Events

Deadline: December 31st, 2021 Payment: 1/word ($5 minimum.) for accepted fiction, $10 per accepted poem Theme: Stories about the future which feature cats Submissions are open for Felis Futura: An Anthology of Future Cats (working title) from Manawaker Studio, edited by CB Droege. Felis Futura is an anthology focused on stories about the future which feature cats. This volume will contain stories, poetry, and visual art. THEME Submitted works should be of any genre, as long as the work depicts a world that is noticeably in the future. Hard and Soft Sci-fi, (Post-)apocalyptic, Solarpunk, Slipstream, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Alternate (future) History, Supernatural, Retro-futurism etc. are all fine names for genres that often take place in the future, but your story doesn’t have to fit into one of those. In fact, if it manages to miss all of those labels, we may be even more interested to see it (unless it thus falls into what we specifically don’t want (see next paragraph)). All works must also prominently feature at least one cat. It does not have to be a cat of the genus Felis. Other members of the cat family are also acceptable, as are non-biological cats, metaphorical cats, robots with the acronym K.A.A.T., and so on. We are not looking for gore horror nor erotic romance. Works that contain some horror elements or some romantic elements are fine, but we would like the book to remain accessible to young adults and squeamish people. Works which seem particularly hateful or which discriminate against specific real-world groups will also be rejected. FICTION There is no hard word limit, but novellas and above might be hard to find room for. Fiction (one story only, please) should be attached to an e-mail (see below) as an RTF file. Please use standard manuscript formatting if possible. If submitting a sequential graphic narrative (comic), see the...

Deadline: December 31st, 2021 Payment: 8 cents per word Themes: Noir: Science fiction, fantasy, or urban fantasy stories with a detective/private investigator set-up and a noir atmosphere Shattering the Glass Slipper: Stories of known fairy tales that have been upended, gender-bent, or twisted around in some way. Brave New Worlds: Science fiction stories set along the pathway of us leaving Earth for the stars.   The NOIR, SHATTERING THE GLASS SLIPPER, and BRAVE NEW WORLDS anthology Kickstarter (back us at tinyurl.com/ZNB2021) has hit its goal!  If you have a story idea that fits one of the anthology themes, write it up, revise it, polish it, and send it in for consideration.  I've posted the guidelines below. The NOIR, SHATTERING THE GLASS SLIPPER, and BRAVE NEW WORLDS Submission Guidelines Zombies Need Brains LLC is accepting submissions to its three science fiction and fantasy anthologies NOIR, SHATTERING THE GLASS SLIPPER, and BRAVE NEW WORLDS.  Stories must be submitted in electronic form as an attachment with the title of the story as the file name in .doc or .docx format.  The header of the email should include the name of the anthology the submission is for along with the title of the submission (for example:  NOIR:  Private Detectives Gone Wild!).  The content of the email should also include which anthology the manuscript is intended for.  Please send multiple manuscripts in separate emails; you may submit to any or all of the anthologies as many times as you wish.  Manuscripts should be in manuscript format, meaning double-spaced, 12pt font, standard margins on top, bottom and sides, and pages numbered.  Please use Times New Roman font.  The first page should include the Title of the story, Author’s name, address, and email, word count, and Pseudonym if different from the author’s real name.  Italics and bold...

Deadline: December 31, 2021 Payment: 6 cents a word (USD) Theme: Stories inspired by and featuring the BABA YAGA. Note: Open to writers who identify as women Deep in the dark forest, in a cottage that moves through the forest on birds’ legs behind a fence topped with human skulls, lives the baba yaga. A guardian of the water of life, she lives with her sisters and takes to the skies in a giant mortar and pestle, creating tempests as she goes. Those who come across the baba yaga may find help, or hinderance, or horror. She is wild, she is woman, she is witch—and these are her tales. We are looking for stories inspired by and featuring the BABA YAGA. INTO THE FOREST: Tales of the Baba Yaga is a women-in-horror anthology. All writers who identify as women are welcome to submit. GUIDELINES: Payment: 6 cents a word (USD) Length: 1000 to 5000 words Submission Period: September 28, 2021 to December 31, 2021 Expected Release Date: November 2022 (traditional trade) No reprints, multiple subs or simultaneous subs Use classic Shunn formatting. ​​ Full list of invited contributors: - Gwendolyn Kiste - Stephanie M. Wytovich - Donna Lynch - R. J. Joseph - Lindy Ryan - Mercedes M. Yardley - Monique Snyman - Lisa Quigley Via: Black Spot Books.

