Events

Deadline: October 31st, 2022 Payment: 10.00 for each short story, $5.00 for each poem, article, and flash fiction piece, and $2.50 per cartoon/Comic Strip. Theme: Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Time Travel Fantasy, Grimdark, Horror, Thriller, Paranormal, Bizarro Full Moon Chronicles Submission Guidelines We will be open to submissions September 1, 2022, through October 31, 2022 Quick and to the Point: Send us your submission in a .doc or .docx attachment in an email to [email protected]. Subject line, “FMCSubmissions” otherwise, your submission may not make it to our editors. Submissions sent to any other email address will not be considered. Include in the body of the email, Story Name (your title) Author (your name/pen name) Genre (in your opinion) Word count (the number of words in your story) Your story (Please leave a single blank line in between each paragraph of your story.) Please make sure you read and understand the guidelines as outlined above before you do so, especially the part about properly spacing your paragraph breaks. Who We Want We are eager to accept submissions by published authors and unpublished writers. What We Want All fiction, (for ages 18 and up) FANTASY, DARK FANTASY, HISTORICAL FANTASY, TIME TRAVEL FANTASY,GRIMDARK, HORROR, THRILLER, PARANORMAL, AND BIZARRO. (For other fiction not mentioned, please send a 250-word pitch for consideration.) Short Fiction Length: 2,500 to 4,500 words Flash Fiction Length: Up to 1,000 words (Flash fiction should never be more than 1,000 words.) Poetry Poems should be no more than a page, (approximately 225 words) or less. Subject matter to follow the above genres, and you may submit up to two poems per submission with triple spacing between them. Articles Pertaining to authors, genres, coming releases, distribution outlets, and so on. Cartoons / Comic Strips Original works only. (See “What We Don’t Want” below) What We...

Deadline: October 31st, 2022 Payment: 9 cents per word Theme: Speculative Fiction The submission window for the fall 2022 flash fiction submission cycle is October 1 to October 31. Authors will be notified in mid-November about whether their stories have been accepted for publication. Stories will be published under a non-exclusive license, at a rate of 8 cents per word. The author will retail all original copyrights. Stories must be under 1,000 words in length and fall under the genres of science fiction, fantasy or horror. Please submit only one story per cycle. Simultaneous submissions to other publications is allowed. Meanwhile, we are also accepting reviews, essays, reprints, and book excerpts for publication on this site. MetaStellar is an online publication focusing on horror, fantasy and science fiction, launched in September 2020, founded by a dozen speculative fiction writers, editors and artists from around the world. Via: Metastellar.

Deadline: October 31st, 2022 Payment: $0.005/word up to 7500 words. Minimum of $15 Theme: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Note: Reprints Welcome We are currently open to SHORT STORY submissions for Summer of Sci-Fi & Fantasy: Volume Two to be published in the Summer of 2023. All stories must be submitted before our deadline of October 31st, 2022. We ask for the following: 1) We are looking for great Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Don’t overthink it! Just write an incredible story and you will find yourself in this anthology. 2) Submit your work in the Shunn Standard Manuscript Format. We only accept documents in DOC, DOCX and RTF formats. 3) We accept work in the range of 1500-7500 words. Anything outside this range will be automatically rejected. 4) Payment for original fiction is currently $0.005/word up to 7500 words. Minimum of $15. Reprints paid at full rate. We retain no rights to your work. 5) Worldstone Publishing encourages submissions from writers of all races, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, disability, age, marital status, sexual orientation, etc. We want and value diverse voices. Saying that, we make editorial decisions strictly based on merit, and we do not collect any information that might clue our editors to any of these attributes other than your name, email, address, and cover letter before any decisions are made regarding your submission. 6) Ready to submit? Then send an email directly to [email protected] In the subject line, please write “Anthology Submission: “STORY TITLE” or your story will be automatically rejected. 7) No multi-submissions. We try to respond to all submissions within 30 days. Via: Worldstone Publishing.

