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Deadline: December 31st 2015 Payment: £10 and contributor's copy Oh, another bloody slasher. Oh, more extreme horror. Oh, it must be Tuesday. BORED! Whilst sipping a martini clarity arrives: one hungers for a change of pace, dash it all: So we would like tales of civilised, gentle(wo)manly horror, cold, calculating and bloodless; spinechillers rather than slashers, enervating instead of eviscerating. Though a wee bit of the red stuff will not make us blanch, focus more on unshakeable dread. Make us afraid to investigate that noise downstairs. Cause us to shudder when we glimpse something move out of the corner of our eyes. Think Ann Radcliffe and the Gothics, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, M.R. James and even those modern folks like Shirley Jackson and Fritz Leiber. It’s all about the style. Mashups are the Fox Spirit specialty, so mix and match to your little heart’s content (Lovecraftian Wodehouse has been done). Just be sure to keep the theme uppermost. Humorous attempts at horror are acceptable, but be warned that your editor’s sense of humour like her taste in martinis is most peculiar and exacting. You would be strongly advised to inform yourself of her tastes. THE PARTICULARS for Respectable Horror Follow our house style and submit via Word document attachment to katelaity at gmail dot com by December 31st, 2015. Selection of stories will happen in the spring; the publication itself will appear later in 2016. You will be expected to join in the publicity efforts as much as you are capable (social media mostly). Word count: ~4-8K Payment: £10 upon publication + digital and print copy of the volume What ho! Ask any questions you have in advance of the closing date. Via: Fox Spirit.

Deadline: December 31st, 2015 Payment Breakdown: Reprint Flash Fiction - one E-book. Reprint Short Fiction - one E-book and 1 share of royalties. New Flash Fiction - a half cent a word paid on publication as well as one E-book and 1 share of royalties. New Short Fiction - one cent a word paid on publication as well as one E-book and 2 shares of royalties. Note: Reprints Accepted Strange Musings Press is looking for short funny paranormal stories of life after death for our new anthology, Alternate Hilarities 5: One Star Reviews of the Afterlife. I don't want to lock anyone down as to what I am looking for, but you need to have two things for sure. It needs to deal with the afterlife and it needs to be funny. I'm looking for administrative mistakes in heaven, weird deals with the devil, strange stories of hauntings and odd interpretations of eternity. I will consider Fantasy, Science Fiction or Horror if you make some connection to the afterlife. Remember, your story needs to be funny all the way through. If it is just a lead up to a punch line, make it short (500 words). We will consider reprints if your story has been out of print for more than two years. We are looking for: Flash Fiction between 500 and 1500 words. Short Fiction between 1501 and 6000 words. We are paying: Reprint Flash Fiction - one E-book. Reprint Short Fiction - one E-book and 1 share of royalties. New Flash Fiction - a half cent a word paid on publication as well as one E-book and 1 share of royalties. New Short Fiction - one cent a word paid on publication as well as one E-book and 2 shares of royalties. We will be running a Kickstarter to fund a print edition and our first set of stretch goals will be to increase...

Deadline: December 31st, 2015 Payment: 4% royalties after cost and a contributor's copy Chocolate. Some people crave it, some people hate it. It is given and used for many occasions, for celebratory reasons and for some as comfort in bad times and sad times. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘death by chocolate’, and I want you to think about exactly what that could mean. We could go literal with the eventual cholesterol induced cardiac arrest of an over-indulging chocoholic, to someone being drowned in a chocolate fountain, maybe even encasing someone inside a chocolate filled sarcophagus. Maybe opening that Terry’s Chocolate Orange will open more than just orange-flavoured chocolate segments, what if Willy Wonka was the devil and had lured the children with delicious temptation that would end in their sticky demises? I want soft centres, hard centres, maybe even a few fruity centres to get my teeth into, but I want chocolate horror. Works around 5,000 words are most likely to meet with the editor’s approval, although slightly longer/shorter pieces will also be considered. Aim for 3,000 – 6,000. Please follow standard manuscript format and under no circumstances use the Tab key or the Space Bar to indent your paragraphs. Either do not indent at all or use MS Word’s built in features to do so. Submissions must be .doc, .docx, or .rtf format, typed in Courier, Garamond or Times New Roman, 12 point, double spaced. Please include your full name, address, email address and telephone number at the beginning of the manuscript. Submissions should be sent to [email protected] with the email subject header “SURNAME/CHOCOLATE/WORDCOUNT”. Authors will retain copyright. Multiple submissions up to a maximum of two stories per author may be submitted. We will write to you within three to four weeks of the submission deadline to let...

