Events

Deadline: July 15th, 2025 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) comIssues 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 We do not publish reprints, including anything that has appeared on a website.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 story...

Deadline: July 15th, 2025 Payment: $25 usd Theme: Scifi, speculative fiction, fantasy, not horror that showcases Gen-X Theme:Gen X (Gen X characters and/or themes and/or culture should figure prominently within the story in ways that distinctly identify them as Gen X and/or that have an easily identifiable Gen X “vibe”).We’re especially interested in unique, unexpected takes on the Gen X experience from original points of view. Deadline: July 15, 2025. Submissions are considered on a rolling basis, meaning that acceptance/rejection decisions are made as submissions come in. Authors can generally expect an initial response to their submission within 1-2 weeks. Anthology Release Date: Late 2025-Early 2026 Genres and categories accepted: Literary, Romance, Sci-Fi & Spec Fic, Mystery, Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retellings, Historical Fiction, Humor/Satire, Paranormal, Magical Realism, and others. No horror (spooky is okay), gratuitous violence, erotica, of use of “F-bombs,” please. No essays, CNF, poetry, or anything that isn’t fiction. No AI-generated or AI-assisted stories. All submissions should be original, human-created stories that have never been published or performed/read elsewhere (including, but not limited to, social media, a personal blog or website, live or recorded event, etc.). Reader Demographic: YA to adult (approximately ages 14-100) Word count: Between 1,500-2,000 words Payment for accepted submissions: $25 USD (via PayPal) upon completion of edits. Additional Notes: We are most interested in stories that encompass a complete, compelling narrative arc including an interesting/unexpected hook and/or twist and/or reversal and/or “aha!” moment for the reader. Original, eye-catching phrasing is always a plus as well. A standard, short fiction publishing agreement will be sent to each author upon acceptance. RIGHTS: The publishing agreement grants to Altitude Press Exclusive First World Electronic and Print Rights for three (3) months following date of publication; Non-Exclusive Internet Archival Rights for an indefinite time, in order to include published works, and excerpts of published works,...

Submission Window: June 15th - July 15th, 2025 Payment: $25 Theme: All subgenres of horror (dark fantasy, sci-fi, noir all accepted as long as horror plays a central role). SLUGGER is the creative effort of two horror writer pals. Send us:  In general, we are open to all subgenres of horror (dark fantasy, sci-fi, noir all accepted as long as horror plays a central role). Body horror tickles our fancy the most if we had to pick a subgenre, but SLUGGER will be open to all horror stories. We love subversive and transgressive fiction. Anything that fits the punk ethos is likely to get our attention. Stories can be speculative or not. Our guidelines may change over time, but we are open to the full spectrum of genre to literary fiction, conventional storytelling to experimental, and plot driven to vibes only. Do NOT send us: Bigotry (racism, sexism, genderism, ableism, fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia, you get the idea). It’s fine to explore these topics, especially when a horrible character gets what’s coming to them. But hate for the sake of hate will not be accepted. Exploitive sexual violence. Erotica/graphic sexual content. Classic tropes such as vampires, werewolves, etc. are not a hard sell, but the story needs to stand out. No fanfiction. The Details: Word count: 1,000-4,000 Simultaneous submissions: YES. If your piece is accepted elsewhere, please email us at [email protected] so that we can congratulate you and withdraw your story from consideration. Multiple submissions: NO. Please only submit one story per submission period. Reprints: NO. Original fiction only please. Use of artificial intelligence: ABSOLUTELY NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Payment: $25 per accepted story. We hope to increase payment to writers depending upon the success of SLUGGER. Each story will have an original black and white illustration designed by a university student....

Submission Window: July 1st - 15th, 2025 Payment: Short Story-2,500 words or less. $0.015 USD per word/$37.50 USD max, Poems-less than 200 words $10, Flash Fiction-less than a 1,000 words $0.015 USD per word/$15 USD max Theme: Monkey's Paw/Answered Prayers The Last Girls Club Magazine is a quarterly feminist horror magazine that publishes international short stories and poems from the female gaze. It is an homage to the scary comics and zines of the late 20th century. This season's theme is Monkey's Paw/Answered Prayers. You've got everything you ever wanted and it's awful. More tears have been shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. Show us the folly of wishes. Terrify us with consequences. Keep us up at night dreading a knock on the door or an envelope in the mail. No more than two fiction stories per author per submission period. Fiction is limited to 2,500 words or less. Authors are paid $0.015 USD per word upon acceptance ($37.50 USD max). Flash fiction is limited to under 1,000 words. Authors are paid $0.015 USD per word upon acceptance ($15 USD max). No more than three poems per poet. Poems are limited to 200 words or less for each poem. Poets are paid $10 USD upon acceptance. I prefer to use PayPal to pay authors, but will work with authors where PayPal is not available. Nonfiction columns will must be pitched to editor in chief before submission. Email your idea to [email protected] The Last Girls Club Magazine is a quarterly feminist horror magazine that publishes international short stories and poems from the female gaze. It is an homage to the scary comics and zines of the late 20th century. Please check on the website for the theme in detail. Submissions will be accepted from Jan 1-15, April 1-15, July 1-15, Oct 1-15. Final...