Deadline: October 31st, 2022 Payment: 10 cents per word for fiction, $3000 for pay to play contest, $200 for cover artwork Theme: A haunted place, and silver. Note: There is also a contest with the same theme that you can enter, which IS pay to play with big rewards. However, it is not required to enter in order to submit to the magazine. Do you tremble from the chill? As the weather cools and leaves scatter the ground, can you be sure it’s not something… else. Which scares you more, the darkness or your own thoughts? Certain places are known to be haunted. Asylums, crypts, and old creaky houses. The striped-tent circus turns sinister at night. You wonder what lurks inside the fog as the mist rolls through town, as the rain blankets the manor home, as lighting illuminates the deep woods. Where do you hide when the panic sets in? Surely not that cave, hotel, or empty church. An isolated cabin in the forest? Run farther, to a station among the stars, where the echoes you hear are definitely human. Perhaps you’re haunted by memories, of things you’ve done and people you’ve lost. How do you escape the voices in your head, conversations replayed ad nauseam until you scream with guilt? Chased by ghosts—real or imagined—where do you hide? This contest invites you to explore haunted hideaways, whatever that means to you. Fantasy, contemporary, romance, crime. All genres are welcome. Submissions close October 31st at 11:59 pm EST. Contest only open to new writers. WHO CAN ENTER? Anyone can submit work to the magazine for free, but you must be an Elegant+ Member to enter the contests and win prizes. Membership is $10/month and includes over $250 in exclusive discounts from our partners like Scrivener, ProWritingAid, Novel Factory, and more. SIGN UP NOW...

Deadline: February 1st, 2023 (DEADLINE EXTENDED) Payment: 3 cents per word Theme: Homebound Horror Ever felt like you weren’t alone in your own home? Like eyes were watching you through the walls and ceiling vents, or that if you just listened hard enough, you could hear footsteps creaking from the ceiling above you? Home is where you’re supposed to feel safe. But what happens when that safety is violated? When something malignant - living, dead, or something that never lived at all - enters our most sacred of places and begins twisting it to use that safety against you? You tell us. UNDER THE STAIRS wants your most horrific stories about what happens when one’s sense of home is lost. How you interpret that is up to you. We want supernatural stories and stories that deal with strictly human horrors. We want stories about stalkers, psychopaths, ghosts, monsters, urban legends, the mortician who built your home and parked his hearse in the driveway, where he used to let the bodies sit overnight. But what we want most are the stories that you are scared to tell. The splinters of painful terror from the deepest recesses of your heart. The ones that make you stop short of stepping over that threshold - whatever, or wherever “that threshold” is. Surprise us. We’re looking for original stories no more than 3,000 words. This is a hard limit. Submission Window Submissions will be accepted from August 1st-October 31st 2022. Any story submitted before or after will be deleted unread. Response Times We will try to respond to every submission within 60 days of submissions closing. Rights We are setting a 1 year, print and digital submission right to publish for submitted stories. Payment Sure, this is a passion project for us, but we wanna...

Deadline: November 1st, 2022 Payment: 15GBP Theme: If you think you’ve got what it takes to terrify, scar and haunt our audience of 150k+ monthly listeners, then we want your stories! If accepted, we’ll get our fantastic narration team to lend their voices, our editor will sprinkle some magic pixie dust on the track, and you could have your story heard by thousands of listeners each week. (Vol 86.) Mother Nature; deadline 1st November 2022 SUBMIT YOUR STORIES USING THIS FORM If this form isn’t working, please email your submission to [email protected] as a last resort. Title your email with the following syntax: “SUBMISSION | STORY TITLE | THEME | WORDCOUNT”  (e.g. SUBMISSION | THE MARTIAN | SPACE | 1,982) Submission Guidelines • Stories must be 2,000 (10% tolerance +/-) • Save stories in a Word document - Times New Roman font, size 12 • Include a 1-2 sentence log line for your story at the end of the document • Ensure that your name and an email address are somewhere on the document • Stories must fit an upcoming theme • By submitting your story to us, you are confirming that you are the original creator of the story • We will consider entrants whose work has been entered and published elsewhere, however please ensure you state where and when your story has been used elsewhere on the document • You will be allowed to place one call-to-action for your own work at the end of the episode. Be sure to include this at the end of your document, underneath the log line • Payment per accepted story is 15GBP • 2x entries per theme permitted   When will I hear if my story has been accepted or not? We carefully review every single submission that comes through our door. If you’ve...

Deadline: November 1st, 2022 Payment: short story, $25; short-short piece (up to 1000 words), $10; poem, $10, artwork, $25 for cover, $10 for interior page display. Theme: So THAT's Why THEMA literary journal was born in a Chinese restaurant in 1988 as the result of a conversation over how different writers would respond to a single quirky theme—specifically, stories involving the fortune cookies received that day. Our curiosity evolved into a mental exercise among friends—a challenge. What we didn’t expect was how much fun we would have. As we wrote about fortune cookies, we began to ponder other topics. Soon, it was like eating peanuts—we couldn’t stop. Strange themes kept popping into our heads; how would various imaginations react to them? We had to know! So now we had a list of quirky themes in one hand, a fistful of diverse but homeless fortune-cookie manuscripts in the other, and heads buzzing with potential theme-based plots. What should we do with the themes? What would we do with the resulting stories and poems? Start a literary journal and send the challenge across the country—of course! Why not?? Upcoming premises (target themes) and deadlines for submission : The Crumpled Yellow Paper (July 1, 2022) So THAT's Why (November 1, 2022) Help from a Stranger (March 1, 2023) To download a PDF file of the guidelines, click here . ALL SHORT STORIES, ESSAYS, POEMS, PHOTOGRAPHS and ART MUST RELATE TO ONE OF THE PREMISES SPECIFIED ABOVE. NOTE: Previously published pieces are welcome, provided that the submission fits the theme and that the author owns the copyright. The premise (target theme) must be an integral part of the plot, not necessarily the central theme but not merely incidental. NOTE: Fewer than 20 double-spaced typewritten pages preferred. Indicate premise (target theme) on title page. Be sure to Indicate target theme in cover...

