Taking Submissions: Eidetic Quarterly – Beach Horror
Deadline: April 18th, 2024 Payment: $10 and a contributor's copy Theme: Beach Horror We’re back baby and we’re looking for your best creepy stories. The talented team - Nora B. Peevy (Managing Editor and Submissions Reader) and Thomas Stewart (Art Director and Submissions Reader) will be working together to bring you the newly vamped version of Eidetic Quarterly. Our inaugural summer issue is coming out on July 4th, Independence Day, 2024. We are accepting ten stories. Theme: Beach Horror Submissions are open: From March 18, 2024, through April 18, 2024. You may submit another story, if yours is rejected, but please, only one at a time. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, if you let us know. If your story is accepted elsewhere, please tell us immediately, so we can pull it from consideration. It is not fair to our other authors to miss out on an opportunity because your lack of communication. Word Count – 1,500-3,000 words, not including your story title or byline. Standard Formatting: Use Modern Shunn Format. If you are not familiar with Modern Shunn format for stories, you can check it out here: Modern Manuscript Format | William Shunn Send a cover letter with a short bio to: [email protected] Name your file: “Beach Horror-(Story Name)-(Author Last Name)” Payment: $10 and one free hard copy of the publication. What we do want: Your best tales about beach creature features, vacations gone wrong, and anything else you can scare up beach horror related. Be original. What we don’t want: Hate towards any group of people, child molestation, violence against animals, children, or any group of people, beastiality, and extreme gore. This is not a splatterpunk magazine. Please don’t send us Jaws rewrites. We don’t want to deal with copyright issues. Lovecraft stories are wonderful, but we also don’t want...
Taking Submissions: Grimm Retold
Speculation PublicationsDeadline: April 19th, 2024 Payment: $25 for stories 2000 - 5000 words (after edits), $35 for stories 5000 - 8000 words (after edits), $15 for poems, $10 for reprints Theme: Horror and dark fantasy collection of Dark Grimm Fairy Tales, retold in new and horrific ways. Note: Reprints Welcome Open for submission February 9th – April 19th Fairy Tales can be frightening, and while many have been watered down over the years, their grim roots are steeped in black magic, forced marriage, abduction, murder, curses and cannibalism. And we’re here for it. Grimm Retold is a horror and dark fantasy collection of Dark Grimm Fairy Tales, retold in new and horrific ways. We’re looking for stories 2000 – 8000 words and Poems 1 - 4 pages email a brief cover letter, bio and attached full manuscript, .doc or .docx formatted to standard Shunn Manuscript style to [email protected] $25 for stories 2000 - 5000 words (after edits) $35 for stories 5000 - 8000 words (after edits) $15 for poems $10 for reprints Stories should be based on specific Grimm Fairy Tales and recognizable to their source material, even if they drastically diverge from them. We want voice-y weird and terrifying. We welcome blood, violence and gore, but be careful with gratuitous and exploitive sexual violence, and keep it away from children and animals. (To be clear, there are many fairy tales with children and animals in danger and killed, but watch how those are described) We would particularly love to receive retellings from the perspective of other cultures or marginalized points of view. Tentative Release Date: September 2024 Some ideas: The Robber Bridegroom Sleeping Beauty The Goose Girl The Juniper Tree Rumpelstiltskin Hansel and Gretel And for your reference here is a link to a List of All Grimm Fairy Tales...
Taking Submissions: Astrolabe Spring 2024 Window (Early)
AstrolabeSubmission Window: March 20th to April 20th, 2024 Payment: $50 upon publication Theme: Stories about how we seek out, discover, and grasp onto connection in all genres with a particular fondness for anything that moves beyond realism in form or content or spirit At Astrolabe, we’re looking for work about how we seek out, discover, and grasp onto connection. Into the woods. Across a line. Beneath the ocean. Along a seam. Into the branches of an alternate present or the crevasse of an alternate future. Across the rifts between one another. And then, once we find one other, the myths we make. We’re excited to see as many interpretations of this broad theme as there are stars in the night sky. We’re open to work of all genres, with a particular fondness for anything that moves beyond realism in form or content or spirit. Read about Astrolabe for details on our mission and what we’re doing with the Universe. The details Astrolabe is open for submissions year-round temporarily closed for submissions. We pay a $50 honorarium upon publication of one or more pieces from your submission. To help fund those payments, we alternate between free and paid submission periods throughout the year. Our free periods begin the day we publish new work—on the spring equinox, summer solstice, autumnal equinox, and winter solstice—and stay open for a month. We’re temporarily closing for all submissions beginning on December 21, 2023 to help us catch up with the queue and spend time with our families. We'll re-open to free submissions on March 20, 2024. Here are the free periods for 2024: March 20th to April 20th June 20st to July 20st September 22nd to October 22nd December 21st to Jan 21, 2025 Some additional details: We currently accept three types of work: fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography & art. See below for genre-specific...
