Events

Deadline: October 5th, 2024 Payment: Royalties Theme: Cowboys... In Space! Space Cowboys 6 This anthology series hit a nerve with the reading public. Something about the rugged individualism of the cowboy strikes a chord in us all. A certain romanticism exists in the feeling that cowboys inhabit a simpler world; one that’s clearer, brighter and makes more sense than our day to day existence. Cowboys have a certain reckless reputation and that doesn’t fade away when you move them into space and onto alien worlds. Men and women who face hardships and rope a living out of an unforgiving landscape without waiting for orders from a distant authority. They do what needs to be done and take care of their animals, their people, and themselves. Opens: 8/4/24 Closes: 10/5/24 Contracts: 10/26/24 Publication: 11/22/24 5,000 to 8,000 words. Length and genre are negotiable, as long as the story fits the concept, and is entertaining. Any submission must be in Times New Roman (preferred, but you can use Georgian or other readable font), 12PT, double spaced, with your name, title of the story, and your email on it. Name the file as -—. Send it in a .docx format as an attachment—no links. Refer to the submission guideline graphic below for how to format your story—It has all the information you need! Feel free to download it for reference. Raconteur Press will hold the rights for one year after publication, after one year the rights will revert to the author, but we continue to pay you as long as the anthology is selling. Authors receive an equal percentage share of the proceeds from the anthology, along with the Press, our editors, and administration. Yes, you read that right. We don’t take 80% off the top and split the 20% left over between all...

Deadline: October 7th, 2024 Payment: 6 cents per word Theme: Speculative fiction stories where Love Goes Awry Love is in the air…or is it? Sometimes Cupid’s arrow finds the wrong target, or the right target at the wrong time. Those stupid Cupids can sure make a mess of things! Freefall into a world where love, magic, and wonder can devolve into chaos and confusion. Confounding Cupids: When Love Goes Awry is your chance to take aim at your favorite romance tropes and have a fantastical time. Look past Cupid’s bow, and show us the beautiful chaos of love. Confound your Cupids with unexpected results, hilarious mistakes, and terrifying consequences. This is the sixth anthology put together by the Publishing masters degree students at Western Colorado University, taught by bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson and award-winning editor Allyson Longueira, funded by Draft2Digital. Previous anthologies include Monsters, Movies, and Mayhem; Unmasked; Gilded Glass; Merciless Mermaids: Tails from the Deep; and the just-released Feisty Felines and Other Fantastical Familiars. See the examples at https://wordfirepress.com/collections/western-colorado-university-grad-program-in-creative-writing-anthologies Submission Guidelines for Confounding Cupids: When Love Goes Awry   CONFOUNDING CUPIDS When Love Goes Awry Submissions Open August 31–October 7   Love is in the air…or is it? Sometimes Cupid’s arrow finds the wrong target, or the right target at the wrong time. Those stupid Cupids can sure make a mess of things! Freefall into a world where love, magic, and wonder can devolve into chaos and confusion. Confounding Cupids: When Love Goes Awry is your chance to take aim at your favorite romance tropes and have a fantastical time. Romance can blossom in an ancient castle, at a local café, or on an interstellar generation ship. What happens when a love story suffers from hexes, alien technology, or missed connections? How do you file a complaint with Cupid? Who do you call when you're ghosted by a ghost? What if your spouse turns...

Deadline: October 13th, 2024 Payment: 8 cents/6 pence per word Theme: Dark stories featuring monstrous manifestations of trauma and guilt, paranoia and persecution, anxiety, addiction, and crippling terror In the tradition of Poe’s ‘A Tell-tale Heart’ and Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, This Way Lies Madness (publishing September 2025) will bring together a twisted tangle of dark stories featuring monstrous manifestations of trauma and guilt, paranoia and persecution, anxiety, addiction, and crippling terror. In these pages, readers should expect to find madness in all its forms, without the tired stigmatising tropes. Instead, these tales of deep-rooted terror will draw on metaphor, symbolism, imagery, structural innovation, and close introspection to challenge stigma and promote understanding around mental illness, reflecting broader cultural, generational, and societal impacts with authenticity and insight. Think of horrific scenarios as metaphors for mental illness: trauma is the creature that drags its prey into its deep, dark lair; the hopelessness of depression is the person lost in a labyrinthine underworld, suicidal ideation is a person living in the belly of a great beast, addiction is the two-sided mirror, or the persecuted werewolf is the representation of a person’s struggle against the duality of bi-polar disorder. Writers are asked to be bold and inventive, to challenge convention, while being sensitive to the stigmatising constructs of mental illness in current society. Up to 10 stories will be selected from this submissions route, and we welcome fresh interpretations and perspectives from diverse voices. Each selected story will be accompanied by a c. 300-word introduction by the author on their reflections / personal experience that inspired the story. Once selected, authors will be contacted to supply this additional text. This Way Lies Madness will be curated by Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery, award-winning author-editors with lived experience of mental illness and advocacy.   Lee Murray is from Aotearoa-New Zealand and is a Shirley...

