Events

Deadline: December 20th, 2019 Payment: AU$5.00 for stories under 2500 words / AU$10.00 for anything above 2500 words Thuggish Itch is our horror and sci-fi anthology collection. This is the place to submit your horror, sci-fi and speculative fiction stories.  Current theme: CLOSE THE GATE There's something about a locked gate that just screams horror. The two ends of a thick metal chain linked by a strong and sturdy padlock. The signs warning passers by to keep out, stay clear, or that their presence is being watched by the nearby security camera. Is the gate locked to keep something in? Or to keep something even worse out? For this collection, we would like you to send us stories in which a locked (or unlocked) gate is a major plot point. Are your characters trying to get in? Are they trying to get out? Are they the gate themselves or just those that control its usage? Thuggish Itch is our horror, sci-fi and speculative fiction collection. Please make sure that your story falls within one of these genres. Be original. We also encourage new and unpublished writers to take the leap and get in touch. Please ensure that you read through the general guidelines below and format your submission accordingly. If you have any specific questions please contact us using the form on the home page or via the listed social media accounts. To help make sure that your submission gets to the correct place, please include the following in the subject line of your email: Thuggish Itch - Close the Gate - Story Title. Word count: 1000 - 4500 words Deadline: December 20 2019 Payment: AU$5.00 for stories under 2500 words / AU$10.00 for anything above 2500 words Via: Gypsum Sound Tales.

Deadline: December 20th, 2019 Payment: Royalties What we are looking for: Write a SCARY story about PETS. Not just animals in general, specifically pets. Your characters can possess an exotic animal license and own an animal, but the animal MUST be OWNED. No beastality and no animal abuse. Animals may die but not in a glorified way that showcases gore and violence. 1.15 spacing, Arial, size 11. State whether it's okay for horror narrators to narrate your work(s) in your submission. If the story(ies) you're submitting is already out there link it to your submission email. Make paragraph indents 4 spaces. Put the title of the story at the top, in bold, font size 14, have your credit name also be bold, 14, and right under the title. Things like spacing, font, and font size will be changed in the actual book to Times New Roman, font size 12, possibly double spaced. When done, feel free to upload or add a link to the Facebook group (link at bottom of thread). Minimum word count: 1000 Maximum word count: 4,000 Amount of stories one can submit: 3 but please submit as many as you like. Don't commit plagiarism. When done, submit to [email protected] Your story has the right to be rejected for things like having too many stories with the same animal, or a story with an extremely similar plot. Sorry but We don't want to have like 8 stories in a row about a dog that kills people or something. Deadline: December 20 2019 Release: spring 2020 You have the right to post your story anywhere if you've submitted it, though I highly recommend you advertise the book with said story. If you need more information, email above or contact project manager Kyle Harrison at [email protected] Half of the pay is going...

December 20th, 2019 Payment: An honorarium equal to your age for each published story. Note: Writing by women of a certain age, for women of a certain age or of interest to women of a certain age. Hot Flash Fiction is an online literary magazine where the rich and varied voices of womxn from all walks of life are showcased and celebrated. We seek submissions from people whose life experiences have been cast and polished into wisdom—the fertile soil of great fiction. We offer Hot Flash Fiction as an outlet for writing by women of a certain age, for women of a certain age or of interest to women of a certain age. Hot Flash Fiction publishes fiction and other versions of the truth. No Hallmark stories. No self-help articles. Just smart, funny, compelling, and interesting writing. Sorry, no poetry.  While there is a broad theme to the writing we’re looking to publish, we hope to attract a diverse range of voices on a plentitude of topics. Please share your stories with us. We are seeking previously unpublished work. Simultaneous submissions are fine—just let us know when your piece is published elsewhere, so we can help you celebrate! Please send us only one piece at a time. Submissions are free and accepted on a rolling basis. Under 5,000 words is ideal. Up to 9,000 if it’s truly amazing. We will read all submissions and get back to you as soon as we can. We offer an honorarium equal to your age for each published story. Our stories remain posted on our primary page before joining our archives. Hot Flash Fiction publishes fiction and other versions of the truth. No Hallmark stories. No self-help articles. Just smart, funny, compelling, and interesting writing. Sorry, no poetry. We are seeking previously unpublished work. Simultaneous...