Taking Submissions: Super Canucks: An anthology of small-town Canadian superheroes
Latitude 46 Publishing 109 Elm St Suite 205, Sudbury, ON, CanadaDeadline: April 21st, 2024 Payment: $200 CAD and a contributors copy Theme: Canadian characters living their ‘super’ lives while still retaining their national/regional identity/connection. We’re looking for stories that push the usual superhero tropes while shining a spotlight on unique corners of Canada. We want stories set in and around the nation’s more often overlooked locales—isolated small towns, remote reservations, bedroom communities, and other underrepresented areas of Canada. Give us rural superheroes, backwater supervillains, and tales of characters/communities at a crossroads.How does place impact your character? Are they unable to reconcile their superpowers with their residence or is it the people who pose the problem? Does your hero struggle to maintain a secret identity where everyone knows everyone or do they find that familiarity weirdly comforting given the challenges of being superpowered? Submission Guidelines: Word Count: 500-3500 Canadian characters living their ‘super’ lives while still retaining their national/regional identity/connection. Stories that know the tropes and cliches—those applied to superheroes and Canada both—and either explore or subvert them. Heroes that reconcile their superpowers with the limits of their home—geographic, political, economic…heck, tie in the weather—so long as they’re original characters with strong connections to specific parts/cultures of Canada. Have your protagonists face situations unique to our nation/their region thereof. These can be silly or serious, inspired by reality or entirely fictional. Tell us about everyday Canadians. Folks often excluded from mainstream literature—the ignored, overlooked, and undervalued. (Including cultures, genders/sexual orientations, ages, economic groups, and faiths.) Genre-busting tales are encouraged. A superhero mystery or an origin story couched as a romance. Submitted stories do not have to be about superheroes per say (tales of supervillains and anti-heroes are welcome), but should tie into that theme in some way. Please avoid extreme violence, unnecessary profanity, and/or graphic sexual content. Submission deadline: April...
Taking Submissions: Offshoots: Humanity Twigged
Third Flat IronDeadline: April 21st, 2024 Payment: 9 cents per word Theme: Offshoots: Humanity Twigged – SF, fantasy, positive futures Theme: Offshoots: Humanity Twigged – SF, fantasy, positive futures The dictionary defines “twig” as a shoot branching off a tree, the result or descendant of something, or a style of fashion. How will humanity cultivate the strongest branches from among myriad potential futures? Please give us your science fictional and fantasy speculations. Possible subjects might include: bioengineering, space exploration, future societies, magical futurism, and extrapolation of trends (think Asimov’s Foundation or Loki’s Sacred Timeline). Stories about effects of AI and virtual reality are fine, but they must be written by people. Flash humor is welcome. Reading Period: April 1 – 21, 2024 Writer Deadline: April 21, 2024 Publication Date: July 15, 2024 Themes and Schedules Continuing with Third Flatiron’s quarterly themed anthologies, we will be soliciting SF/Fantasy/Horror short stories with stated themes. Themes are designed to be open-ended, allowing authors considerable leeway. We appreciate short, imaginative tales, preferring those that work with the theme in some way. Short stories should be 3,000 words or less. Flash humor pieces (<=1,000 words) can be on any theme. We aim to be inclusive and encourage submissions from all creators. Please submit during the reading periods. We do themed anthologies. We are not currently accepting unsolicited reprints. We have also discussed the types of stories we prefer in an interview (note that the pay rate has increased) at D.L. Snell’s Market Scoops. We are currently closed for submissions. Please see our main page for the current theme . Stories should be submitted in either Microsoft Word (using double spacing), RTF, or plain text. They should be between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Be sure they are the final version (any Review comments removed). Flash humor pieces (Grins and Gurgles) should be short, around 600-1,000 words. Please don’t...