Submission Window: July 23rd - 30th, 2025 Payment: €0.01 per word, with a €20 minimum. Theme: Diverse sci-fi and fantasy fiction. When open, we seek and offer the following: Length: 1,000-5,000 words. These are firm limits. Shorter or longer works will be considered, but the further a story goes outside these bounds the more it will need to impress. Compensation: €0.01 per word, with a €20 minimum. Please be aware that payment is via PayPal only. If you do not receive an acknowledgment within 24 hours of submission, please get in touch. We aim to accept or reject within 14 days of acknowledgment, but rl (real life) and rl (reading load) can get in the way. If you do not hear from us after 30 days, feel free to query. REQUIREMENTS Mythaxis seeks speculative fiction (sf/f/h) of all stripes for our first three issues each year. We are also interested in submissions of crime fiction for our end-of-year “all crime” issue. All these genres are equally welcome in each submission window. We acquire First Print, Digital, and Audio rights with a six month period of exclusivity from the date of publication. We also ask permission to potentially include accepted pieces in future anthologies; in event of agreement, an additional compensation will be offered. All other rights remain entirely with the author. See here for an overview of our editorial process. Simultaneous submissions are not only accepted, they are encouraged. Please tell us if you sim-sub, and we merely ask that you notify us of acceptance at another market as soon as possible. In the event that we accept first, we expect a positive and timely confirmation. Therefore we recommend sim-subbing to markets of equivalent status – we won’t wait for someone else you’d like better to turn you down. We do not accept multiple submissions. Please wait until your first submission...

Deadline: July 31st, 2025 Payment: $30 plus 1 cent per word and a contributors copy Theme: Genre-bending stories that feature Polarities Autonomous Press is now accepting submissions of short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry for the 10th volume of Spoon Knife, our annual genre-bending lit anthology. Please read this whole page carefully before submitting; some details have changed this time around! Theme The theme for Spoon Knife 10 will be Polarities. Polarities: pairs of opposite forces or qualities or tendencies. Good and evil. Love and hate. Life and death. Heroism and villainy. Feminine and masculine. Night and day. Vice and virtue. Old and new. Order and chaos. The public persona and the hidden shadow self. The mundane everyday world and that which lies beyond. What polarity lies at the heart of your story? In what ways does it manifest? What happens when the two sides of the polarity come into contact or conflict, or when one transforms into the other? What We’re Looking For One of the things that’s always set Spoon Knife apart from other anthology series is the wild diversity of genres represented in each volume. Each volume has its own theme, and we aim to show how that theme can be woven into stories across multiple disparate genres. In a given volume of Spoon Knife, you might find the theme explored in tales of magical realism, science fiction, absurdist satire, swords-and-sorcery, historical romance, and horror, not to mention creative nonfiction and poetry. We especially love stories that defy established genre categories or creatively blend genres. Ultimately, our criteria for assessing a submission boil down to this: is it a good, engaging, and well-written story that plays with the volume’s theme in an interesting way? If you’re not familiar with Spoon Knife, please have a look at our most recent volume (that would be volume 8...

Deadline: July 31st, 2025 Payment: One free paperback OR $10 USD Theme: Stories that involve vampires. Your vampire(s) can be the whumpee, whumper, and/or caretaker. We will also consider stories about vampire-adjacent creatures such as dhampirs, succubi, etc. Bring out your vampires! For WPP's fourth anthology, we’re looking for stories that involve vampires. Your vampire(s) can be the whumpee, whumper, and/or caretaker. We will also consider stories about vampire-adjacent creatures such as dhampirs, succubi, etc. Word Count: Up to 17,500 words   For this anthology, we are looking for stories in the following categories: Micro-fiction: 250 words or less Flash fiction: 251-1,000 words Short Story: 1,001-7,499 words Novelette: 7,500-17,500 words Each author can submit one story per category. So for example, you can submit a short story and a micro fiction but you can’t submit two micro fictions. Compensation: ebook contributor’s copy, one free paperback OR $10 USD, and discounts on additional paperbacks 50% of proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to charity. Submissions Open: November 1, 2024 Submissions Close: July 31, 2025 Expected Publication Date: October 2025 Submit here! The Nitty-Gritty (aka more details about submitting) Via: The Whumpy Printing Press.

