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Deadline: April 30th, 2023 Payment: 10 cents per word Theme: Shadows & Knives, and a crow Note: There is ALSO a contest you can enter your work into instead of a magazine for a chance to win $3,000. However, it is pay to play on the contest. Write a story involving Shadows & Knives, and a crow. $3,000 grand prize. Hurry down the street as night falls. Is that movement in the shadows? Don’t look back. Dark figures block your path, steel glinting. No time to think. Do you run, fight, or scream? Murder is as old as time. The lights come on and someone’s dead. Everyone’s a suspect. The genius detective plays cat and mouse with a meticulous villain. Bodies, blackmail, and bloodstained letters. The cozy mystery is anything but for the victim. Prepare your alibi, avoid suspicion, and hope the trail of bodies leads back to the butler. The investigator has a secret, and the killer is working with the police. Conspiracies, confessions, and court intrigue. Assassins and bloody night raids—danger lurks in the dark. So accept the invitation, gather round the campfire, and hope the train doesn’t go through a tunnel. It’s a mystery, and we’re all gathered for the big reveal. This contest invites you to explore shadows and knives, whatever that means to you. Fantasy, contemporary, romance, crime. All genres are welcome. Submissions close April 30th at 11:59 pm EST. Contest only open to new writers All new writers 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. Each issue...

Deadline: April 30th, 2023 Payment: 8 cents per word Theme: Science fiction drabbles General Submissions are open April 1st – 30th! What we want more of: Cyberpunk Sci-fi horror Stories with Tech Starships Holograms Stories involving other planets Dark sci-fi Characters making a decision What we want less of: *GASP* we were really talking about humans, Earth, etc. Twist stories where the twist doesn’t change the way we view the story. We caused the apocalypse because humanity sucks. We accidentally called the aliens who are invading us because of some silly reason. General Guidelines Martian magazine publishes drabbles, stories of exactly 100 words (excluding title). Stories submitted of greater than or less than 100 words will be rejected. We use Google Docs to determine word count. We publish science fiction. Every subgenre of science fiction is acceptable but the science fiction element must be present. Submitted works must be stories. They must have a beginning, middle, and at least hint at the end. They may be 100 words, but we are not interested in thoughts or feelings without action or characters that don’t do anything. We will have set reading periods each year. Submissions will only be read in those reading periods. Stories sent outside of the reading periods will not be read unless they were specifically solicited by the editor. We pay .08 per word for original fiction, paid on publication of the selected work. Reprints are accepted and paid at .04 per word, half that of original fiction. We accept simultaneous submissions. Just please let us know if your work was selected elsewhere if we have not yet gotten back to you. We accept multiple submissions-up to three at a time, sent as separate emails. We will respond within two weeks with either a rejection or hold request. The rights we...

Submission Window: February 1st to May 1st 2023. Payment: £25 Theme: Cursed Objects Cursed Objects It's a dark and misty evening. A sale begins in an old, crooked auction house. The auctioneer has ten items available, once owned by a mysterious collector of obscure, supernatural items. We are looking for ten stories. Each tale should be based on an object, an auction buyer takes home or has delivered. A haunted painting? A cursed ring? A demon infested box? Let your imagination run wild. The call is open to all. February 1st until May 1st 2023. 3000, to 4000 word count. DOC, DOCx or FTF format. £25 paid for each accepted story. Please send submissions to [email protected] for consideration. Include your name or pen name, email address and word count in your cover letter. No child abuse, gore for the sake of gore, incest, rape, racism etc. No reprints please. Any questions, feel free to reach out. Via: Bloody Hatchet Press's Twitter.

Deadline: May 1st, 2023 Payment: $25.00 - $50.00 for fiction, $5.00 - $10.00 for poetry Theme: Story must begin with: "All the lawns on Mentone Avenue are mowed on Wednesdays." 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...

Submission Window: April 1st - May 1st 2023 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: Reparations Last Girls Club Summer Issue Theme is Reparations. The country I live in is founded with a deep blood debt that will continue to haunt us if we do not acknowledge it. Revisionist history cannot kill ghosts. Colonialism exists everywhere. What do reparations even look like? Please go to our website www.lastgirlsclub.com to get a feel for what we publish. Acceptances will be notified on May 15. 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] 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. Submissions will be accepted from Jan 1-Feb 1, April 1-May 1, July 1-Aug 1, Oct 1-Nov 1. Final notifications will be Feb 15, May 15, Aug 15, Nov 15. Authors must be 18+. Submissions from underage authors will not...

Deadline: May 1st, 2023 Payment: $25 Theme: Writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in. Schedule We publish two issues a year, September 1 and March 1. We accept general submissions for poetry, nonfiction, and fiction between two reading periods, and the first 300 submissions to each are free. We also run a collaborative writing contest in August. We also accept visual art all year. General Submissions: March 1 – May 1 General Submissions: October 1 – December 1 Collaboration Contest: July 15 –  August 31 Payment We are thrilled to finally be able to say that, starting with issue 17, we will be able to offer our contributors a small payment of $25 upon publication. Hopefully, with time it will be more. A Note on Our Aesthetic We believe there is beauty in scars on smooth skin, in the small fissures where things begin to break apart. Sundogs are not the sun itself but phantom stars appearing on the horizon, illusions produced by the play of the sun’s heat with crystals of ice. They shed their light all the same. Many are tinged with color. We look for this same quality in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We want writing that attempts to salvage something pure from the collision of warmth and cold, that says what it can about the world it finds itself in. We seek a diversity of voices speaking from visceral, lived experience. We like truth we can stare at until our eyes water, words so carefully chosen we want to reread them as soon as we have finished. Practical Matters We are grateful to be a part of a literary community that is taking action against systemic racism. We will also...

