange cults proliferate through Logres. Shadows rise over Avalon. WHAT WE WANT Cthulhu Mythos stories set in the Arthurian world. THE ARTHURIAN “Arthur’s Kingdom, the Realm of Logres, the model of chivalry and right striving against the barbarism and evil which surrounded it and, at length, engulfed it” (Roger Lancelyn Green). We do, of course, want stories about the primary characters of the Arthurian world: Arthur, Merlin, Morgan, and the others. But we’re also interested in stories focusing on the less well-known personalities. In particular, we’d love stories about Bleys, Bors, Bertilak the Green Knight, Galahad, Kay, Palamedes, and Percival. When and where is the Arthurian world? Logres and its capitol, Camelot, are centered somewhere either in Wales or southern Britain—and extend up toward what we would today recognize as Scotland. It is somewhere roughly between 400-600 A.D. The cultural and technological level can...

Deadline: October 1st, 2020 Payment: $50 Theme: Essays on Mary Shelley’s work I’m inviting 9 authors to contribute 5,000 (max) word essays on Mary Shelley’s work (not limited to Frankenstein), and her life. This can also include others in her life, for example her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, or her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and how they influenced her work. I am also looking for internal artwork related to the theme (I’m hoping for 5 pieces to accompany the chapters). Payment will be $50 per essay and per artwork, respectively. This will be a book similar to ‘The Body Horror Book’, in that I will compile and edit each chapter. Submissions are open, and close October 1st; the book will be published in December. Contributors will receive an ebook and paperback copy. William Shunn manuscript format preferred. Please send any inquiries and submissions to [email protected] Good luck!

Deadline: October 1st, 2020 Payment: $0.01 / word and potential royalties Theme: Short fiction that veers into the numinous, the esoteric, the supernatural, and the weird UNDERLAND ARCANA is published four times a year, and is looking for previously unpublished short fiction that veers into the numinous, the esoteric, the supernatural, and the weird. We like these stories to be mildly speculative, fantastic, mysterious, and/or horrific (if you prefer genre tags). We’re not terribly keen on stories that splash through gore, but we don’t mind the grotesque. We prefer character-driven pieces, but will pause and admire works that are exceptionally experimental in tone, style, and presentation. We are actively interested in submissions from writers of underrepresented communities, including, but in no way limited to, writers of any gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, nationality, class, and physical or mental ability. We believe in the rich potential and diversity of humanity, and seek to have that belief reflected in the stories published in the ARCANA. In more concrete terms: stories should be under 5k in length, but special consideration will be given to longer pieces should the writing demand such attention. Please query before sending anything novella length. Submissions should be in .doc or .rtf formation. Stories must be compatible to both an online presentation and a print publication. Please submit your stories to [email protected], along with a brief cover letter that hits the highlights of your recent publishing adventures. READING PERIOD:  In parallel with our publication schedule, we will only be considering submissions during one of our open reading periods. The current reading period closes on October 1st, 2020. The next reading period is scheduled to open early in 2021. PAYMENT: Underland Arcana is paying $0.01 / word—up to 5,000 words—for publication on the website. Additional publication in other formats (ebook and collected print editions, for...

Deadline: October 1st, 2020 Payment: $25 and a contributor's copy Theme: Horror which takes place in Kentucky   NEW ANTHOLOGY FROM NIGHTMARE PRESS: KENTUCKY FRIED HORROR!!! Nightmare Press is now taking short story submissions for KENTUCKY FRIED HORROR. The theme is simple: short horror stories that take place in Kentucky, and you'll get bonus points if it reflects Kentucky culture. Anybody can submit - you don't have to be from the Bluegrass State to participate. Here are the details: What we want: Horror shorts that take place in Kentucky, 1000-5000 words, send it in a word doc or docx file attached to the email. Do not paste it in the body of the email. In the subject line, write KENTUCKY FRIED HORROR <title> <your name>. No more than one submission per person. Reprints are fine as long as you own the publishing rights to the story. What you get: $25 if accepted, a contributor's copy of the book, the opportunity to purchase copies at cost (including shipping and taxes). When and where: You have time for this one. The deadline is October 1st. Email your submissions to [email protected]. Two other points: We will not ask for exclusivity for more than 30 days after publication. Also, if your story is a reprint and has previously been edited elsewhere, we reserve the right to edit the story again. We know some authors have issue with reprints being re-edited because they want the story to remain the same across all publications, so if that is a problem, do not submit your reprint. If you are okay with Nightmare Press re-editing the story, then by all means, please submit it. We look forward to seeing how frightening you all can make Kentucky.