Events

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: $.08 per word for the first 7,499 words, with payment capped at $599.92 for stories longer than 7,499 words. For re-printed stories that are not currently available elsewhere on the internet for free, we pay $.02 per word for the first 10,000 words, with payment capped at $200 for stories longer than 10,000 words Theme: Slean fantasy and sci-fi stories. Note: Reprints Welcome Thank you for your interest in submitting to Deep Magic. What you first need to understand is that we aim to be the dominant magazine for clean fantasy and sci-fi stories. It’s our tag-line. If you can tell a gripping story that doesn’t rely on sex, swearing, and graphic violence—you’ve come to the right place. If not, there are plenty of other magazines and venues out there. Move along. Move along (Jedi hand wave). Please consider reading Deep Magic to get an idea of the type of stories we publish. You can read our inaugural issue for only $.99. We are keeping the June 2016 issue at this special price so authors can check out our style without breaking the bank. Deep Magic is a quarterly electronic magazine that publishes clean short fiction in the fantasy and science fiction genres. Our issues are also filled with author interviews, art features, book reviews and tips for writers. Most of our non-fiction pieces are invitation only to industry professionals and Deep Magic staff, but if you have a fantastic piece, please send it our way. Not all the authors we feature write exclusively clean fiction. We don’t judge. But everything you find inside Deep Magic will be. – The Deep Magic Team It may be helpful to read the following articles before submitting to help you understand what types of stories we’re looking for: *An interview...

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: Royalties Theme: Horror stories set in Alaska Note: Reprints Welcome An anthology dedicated to the unique horrors of Alaska. We want readers to experience the darkest, scariest, weirdest, most terrifying elements Alaska has to offer! We’re seeking short horror stories between 500 – 7500 words. Stories must be horror, and they must be reliant on Alaska somehow. The “how” is entirely up to you! Originals preferred, but reprints will be considered. Submission Deadline: March 31st or until filled. As payment, authors will receive royalties divided by word count. First and foremost, all submissions must be horror. However, we recognize that horror is a very broad and nuanced genre. To that end, we’ll read stories that fit into other genres (thriller, family drama, coming of age, science fiction, fantasy, comedy, romance, et cetera) as long as the story contains horror, and as long as horror is integral to the narrative. ALL submissions MUST meet the following requirements (documents that do not meet these guidelines will be returned to authors for correction): 1. 12-point Times New Roman font ONLY (no other fonts, please) 2. Use “SMART QUOTES” 3. Submit all documents as an attachment in .doc, .docx, or .pages format Submit via email to [email protected] In the body of the email, include your name and contact information. Unpublished stories are given preference, but we consider reprints on a case by case basis, as long as all rights have reverted to the author. If your previously unpublished piece is accepted for publication in an anthology, we take First Print and Electronic Publishing Rights, with exclusivity for twelve months from the date of publication. If we accept your reprint for publication in an anthology, we take nonexclusive reprint rights. A copy of our publishing contract is available upon request. Via: Soteira Press.

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: Royalties Theme: Horror stories set in Hawaii Note: Reprints Welcome An anthology dedicated to the unique horrors of Hawaii. We want readers to experience the darkest, scariest, weirdest, most terrifying elements Hawaii has to offer! We’re seeking short horror stories between 500 – 7500 words. Stories must be horror, and they must be reliant on Hawaii somehow. The “how” is entirely up to you! Originals preferred, but reprints will be considered. Submission Deadline: March 31st or until filled. The anthology target is 50 stories. There is no limit on the number of submissions per author, but we reserve the right to limit the number of accepted stories per author. As payment, authors will receive royalties divided by word count. First and foremost, all submissions must be horror. However, we recognize that horror is a very broad and nuanced genre. To that end, we’ll read stories that fit into other genres (thriller, family drama, coming of age, science fiction, fantasy, comedy, romance, et cetera) as long as the story contains horror, and as long as horror is integral to the narrative. ALL submissions MUST meet the following requirements (documents that do not meet these guidelines will be returned to authors for correction): 1. 12-point Times New Roman font ONLY (no other fonts, please) 2. Use “SMART QUOTES” 3. Submit all documents as an attachment in .doc, .docx, or .pages format Submit via email to [email protected] In the body of the email, include your name and contact information. Unpublished stories are given preference, but we consider reprints on a case by case basis, as long as all rights have reverted to the author. If your previously unpublished piece is accepted for publication in an anthology, we take First Print and Electronic Publishing Rights, with exclusivity for twelve months from...