Deadline: December 21st, 2019 Payment: $25 Read our mission to ensure your work is a good fit. Read back issues to get acquainted with the journal. All work is published online bi-annually (spring & fall). We proudly nominate six authors each year for the Pushcart Prize, two poets for the “Best New Poets” anthology, and up to eight flash pieces for the “Best Microfiction” anthology. Journal submissions are closed from May 15th-Aug 15th. Reviews and Translations remain open year round. We do not accept previously published material. We accept unsolicited simultaneous submissions. Update your submission’s status in Submittable if accepted elsewhere; never email. A brief cover letter is helpful, but not required. We encourage, but don’t require, web formatted prose (no indents, single-spaced, one space between paragraphs). We respond generally within three months. Contact us if longer than six months. We ask for first serial rights and the right to keep a copy of the publication in our archives. All other rights revert back to the author after publication. We ask that authors mention that the work saw first publication in Newfound for future reprints. The honorarium for publication is $25. Review our guidelines for each section: Fiction, Flash, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Translation, and Visual Arts. For reviews and review copies, visit our reviews page. Click here to visit our submission manager. Virtual Realities: Themed Issue (Deadline: 21 Dec. 2019)   Is a virtual experience an actual experience? How can we trust our senses? What is real and what is fantasy? We want to explore all aspects of this theme in our spring 2020 issue. Tell us about a computer-generated experience or simulated environments. Immerse us in parallel or intersecting worlds. Please add a note to your submission if you would like us to consider it for the themed issue. All theme submissions will be considered for General Submissions. Click here...

Deadline: December 25th, 2019 Payment: $0.01 per word and royalties A Room is Locked… Due Date: December 25, 2019 Word Count: 1,000-7,500 words Payment: $0.01 per word and a percentage of royalties. Payment made upon publication In the mystery genre, the idea of a locked room puzzle is one of the standbys. Everyone from Agatha Christie to Edgar Allen Poe has done it, and now it’s your turn. Your story, to be considered, must feature the idea, concept or tool of a locked room. It can be figurative or literal, the choice is yours. The challenge is to take this old idea and make it new again. Please email your submissions in standard manuscript format, along with a short bio for consideration to [email protected]. Please put “Locked Room Submission” in the subject line. Expected publication date is sometime July/August 2020. Via: Antimony and Elder Lace Press.

Deadline: December 28th, 2019! Payment: 6¢ 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. Theme: We are looking for: 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 Allowed We have a regular submissions schedule, easy to remember and plan for: four times a year, one week each time, midnight E.S.T. to midnight E.S.T., at the beginning of each season of the year: March 21 – 28, June 21 – 28, September 21 – 28, December 21 – 28 We began The Kepler Award this spring.  The purpose of the award is 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. We pay 6¢ 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. Reprints must not have been published elsewhere within the past year or be available for sale online. For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers. Writers Guidelines We accept new work as well as reprints, anywhere from 1000 word flash fiction on up, but all else being equal, shorter pieces will be favored. We also accept poetry.  We have tough standards but only care about the quality of the writing, storytelling ability, characters, plot, and ideas, not whether you’re new or established.  Submit only work you are proud of — if you don’t love it, neither will our readers!  If in doubt, edit it down...

Deadline: December 31st, 2019 Payment: $5 Content: An original, unpublished, story that includes a super-powered being and someone trying to use their power to their advantage. Accepted Styles: Short stories and flash fiction Accepted Genres: Anything that isn't erotica. Simultaneous Submissions: These are allowed, but please withdraw your submission immediately if accepted by another publisher. Reprints: No. Stories posted on the internet, including but not limited to, FB, personal websites, blogs, etc., are considered published. Number of Submissions per Author: 1 short story or 3 pieces of flash fiction Length: A short story should be less than 5,000 words. Each flash fiction piece should be less than 1,500 words. Payment: Free electronic copy of the book and $5 per author, regardless of number of accepted submissions. Requested Rights: First rights to digital, audio, and print formats in English. Exclusive for one year from publication. After that year all rights revert back to the author. Deadline: December 31st, 2019 Formatting: Stories must be submitted electronically as a .docx attachment in an email to [email protected]. Submission should be 12 point font, Times New Roman, and double spaced. The document name should include the name of your submission. Please include the title and page numbers in the header of the attachment. In the body of your email please include your name, author name/website, address, short story title, and word count of submission. IF IN DOUBT PLEASE SUBMIT! Via: Pub 518.

