Events

Taking Submissions: Unfading Daydream

Deadline: August 31st, 2018 Payment: 1000-3000 words will receive $5. Stories that are longer than that will receive $10 and a contributor's copy. Unfading Daydream is looking for unique and exceptional fiction to be showcased in our quarterly literary magazine. We strive to feature stories within the genres that have inspired us (sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc) as well as stories that feature LGBTQ+ themes. We are currently not seeking submissions – but our next reading period starts in August which is for Issue 6 (published in Octoboer 2018). Basic Details We are open to established and new, emerging authors. In terms of length, we’re looking for stories between 1000 and 7000 words. Shorter or longer stories will be evaluated on a case by case basis. No previously published works. Please no simultaneous submissions Reading periods are May, August, November, and February. All submissions must be in by 11:59pm CST on the last day of the reading period (May, August, November, or February) Please do not send submissions outside of our reading periods. Submissions received outside of reading periods will not be considered. Expect a decision within four weeks See full guidelines below Payment Stories that are between 1000-3000 words will receive $5. Stories that are longer than that will receive $10. All contributors receive a hard copy of the magazine. In time, we would like to pay contributors more! Submissions We accept submissions only by email. Free to submit! Please send your submission to submit unfadingdaydream com with the title of ‘Unfading Daydream Submission’. Full Guidelines We want to see your unique sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. We prefer stories that are between 1000-7000 words, but if you feel that your 8000 word story or your 700 word story is brilliant, we’d love to see it. The Submission Piece One submission...

Taking Submissions: Breach September 2018 Issue

Deadline: August 31st Payment: Short Stories are at 1 cent a word, to a maximum of $20 with Poetry at $5 per piece Note: NZ and Australian authors only We publish SF, horror and dark fantasy short fiction from NZ and Australian authors. We publish bimonthly and open for submissions for the month prior to release. Our submission periods for 2018 are as follows: Issue #08: August (to publish in September) Issue #09: October (to publish in November) Issue #10: December (to publish in January 2019) In the Zine All work must be original and previously unpublished. We pay for first worldwide publication rights and nonexclusive reprint rights. Copyright belongs to the author or artist. We simply ask for you to credit Breach as the site of first publication if your work is then subsequently reprinted elsewhere. Stories between 500 and 2000 words, in doc format. Poetry of a page length, doc format. Cover art in A4, 600dpi, RGB. Payment Short stories: 1 cent a word, to a maximum of $20. Poetry: $5 per piece. Cover art: $20 per piece. From August, 2018 we'll also accept submissions of longer works of novella (17,000 to 40,000 words) and novelette (7,500 to 17,000 words) length. Our short stories lean toward horror and the darker side of science fiction and we'd like to carry that over to longer works. If you're interested in publishing with us, please send the first chapter and a single-page synopsis as a Word doc using the form below. All work must be original and previously unpublished. Breach pays 50% royalties from all print and ebook sales - we don't offer advances. We pay for worldwide publication rights to any and all editions of the work, for the duration of the copyright. Via: Breach.

Taking Submissions: Apparition Lit Magazine – October 2018

Deadline: August 31st, 2018 Payment: $0.01 per word, minimum of 10.00 Apparition Lit is open for poetry and short story submissions four times a year. February 15-28 May 15-31 August 15-31 November 15-30 Apparition Lit also holds monthly flash fiction contests. These stories will follow selected themes and be published online. For more information on themes and submission guidelines, please see the flash fiction drop down below. Our themes for 2018 will be: Apparition (Published January 2018) Delusion (Published April 2018) Vision (Published July 2018) Diversion (opens for submissions August 15-31, 2018, publishing October 2018) PAYMENT: Apparition is a semi-pro rate magazine, paying $0.01 per word, minimum of 10.00 dollars (excluding flash contest, a flat rate of 5.00 dollars to the winning flash). If we accept your story, we are purchasing the right to publish the story online and in the quarterly edition. Rights will revert back to the artist after one year. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR: SHORT FICTION: We will only accept stories between 1000-5000 words. If the story is complete with an extra hundred words, then it will still be considered. Any stories over 5,200 words will automatically be rejected. PAYMENT: Apparition is a token-rate magazine, paying $0.01 per word, minimum of 10.00 dollars (excluding flash contest). If we accept your story, we are purchasing the right to publish the story online and in the quarterly edition. Rights will revert back to the artist after one year. HOW TO SUBMIT: Format the story using the Shunn manuscript Please only use Times New Roman or Arial font in your document Save as an RTF file and attach to an email In the text of the email, provide a brief cover letter that includes your name, the title of the short story, word count, and any relevant publications Edit the email’s subject line so it reads: SUBMISSION: Title of Your Story Email your formatted email...