Submission Window: October 1st - November 1st, 2022 Payment: Short Story-2,500 words or less. $0.01 USD per word/$25 USD max, Poems-less than 200 words $10, Flash Fiction-less than a 1,000 words $0.01 USD per word/$10 USD max Theme: DEVOUT: Martyrs, Cults, and Madness The Last Girls Club Magazine is a quarterly feminist horror magazine that publishes international short stories and poems from the female gaze. It is an homage to the scary comics and zines of the late 20th century. Please check on the website for the theme in detail. Last Girls Club Winter Issue Theme is DEVOUT: Martyrs, Cults, and Madness No more than two fiction or flash fiction stories per author per submission period. Fiction is limited to 2,500 words or less. Authors are paid $0.01 per word upon acceptance ($25 USD max). Flash fiction is limited to under 1,000 words. Authors are paid $0.01 per word upon acceptance ($10 USD max). No more than three poems per poet. Poems are limited to 200 words or less for each poem. Poets are paid $10 upon acceptance. I prefer to use PayPal to pay authors, but will work with authors where PayPal is not available. Nonfiction columns will must be pitched to editor in chief before submission. Email your idea to [email protected]   Via: Last Girls Club Duotrope.

Deadline: November 1st, 2022 Payment: $25.00 - $50.00 for fiction, $5.00 - $10.00 for poetry Theme: Story must begin with: When he died, their father had two requests. We love that writers around the world are inspired by our first lines, and we know that not every story will be sent to us. However, we ask that you do not submit stories starting with our first lines to other journals (or post them online on public sites) until we've notified you as to our decision (usually four weeks after the deadline). When the entire premise of the publication revolves around one sentence, we don't want it to look as if we stole that sentence from another writer. If you have questions, feel free to drop us a line. Also, we understand that writers may add our first line to a story they are currently working on or have already completed, and that's cool. But please do not add our first line to a previously published story and submit it to us. We do not accept previously published stories, even if they have been repurposed for our first lines. And, just to be clear, we do not accept simultaneous submissions. One more thing while I've got you here: Writers compete against one another for magazine space, so, technically, every literary magazine is running a contest. There are, however, literary magazines that run traditional contests, where they charge entry fees and rank the winners. We do not - nor will we ever - charge a submission fee, nor do we rank our stories in order of importance. Occasionally, we run contests to help come up with new first lines, or we run fun, gimmicky competitions for free stuff, but the actual journal is not a contest in the traditional sense. Fiction: All stories must...

Deadline: November 1st, 2022 Payment: $10 Theme: The artfully weird. Strong preference for Orlando based writers/submissions about Orlando and surrounding areas. While we prefer writers with a connection to Orlando or the greater Central Florida area, Olit will accept quality writing meeting our aesthetic and criteria from writers anywhere around the world. What do we mean by aesthetic and criteria? We’re glad you asked. Olit seeks the following: Genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Hybrid, Artwork, Photography. Send us all kinds of stuff. We love the artfully weird. Strong preference for Orlando based writers/submissions about Orlando and surrounding areas. We aim to focus primarily on publishing marginalized voices. LGBTQIA+ is a big plus with us. BIPOC voices will always be uplifted here. Disabled? Incarcerated? Low income? Other marginalized voices? Please send us your work. If you do not consider yourself marginalized, your submission is still welcome at Olit if it meets our other criteria. Our aesthetic is best defined as gritty with grace, fast food parking lots in the middle of the night, the underbelly of a tourist city the locals know by memories. We want quality writing with heart and teeth. Give us words that bite back, stories full of verve, and the poems you wouldn’t let Grandma read. We are not the Academy/highbrow lit scene. We are indie and intellectual, raw yet polished. Send us only your best. We welcome simultaneous submissions. We would never ask you not to submit your work to more than one place at a time. Any lit journal still doing that should be banished and left behind. Please send us only previously unpublished works. We welcome multiple submissions. Have a short story perfect for us? Looking to publish some poems at the same time? That is fine with us, but please submit them as separate...