Events

Deadline: March 1st-March 31st 2021 Payment: Winner: $500, two runner ups: $50 Theme: Philosophical, Metaphysical, or Epistemological fiction Speculative Philosophical Fiction Contest A new contest will be coming to Theme of Absence this year. The theme of this contest is Philosophical, Metaphysical, or Epistemological fiction. Keep reading for the details. The contest is sponsored by a donor who whishes to remain anonymous. It will open March 1, 2021 and remain open for submissions until March 31, 2021. The winning story and runners-up will be published on June 1, 2021. Entry and submission guidelines: Only original, unpublished flash fiction is eligible for this contest. The story must revolve around some metaphysical or epistemological issue, like the nature of time or knowledge of the external world. The maximum word count for this contest is 1,000. A story that has at any point been made publicly available in print or online (including personal blogs) is considered previously published and will not be eligible. We are also not accepting multiple submissions, meaning submit only one story for the contest. The payment for the winning entry is $500.00, payable through PayPal. The top two runners-up will receive $50.00 each. I won’t seek any rights, other than the non-exclusive right to archive the story here as long as the site is live. Bear in mind that a large percent of publications will not accept pieces that have been previously published in print or online, so after your work is published at Theme of Absence, it can only be marketed elsewhere as a reprint. All copyright is retained by the author. If you agree with these terms, please submit your story in the following way: Email your story to [email protected]. In the subject, include the words PHILOSOPHICAL SUBMISSION, the story title and word count (example: PHILOSOPICAL SUBMISSION: Rappelling Into Plato’s Cave, 500 words). Paste the story in the...

Deadline: March 31st, 2021 Payment: $0.08 per word for original fiction. USD $100 per story for reprint fiction. Theme: A month-long celebration of Black voices in science fiction Note: Reprints Welcome Escape Pod is pleased to announce a new special project for 2021: Black Future Month, a month-long celebration of Black voices in science fiction. We are excited to have Brent Lambert of FIYAH Magazine as our guest editor. For this special event, we are only accepting submission from authors of the African diaspora and the African continent. This is an intersectional definition of Blackness, and we strongly encourage submissions from women, members of the LGBTQIA community, and members from other underrepresented communities within the African diaspora. Episodes will air in the month of October and feature two original works of short fiction as well as two reprints. Submissions will be open from March 1 – 31. Stories must be between 1,500 – 5,000 words, and manuscripts do not need to be anonymized. Pay rate, content, and format will follow Escape Pod’s regular guidelines. The term Black Future Month is inspired by N.K. Jemisin’s essay titled, “How Long ’til Black Future Month,” (as well as a recent short story collection with the same title), and timing is aligned with Black Speculative Fiction Month (October). Submit your stories via our Moksha Portal for this project! Via: Escape Pod.

Deadline: March 31st, 2021 Payment: Contributors Copy and $25 CAD for stories up to 1000 words and $50 CAD for stories over 1000 words Theme: Better holiday celebrations featuring Canids 2020 was a hard year, with the holidays hitting harder than usual. Many traditions had to be reconfigured or dropped all together. Visitations were restricted, parties were non-existent, and travel was impossible.   Home for the Howlidays will be an anthology focusing on better holiday celebrations. What will next year look like? Or any year that isn’t hobbled by COVID-19 restrictions for that matter? Send me those stories.   Specifically, I’m looking for stories with canids. I’m also looking for winter holidays. These could include, but are not limited to: Yule, Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Diwali…any winter celebration is fair game. And finally, I’m looking for people getting together—friends, found family, family of origin, work colleagues, or even perfect strangers—during the holidays. For further inspiration, check out the cover!   I welcome and encourage submissions from writers of all backgrounds, including, but not limited to: gender/gender expression, disability, race, colour, religion, age, and national origin.   Submission period: 1 February 2021 – 31 March 2021   Story length: 7,000 words max   Payment: Flat $25 CAD for stories up to 1000 words + contributor copy; Flat $50 CAD for stories over 1000 words + contributor copy   Submission details: Standard short story formatting, with Canadian spellings, please. Send your story to: [email protected] with the subject heading of: Home for the Howlidays. Simultaneous submissions are okay; multiple submission are not. Expected publication is November of 2021.   Via: Tyche Books.

Deadline: March 31st, 2021 Payment: 3 cents per word Theme: Hotels, Motels, and Apartment buildings Note: My apologies for the short notice, this JUST hit my inbox about 5 minutes before I'm posting this. Your April Shallow Waters theme is... ...Hotels, Motels, and Apartment buildings! To celebrate the release of Jonathan Winn's Eidolon Avenue: The Second Feast (out today on paperback and Kindle), we're going with the same dark setting/theme as his shared-world collection. Authors, your word count is 1,200 words max. I'll personally read all the submissions and post the best 10 to 15 stories here on Patreon (to our $5 a month and higher tiers). Our patrons will then read all the entries, posted one per day, and vote for a winner. The winner will receive 3c USD per word, publication in a future Crystal Lake publication (anthology or magazine), and an author spotlight in our newsletter and here on Patreon. Please email your submission in the body of an email to [email protected]. Your email subject should be the title of your story. The deadline is end of March, whatever time zone you live in. And be sure to check out Eidolon Avenue. ;-) Via: Crystal Lake Publishing's Patreon.