Taking Submissions: Burnt Fur

Deadline: September 1st 2018 Payent: 3 cents/word Furry: ‘noun informal 1.an enthusiast for animal characters with human characteristics, in particular a person who dresses up in costume as such a character or uses one as an avatar online.’ Furry can also mean actual anthropomorphic animal characters. Real animals acting like people (ie. WATERSHIP DOWN) or half-human/half-animal hybrids (ie. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). We’re looking for stories from the dark underbelly of Furry life. The Pooka who is not only invisible to everyone but Elwood Dowd (“Harvey”), but who is also slaughtering the neighborhood pets. The talking porcupine who uses an ancient form of acupuncture to mind-control the humans into a sex/blood cult. The couple who dress up as wolves, go to Furry cons, and actually eat people dressed as prey animals. You get the idea. Show us the corruption of innocence. Give us fur matted with blood. Make us squirm as we read. But, please, make sure you have a story to go with your gory. Please include a plot with your cum shot. If it’s all shock and no substance, we’ll likely pass. What we’re looking for: Genres: All sub-genres of horror accepted—extreme, bizzaro, erotic, new weird, splatterpunk—if it’s dark and it’s furry, we want it! Stories must be previously unpublished in any form Email:  [email protected] Length: 1,500 words up to 7K Deadline: September 1st 2018 Multiple Submissions: No Simultaneous Submissions: No Payment: 3 cents/word Editor: Ken MacGregor Publisher: Blood Bound Books Via: Blood Bound Books.

Taking Submissions: Release The Virgins

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: 5 cents per word The anthology Release the Virgins! is now open for submissions. Through a kickstarter campaign, we were able to raise enough to go ahead with this project, and we have confirmations from authors David Gerrold, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Jody Lynn Nye, Allen Steele, Steve Miller, Sharon Lee, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Gail Z. Martin, Cecilia Tan, Patrick Thomas, Shariann Lewitt, Alex Shvartsman, Hildy Silverman, and Daniel M. Kimmel. We should have room for a few extra stories as well. But only a few. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYWGqegtzrU Submissions are open for short stories that include, somewhere in the story, the phrase “Release the Virgins.” The story should be no more than 5,000 words. This should be sufficient for what should most likely be a somewhat humorous tale. The payment is 5 cents a word. Do not take this as an invitation to pad your story in order to earn a few more bucks. If your story is complete at 3,000 words, then end it. A good but padded story may get rejected over a concise, fast-moving one, because we want to fit in as many stories as possible. Unpublished authors are encouraged to submit, but will still face the same standards for submissions as the published authors. (Hint: Don’t send me a submission full of spelling and grammatical errors.) An email proposal is required to make sure you are not duplicating an idea already reserved by one of the accepted authors. Send to [email protected]. Once that is approved, your story should be double-spaced in rtf format with 12 point Times Roman font. There should be no spacing after the paragraphs. The first page must contain the name of the story, the word count, and your name, address, email, and phone number. Your cover letter should list any previous publications. The deadline...

Taking Submissions: Futures: A Science Fiction Chapbook Series

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: $0.06 per word Radix Media is proud to present the next project in our publishing program: Futures, a series of short stories that will explore critical contemporary issues and their human ramifications in a science fiction setting. What would climate change look like in the future? What about policing? Labor issues? Immigration? The human cost of technology? By using science fiction as a means through which to unpack these issues, we hope that the stories will allow for a better understanding of our world and give us more tools in our struggle to make it better. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES We are looking for unpublished short stories that could be described as “literary science fiction.” The work should be about more than just rayguns and spaceships. (But there’s nothing wrong with those things!) They should explore the human element of science fiction, ask tough questions, and examine what it would mean to be alive in a future that is yet unwritten. We believe that good science fiction reflects the dreams and nightmares of the present day. Pieces should adhere to the following guidelines: Cover Letter Please submit a cover letter with your submission to [email protected], listing: Your contact information The title, word count, and a summary of the submission If you have been published in any major publications or won any awards Any association or relationship with a worker at Radix Media or a guest editor Manuscript Guidelines Between 5,000 and 10,000 words Typed, double-spaced pages Numbered pages Attach your submission as a .DOCX file. No .DOC or PDF files. Deadline is September 1, 2018. CONTRIBUTORS & PAYMENT Contributors to Futures will be paid at the rate of $0.06 per word. Payment for finished pieces will be issued within 30 days of publication. If you are a person of color, queer, trans, disabled,...

