Events

Deadline: August 31st, 2023 Payment: 10 cents per word Theme: Stories that are ghoulish or "fun horror that aims to celebrate all things spooky" We are…blown away by this cover, and we can’t wait to fill it with a bunch of gnarly stories. That’s where you come in. What we are after: short stories that fit our personal definition of the word GHOULISH, which is “fun horror that aims to celebrate all things spooky.” Note that we said fun, not funny. Comedic stories are definitely allowed, but it’s not all we’re looking to receive. We want stories that remind us why we love the horror genre. We want to have a perverted little smile across our face while reading. Make us slobber like idiots. Turn us into the Sickos.jpeg meme. We are also interested in non-fiction about the horror genre. GUIDELINES: Deadline: August 31, 2023 (11:59 PM CST) Word count: 5,000 max (short stories); 3,000 max (non-fiction) Payment: 10c per word Simultaneous Submissions: Yes Multiple Submissions: No (Please only submit one story per open call. If we reject you, do not resubmit until we reopen for the next issue.) Reprints: No AI Submissions: No. Please note if you are caught sending us an AI story, you will be blacklisted from ever publishing with us in the future. Don’t do it. How to submit: Send all stories & essays to ghoulishsubmissions @ gmail dot com with – – in the subject line. Please do not copy/paste the story in the body of the email. We prefer Word doc attachments if possible. All inquiries can also be directed to the same address. As you wait, feel free to come hang out in the GHOULISH discord. Thank you and good luck, ghouls! Via: Ghoulish Books.

Deadline: August 31st, 2023 Payment: 10 cents per word for the magazine (free to submit) $3,000 for the contest (fee to submit.) Theme: Write a story involving Sunken Secrets, and a jewel. Note: Elegant Literature has a magazine that is free to submit to and a contest that there are fees to submit to. We're obviously hyping the magazine portion as we don't believe in fees but want to include all of the details for those who are interested. Plunge into the abyss. Embrace the cold, unfathomable depths. What secrets lie beneath these waves? Descend, deeper still, until the sunlight becomes a distant memory… Shipwrecks, submersibles, and silence. Ancient secrets in watery graves. Strong currents pull you through cities cloaked in coral, where unknown creatures lurk in the shadows. Siren songs echo in the deep. A mermaid’s melody—Poseidon’s puzzle. Down here, far from tides and tempests, the world above is a lifetime away. Or is it what you’ve anchored deep within yourself, a buried truth? The pressure turns your own thoughts to monsters. Claustrophobia, drowning, the unknowable void. The frozen sea of an icy moon, the magic at the bottom of a Faerie pool, the treasure lost in quicksand. There’s life below, so dive into the abyss or the subconscious. Sunken Secrets are ready to be revealed… can you handle them? This contest invites you to explore Sunken Secrets, whatever that means to you. Elegant Literature is the first short fiction magazine to pay professional rates but not accept submissions from pros. Our mission is to help new writers earn their first publishing credits—and their first dollar—from writing stories. To date, we have published 165 new authors across 21 issues, and put over $100,000 into the hands of writers around the globe. It’s free to submit to the magazine, and...

Deadline: September 1st, 2023 Payment: $25 for art, 8 cents per word for fiction Theme: Stories that contain significant speculative elements. The Basics Stories should be submitted to [email protected]. All stories must be under 1200 words (not including the title and byline). All stories over 1200 words will sadly be rejected automatically. All stories must contain significant speculative elements. This does not mean all sci-fi stories must have lasers and rockets. It just means a non-speculative story doesn’t become speculative if you include a single line clarifying the story takes place on Mars. When to Submit Because of the time needed to evaluate submissions and prepare stories for publication, Orion’s Belt has a limited submission window. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause to you. Stories submitted outside the submission window will not be deleted, but they will not be read until the submission window re-opens. Our current submission window opened March 1st. This submission window will remain open until September 1st. Art Submissions Art submissions are currently open. We’re looking for cover art for issues of our magazine. Payment is a flat $25. The art should fit the ethos of this magazine and thus should feature speculative elements, but there are otherwise no major restrictions on what we’re looking for. If you have artwork you would like us to consider, submit it to us with a subject line that’s some variation on the basic format of “Art Submission - Artwork Name (Artist’s Name).” All art submissions should be directed to [email protected]. Keep in mind that we tend to take significantly longer to respond to art submissions than to story submissions, though we will eventually respond to every submission. For examples of what we’re looking for, check the cover art of Flash Fiction Online or Uncanny Magazine, though keep...