Deadline: May 1st, 2023 Prizes: $100, $75, and $50 for the top 3 spots Theme: A speculative fiction LGBTIQA story with the theme of "Rise" (See below) Note: Those who submit a quality story, even those who don't win, will likely see their work in print which would put selling this in the future as a reprint Every year, QSF holds a flash fiction contest to create an amazing new anthology of queer speculative fiction stories. We ask authors to do the nearly-impossible – to submit a sci fi, fantasy, paranormal or horror LGBTIQA story that has no more than 300 words. Our 2023 contest launches on March 1st, and closes on May 1st, but we will soon be open for early entries. We’ve increased our prizes for the 10th anniversary edition of our contest. The theme for 2023 is “Rise”: Rise (Noun) 1) An upward slope or movement 2) A beginning or origin 3) An increase in amount or numberttaining certainty about something 4) An angry reaction Rise (Verb) 1) To take up arms 2) To return from death 3) To become heartened or elated 4) The exert oneself to meet a challenge With the world in turmoil, we all need a little hope, so this year we chose a word rife in meanings and ripe for inspiration. Tell us about rise in all its forms and the difference it can make on your characters, the culture, and the world, for better or worse. Submit Your Story What We’re Looking For We’ll be accepting works from across the queer spectrum, and would love to see more entries including lesbian, trans, bi, intersex and ace protagonists, as well as gay men. We also welcome diversity in ability (physical and mental) and in race. We had our most diverse set of entries yet...

Deadline: May 1st, 2023 Payment: ¢ per word for prose, $10 for poetry, $25 for artwork Theme: Epic Fail NonBinary Review is open for submissions on the theme of "epic fail." We're not talking about everyday failures, like you didn't pay the electric bill, so your lights are turned off. We're talking about the cascades of calamity that end in death, destruction, disaster. Series of unfortunate choices that lead to plague, famine, and war. A train wreck that, once it's been set in motion, you can neither stop nor look away from. There but for the grace of some spectacularly poor planning, bad decisions, and gross incompetence, go all of us. Let's hear it all. Zoetic Press publishes the best in new lit - experimental, interstitial, luminous. We welcome submissions from EVERYONE. The only requirement is that they be in English, or translated into English (we love a translation). If your writing is outstanding, no matter who you are, we have a place for it. NonBinary Review, our award-winning themed lit journal is published quarterly. Each issue revolves around a specific theme, but we're asking contributors to go beyond the old familiar media tropes. We're looking for work we can read with our whole body - work that gives us goosebumps, makes us see the world differently, has the tang of authenticity, makes us sit up and listen, and smells like....something. This analogy got out of hand. What we're saying is that we're not looking for re-hashes of images or stories we've read before. We want contributors to explore every facet of our themes, really getting in between the cracks, in the corners, all the forgotten places that no one ever thinks to explore. We want to read work that makes us think "I never would have thought of this, and...

Deadline: May 1st, 2023 Payment: $35 or $25 with a contributor copy. Theme: Taking a look at the super Wealthy and Depraved Issuing layoffs from their yachts. Making idiotic business decisions while others pay the price. Keeping their riches via tax loopholes for the super wealthy. Profiting from the hard work and suffering of others. Sending dick-shaped rockets into space. Evading punishment. It goes on and on. The details range from the banal to the scandalous. The uber wealthy play an outsized role in our society — determining or demanding too much and contributing too little. With The One Percent: Tales of the Super Wealthy and Depraved (our previous working title was Rich People Being Shitty, so that should give you a target to aim for), Rock and a Hard Place Press changes it up a little bit from their established pattern. Instead of stories about desperate protagonists in tough positions, we’ll explore the privileged and elite, and how they traffic in, revel in, and benefit from the desperation that they cause. Hopefully, some of these characters get the comeuppance they so richly deserve . . . but we wouldn’t count on it. WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR? We are looking for fictional short stories ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words examining the ways in which the most affluent among us commit wrongs. These transgressions can range from broken laws to the perfectly legal, though otherwise reprehensible. These acts can be small in scale — being an awful parent or spouse — or they can have wide-ranging impact — concealing carbon emissions or human rights abuses. At RHP, we subscribe to the notion that the act of becoming a billionaire, even if no other laws are broken in the process, is, by its nature, a crime against humanity. People should...

Submission Window: May 1st-3rd, 2023 Payment: 8 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints, For artwork: $10 for the non-exclusive right to use each image, for as long as the site is online.  If we publish a print collection we will pay a pro-rata share for each image used. Theme: Well written original work in science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tales, and eldritch, in written, podcast, video, and/or graphic story form, and from around the world. Note: Reprints welcome     Submissions Schedule We have a new submissions schedule as of June 1, 2020: The first and second day of every month, 12 am of the 1st to 12 am of the 3rd, E.S.T. Only one submission per person. For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers. We pay 8¢ per word for new fiction, 2¢ per word for fiction reprints, 2 – 6¢ per word for new fact-based work, 1- 4¢ per word for reprinted fact articles. For new poetry, we pay $1 a line, reprints would be 50¢ a line, up to 40 lines. We’ll look at longer poems but that would be a hard sell, and words over 40 lines would be paid at 6¢ per word. We began The Kepler Award to recognize and encourage writers of excellent science fiction and fantasy stories that creatively extrapolate on known science in constructive and exciting ways. You can learn about The Kepler Award here. You can read a copy of our standard contract here.   It can be varied as needed to include the rights of translators, voice actors, etc. Writers Guidelines We accept new work as well as reprints, prose and poetry, anywhere from 1000 word flash fiction on up, but all else being equal, shorter pieces...