Events

Taking Submissions: The Earth Bleeds At Night

Eerie River Publishing

Deadline: June 30th, 2024 Payment: 5 cents per word Theme: Your take on the idea of what "The Earth Bleeds At Night" means, some examples and samples below ​We want you to get creative with this one and use the title for inspiration. Looking for a suggestion? Take the theme 'earth' and write us an eco-horror, go full body horror and run with the 'bleeds', or use "night" and give us your nighttime stalkers, your dark dwelling monsters... Whatever you decide and however you spin the title, remember to give us your best! We are NOT looking for stories that glorify sexual assault, rape, or bestiality. OPEN NOW May 14, 2024 - June 30, 2024 ​ ​ ​ Payment:  Professional rate of ¢5 per word USD after approved edits. ​​Word count: 2000 - 5000  (up to 20% wiggle room. Please don't email us asking if you can submit.) Reprints? No ​Multiple Submission? No 💀 Only one submission per author per theme/quarter.  ​Formatting: Shunn - Follow the details on the link below, please. Proper Manuscript Format for Fiction Writers | William Shunn   How to submit?  We will be using a Google Docs form when the submission window has opened. ​ What we are looking for: Unique, clever, and terrifying stories. Well-written relatable characters with flaws and real dialogue. Take us on a journey and scare the sh*t out of us while doing it.  ​ What we are not looking for: Erotica (some sex is fine, just not all of it), rape, and animal abuse (kill the dog, but don't f* it). ​ Curated by Holley Cornetto and Michelle River SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Remember to read the submission guidelines in full.  Failure to comply could result in your submission being rejected or sent back for correction. At this time we are only accepting manuscripts in English. ...

Taking Submissions: The Emptiness At the End of Time

Underland Press

Submission Window: June 1st - 30th, 2024 Payment: 1 cent per word Theme: Stories of cozy cosmic horror that illuminate the elegance and grace and compassion that persists against the vast background of unrelenting emptiness At the end, when the last star dies and the cold begins to seep in, what will be the totality of our accomplishments? What will have been the point? And will anyone notice that we’re gone?  Probably not.  Well, your cat will notice because who is going to get annoyed when they knock a teacup off the desk? And what’s the point of barfing on the rug in the middle of the night if someone doesn’t step in it the following morning?  If the true terror at the center of cosmic horror is the vast indifference the universe has for us, does that mean the closest thing we have to any sort of compassionate connection is . . . our cats? Ah, we are doomed.  Pay attention to them while you can, then, but not for more than five minutes at a time, and don’t—don’t ever—rub them like that.  This fall, Underland Press is publishing Even Cozier Cosmic, a follow-up anthology to last year’s The Cozy Cosmic. The cosmic indifference of the Universe (and of the dreaded intelligences that swim out there) may be unrelenting, but we still have to go about our days. We’re looking for stories of cozy cosmic horror that illuminate the elegance and grace and compassion that persists against the vast background of unrelenting emptiness. We reject nihilism and rejoice in the comforting weight of a furball in our laps (never mind that its razor-sharp claws will cut us the moment it thinks we’re going to move). We want to teeter along that fine line between big-eyed devotion and stark raving madness. The...

Taking Submissions: The Lost Poetry Club: Theme 1.03

The Lost Poetry Club

Deadline: June 30th, 2024 Pament: £0.015 per word (Flat £5 rate for under 300 words) Theme: Poetry that will be released as audio with the theme of: All Flowers Keep The Light In our world, nature and artifice blur, balancing us between oblivion and salvation.  Virtual habitats.  Immortal pets.  Bionic babies.  Unwind as an insect in the Metaverse  Or sow microchips like flowers.  AI. Cloning. Genetic engineering.  Nature has many new faces.  ​Plant stories that embrace nature's paradox; poems and music that dance between artifice and authenticity. Show us how our existence is intertwined with nature's complexities in this bold new world. Current Theme Deadline: June 30th, 2024 Submission Guidelines (check website for full guidelines): - Up to 5 mins or 500 words for poetry/flash fiction/songs - Up to 15 mins or 1800-3000 words for short stories/plays - Compensation: £0.015 per word (Flat £5 rate for under 300 words) - Original work only. Reprints accepted. - If the current theme doesn’t suit you, please feel free to send in your work anyway, as it may be suitable for future themes. Website: www.thelostpoetryclub.com Email: [email protected] The Lost Poetry Club is an audible zine. We aim to create a kaleidoscope of voices and materials. Chosen work will be dramatized, but you are openly encouraged to contribute to our M.A.F.P. (mind-altering frequency protocol) with your own recordings and performances for a fully collaborative experience. What to Submit: ​​ Short Stories/Scripts/Non-fiction: Up to 15 mins or 1800-3000 words. Poetry/Flash Fiction: Up to 5 mins or 500 words. Songs/Music/Other: Up to 10 mins. ​ Compensation:  Over 300 words: £0.015 per word.  Under 300 words: £5 flat rate. ​ Rights: If previously unpublished, we claim first-world on-going non-exclusive rights (text and audio) with 120 days of exclusivity from publication. However, we do accept reprints.  Any audio adaptations produced belong to us solely. Other formats like...