Deadline: September 1st, 2023 Payment: 5 cents per word for original and 1 cent per word for reprints Theme: speculative elements and involve the strangeness of the fey folk and their interactions with mortals. Deadline is September 1, 2023 Stories must have speculative elements and involve the strangeness of the fey folk and their interactions with mortals. Please be aware there is a difference between fairy tales and tales with fairies. If you have not read So Fey... why are you even submitting to us? Stories do not need to be romantic; endings do not have to be happy. But any work that punishes an individual for being queer will not be accepted. When in doubt, query us. Stories should be 2,500 to 10,000 words. Standard formatting please (Times New Roman 12, double space, etc). Payment for original fiction will be 5 cents a word for one-time print and digital rights. Payment for reprints is a bit more than 1 cent a word. Additionally, contributors will receive two copies of the finished book. Publication will be sometime in 2024. Via: Lethe Press Books.

Submission Window: September 1st-2nd, 2023 Payment: 8 cents per word for original, 2 cents for reprints, For artwork: $10 for the non-exclusive right to use each image, for as long as the site is online.  If we publish a print collection we will pay a pro-rata share for each image used. Theme: 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 welcome     Submissions Schedule We have a new submissions schedule as of June 1, 2020: The first and second day of every month, 12 am of the 1st to 12 am of the 3rd, E.S.T. Only one submission per person. For reading impaired individuals, our submissions manager and ‘forget password’ have a captcha compatible with screen readers. We pay 8¢ 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. For new poetry, we pay $1 a line, reprints would be 50¢ a line, up to 40 lines. We’ll look at longer poems but that would be a hard sell, and words over 40 lines would be paid at 6¢ per word. We began The Kepler Award 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. You can read a copy of our standard contract here.   It can be varied as needed to include the rights of translators, voice actors, etc. Writers Guidelines We accept new work as well as reprints, prose and poetry, anywhere from 1000 word flash fiction on up, but all else being equal, shorter pieces...

Deadline: September 2nd, 2023 Payment: $10 and a contributors copy Theme: A throwback to old-school lit mags Welcome to the Unstamatic Newsprint Issue, Vol. 2! The Newsprint project is a throwback to old-school lit mags that were, once upon a time, printed in newspaper format and distributed on the streets, guerrilla style. We’re bringing it back.What we’re looking for: Prose of 500 words or fewer Poetry of 25 lines or fewer Visual art of any sort (but bonus if it’s small/can be scaled down to fit the margins) We’re primarily interested in unpublished pieces, though we may consider exceptional previously published works, so long as you currently hold the rights. Submissions close Sept. 2, 2023 Unstamatic pays $10 USD per accepted piece, plus a complimentary contributor copy. The Newsprint Issue will be available first as a physical publication for order, and later as a downloadable digital publication. We hope to have the Newsprint Issue Vol. 2 in our hands by October 2023, though this is a tentative timeline subject to change. We ask for first publication rights, and upon publication all rights revert back to you. If you want to know more about what you’re getting into, hit up our store page for a free download of Vol. 1. Via: Unstamatic.

Submission Window: September 1st - 7th, 2023 Payment: Drabbles and Flash - £5, Short Stories 1001 to 4000 words - £10, Short Stories 4001 to 8000 words - £15 Theme: All genres, styles and themes will be considered Note: Only publishes creators from under represented and/or marginalized communities. WE ONLY PUBLISH CREATORS FROM UNDER REPRESENTED AND/OR MARGINALISED BACKGROUNDS AND/OR COMMUNITIES We don't ask for any proof, we take this on trust with the expectation that anyone not from a marginalised background or underrepresented community wouldn't take up the space of someone who is. We ask you to consider this before submitting. QUARTERLY ONLINE ANTHOLOGY: BRIEF We’re looking for stories you’ve poured your soul into but haven’t been able to find the right home for. We’re looking for stories that make us feel something. Warmth, love, melancholy, rage. We want it all.  All genres, styles and themes will be considered and we especially love stories that are outside the box in their telling. Ambiguous endings? Non-linear storytelling? Antagonist’s point-of-view? A story told in just one scene? We love it all. ​ SUBMISSIONS: CLOSEDPLEAE NOTE: We will close submissions early if our cut off point is reachedQuarterly Online Anthology Submission Schedule: September 1st - 7th (Winter Issue) or until we reach 70 submissions December 1st - 7th (Spring Issue) or until we reach 70 submissions March 1st - 7th (Summer Issue) or until we reach 70 submissions June 1st - 7th (Autumn Issue) or until we reach 70 submissions ​ we do not have set issue themes but feel free to be inspired by the season, seasonal occasions and events. We are unlikely to publish stories with seasonal events out of season - for example a story set in the Winter isn't likely to make it into our Summer issue even if we adore it. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES -...