Deadline: December 31st, 2019 Payment: 1 cent per word Autonomous Press seeks submissions of poetry, short fiction, and short memoir pieces for an upcoming anthology, Spoon Knife 5: Liminal. Scheduled for publication in Fall 2020, this fifth volume of the Spoon Knife Anthology series follows The Spoon Knife Anthology: Tales of Compliance, Defiance, and Resistance (Spring 2016), Spoon Knife 2: Test Chamber (Spring 2017), Spoon Knife 3: Incursions (Fall 2018), Spoon Knife 4: A Neurodivergent Guide to Spacetime (Fall 2019). Deadline for submissions is Tuesday, December 31, 2019. What We’re Looking For limen: Latin, “threshold” A liminality is a threshold, the place between here and there which is, in itself, both and neither. From it we get the word “subliminal” meaning, literally, “below the threshold of sensation.” A liminal space is a transitional zone. It is at the heart of a ritual or rite of passage, when one is no longer the thing they started as, but has yet to become the thing they will be. To stand at a liminal point is to occupy both sides of a boundary at once. Liminality can be disorienting, unsettling, ambiguous, and uncomfortable, but it can also be freeing, an existence without labels or boxes, or a means to a new becoming. We are looking for fiction, poetry, and memoir that explores thresholds and liminalities of all kinds. The work must further intersect with themes of neurodivergence, queerness, and/or the intersections of neurodivergence and queerness. Some examples might be: the experience of occupying liminal space as an individual the experience of collective or cultural liminal spaces, such as demimondes rites of passage, including via formal ritual or ceremony, or as a transition between states of being, locations, moments in time or ages, statuses, or situations sensory phenomena that occur at the threshold of sensation, perhaps sensed by some but not by others...

Deadline: December 31st, 2019 Payment: $5 You know us as a publisher of amazing horror. But what you may not know is that Publishing Editor John Baltisberger worked as a Chef and in the Food Industry for most of his adult life prior to coming to us. So after much insistence from him we agreed to put out a cookbook. We are looking for and asking for your greatest food based horror stories. Pizza that causes mutation, a family roast whose stuffing brings your nightmares to life. The odd color that gives you a headache emanating from your left overs. This is not a cannibalism anthology, cannibalism is unlikely to be accepted unless it is completely unique in a fascinating way. Each story should feature a dish. The concept is that the reader will be able to read the story and then recreate the dish from the story (with some liberties for illegal/alien or weird ingredients. If you have a recipe to match that dish please include it, if you don’t, no worries. We’ll put our poor publishing editor back to work in the kitchen for you. We will not accept any stories about rape. Racism/Sexism/Bigotry of any form will never be accepted here. Stories over 1500 words preferred. (not including recipe) Double check your grammar and spelling. Format your story correctly. Please submit all stories in DOC/RTF format. We prefer stories that have not been published before. We prefer to avoid multiple and simultaneous submissions. We retain exclusive publishing rights for 12 months. We pay $5.00 for stories We provide a digital contributor copy free and at cost+shipping physical copies Rejection/Acceptance letters will be sent out when submissions have been closed. Submissions Will Close When Enough Stories Have Been Collected or on 12/31/19 Via: Madness Heart Press.

Deadline: December 31st 2019 Payment: $100 Excalibur Books is proud to announce the upcoming anthology, EXCALIBUR 2020: TALES FROM BEYOND TOMORROW VOLUME 3 for print and electronic publication to be published in 2020, and we are asking for authors of any background to get involved. Because Excalibur Books is an independent publisher based in Tokyo, this anthology is intended to celebrate the Tokyo Olympics of 2020, and will be published around the time of that event. With this in mind, we are seeking short stories written by both established and upcoming writers from around the world with an Olympic theme. These are the guidelines: The work must be in the genre of Speculative Fiction (Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror). The work must have a thematic connection to Japan and/or the Olympics. This could include: Works set in cities during their Olympic years; for example – Paris 1924, Berlin 1936, the first Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Barcelona 1992, Beijing 2008, London 2012, and so on (We are also willing to accept non-fiction memoirs of Olympic years, depending on the circumstances). Works of fiction with a theme and setting of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics specifically. Works mainly based on aspects of Japanese society and culture with a tangential connection to the Olympics. If you have an idea for a story connected to Japan or the Olympics that doesn’t fit any of the points above, then contact us on the email address below and we’ll be very happy to discuss it with you. Reprints WILL be considered, so don’t worry if your story fits the guidelines but has already been published somewhere else. Word Count: Strictly 2,500 to 10,000 words. All submissions should: Be typed in Courier or Times New Roman 12 Be typed in line with Standard Manuscript Format. Include your full...