Deadline: December 31st, 2015 Payment: 1 cent per word or 1 dollar per accepted drabble and a contributor's copy Guidelines A “drabble” is defined as a short story containing exactly precisely no more and no fewer than 100 words. It has a title, which can be from 1 to 15 words–but no more than 15. That’s a drabble. You have to count each word. Hyphenated words, such as tete-a-tete, count as one word. Don’t use your word count tool to count the words, because that tool will count . . . as three words, which really should be counted as one word. It will also count dashes as words, which is wrong. So count each word by sight, not by tool. Our drabble contests will have themes. For each contest, we will simply throw the theme out there. Whatever the theme inspires you to write, that’s what you write. The theme of this contest is: Confessions of a Shapeshifter. Basically, we’re looking for stories that are a bit off-beat, quirky, unusual. I mean, face it, what would happen if you went to bed with your lover and woke up next to an octopus…or a three-antennaed alien from Betelgeuse VII? And if you have a Little Green Man who somehow gets addicted to little blue pills, that could be cause for humor as well. This contest is open from 1 October 2015 through 31 December 2015. You have three months to write 100 words. Easy! NEW SUBMISSION ADDRESS: Ah, but once you have written them, where do you send them? You send them to the contest editor, Terrie Leigh Relf, at tlrelf at gmail dot com. You’ll have to combine that address–sorry, but we don’t want her to be spammed. Send your submission in the body of the e-mail, please. If...

Deadline: December 31st, 2015 Payment: We pay 2 cents per word or $20 per work, whichever is more Are you feeling inspired to write a short story but stuck for ideas? “Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things” is currently looking to purchase a themed submission entitled: “THE CARROT IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD” Scheduled for the Spring 2016 issue, the chosen story will bring to life the amazing cover which has been specially designed by by artist and illustrator Sean Greenberg. Deadline: December 31, 2015 Let your imagination go wild for this one! We want your best, most creative stories using the picture as inspiration, or even telling the story of the artwork itself – it’s up to you! Our submission guidelines for this piece are the same as always and can be accessed at http://emberjournal.org/submission-guidelines/. We are really looking forward to seeing your work! Surprise us. Entertain us. Make us forget that it’s a cold, wet, November out there and brighten up our lives with your scintillating wordplay and deft descriptions. Please send in your work by the end of December in order to make the publishing deadlines. NOTES FROM THE EDITOR: There is no special submission queue for this call. Submissions are made through our online submission form. You do not need to title your manuscript “The Carrot is Mightier than the Sword” but you should give your submission this title so we know it is in response to this call. We are primarily looking for prose for this call, but metered poetry will also be considered. AUDIENCE Ember is a semiannual journal of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction for all age groups. Submissions for and by readers aged 10 to 18 are strongly encouraged. HOW TO SUBMIT Submissions are managed through our Submission Manager, powered bySubmittable . If you submit by e-mail, we...

Deadline: December 31, 2015 Payment: 0.06 per word, to be paid out of the Kickstarter. As creators ourselves, we are planning on introducing stretch goals to further raise the word rate. Attention writers! Announcing the open call for submissions for the upcoming Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytellinganthology. This collection is edited by Monica Valentinelli and Jaym Gates, and will be coming in 2016 from Apex Publications. There have been quite a few discussions in science fiction and fantasy addressing the idea of tropes and cliches, from whether they’re good or bad to how they change over time. Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling is a collection of stories that aims to subvert many of the popular tropes and cliches to show them in a new light. Each story in our collection will be an author’s creative examination of a specific trope that is prevalent in science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Examples of tropes include some well-defined character tropes, but also storytelling tropes that lazily incorporate race, gender, religion, etc. Writers who have already been accepted to the anthology include Alyssa Wong, Nisi Shawl, Sara M. Harvey, Maurice Broaddus, Kat Richardson, Nisi Shawl, Michael Underwood, and many more wonderful authors. Hugo, Chesley, and World Fantasy Award-nominated artist Galen Dara will be providing the art for our cover. Tropes examined thus far include: Chainmaille Bikini The Magical Negro The Super Soldier Chosen One Guys Smash, Girls Shoot Love at First Sight Damsels in Distress Heroine Loves a Bad Man Yellow Peril The Black Man Dies First The Villain Had a Crappy Childhood The City Planet Prostitute with a Heart of Gold The Singularity will Cause the Apocalypse To be considered for Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling we ask that authors a) identify the trope and b) break, bend, twist, smash...

Deadline: January 1st, 2016 Payment: $25 usd For this anthology, we're going urban! We'd like you to spin us a tale of horror describing what lurks below in the city sewers. All sorts of creatures, both real and imagined, may wish to do those who live in the sunlight harm; covet their ability to exist in the brightness above; or perhaps they simply fight for domain of their own patch in the darkness! Whatever fantastically dark tale you come up with, please do not include zombies, homeless humans, or orphaned children. We want tales of true horror - not the horror of the human condition. So tell us, the next time we walk over a grate in a city sidewalk, or pass a manhole cover slightly ajar, what should we be terrified is watching us from below? Deadline: January 1, 2016 Word Count: 4,000 - 8,000 words All submissions MUST be submitted to: [email protected] Reading & Evaluation Period: Two to three months after close of the deadline NO REPRINTS WILL BE CONSIDERED Payment: Each story selected for inclusion will receive a one-time payment of $25US As per our standard guidelines, there will be no stories containing pedophilia, or graphic rape accepted. Anthology Submission guidelines:Submission Deadline - January 1, 2016Word Count: 4,000 - 8,000 words. Payment: $25US per story selected for inclusion. Copyright: First time worldwide copyright for a period of one year after publication. Reprints will NOT be considered. Graphic gore must be kept to a minimum unless it is integral to the story; absolutely no pedophilia, overtly descriptive and graphic rape scenes will be considered. Only stories previously unpublished may be submitted. Upon acceptance into the anthology, you agree that Sirens Call Publications holds exclusive publishing rights for twelve (12) months from the date of publication; after that date...