Taking Submissions Eavesdrop Issue 3

Eavesdrop Magazine

Deadline: June 30th, 2024 Payment: $30 per poem, $70 per short fiction, CNF piece, and short play. $70 per visual art piece, $30 per comic Theme: Queer-focused stories of any genre: space opera, niche cryptid horror, experimental formats, and anything in between! Eavesdrop is a queer-focused multimedia magazine. Our tone is inclusive, playful, and passionate. Eavesdrop accepts any and all genres. Space opera, niche cryptid horror, experimental formats, and anything in between. We love genre fiction, especially when it’s done well. However, please note that we will not accept graphic sexual violence, hate speech, or discriminatory works. If your piece contains violence, deliver it with purpose. We recognize that violence is, unfortunately, part of our queer experiences, and we never want to censor anyone’s experience, but Eavesdrop wants to create a safe community for our content consumers and fellow artists. If you have any questions about this policy, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. This submission period will be from May 31st to June 30th, 2024. WHO CAN SUBMIT? Our mandate is to connect both emerging and established Canadian writers with audiences who care. For this issue, we are accepting international submissions. We prioritize submissions from BIPOC writers, writers with disabilities, LGBTQ2SIA+ writers, and writers from marginalized groups, but accept submissions from everyone. We also gladly accept submissions from artists we’ve published before, but will make a concerted effort to spread the love as much as we can so we can share more voices. Please send us your work, and tell your friends! WHAT WE ACCEPT: Fiction and Plays For this issue, we are seeking short stories and short plays of no more than 2500 words. Poetry We accept up to 5 poems in a submission. Each poem should be no longer than 2 pages single-spaced. Creative Non-Fiction...

Taking Submissions: Ghoulish Tales Issue 4

Ghoulish Tales

Deadline: June 30th, 2024 Payment: 10 cents per word Theme: Fun horror that aims to celebrate all things spooky Note: Only considering fiction and non-fiction from writers who have never been published before Hello, ghouls! We are thrilled to announce that we are, once again, reading submissions for a new issue of our magazine Ghoulish Tales. This will be for our fourth issue. Issue 3 is in the process of being finalized and will come out next month. We strongly encourage you to subscribe now so you don’t miss it once it’s available. Plus, if you are not already familiar with the style & tone of the magazine, we highly encourage you to read one of our previous issues. Beginning this weekend, we will also start posting past stories on GHOULISH.RIP and our newsletter for free. With this new issue—Issue 4—we are doing something slightly different with our open call. This time, we are only considering fiction and non-fiction from writers who have never been published before.We want to see work from new writers only. I suppose you could call this the New Ghouls issue. Again, just to clarify: We only want writers who have never been published before, either in physical media or digital. Self-publishing counts as having been published—but we’re reasonable ghouls. If you simply posted a story on your blog or something, or perhaps printed out some DIY zine that you only shared with friends or whatever, you may still submit. Use common sense and, if in doubt, send us an email at [email protected] to state your case. This is just something we’re trying to do to help spotlight new writers and get their spooky feet in the door, right? No need for any of us to stress out too much about loop holes or technicalities. Also, if you’ve recently sold a work elsewhere, but it hasn’t come out yet,...

Taking Submissions: A Brood of Vampires

West Avenue Publishing

Deadline: June 30th, 2024 Payment: £10 Theme: Vampires! We're looking for short stories up to 5000 words, and poetry of any length. Submissions will close 30th of June, midnight GMT. Please send your work to us as a Word document with no headers/footers and no page numbers. We will accept one submission per author. Successful authors will receive a £10 payment, and it's free to submit your work to us for consideration. Please send your submissions to [email protected] Via: West Avenue Publishing.

Taking Submissions: Among nocturnes and Nightmares

Wordsmyths

Deadline: June 30th, 2024 Payment: $25 Theme: Dark Fantasy Call for Submissions – Dark Fantasy Short Stories Worldsmyths is now open to short story submissions for Dark Fantasy stories between 2k and 15k words. Dark Fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that features horror elements, disturbing or frightening themes. What we don’t want: We want darkness without tipping into despair, darkness without going into grimdark. Stories don’t have to have a happy ending for this submission. We also don’t want religious texts or essays. Stories below or over wordcount will be deleted unread. No AI generated or assisted stories. Submission Period: Now until June 30th at 11:59pm Length: 2000-15,000 words Genre: Dark Fantasy Pay: $25USD Rights: Exclusive right for a year, reprints after Reprints Accepted: No Simultaneous Submissions: No Who Can Submit: Anyone Where to Submit: https://forms.gle/aa2vwf5MnkxhLnT99(edited) Via: Wordsmyths.