Deadline: December 31st, 2021 Payment: $75 and a contributor's copy Theme: Mystery and Crime stories to be set in Minnesota or Minnesota adjacent (Wisconsin, Iowa, Canada, the Dakotas). We are pleased to announce there will be a short story anthology for Bouchercon 2022 - The Land of 10,000 Crimes. Our goal is to raise money for the Women's Prison Book Project. All of the proceeds, after publishing costs, will  go to the WPBP, along with the proceeds from our live and silent auctions.     Submission guidelines:    Short stories must be crime fiction, less than 5000 words, and stories must not have been published anywhere else previously.   We would like the stories to be set in Minnesota or Minnesota adjacent (Wisconsin, Iowa, Canada, the Dakotas).   The hard deadline for submission is December 31, 2021. Any stories received after this will not be considered for any reason.   Please submit stories via email and in Word documents to [email protected] Please include your name, email, and any other contact information we might need.  If selected, we will send you a contract assigning Bouchercon the rights for your story for one year after the publication date. After that, the rights revert to you. You will be paid $75.00 for each story we publish so you meet the guidelines for certain awards in our industry. You will also receive a free copy.   We will be holding a signing at Bouchercon 2022.   Greg Herren and Bouchercon 2022 co-chair Terri Bischoff will be making the selections and editing the anthology. Via: BoucherCon 2022.

Deadline: December 31st, 2021 Payment: $15 Theme: Speculative fiction, primarily horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Note: Reprints welcome Formatting Guidelines This is proving to be a recurring problem, so we're putting it up front. Please, for all our sakes, read this next part carefully. All submissions should be sent by e-mail (no letters or telephone calls please) to [email protected]. Below are some formatting rules to help us process your submission more quickly. EMAIL AND COVER LETTERS Email is accepted in both text and HTML formats. When submitting, please put this in the subject line: Submission: (Title) - (First and Last name) Include the following in the body of the email and in the attached submission: Your name Name to use on the story (byline), if different Your preferred email address Your mailing address The story's title The story's word count You may also include a cover letter in the body of the email. We get a lot of strange stuff in cover letters, so if you're unsure of what goes in them (and especially what doesn't) please refer to these cover letter tips: How to write a cover letter | What not to put in a cover letter by Jed Hartman SUBMISSION FORMATTING We ONLY accept submissions as attachments! All stories submitted as an attachment must follow standard manuscript formatting. We will no longer read any story not properly formatted. (And we much prefer Courier New to Times New Roman) For explanations and tips on what SMF is and how to do it with word processing programs, please see this article. Please send your submission as an attachment in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) or Rich Test Format (.rtf) only. Other formats, such as Works, WordPerfect, Open Office, etc., have proven difficult to open. Please note that we no longer accept "inline" submssions; that is, submissions with the stories pasted...

Deadline: December 31st, 2021 Payment: $5 Theme: Stories that are the perfect length for between sitting down and having a 'royal flush' THE TOILET ZONE: THE ROYAL FLUSH SUBMISSIONS EXTENDED TO 31 DECEMBER 2021 HellBound's third outing to the smallest room... And no, don't panic, we're still not looking for lavatory-themed tales of terror - although should your short story involve the smallest room in the house, we'd be more than delighted to read it! The theme for this anthology is short horror stories that will make an ideal sit-down read, just long enough for those extended stays at the convenience, and terrifying enough that they really are best read whilst over water.... We have based story length upon the average time spent upon the convenience (10-15 mins) and the average reading speed (200-250 words per minute), so that the stories within this exceptionally unique anthology will be the perfect 'per visit' length! NOTE: we will also accept a handful of shorter stories - 'flush fiction' - if the fit is right! To submit, email your polished story to: [email protected] PLEASE read and adhere to our submission guidelines... * Word format saved in .doc, or .docx * 12 pt times new roman * Double spaced * Absolutely NO extra lines between paragraphs! * 2.5K-4K word count (although we are incredibly flexible for awesome stories!) * Write 'TOILET ZONE 3' along with your name and story title in the header of your email *The body of your submission email will be considered the cover letter. * The submission documents are to be separated and Word (.doc or .docx) documents are to be attached to your submission email. Deadline: 31 DECEMBER 2021 NO REPRINTS - ORIGINAL UNPUBLISHED WORKS ONLY Payment -$5 for first rights Capped at 120K words in total

Submission Window: December 1st-31st Payment: £10 Theme: Fresh starts and new beginnings Each month, a new theme will be announced, and we will be accepting flash fiction submissions based around the specific theme for the entirety of that month. From these submissions, four winners will be chosen to be published each Friday of the subsequent month, and at the end of the year, these forty-eight flash fiction pieces will appear in a similarly titled anthology. We will be looking for original and unpublished fictional stories that run the gamut of the horror genre and all its assorted sub-genres—we’re open to it all, so long as it has a strong horror twist flowing through its veins. Since The Theatre Phantasmagoria series is aiming to offer varied slices of horror, you can really go wild as far as characters, settings, and storylines go. As always, if your story is blatantly racist or homophobic it will be instantly rejected. We also encourage submissions from female, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors, as we’re striving to offer a range of experiences and perspectives in this series. The anthology will be edited, and the stories selected, by J. D. Keown. He can be found on both Instagram and Twitter @JDKAuthor, and we can be found on Instagram @nightterrornovels. All updates and announcements regarding this project will be posted on each of those accounts, so give us a follow if you want to get the latest news. The first window to submit will run from the 1st December, 2021 (1/12/2021) to the 31st December, 2021 (31/12/2021), with the selected stories debuting on our website throughout January. DECEMBER’S THEME: Fresh starts and new beginnings. How you interpret this theme is largely up to you. As these first stories will be going live in January, we are looking for flash fiction centred around New Year’s resolutions, starting over, resolving to change, or similar horror stories along these lines. Each...