Submission Window: September 1st - 8th, 2023 Payment: 4 cents (CAD) per word, up to a maximum of $350 (CAD) per story. Theme: SF-tinged literary fiction stories and novelettes Note: Apologies for the short notice, hopefully you have something laying around, we were just notified of this market. What We Want Science fiction or SF-tinged literary fiction stories and novelettes ranging anywhere from 2,000 to 15,000 words. Although any science fiction subgenre is fair game, our tastes lean towards slipstream, cyberpunk, post-apocalypse, and anything with a little taste of the bizarre. FF prefers character-driven stories, and often skews towards quiet, reflective pieces. If the primary tone of your story is one of high adventure or humour, it’s probably not the right fit for FF. That said, quality always outstrips genre preference in terms of importance, so feel free to send us anything that even vaguely resembles science fiction. We’ll be publishing reprints, but no more than one per issue, so expect acceptance rates to be accordingly lower. Work written by humans. We have no interest in AI-written stories. We’re always interested in publishing work by marginalized voices. If that’s you, and you feel comfortable doing so, please call this out in your cover letter. What We Pay Both previously unpublished work and reprints pay 4 cents (CAD) per word, up to a maximum of $350 (CAD) per story. Our preferred method of payment is PayPal. If you live in a region where PayPal is not available, we’ll do our best to work with you to find an alternate method of payment. How To Submit Send your stories in RTF, DOC, DOCX or ODT file formats. Standard manuscript formatting is nice but not necessary. No one’s going to get accepted or rejected based on manuscript formatting, so don’t stress about it....

Deadline: September 10th, 2023 Payment: $20 Theme: Non-Genre Specific Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry Deadline 2023/09/10 $20 Contributor’s Payment if Accepted No Reprints If previously accepted, wait 24 months before submitting again. Only submit once per reading cycle. We are non-genre specific. Read the previous issues to get an idea of what we publish. Samjoko purchases first worldwide English-language serial and electronic rights from the date the contract is signed and paid for up until 6 months after publication date. After initial publication date, Samjoko Magazine will maintain non-exclusive rights to publication. Paid submissions must not use the intellectual property of any other author or company. Just To Clarify: your work will not appear, and will not have appeared, in any other available format (blogs and public forums included) until 3 months after the release date of the story in Samjoko Magazine. After 3 months, we’ll retain ongoing non-exclusive distribution rights, but you can self-publish your work or sell your story to another paying market. Each piece we acquire will be published on samjokomagazine.com in an electronic seasonal issue. We may also excerpt pieces for promotional purposes. The author retains all other rights. We pay up to 6 months after publication through PayPal only. Payment projected to happen sooner. Current payment is $20 per accepted submission, though we hope to increase this with greater support from readers. Cover letter should have contact information, PayPal email, and author’s bio less than 100 words. Email subject should read: Example - SUBMISSION: The Grey Wolf (FICTION - 3200) by Lauren Hill See below for detailed submission guidelines. Submissions that do not follow the guidelines will be deleted unread. Notification of receipt and rejections will be form letters to save time. There will be no personal responses except in the case of general queries and acceptances. Cover Letter...

Submission Window: August 13th - September 10th, 2023 Payment: $25 Theme: The End Accepting: Short Stories up to 3000 Words Flash and Micro Fiction up to 1200 Words Narrative Poetry/Stories in Verse up to 1200 Words Author Compensation: $25.00 (USD) per piece Rights: We request first worldwide and digital rights for four months following publication. Thereafter all rights revert to the author. All copyright remains with the author. Issue Theme: “The End” Call Status: CLOSED Publication: Digital Format (PDF) Submission Period: August 13th, 2023 – September 10th, 2023 Decisions By: October 1st, 2023 Release Date: October 26, 2023 What We’re Looking For: Quiet Horror and Dystopian genre works. You may be as creative with your interpretation of the theme as you like as long as your submission fits the genres we publish (see our FAQ page for more on how we define Quiet Horror and Intimate Dystopia). EMail Submissions To: [email protected] Continue below to read our submission rules and guidelines… ~ Submission Guidelines ~ For all open calls, submit your work by email to [email protected] with the subject line formatted as such: “ ” (ex.“April 2023 – The Sinkhole – Emily Young – Adult”). Please submit your work as an email attachment in .doc/.docx format. Authors may submit up to two pieces per issue. We request that each piece be submitted via its own individual email. You are welcomed to interpret each issue’s theme however you like but keep in mind that your interpretation should be within the realms of quiet horror and/or intimate dystopia. Ensure your document contains your story title, your name (or pen name), and an approximate word count. In the event that your story is selected for publication, we will need your legal name for the contract. Please include a header on each page of your document with your surname, title and page number. Your document should be formatted in Times New Roman, 12pt., with...