Deadline: January 1st 2016 Payment: 6 cents a word Reprints Allowed but must query first ChappyFiction LLC is now accepting submissions to its new science fiction/fantasy anthology on Time Travel (title pending). The anthology will contain new short stories centered around time travel. How does it affect our society, our humanity, or the characters? We want new stories. Create paradoxes. Make us laugh. Make us cry. If you have a killer reprint, query us first before submitting. Length: We prefer stories under 7,000 words. We will look at stories over that, but the longer the story is, the better it has to be. We want to include many authors, so shorter stories will have the edge. Format: We're not picky. However, standard MS format will communicate to us that you're professional. Pink text on a black background will make our eyes bleed. In a bad way. Send over a doc or docx attached to your email. In the body of your email, write a quick, short cover letter. List sales. Don't summarize your story. Put the word count and your contact info somewhere in the cover letter. In the subject line put "Submission: (title of your story)". Send email to chappyfiction at gmail.com. UPDATE: We will close the submission period on January 1st 2016. Our response times will vary but if you don't hear anything by February of 2016, please query. UPDATE! We accept simultaneous submissions. Payment: 6 cents a word. That's pro rates! Word! Upon acceptance, you'll receive an industry standard contract (6 months exclusivity, with the exception to year's best anthologies). What not to do: Do not submit stories that don't contain Time Travel! It'll be a waste of your time and our time. And you'll be black listed from future Chappy Fiction anthologies! Via: Chappy Fiction.

Deadline: January 6th, 2016 Payment: We intend to fund this project via Kickstarter. Authors are encouraged to provide backer rewards for the campaign, but that is definitely not required. The initial funding goal will provide for a flat $0.06/per word (US) for all stories. Read full post for details if the Kickstarter fails. Note: They aren't looking for straight horror but if you read through the prompt clearly you can get away with suspense if done right. What: No Shit, There I Was, an anthology of short speculative fiction sharing one common thread: each story begins with that immortal line. Where they end will be up to the writer. Why: The world is full of unbelievable, hilarious, and sometimes tragic no shit, there I was stories. Can speculative fiction writers rise to the challenge of creating something even more fantastical than the everyday product? Who We Are: Alliteration Ink is run by Steven Saus (member SFWA/HWA), focusing on anthologies and single-author collections, with over a dozen titles across two imprints. Rachael Acks is a writer, geologist, and sharp-dressed sir. In addition to her steampunk novella series, she’s had short stories in Strange Horizons, Waylines, Daily Science Fiction, Penumbra, and more. She’s an active member of SFWA, the Northern Colorado Writer’s Workshop, and Codex. Who: This will be an open call. All who read and follow the submission guidelines are welcome in the slush pile. When: Rachael wants stories no later than 6 Jan 2016. No exceptions will be made. The Kickstarter will occur after the table of contents has been set. What We Want From You: Stories 2,000-7,500 words long. Query for anything shorter or longer. All stories must begin with the line, No shit, there I was. It can be dialog or part of the regular prose. Stories must...

Deadline: January 15th, 2016 Payment: 6c/word Liminal is searching for stories of a particular tone and tenor, regardless of form.  We like stories that are strange and unsettling, sharp-edged and evocative.  Although we will consider any genre, we have a soft spot for weird fiction, magical realism, soft sci-fi, and those uncatagorizable stories that straddle the line between genres.  Liminal stories should linger in the mind and evoke emotion in the reader. We will consider stories up to 10,000 words, and pay 6c/word on publication. Liminal isn't a market for poetry, reprints, or non-fiction. We don't accept simultaneous or multiple submissions. Seeking Diverse Voices The editors of Liminal believe that fiction is enriched by diverse voices. We welcome and encourage submissions from writers of every nationality, race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender. How to Submit Send submissions in .DOC or .RTF format to [email protected]. Please use Submission:  as your subject line. Include your story's title and length in your cover letter. Don't stress over what to call us. We'll answer to Editors, Shannon and Kelly, or Ms. Peavey and Ms. Sandoval. Please use Standard Manuscript Format for all Liminal submissions. Response Time We try to respond to all stories within 30 days. Please query if you haven't heard from us. Use Query:  as your subject line. Via: Liminal Stories.