Events

Submission Window: October 1-31, 2015 Payment: $5USD advance followed by 35% - split between the contributors It's baaaaaaaaaaaaack! Our annual collection of funny paranormal stories. Story must be funny and have supernatural/paranormal elements. Previous published stories include a farting contest with the Boogeyman, a Shriner who becomes a weregoat, and a hoarding intervention at the home of a wizard. Story length should be 2000-6000 words. If you sub something longer than that, it'd better be really funny or you need to be Stephen King. Our submission window is October 1-31, 2015. Please do not sub sooner because there's a 90% chance it won't get read till October anyway and could get buried under other emails. Publication of SF3 should be in spring 2016 (note the use of 'should' here). Go to our Submissions page to find out what's open and what's not. Please send all submissions (short stories or novels) to [email protected] . To avoid confusion on our part, please put the name of the anthology you are submitting to in the subject line, or "Novel submission: (Your Title)". Mystery and Horror is a market that welcomes LBGTQ, multiethnic, multinational, nontraditional, and unusual fiction. We are concerned with well-written stories involving well-developed characters. PLEASE FOLLOW THE FORMATTING GUIDELINES BELOW: We only accept e-submissions - nothing in print. Our formatting requests are below. Note that 5 and 6 are extra important. 1) Your submission should be an attachment to your email in RTF or DOC format, .JPG for artwork (black and white only, except for book covers). 2) Submission text should be black in color and only use one font and one size print - preferably 12-point Times New Roman. 3) The text should be single spaced. 4) An extra line should only be inserted between scenes - not individual paragraphs....

Deadline: October 31st, 2015 Payment: $15 and contest winners for the top 3 selections For 2015’s Story Quest Competition we want to look at the unlikely, the neglected, the untried. We are looking for either: – unlikely partnerships between characters, species, the smashing together of worlds, cultures, ideas – unlikely genre partnerships, those we don’t see often or at all For combination number two, at the mag we don’t often see fairytale crossovers (we’d love some more diverse voices), steampunk, true romantic horror, Western crossovers, mysteries. Whatever you can think of, we’ll read. Just make it a story that makes the judges eyes bug. Submission Period Opens 1 September 2015 and closes 31 October 2015. Short listed stories and winners will be announced mid to late November 2015. It is free to enter. All submissions must be entered online using the Submittable System.Click here to submit. Please note that this is a third party system that will store submitted short stories on their database.   Awards Five or six stories will be short-listed, all of which will be published in SQ Mag in early 2016 – contract conditions for unsolicited entries strictly apply. Within the short list, 1st place will also be awarded US$100.00, 2nd place: US$50.00, 3rd place: US$25.00. All published short-listed stories will receive the standard US$15.00 SQ Mag payment. Authors who submit to the contest must have or nominate a PayPal account to receive their payments. Submission Requirements Shunn rules for presentation apply. Exceptions: Actual italics to be used and fonts can include Times New Roman, Times, Garamond. 1000 to 3000 words only. No exceptions. In line with SQ Mag being an original fiction market, no reprints will be accepted. Authors are encouraged to submit their manuscripts in the form of English that they wish (for example, US English, UK English, Australian English). Short listed...

Deadline: October 31st 2015 Payment: 1 cent per word for the first 4,000 words, and 1 cent per two words after that point, with a minimum total payment of $10, Free ezine subscription Cyclopean is an upcoming online speculative fiction e-zine. We're open to submissions from September 6th to October 31st. Length: Up to 7,500 words. Pay: 1 cent per word for the first 4,000 words, and 1 cent per two words after that point, with a minimum total payment of $10. Additionally, our authors will recieve a free subscription to the e-zine for you and one friend upon release, lasting for the life of the e-zine. Payment will be distributed during the weeks prior to publication. NEW 9/8/15 Language: English only. Rights: We claim electronic rights, (text and audio,) first serial rights, and non-exclusive rights indefinitely, to sell the e-zine in which it is initially published, and place the story in future anthologies, magazines, e-zines, or simply to reference or iterate the work as we see fit. If we do use the full text of your story again in the future, (not including if we use the audio,) we will pay you at least the amount you received on the initial publication, including a contributor copy, if it appears in print. (We will send contracts out, commencing in mid-October.) Response Time: We try and send a confirmation email within a day, and answer all submissions with a "yes" or "no" within 2 weeks. If you have not received a confirmation email within a couple days, or if it takes longer than 3 weeks to receive a reply, please send a query. Submissions: No reprints. You may submit one short story or two short poems and/or flash fiction stories per week. We accept simultaneous submissions, so long as you inform us in the body of the email of the original submission that...