Deadline: December 31st, 2021 Payment: 10 cents per word Theme: Horror VALRAVN is our yearly annual of “wyrd fiction” short stories (3,000 to 10,000 words). We also publish anthologies as the mood strikes us. These guidelines are similar to our novel/novella guidelines above, but there are key differences, so we’d recommend you read carefully. VALRAVN is still horror themed, but each annual contains a multitude of genres and elements in it. Our anthologies tend to be themed, and when we announce them, we announce the theme we’d like short stories submitted in. WHAT WE WANT We love fiction from diverse, under-represented perspective and cultures, well-researched and written by fresh and exciting voices. Speculative short fiction in the following genres (for VALRAVN. As we said above, for anthologies, we’ll tell you the theme.) Fantasy Horror Espionage/Thriller Science Fiction Up to 10,000 words, minimum of 3,000 words Only one submission per quarter, no simultaneous submissions, no submissions of previously rejected material without prior approval. Please wait until the next quarter (January 1, April 1,  July 1, October 1) before submitting anything again. Please only send RTF, DOC or DOX files, and must adhere best practices in manuscript formats: https://www.shunn.net/format/classic/ For VALRAVN and our anthologies, we require previous unpublished works. If you have a short story collection, you can see our novel/novella guidelines above. WHAT WE OFFER With our short fiction annuals and anthologies, we offer a one-time purchase fee of $0.10 USD per word (ten cents USD per word), with additional bonus payouts based on crowdfunding and sales (these are not “royalties” exactly, as they’re based on sales thresholds rather than a per sale bonus.) We request a year’s publication rights, after which, the story is yours to do what you want with, though we will retain the rights to continue publishing the...

Deadline: December 31st, 2021 Payment: $50 and a contributor's copy Theme: A compilation of first-person accounts including letters, prosaic poems, diary entries, postcard letters, short personal essays, and other genre-bending experimental pieces I am seeking writers for an experimental anthology titled “letters i’ll never send”. This anthology will be a compilation of first-person accounts including letters, prosaic poems, diary entries, postcard letters, short personal essays, and other genre-bending experimental pieces. "letters i'll never send" is meant to serve as a sentimental linkage between the writer and the reader. It should lure the reader in emotionally, so that they can resonate in some meaningful way. Simultaneously, all pieces inside the book should connect with the others in vulnerable, open, or spiritual ways - or all of those ways. Essentially, just write as if you're writing to whoever, and run with whatever comes up - whether it's an angry letter, a love letter, a breakup letter, a friendship letter, a self-reflection letter, a letter to yourself, a postcard letter to a friend/significant other, etc. The possibilities are endless, and as long as you capture the vulnerability and heartwarming (or heart-wrenching) pull that I'd love to evoke in the book, then this anthology will be an impassioned masterpiece! If you have a piece that you think is fit for this project, I’d love to hear from you. Please make sure to only send your own, unpublished work. I will not accept previously published work for this project. Please make sure that longer pieces are no more than 1,000 words. If your piece is chosen, I will need non-exclusive rights to what you submit and I will pay you $50 on acceptance. All rights revert back to the author upon publication. I will also send you a copy of the print version of the book when it...

Deadline: December 31st, 2021 Payment: 10 cents per word Theme: Merry Magic and the color red Note: Membership (free) is required to submit to the magazine. There is also a monthly $20,000 contest however a monthly paid membership is required to submit to it. Theme Info: Write a story involving magic, merriment, and the color red. Is magic real? Perhaps, if you know where to look. You can find it in the twinkling eyes of a smiling stranger, in the gleeful laugh of playful children, and in any dish cooked with love. When families and communities get together and celebrate the holidays, well, you can taste the magic in the air. Ah, but you may be interested in more… practical applications. How does Santa make it to each house in a single night? How do elves penetrate locked doors to leave presents in shoes? Which wards do you draw on the mantle, and what is the proper wording to summon Krampus? Blizzards have awesome power. Glades of silent, snow-covered pines hold many secrets. Enchantments lay on warm-glowing villages in the night. Magic is everywhere. You just have to look. This contest invites you to explore the wonder of magic with an eye to the festive, whatever that means to you. Mystery, fantasy, romance, crime. All genres are welcome. Submissions close December 31st at 11:59 pm EST. More details below. Submission Info Anyone can submit work to the magazine. It’s free. We don’t believe publications should charge authors to be published. However, we have a specific submission process you must adhere to in order to have your work considered. Our submissions window opens on the first and closes at midnight on the final day of each month, just like our contest. The theme of each issue of the magazine is the same...