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: $0.01 per word and a contributors copy Theme: Steampunk and Gaslamp Fairy Tales CLOCKWORK, CURSES, AND COAL: Steampunk and Gaslamp Fairy Tales Anthologist: Rhonda Parrish Open for Submissions: February 1 - March 31, 2020 Expected Publication: early 2021 Story Length: up to 7,500 words Payment: $0.01 per word + contributor copy Steampunk’s core is a re-imagined 1800s using steam-powered technology so it is all about gears, goggles and gaslamps. And corsets and courtship and exploration (often in the form of colonialism). I want the bustles, parasols, high tea and airships, of course, but I also welcome stories which confront the darker, problematic side of Victorian sensibilities and attitudes. Plus fairy tales. For example: What if a shoemaker was visited at night by tiny automatons? What if the little mermaid didn’t have to escape the ocean to be with her prince, but instead her social class? What if a woman’s upper class family was embarrassed by her scientific endeavors so they locked her in a tower… or tried to, anyway? Or a mechanized cat discovers a pair of fantastic boots? Or an explorer climbed a giant beanstalk and found a whole new, forgotten world? Original fairy tales are welcome, as are retellings. If you choose to retell a familiar favourite, make sure your story offers something new and interesting. I’d rather see stories that reflect the long history of fairy tales as social commentary than those which simply tell the same story with a different setting. Although steampunk tends to be focused in the American ‘wild west’ or Victorian England, this anthology needn’t be. I am open to stories set all over the world, and would love to see ‘Own Voices’ stories. As with the first book in the Punked Up Fairy Tales series, Grimm, Grit and...

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: 25.00 for original stories, $7.00 for reprints. Theme: The paranormal. Read "What We Want" below to find out exactly what they consider Note: Reprints welcome parABnormal is open to short stories, art, articles, and reviews. 2020 submissions open Feb 1 – Mar 31, Jun 1 – Jul 31, Oct 1 – Nov 31. Anything submitted outside those periods will be deleted unread. ​No matter how far we move forward as humans, we are still bound by the instincts and ancestral memories of our animalistic past. None of these are so strong as the fight or flight response. However, there are times when we seem to be perfectly safe, completely at ease and comfortable, when that urge to run from something sneaks up on us. What causes these sensations? Is there something lurking in the darkness? Why is that man giving you the creeps, he’s not even looking at you? And yet, there is something odd. Something instinctual, something you know without fully understanding. We may have moved on, we may have forgotten and left behind those old stories and legends of beasts, of voracious monsters, dark spirits, vampires, and shapeshifters… But they have not forgotten or left us . . . ​ What We Want The subject matter of parABnormal Magazine is, yes, the paranormal. For us, this includes ghosts, spectres, haunts, various whisperers, and so forth. It also includes shapeshifters and creatures from various folklores. ​Creatures like vampires, werewolves, and zombies are not paranormal. Shapeshifters, for the purpose of this magazine, refer to the spiritual shift, not the physical. Think Native American shaman. Paranormal activity centers around the human, not the creature. ​Please, no stories that involve excessive blood, gore, digestive tracts, and so forth. If you write a dark story, make sure it is spooky. Makes sure...