Deadline: October 31st, 2015 Payment: 6c per word for original content, max $200. 2c per word for reprints published in the magazine, maximum $100. 1c per word for web only reprints, max $50. Reprints Allowed but unlikely See the Elephant is a new semi-pro e-zine published by Metaphysical CircusPress. To learn about the kind of fiction we publish, please see MCP Style & What We’re Seeking. Our open submissions period for the 2016 issues will be Sept 1-Oct 31, 2015 through our Submittable Account (see link below). If you were personally invited to submit, please include a note that mentions which editor invited you. You must be signed up for our mailing list in order to be considered for publication, unless you were personally invited to submit by one of our editors (even then, we hope you will). This is because we are building a community of writers. We need your support to make this a success. Length: 500-6000 words. Longer may be considered if it is suitable for serialization. We are interested in original work only. Pay: 6c per word for original content, max $200. 2c per word for reprints published in the magazine, maximum $100. 1c per word for web only reprints, max $50. Simultaneous Submissions: This year we prefer that you not submit elsewhere at the same time. We will try to reply to all work within one month of submission with a decline or notice that the work has moved to the next round of selection. Multiple Submissions: No, unless the submission is flash fiction (under 1000 words) in which case you may send up to three. Reprints:  Yes, provided the story is not currently available for free elsewhere on the web. Don’t let those great stories languish! If you have a new book out, having reprints on the web...

Deadline: November 1st, 2015 Payment: $25.00 - $50.00 for fiction, $5.00 - $10.00 for poetry, and $25.00 for nonfiction (all U.S. dollars). We also send you a copy of the issue in which your piece appears. You'll receive your money and issue at the same time. Winter: George pressed the call button and said, "Mrs. Whitfield, you have a visitor." We love the fact 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 two to three 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. 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 be written with the first line provided. The line cannot be altered in any way, unless otherwise noted by the editors. The story should be between 300 and 5,000 words (this is more...

Deadline: November 1, 2015 Payment: $25.00 - $50.00 for fiction Winter: George pressed the call button and said, "Mrs. Whitfield, you have a visitor." We love the fact 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 two to three 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. 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 be written with the first line provided. The line cannot be altered in any way, unless otherwise noted by the editors. The story should be between 300 and 5,000 words (this is more like a guideline and not a hard-and-fast rule; going over or under the word count won't get your story tossed from the slush pile). The sentences can be found on the home page of The First...

Deadline: November 1st 2015 Payment: .25 cents per hundred words The term Cheapjack originated as the name for a traveling peddler or tinker. The insinuation was that he was carrying inferior goods. This was moot because he served a poor clientele and did them the service of bringing the goods to them. It was all that some of them had sometimes. In the spirit of the penny dreadful, the pulp magazines of the industrial age, and the traveling tinkers of old....We proudly present to you CHEAPJACK PULP. SUBMISSIONS FOR THE MARCH 2015 ISSUE ARE OPEN FOR ALL DEPARTMENTS PLEASE EMAIL SENIOR EDITOR USING BUTTON ON SUBMISSION PAGE AND INCLUDE THE DEPARTMENT YOU WOULD LIKE CONSIDERATION FOR IN YOUR SUBJECT LINE. PLEASE INCLUDE ALL SUBMISSIONS AS AN ATTACHMENT (.doc or .rtf) For all art work please send queries. Submission Schedule: March issue submission deadline: February 1st (2015 only deadline extended to 2/15/15) June issue submission deadline: May 1st September issue submission deadline: August 1st December issue submission deadline: November 1st CheapJack Pulp is a quarterly pulp webzine which is archived in ebook format. We are free each month to the public. Our back issues are free immediately following archival of the current issue through Kindle Direct Publishing as an e-book. Stories and artwork relating to the pulp themes can be submitted to senior editor in the format the department editor specifies on submission page as they wish to receive it for review.The individual editors will list their contact info as they see fit for individual submission. Stories or articles should be no more than 8000 words long. Longer submissions are accepted by invitation and query only. CHEAPJACK PULP is currently a profit-making webzine (not much mind you!), we will be offering payment, we pay at a rate of .25 cents per...