Taking Submissions: Darkest Shadow, Brightest

Three Ravens Publishing P.O. Box 851, Chickamauga, GA, United States

Deadline: June 1st, 2024 Payment: Royalties Theme: Dark Fantasy Do you love dark and gritty fantasy settings? What about situations of overwhelming odds? Then you may want to submit to Darkest Shadow, Brightest Light. A Dark Fantasy anthology where the situation can be as grim as you want it to be, even ending in personal tragedy (Death of the heroes), but they need to succeed in the end.   We’re looking for new, previously unpublished stories that take us on an adventure and leave us wanting more. Genre: Dark Fantasy Word Count: 5,000 – 10,000 Opening by: TBD Edited by: Benjamin Tyler Smith Anchor Author: TBD Due Date: TBD (In the guidelines, on their main call page it indicates June 1st, 2024.) Email submissions to: threeravenspublishing @ gmail dot com with “Dark Fantasy” in the subject line Payment: Stories selected for publication in the upcoming Anthology(ies), will receive a percentage of sales divided equally between the contributing authors.   We are looking for amazing stories from any genre that are fun to read and will take us on an adventure of epic proportions. Please download our standards template by clicking here ***NOTE*** We publish genre fiction with aspects of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. If your work does not include one of these aspects, we are less likely to pick up the title unless it is of exceptional quality.   What we are NOT currently accepting: Poetry Single-author collections of short stories. Hard and fast rules of what not to send: Fan-fiction: Just simply don’t. It will be immediately deleted or tossed into the recycle bin. Gratuitous Sexuality: (i.e. smut, softcore porn) (Please, we know that there is a market out there for stories in this genre, but it’s not for us. Contact our affiliate, Tanglewood press for submissions in this genre at tanglewoodromance...

Taking Submissions: It Came From The Trailer Park Volume 4

Three Ravens Publishing P.O. Box 851, Chickamauga, GA, United States

Deadline: July 1st, 2024 Payment: Royalties Theme: Creature Feature Horror Comedy After the success of the previous Trailer Park anthologies, we’ve decided to bring it back for another release of fun Creature Feature Horror. Stories should be original creature-feature, horror-comedy with the same feel as The Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Shaun of the Dead, or Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. And of course, our heroes winning the day in all of their redneck glory. The added challenge this year, should you choose to accept it, volume 4 submissions can have a “Holiday or Vacation” (depending on where in the world you are from) twist to it. Not sure what we’re looking for? Think Bubba and Earl go on a cruise, only to deal with the cruise ship of the damned. Genre: Horror Comedy / Creature Feature Word Count: 5,000 – 10,000 Opening Essay by: TBD Edited by: William Joseph Roberts Anchor Author: TBD Due Date: July 1, 2024 Email submissions to: threeravenspublishing @ gmail dot com with “Trailer Park” in the subject line Payment: Stories selected for publication in the upcoming Anthology(ies), will receive a percentage of sales divided equally between the contributing authors. Please follow the Three Ravens submission guidelines that can be found here Three Ravens Publishing.

Taking Submissions: Midwest Futures: Poems from Tomorrow’s Heartland

Middle West Press

Deadline: July 1st, 2024 Payment: Contributor's Copy Theme: Speculative poems and micro-prose (300 words max.) engaging with themes of environmentalism, climate change, technology, and more through a lens of Midwestern experience. Middle West Press LLC, an independent micro-publisher based in Central Iowa, has issued a call for human-generated poems and micro-prose (300 words max.) engaging with themes of environmentalism, climate change, technology, and more through a lens of Midwestern experience. The working title of this project is Midwest Futures: Poems from Tomorrow's Heartland. Deadline for submissions is Jul. 1, 2024. Publication is projected for Spring/Summer 2025. Submit via Submittable here at this link. This is explicitly a speculative poetry (and related micro-flash-prose) market. We are interested not only in the gritty and grounded, but also near-future science-fiction-infused visions of the possible. For inspirations and vibes, see also movements such “Solarpunk,” “Eco-modernism” and “Climate Fiction” (“Cli-Fi”), as well as these potential exemplars of eco-poetry and other writing: Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota: Poems by Amelia Gorman “Botanical Fanaticism” and “Interpretation of a Poem by Frost” by Thylias Moss “8 Black Eco-Poets Who Inspire Us” - Sierra magazine “Five Indigenous Poets Explore Loss and Love of their Native Lands” - Natural Resource Defense Council Forever War by Kate Gaskin “Imagining the Future of Phoenix” - Arizona State University climate-writing exercise Special “Cli-Fi” issue of Guernica magazine Flyway: Journal of Writing and the Environment While we envision the Middle West as a renewing, evolving, and complicated place, but we are also not blind to the social and environmental challenges we face. We want to illuminate real-world problems specific to the region, including but not limited to climate change, racism, water quality, aging populations, rural/urban divide, and healthcare deserts. We want to imaginatively celebrate new possibilities, solutions, and futures. As with previous...