Contest: Baen Fantasy Adventure Award 2024
BaenDeadline: April 30th, 2024 Prizes: The GRAND PRIZE winner will be published as the featured story on the Baen Books main website and paid at industry-standard rates for professional story submittals. The author will also receive a handsome engraved award and a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books. SECOND place winner will receive a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books. THIRD place winner will receive a prize package containing $300 of free Baen Books. Theme: Any form of fantasy Baen Books is excited to announce the eleventh annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award. The award recognizes the best original adventure fantasy short story in the style of fantasy greats like Mercedes Lackey, Larry Correia, Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Elizabeth Moon, Andre Norton, Brandon Sanderson, J.R.R. Tolkien, and David Weber. Contest Rules Write and submit a short story of no more than 8,000 words. It must be a work of fantasy, though all fantasy genres are open, e.g. epic fantasy, heroic fantasy, sword and sorcery, contemporary fantasy, etc. No entry fee. But only one submission per person...we suggest your best one! No reprints (i.e. the story must be unpublished). All entries must be original unpublished works in English. Plagiarism, poetry, song lyrics, settings and/or characters from published gaming worlds or another author’s works of fiction will not be considered. Any AI-generated stories will be automatically disqualified. E-mail submissions only. Send entries as .RTF attachments to: [email protected] Please put BFAA SUBMISSION in the subject line when sending a contest entry and BFAA QUESTION in the subject line for questions to the contest administrator. Please include the following in the body of your email: the title of the work the author's name, address, and telephone number an approximate word-count The manuscript should be a RTF attachment, in standard manuscript...
Taking Submissions: The Quarterly Journal – WET
Quarter PressDeadline: April 30th, 2024 Payment: $5 Theme: Wet A Literary Journal with Some Art, Comics, and Analysis Thrown in for Good Measure As Quarter Press continues to grow, we’re adding another coin to our pocketful of change. We want to offer a space for shorter works to mingle with art and other bits of nonsense, so we bring you The Quarter(ly): It just makes cents. Issues are themed; however, we consider all interpretations. 2024’s Themes and Deadlines: WET (April 30) hat’ve you got to show us? Stories and / or Poems For Stories: We’re open to micro works all the way up to 10,000 words. Just keep two things in mind: We want to be engaged and the submission must be completed (no pitches, please!) For Poems: We’d love to see up to five poems from you, but you can always just send one, too. Art As long as it has some tie to the current issue’s theme, we’re open to see any art created in any medium at any time. Just know that it will need to “work in print” and—might—be presented in black and white. We WILL NOT Accept any AI-Generated art. For ART ONLY, you may choose to submit via email by sending jpgs, PDFs, or PNGs to chrisatquarterpress(at)gmail(dot)com Graphic Stories Show us your comic strips or complete short works; we’d love to see them all! Please try to keep submissions to 20 pages or less. Feel free to also send a collection of comic strips / one shot comics, as well. (Please note that our publication size / dimensions might change between issues. Our “Norm” is 6x9”). These must be COMPLETE works. For Graphic Work / Comics, you may choose to submit via email by sending jpgs, PDFs, or PNGs to chrisatquarterpress(at)gmail(dot)com Analysis / Interviews /...
Taking Submissions: Book Worms Horror Zine Issue #5
Book WormsDeadline: April 30th, 2024 Payment: 8 cents per word and a contributors copy Theme: “fun”, “80s style” horror that involve Rock n Roll Note: Only accepts Mail-In Submissions so don't wait until the last moment! Seeking short fiction for our Rock n Roll Issue! From hair-raising riffs to head-banging oblivion, horror and rock n roll are a match made in Hell! Book Worms Horror zine is a limited-edition print only publication sold on Etsy and selective bookstores. Frequently Asked Question: What kind of stories are you looking for? We generally enjoy “fun”, “80s style” horror reminiscent of the zine’s old-school vibe, but we’ve also been blown away by fresh voices that take the genre in a new direction. That being said, the best chance for your story being accepted by Book Worms is to follow the submission guidelines. Make sure your story is of the horror genre (you’d be surprised how many we receive that aren’t), mail in your submission versus email, meet the deadline, and don’t exceed the word count limit. And if your story doesn’t make it, please keep trying. We’ve had to turn down many excellent stories due to space constraints alone. It might be helpful to explain what we don’t want. Paranormal romance (Love the genre. It’s not right for Book Worms.) Anything with a political theme. We read to escape that stuff. Beyond the pale violence or pornographic material. Keep it fun, kids. Submission Guidelines Deadline: April 30, 2024 Payment is 8 cents a word for fiction and essays (1500 words or less). Includes one contributor copy. No reprints or multiple submissions please. Exclusive rights for six months after publication. ACCEPTING MAIL-IN SUBMISSIONS ONLY! Mail your submissions to: La Regina Studio/Grundy Commons/925 Canal Street/Bristol, PA 19007 *In the past, we’ve made some special allowances for writers living outside the USA....