Submission Window: October 1st - 14th, 2024 Payment: Fiction: 1500-7500 words ($.08 per word, $100 minimum), Poetry: One poem of up to three pages ($40 per poem), Nonfiction: 1000-2000 words ($75 per essay or article), Cover Art: $100 for reprints, $200 for original unpublished, Interior Art: $50 for reprints, $100 for original unpublished Theme: Works that stir readers with themes of defiance, change, and achievement Submissions are currently closed. Our next and final submission windows for 2024 will be open from October 1-14, 2024. Our 2025 submission schedule will be released by the end of summer 2024. (Note: At the moment, our nonfiction department is always open for submissions. If the fiction, poetry, and art portals are closed and you submit those through the open nonfiction portal, your submission will be automatically rejected without being considered.) All submissions to Solarpunk Magazine are done via Moksha. Any submissions received via email will be deleted without a response. Please don’t email us to describe your story and ask if it’s something we’d be interested in before submitting. We appreciate the consideration, but its easier if you just submit the story through Moksha. In 2024, we are particularly looking for stories between 1,500 and 3,000 words. While our word limit remains 7,500, stories that fall between 1,500 and 3,000 will have a better chance of being selected for at least the first few submission periods in 2024. Please read the full submission guidelines on down below or on our Moksha page before submitting your work. All submission periods end at 11:59 pm PST on the 14th of their given month. 2024 Submission Window Schedule: January 1-14 April 1-14 July 1-14 October 1-14 2024 Issue Release Schedule: Issue #13 – January 10 Issue #14 – March 12 Issue #15 – May 14 (delayed to May 21) Issue #16 –...

Submission Window: October 1st-14th, 2024 Payment: Fiction: 1500-7500 words ($.08 per word, $100 minimum), Poetry: One poem of up to three pages ($40 per poem), Nonfiction: 1000-2000 words ($75 per essay or article), Cover Art: $100 for reprints, $200 for original unpublished, Interior Art: $50 for reprints, $100 for original unpublished Theme: Speculative fiction works that stir readers with themes of defiance, change, and achievement Submissions are currently closed. Our next and final submission windows for 2024 will be open from October 1-14, 2024. Our 2025 submission schedule will be released by the end of summer 2024. (Note: At the moment, our nonfiction department is always open for submissions. If the fiction, poetry, and art portals are closed and you submit those through the open nonfiction portal, your submission will be automatically rejected without being considered.) All submissions to Solarpunk Magazine are done via Moksha. Any submissions received via email will be deleted without a response. Please don’t email us to describe your story and ask if it’s something we’d be interested in before submitting. We appreciate the consideration, but its easier if you just submit the story through Moksha. In 2024, we are particularly looking for stories between 1,500 and 3,000 words. While our word limit remains 7,500, stories that fall between 1,500 and 3,000 will have a better chance of being selected for at least the first few submission periods in 2024. Please read the full submission guidelines on down below or on our Moksha page before submitting your work. All submission periods end at 11:59 pm PST on the 14th of their given month. 2024 Submission Window Schedule: January 1-14 April 1-14 July 1-14 October 1-14 2024 Issue Release Schedule: Issue #13 – January 10 Issue #14 – March 12 Issue #15 – May 14 (delayed to May 21) Issue #16 –...

Deadline: October 15th, 2024 Payment: $20 per story or artwork Theme: Electric Spec prefers science fiction, fantasy, and the macabre, but we're willing to push the limits of traditional forms of these genres. Fiction Submission Guidelinessubmissions at electricspec (dot) com Issues are published at the end of February, May, August, and November. We reserve the right to shift publication date slightly, as necessary. We have reading periods for each issue, though we never close to submissions. February closes January 15 May closes April 15 August closes July 15 November closes October 15 We do not consider stories or art created, or partially created, by A.I. We consider stories between 250 and 7000 words with speculative fiction elements. We prefer science fiction, fantasy, and the macabre, but we're willing to push the limits of traditional forms of these genres. We do not consider poetry, stories with over-the-top sex or violence, serials, novels, fan fiction, or non-fiction. We don't accept multiple submissions; in other words, only submit one story at a time and wait for a response before submitting another. We accept simultaneous submissions as long as you let us know up front and tell us as soon as it's accepted elsewhere. We do not publish reprints, including anything that has appeared on a website. We pay $20 for each story we publish. We buy first-printing world exclusive rights for four months. Payment will be made shortly after publication using PayPal. We encourage our authors to establish a PayPal account if they don't already have one. We prefer to read submissions in traditional manuscript format. This means indented paragraphs instead of left justification, and Courier or Times New Roman font in 12 pt, double-spaced. Also, please include the title, your name, address, and word length on the first page of your story. To submit your...