Deadline: March 31st, 2021 Payment: Flat rates per word/type, see below Theme: The worst work environments in the world (or underworld, or space, or...) Note: Reprints Welcome My Job is a Hellhole! Working for demons, imps, devils, and other minions of hell. You boss is a denizen of the underworld, but the story can take place in any setting. Any setting means: hell, another planet, Modern Earth, Future Earth. Heaven? Sure why not? Maybe there's an employee exchange program between heaven and hell. I'm looking for fantasy, dark fantasy, horror, humor (oh HELL YES) and science fiction if you can come up with a science fiction-y hellscape. Flash/shorts (750-1500 words. No MORE than 1500 words, no LESS than 750 words for flash, no more than 2500 words for shorts) for $10 per piece original, previously unpublished flash, shorts $15). Microfics (350-749 words) will pay at a $5 per story rate for original, previously unpublished stories.  Will consider publishing a couple of drabbles for this, at $1 per drabble. Reprints accepted for this one, $10 for shorts, $5 for flash, $3 for micro. No drabble reprints. No poetry for this one. Submissions accepted from Dec 4, 2020 til March 31, 2021.   Down to the Sea in Bits (coming in 2021) Water monsters, undead pirates, sentient murderous seaweed, what have you! Horror. Water monsters. Undead pirates. SENTIENT MURDEROUS SEAWEED, YEAH! More info will be posted on this issue in December.​ No Submissions accept for this issue at this time. Via: The Were Traveler.

Deadline: March 31st, 2021 Payment: £10 Theme: I is for Internet I is for Internet – Submissions open February 1st. Deadline March 31st. We need short horror stories exploring the dark side of the Internet – think online dating gone wrong, killers for hire, cyber bullying etc. 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...

Deadline: April 1st, 2021 Payment: 4 cents a word Theme: Sword-and-sorcery, heroic fiction, sword-and-soul, swashbucklers, and the like. Tales of adventure shot through with elements of horror and magic. Listen Well, Mortal Dogs! If you wish to submit a tale to The Magician’s Skull, you must pay heed, unless you wish to consign your story to rejection and immolation! My magazine is devoted to the greatest of all genres, sword-and-sorcery. If you don’t know what that term means, I am unlikely to appreciate your prose, but I am informed that you may find a definition of the genre by clicking here. Tales From the Magician’s Skull is currently printed twice yearly and pays 4 cents a word upon acceptance. If I find your tale worthy, my minions will purchase select rights so we may publish the story. You retain the copyright. When Will You Open for Submissions? January 22, 2021 – April 1, 2021 My minions will open their portals to receive your submissions for a limited time during 2021. They will accept your electronic manuscripts beginning with the sacred birth date of the founder of sword-and-sorcery, Robert E. Howard, and ending with that day sacred to all fools. Watch this space for news regarding activation of the submission portals! I now relinquish control of this instructional document to my chief editorial minion. Pay him heed! Manuscript format We accept e-mail submissions only, in .rtf, standard manuscript format. I.E. double-spaced, with title and contact information and all that on the first page. If you’re not familiar with standard manuscript format, please look it up. The subject line of your email needs to be structured as follows: Submission – – – . For example: Submission – Fiction – The Skull’s Day Out – Goodman If you want to tell us who you are and provide some publishing history, drop it...

Deadline: April 1st, 2021 Payment: Royalties Theme: A story about the ending of a romantic relationship, any genre. LBP is pleased to announce that we will be accepting short story submissions for the months of February/March 2021! We will choose 8-12 submissions to be published in our 2021 summer anthology, “Not Meant for Each Other”! Prompt: The topic for submissions: a story about the ending of a romantic relationship. Important note: The goal for writers here to give us characters that we care enough about within a short space to be upset or elated over their relationship ending. Accepted stories will be published in ‘Not Meant for Each Other’ summer anthology! E-book and print! Parameters Every genre qualifies. Works must be previously unpublished. Must be at least 3k but no more than 9k. Submissions must be in Times New Roman 12pt. No headers or footers, please. Name and title on top/left of first page. Submissions deadline is April 1st, 2021. All submissions must be submitted to [email protected]. Add ‘Not Meant for Each Other Submission’ in the subject line. SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN Selected Stories: Will be notified by email no later than April 15th, 2021. Winners will receive full publishing credit in the anthology w/competitive royalty. Via: Lost Boys Press.

Deadline: April 1st, 2021 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: April 2nd, 2021 Payment: 1 cent per word ($10 for every 1,000 words prorated, $50 for every 5,000 words prorated, and so on) + E-book and Audio format anthology copies Theme: Horror stories that focus on ghosts, the supernatural, paranormal, monsters, and dark tales. Scare Street is once again accepting submissions for its Night Terrors anthology. Because readers loved our past volumes, we are now gearing up for more! We’re looking for unpublished short horror stories that focus on ghosts, the supernatural, paranormal, monsters, and dark tales. We want dark, creepy, weird, and unsettling fiction that are expertly told. Give us character-driven narratives with clever but logical twists at the end, creative and fresh takes on common horror tropes, terrifying monsters, and suspenseful tales. Gore and violence are fine as long as it follows our guidelines and it’s not just for shock value. Length: 3,000-7,000 words (we will consider stories that are slightly outside the word count range) Reprints: No Deadline: April 2, 2021 (11:59 PM PST) Payment: 1 cent per word ($10 for every 1,000 words prorated, $50 for every 5,000 words prorated, and so on) + E-book and Audio format anthology copies Unpublished short stories must be 3,000-7,000 words and will be included in our Night Terrors anthologies consisting of ~65,000 words each. These stories will be published in e-book, print, and audio formats in English within 6 months after the submissions close date. Based on reader reception, we may also publish them in e-book, print, and audio formats in German and Spanish. WHO ARE WE? Scare Street is a horror publishing company dedicated to helping fellow horror lovers experience sleepless nights. We’ve been around since September 2015 and have published 200+ e-book and paperback titles along with 150+ audiobooks (and counting!). WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU? Get visibility from thousands...