Deadline: July 31st, 2025 Payment: $50 and a contributor’s copy. Theme: Horror stories set in the Ozark mountains Calling all Ozark writers, storytellers, folklorists, and tale collectors!Parlor Ghost Press, an imprint of Watertower Hill Publishing (publishers of 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘴, 𝘏𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘴, and 𝘏𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘴), is taking submissions for our upcoming anthology, 𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘏𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸: 𝘛𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘖𝘻𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘏𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳, edited by Heather Daughrity, to be released February 2026.What we are looking for: horror stories set in the Ozark mountains--either your own take on a story from Ozark folklore or an original tale featuring Ozark locations/atmosphere/beliefs/etc.We want all the spooks, haints, hags, and boogers. Give us the mist rising out of the hollers and the mysterious sounds from the woods, the strange lights in the sky and the distant cackle of Old Granny in her hidden shack.We want horror, but we want it PG—no extreme horror or erotic horror, please. Just a good modern take on the venerable myths, magic, and monsters unique to the Ozark area.Submissions are open from April 7 to July 31, 2025.Word Count: 3,000 to 6,000 words.Payment: $50 plus a contributor’s copy.Send submissions to: [email protected]. Put “OZARK” in the subject line.Submissions should be double spaced with Times New Roman 12-point font. Please ensure that your name, address, email, and word count are located at the top of your document. Send submissions as attachments to your email; stories included in the body of the email will not be accepted.We look forward to reading your stories! Via: Watertower Hill Publishing.

Deadline: July 31st, 2025 Payment: Royalties Theme: Lovecraftian horror Cthulu: Dreams – our Lovecraftian anthology Cthulu: Dreams– This is horror. Express yourself as the theme moves you. Incorporate the Lovecraftian theme as you will into your horror story. Not all need contain an eldritch horror, remember The Alchemist. Good writing will triumph over concepts tightly aligned to a perception of the theme. We encourage you to weave the theme into an engaging story with well-developed characters and deep emotion. Stories that contain infanticide, or rape will not be accepted. Consideration might be made for gratuitous gore, if the story calls for it. Submission Period: May 1, 2025 to July 31, 2025 Submissions: No AI, 1 per author; no simultaneous submissions, no reprints; Submission Cost: Free Word Limit: 2,000 to 7,000 words Submission Guidelines: Anonymous submission with no author name in document; 12 pt Times or Arial; .Doc or .Docx; double-space; first line indent; no tabs used. Genres: Horror Anticipated Pay: Royalty Share of D2D sales and Kickstarter Share Each story will receive A D2D royalty share from the sales on the D2D platform and a percent of the Kickstarter. This does not include: wholesale to authors; or non-D2D retail outlets. Links will be available to direct your customers to D2D outlets. Timeline Projections: Submissions close: July 31, 2025 Review: Aug 2025 Acceptance / Rejection: Sep 2025 Edits: Oct 2025 Production: Oct 2025 Kickstarter: Oct 2025 Published: December 2025 Upon acceptance, the author is expected to work with the editor on at least one round of revisions in MSWord. Our publication goal will be the late fall of 2025; however, the extensive time needed to review and edit submissions may vary depending upon the submitted works and author’s response times. Inkd Publishing LLC will hold first publication rights for four months after publication...

Deadline: July 31st, 2025 Payment: $150 Theme: works of literature that intersect with Taco Bell My kids make books all the time for fun. Both of them want to be writers and artists when they grow up. I feel like this is my fault. I’ve made it look too fun. They bring me their stacks of pages, begging for the stapler, as if the stapler contains magical powers, as if the act of binding together the book is what makes it real. I staple three neat clicks and I’ve made it look real. Something more real to pretend with, at least. We are back, pretending to make our literary magazine again. We are the Taco Bell Quarterly, a Prestigious Literary Magazine that is opening for submissions on 4/20/25. We are looking for prose, poetry, art, and beyond for our eighth issue, which will be available to read for free online, and to buy in print in the late fall. We will pay $150. What are we looking for: works of literature that intersect with Taco Bell Does it have to be about Taco Bell? Does it have to mention it? It’s the Taco Bell Quarterly. The joke is that it’s our only guideline. Also, we do not have any guidelines. We have no rules. You can say whatever you want. We have an aesthetic. We have a vibe. Read our last 3 issues especially to get a sense of the direction we’ve been going in. But also, yes, it can and should be about Taco Bell too, because that is the joke of the literary magazine, in which every piece has a recurring product placement. Because life might happen in a Taco Bell, or with a Taco Bell logo in the background for a moment. That moment of product placement may be chosen...