Deadline: October 15th, 2024 Payment: $25 Theme: Theme: Winter Horrorland Word Count: 1,500-3,000 Call Open: September 1-October 15, 2024 Publication: December 2024 Call: We’re looking for horror stories of all subgenres that take place in winter. Please note that we are not looking for holiday-themed horror stories.   Theme: Stories to Take To Your Grave: High Seas Edition Word Count: 2,000-5,000 Call Open: November 1-30, 2024 Publication: July 2025 Call: We’re looking for horror stories of all subgenres that take place on the high seas. Ports, ships, deserted islands–all are fair game! Undertaker Books is a royalty-paying, full-service publisher. This means we do not charge fees to the author at any time. We pay a royalty rate of 50% of distribution payouts. This can mean you will earn different rates for books sold through different outlets. Our contracts are for digital and print worldwide English rights. At this stage, we do not provide advance payments unless specified for anthology calls. SUBMISSIONS ARE TO BE SENT TO: [email protected] Modern Shunn Format is preferred. Please review this website if you are unsure how to proceed. Submit the first 20 pages of your manuscript as a single .doc(x) file attachment. If submitting for general consideration, please include a one page synopsis of the plot (including the ending) with working title, category or subgenre, and word count. In the body of your email, please include a cover letter containing: a short author bio,your legal name, pen name (if applicable), social media links, and website. WHAT WE WILL NOT ACCEPT No AI-generated content. If an author’s work is discovered to be generated by AI, the work will be rejected (or unpublished). View our AI Use Policy. No depictions of sexual assault against children. No animal abuse. No reprints or previously published works. No unfinished stories or rough drafts. Via: Undertaker Books.

Submission Window: September 15th through October 15th, 2024 (Sept 15-21 is reserved for writers of color) Payment: 3 cents per word Theme: Speculative Fiction in the science fiction or fantasy variety We are open annually for submissions from March 15th through April 15th for our August issue, and from September 15th through October 15th for our February issue. The first week of submissions (March 15-21 and Sept 15-21) is reserved for writers of color. The remainder of the window will be for general submissions. If you’re a writer of color who submits during that first week and you hear back from us before the general window closes, you’re welcome to send a second submission during that time. We are not interested in machine-generated (AI/LLM) characters, plots, or text of any kind. Spellcheckers and grammar checkers that run off machine learning are absolutely fine by us (though we also don’t want you to let a machine strip out your natural writing voice in the name of someone else’s idealized grammar!) HOW TO SUBMIT SUBMIT YOUR STORIES HERE WHAT TO SUBMIT The short version: We pay $0.03 per word with a minimum of $20 in exchange for first world electronic rights in English. We ask for an exclusivity period of 3 months from date of publication. Maximum 5,000 words. Your story must contain speculative elements: that means science fiction or fantasy. We do not accept nonfiction. No simultaneous submissions. Only one submission per writer per open period. We aim to make our final decisions within a month and a half of the close of submissions (i.e. by May 31st for the spring period, and by November 30th for the fall period). You will often receive a response much sooner. If you haven’t heard from us by that time, please query at the above address. The long...

Submission Window: September 22nd to October 22nd 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 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. Here are the next free periods: 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 instructions. We’re not a market for lineated poetry at the moment. We do accept simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if your work was accepted for publication elsewhere—we’ll be thrilled for your good news! No multiple submissions—and if we don’t accept your work, please wait until our next submission period before...

Deadline: October 27th, 2024 Payment: 8 cents/6 pence per word for original stories, 6 cents/4 pence for reprints. Theme: Afrofuturism Note: Reprints Welcome In 2025 and 2026 Flame Tree will publish two new books in the Gothic Fantasy series, following the groundwork of our successful Black Sci-Fi Short Stories, African Ghost Short Stories and First Peoples Shared Stories. First is Afrofuturism Short Stories, followed a year later by Africanfuturism. The National Museum of African American History and Culture characterises Afrofuturism as expressing "notions of Black identity, agency and freedom through art, creative works and activism that envision liberated futures for Black life." This is Africa, based in Kenya, defines Africanfuturism as located in "the African point of view, experience, culture, themes, and history with technology based in Africa, not the diaspora". The publication of these two books offers a dialogue that explores tradition and influence, and fresh insights both about our past, and visions of our future. So, our first call, is for Afrofuturism. Please bear in mind the specific definition above for this title, as distinct from that for Africanfuturism. Authors must be writing from an authentic perspective of the Black experience, whether based in the diaspora or in Africa. Submit to: [email protected]   Terms: Multiple submissions are fine but must be in separate emails. Simultaneous submissions are fine but you must have the right to license your story in an anthology. For accepted stories we pay Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) rates of 8 cents/6 pence per word for original stories, 6 cents/4 pence for reprints. We will aim to read each story and confirm its status within 4 months of the submission deadline. Payment for the chosen stories will be made within 30 days of the final advertised publication date (see our website flametreepublishing.com for details), although some may be paid earlier than that. Submission does not imply the right to publication....