Taking Submissions: Tales From the Old Black Ambulance

Deadline: September 1st 2018 Payment: 4¢ per word, if funded Tales From the Old Black Ambulance — a horror anthology that we will be attempting to fund via a Kickstarter campaign. This anthology has an open call for manuscripts and will pay at least 4¢ per word, if funded. Word count guidelines 5-10k, for a total anticipated length of 100k. Open for horror and weird stories about graveyards, cemeteries, mausoleums, morgues, funeral homes, funerary rites, and, of course, hearses. Juried. Deadline for submission is September 1st 2018. Accepted authors are expected to participate in anthology promotion during the Kickstarter campaign. Via: Prospective Press.

Taking Submissions: Contrary Autumn 2018 Issue

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: $20 per author per issue “Turning words into art is unnatural. It begins with a contrary attitude. It says, I am unhappy with the way things are and desire to make things different. Rather than represent the world, I will make something wildly and savagely new. I will defy logic. I will invest in new perceptions. I will combine and recombine and fabricate and juggle until something that I have never experienced is experienced. The process is alchemical. The process is violent. It goes to the heart of creativity. It disrupts and shatters. It is splendid with provocation. It is an aggression against banality. It is sharp and loud like a janitor scraping frost from a window. The hectic bounce of steam on a street after a truck roars by. The anarchy of waters, the comedy of the face, dangerous feelings vented from a cage of skin.” ~ John Olson Poetry — We believe poetry is contrary by nature, always defying, always tonguing the tang of novelty. We look especially for plurality of meaning, for dual reverberation of beauty and concern. Contrary’s poetry in particular often mimics the effects of fiction or commentary. We find ourselves enamored of prose poems because they are naturally contrary toward form – they tug on the forces of exposition or narrative – but prose poems remain the minority of all the poetic forms we publish. Please consider that Contrary receives vast amounts of poetry and that we can publish only a small percentage of that work. Please submit no more than three poems per issue. Our poetry editor is Shaindel Beers. Fiction — We ask our fiction writers to imagine their readers navigating a story with one finger poised over a mouse button. Can your story stay that finger to the end? We have published long...

Taking Submissions: Wrong Turn

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: Stories that are up to 5,000 words will receive $50.00, above 5,000 words will receive $100.00 It's dark... You’re tired. Not thinking straight. It’s the worst time of all for you to make decisions, and maybe that’s why you take a…WRONG  TURN. CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS We want your detective stories, your noir, your thrillers/mysteries. Any story you want to tell, any way you want to tell it…with the theme of WRONG TURN. Your story will be published in audiobook first, followed by paperback and ebook. We purchase the rights for this anthology, but authors retain their rights and are welcome to use their stories in any way they choose after publication. Payment: Stories that are up to 5,000 words will receive $50.00 Stories above 5,000 words will receive $100.00 Guidelines: Please submit your original story: Double spaced 12-point font Word document Basic formatting only Word count: up to 15k Previously published stories are okay if you own the rights   Submissions due: September 1, 2018 Email submissions and/or questions to: [email protected] Via: Blunder Woman Productions.

Taking Submissions: Artemis Rising 5

Deadline: September 1st, 2018 Payment: $0.06 per word for original fiction, $100 for reprints, and a $20 flat rate for flash fiction reprints (stories below 1,500 words). Note: Female authors only Note: Reprints Welcome In March 2019, Escape Artists will bring you ARTEMIS RISING for a fifth year. This special month-long event, across all four Escape Artists podcasts, is a celebration of stories written by women, in the broadest definition of the word. This year, Cast of Wonders is excited to introduce guest editors Amy Brennan and Karissa Sluss, with assistant editors Katherine Inskip and Alexis Goble. ARTEMIS RISING specifically highlights women in genre fiction, a demographic that has been underrepresented until recent years. This showcase helps to address that historical imbalance and correct the impression, which continues to persist in some social circles, that women cannot write excellent genre fiction. Who Can Submit Submissions are open to anyone who identifies as a woman to any degree. In past years, we have specifically included the term “non-binary” in our Artemis Rising submission calls — you may notice it is missing this year. English is flawed in its ability to accurately represent the breadth of human genders, and as such the language we use is always evolving. We respect the feedback that we’ve received regarding our use of “non-binary” as a catch-all: that it erroneously tilts the perception of non-binary people in a feminine direction. In a continuing effort to support diversity and inclusivity, we’re changing the language of our ARTEMIS RISING call. Non-binary authors who identify as women are welcome to submit. Your gender is for you to determine, and we support you and take you at your word. If you feel you have a story that helps cast light on the multitudinal existence that is womanness, please don’t self-reject....