Taking Submissions: manywor(l)ds March/April 2024 Window
Manywor(l)dsSubmission Window: March 1st - April 30th, 2024 Payment: $10 Theme: Stories of any genre by writers who identify with and as any of the following descriptors: trans, two-spirit, disabled, neurodivergent, Mad, queer, crip, nonbinary, genderqueer, intersex. We welcome submissions by those who identify with and as any of the following descriptors: trans, two-spirit, disabled, neurodivergent, Mad, queer, crip, nonbinary, genderqueer, intersex. This is a space for the words, works, and worlds of and by those whose bodyminds defy social expectations and invite new ways of thinking and knowing. We do not need to know the specifics of your identity/diagnosis/experience unless you want us to. We invite closeted and questioning people to share their work, as well as those whose experiences fall outside the confines of the language we used above. We welcome submissions from creators of all ages. We particularly encourage unpublished/emerging/young creators to submit. If you know an incarcerated/institutionalized creator who would like to submit, email us for information as to where to mail the submission, or clearly indicate in your message that you are submitting on their behalf. We publish on a quarterly schedule, with issues coming out on: February 15 May 15 August 15 November 15 We are open for all submissions EXCEPT during publication months. That is to say, we are open for submissions January, March, April, June, July, September, October, and December. Things to note This is a leftist magazine. We hate capitalism, “america,” cops, prisons, borders, neoliberalism, and all the rest. We don’t tolerate white supremacy, zionism, cisheterosexism, ableism, transmisogyny, xenophobia, fatphobia, intersexism, and anti-sex worker sentiment here. We reserve the right to reject and/or remove content from creators whose work does not align with our values. We do not tolerate AI-generated or -assisted submissions. Anyone found to be using AI will have their content immediately rejected/removed...
Taking Submissions: Charlottesville Fantastic
Whitaker LyonDeadline: April 30th, 2024 Payment: $20 Theme: Speculative fiction set in the Greater Charlottesville Area: Charlottesville City, the Counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Green, Nelson, or Shenandoah National Park. Announcing Charlottesville Fantastic edited by James Blakey and Catherine Simpson. Charlottesville’s a magical place, and we want to read all about it. We’re talking anything from vampires in the Rotunda to Cinderella set in Monticello, from a sentient Rivanna to sirens singing at a Rapunzel’s open mic. What We Want: Dazzle us with High Fantasy, Low Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retellings, Magic Realism, etc. Stories can be set in the past, present, future, or sideways (Alternate History). Smash genres and mix in Mystery, Horror, Romance, Science Fiction, Western, as long as you include a fantastical or supernatural element. Stories must be set in the Greater Charlottesville Area: Charlottesville City, the Counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Green, Nelson, or Shenandoah National Park. What We Don’t Want: Your trunk stories with a couple of Charlottesville references bolted on. Gore, Violence, Sex, Language: Nothing worse than you’d see in a PG-13 movie. Word Count: 1,800 to 5,500 (Hard Limits) with 3,500 being the sweet spot. Formatting Requirements: Shunn Standard or Modern Format. Courier or New Times Roman, size 12. Use Italics for Italics. DOC or DOCX file type. We are conducting Blind Submissions. Remove your name and all personally identifying information from your document/file. File name should be your story title in ALL CAPS. Example: THE WIZARD OF OLD RAG.docx Bio: In the submission form (not in your story file), include a 50-125-word third-person biography. Original Works Only: Your story should not have been published anywhere (in print, eBook, Patreon, etc.) with the exception of password protected critique forums. Simultaneous Submissions: Please don’t do this. Multiple Submissions: You may submit up to two stories (separately), but only one will be accepted for...