Deadline: November 1st, 2015 Payment: 25 cents per hundred words Note: Yes, this is an EXTREMELY low paying market for one that doesn't take reprints. The term Cheapjack originated as the name for a traveling peddler or tinker. The insinuation was that he was carrying inferior goods. This was moot because he served a poor clientele and did them the service of bringing the goods to them. It was all that some of them had sometimes. In the spirit of the penny dreadful, the pulp magazines of the industrial age, and the traveling tinkers of old....We proudly present to you CHEAPJACK PULP. SUBMISSIONS FOR THE MARCH 2015 ISSUE ARE OPEN FOR ALL DEPARTMENTS PLEASE EMAIL SENIOR EDITOR USING BUTTON ON SUBMISSION PAGE AND INCLUDE THE DEPARTMENT YOU WOULD LIKE CONSIDERATION FOR IN YOUR SUBJECT LINE. PLEASE INCLUDE ALL SUBMISSIONS AS AN ATTACHMENT (.doc or .rtf) For all art work please send queries. Submission Schedule: March issue submission deadline: February 1st  (2015 only deadline extended to 2/15/15) June issue submission deadline: May 1st September issue submission deadline: August 1st December issue submission deadline: November 1st CheapJack Pulp is a quarterly pulp webzine which is archived in ebook format. We are free each month to the public. Our back issues are free immediately following archival of the current issue through Kindle Direct Publishing as an e-book.  Stories and artwork relating to the pulp themes can be submitted to senior editor in the format the department editor specifies on submission page as they wish to receive it for review.The individual editors will list their contact info as they see fit for individual submission. Stories or articles should be no more than 8000 words long. Longer submissions are accepted by invitation and query only.   CHEAPJACK PULP is currently a profit-making webzine (not much...

Deadline: November 2nd, 2015 Payment: 5 cents/word (CAD) and a contributor's copy Note: Canadians Only! Edited by Kelsi Morris and Kaitlin Tremblay The Exile Book of Anthology Series Number Twelve The stories surrounding monsters, creatures, and myths play an integral role in the formation of a cultural and individual identity. For our forthcoming anthology, Those Who Make Us, we will gather together a unique body of speculative fiction with a focus on creatures, myths, and monsters set in a real or imagined Canada that highlight these diverse identities. We welcome stories about classic Canadian monsters, but Those Who Make Us will also explore how monsters from other cultures affect and are affected by Canadian landscapes. The cultural stories that shape our understandings of ourselves and our place in Canada are dynamic and Those Who Make Us will reflect the complexities of these interactions. The stories submitted to Those Who Make Us may have their foundation in traditional forms of fairy tales, folktales, mythology, legends, and fables – but we will look for contemporary storytelling that goes beyond their foundations so that they represent personal or group identities, social commentary, evolving cultural norms, and history/future history. Those Who Make Us will challenge the idea of the Canadian identity. What Are Canadian Monsters, Creatures, and Myths? Some classic examples are Ogopogo, Wendigos, shapeshifters, selkies, etc. These can be taken from urban myth, rural folktales, tribal/ancestral stories, cultural tradition, and heritage or completely original creations. We do not want direct retellings of traditional stories, but rather speculative storytelling (personal, imagined, historical in reference, myth-based to one’s culture, contemporary) that embody a distinct Canadian past/present/contemporary/future psyche and place. Make them your own. Or even make up your own. There is a great deal to engage with in today’s world, as well. We are loosely defining...

Deadline: November 15th, 2015 Payment: 50% of the net profit will be paid through sales of the stand-alone ebook-exclusive novella; 4% of the net profit will be paid though sales of the omnibus anthology in both print and digital editions. The Master Detective may have passed away, once, when he fell over the falls. The Master Detective may have passed away, twice, seemingly forever when his creator’s pen fell silent. But the Master Detective is an old familiar, all too willing to rematerialize at the merest provocation. We ask you to summon up Sherlock Holmes once more. We ask you to take the canonical Holmes, just as Doyle left him, and work him into your style and into your fictional universe. We ask you to create the finest mysteries and adventures. The Science of Detection is a twelve-part novella series; one will be released each month in 2016, climaxing with a Christmas 2016 release of The Science of Detection: Twelve Cases of Sherlock Holmes, an anthology containing all twelve of the stand-alone novellas as well as bonus features. We eagerly await your stories… What we want: We want the author’s voice and narrative style to shine through. Unless you choose to write in a flawless imitation of Doyle’s style, you are encouraged to write in your own words. If you have a series character you feel would be appropriate for a team-up or shared-universe story, you are all the more encouraged to utilize them. We want your story to be focused (think of your novella as a long short story rather than a short novel), and we want every word to count. We want the Master Detective to matter. He can’t be an unimportant side-subject; he must directly pertain to the story at hand. (However, it is entirely possible to...