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: $10 Theme: “dialog light, action heavy” fiction Submissions: OPEN Submission deadline for inaugural issue: Tuesday, March 31st, 2020, 11:59p. Editorial decisions: Thursday, April 30th, 2020. Publication of inaugural issue: Friday, June 12th, 2020. Length: We prefer short, compressed stories that are nevertheless complete and cohesive narratives (1500 to 2500 words). These limits are firm. No more, no less. Style: We prefer “dialog light, action heavy” fiction that is unselfconsciously literary but nevertheless takes joy in an occasional old word that gives the breath of antiquity.   Publication, payment, and rights: Issues will be published as .pdf files. If work is selected for publication in WHETSTONE, authors will (1) be paid an honorarium of $10 and (2) will be asked to provide, by contract, "First North American Serial Rights." In our opinion, this means that copyright is NOT transferred. All copyright stays with you, the writer; however, you will have sold/transferred a form of "exclusive use rights" called "First North American Serial Rights" (FNASR). This is the right to publish your unpublished work for the first time, and ONLY the first time, no more. The important thing to remember is that some professional publications may ask for FNASR upon acceptance of a specific work; you are not legally permitted to provide those for that specific work after publication in WHETSTONE, for you have already rendered their use to us. In other words, once you publish a work in WHETSTONE, that works' associated FNASR have been sold/transferred. You CAN publish your previously published work elsewhere as a reprint but only as long as that publication does not require FNASR. This is a long way of saying that WHETSTONE is an amateur publication, meant for showcasing emerging talent for the consideration of professional markets (which is why we kept the...

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: $100 for stories and $25 for poems Theme: Heroic Fantasy Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is currently OPEN for submissions for the month of March, 2020. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is generally open to fiction and poetry submissions four months per year. The months you can submit are: March June September  December  If you submit fiction or poetry in any other month, you will receive an auto-response and your tale will not be reviewed. * * * As its name suggests, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is a quarterly ezine dedicated to publishing heroic fantasy — in both prose and poetry. We are unrepentant in our goal of elevating unapologetic sword and sorcery to a rightful high place. We pay $100 for stories and $25 for poems, upon publication.  (Scroll down for info on art submissions.) We purchase first world English language electronic rights, electronic rights for 90 days, archival rights for twelve months, and excerpt rights. Our fiction word limit is a soft 10,000 words, although we are willing to serialize at a maximum of 50,000 words over four issues. You may submit up to three poems, with a cumulative maximum of 30 pages.   No simultaneous submissions, please. While we don’t have iron-clad rules regarding our fiction payment, we roughly pay $25 for stories under 1,000 words, $50 for stories between 1,000 and 5,000 words, $75 for stories between 5,000 and 7,500 words and $100, for stories of 7,500 words and over. Tolkienesque (as in really long) poetry epics/sagas/vedas will most likely be treated — and paid — like fiction. Similarly, prose pieces of fewer than 1,000 words will be paid at poetry’s standard rate of $25. Art: HFQ is looking for quality banner art to accompany each new issue. Please review art from the past two issues to see the style we prefer. Image...

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment (In Canadian): Poems (4-100 lines): $50 plus one contributor’s copy, Short-short stories (under 1000 words): $50, plus one contributor’s copym Fiction (6000 words max.), 1000-2999 words: $125 plus 2 contributor’s copies plus a One year subscription, 3000-4999 words: $175 plus 2 contributor’s copies plus a One year subscription, 5000-6000 words: $200 plus 2 contributor’s copies plus a One year subscription Theme: Speculative fiction of all kinds, but read below 2020 Story, Poetry and Art Submissions to On Spec open until end of March 2020 Please read all the author instructions carefully first. What are we looking for? And what are we NOT looking for? We like to pride ourselves in searching out the most interesting and innovative works of fiction and poetry in the genre. So what do we want? Speculative writing of all kinds, but nothing derivative. Try to avoid what you think are trends, because by the time we’d publish them, they won’t be. Remember, you are a trendsetter, not a trend follower. We’ll gladly look at works up to 6,000 words, but keep in mind that most of these will eventually need a hard edit to reduce a thousand words of exposition. If you do that, yourself. it makes us more likely to pick up your story. We’d prefer a standard manuscript format, in a readable font. If you are new to this, do some research. The work must be previously unpublished in English in North America. We buy First NA Serial Rights to your work. We are not fond of graphic sex and violence. And we are not fond of horror that is simply “messy”. When we say “character-driven”, we mean it. A story that exists because a character is pushed along by outside influences and has absolutely no agency, will...

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: $15 Theme: Stories that fall on the hopeful end of the spectrum. A few descriptors might be: optimistic, funny, fun, hopeful, lighthearted, joyful, loving, quirky, delightful. Note: Reprints welcome and preferred. Toasted Cake Podcast is doing a short Run of Hope! > We will be open from March 15-March 31. > I will be buying a few stories immediately, so I can start podcasting immediately, and then some more stories from the hold pile in April. Not sure how many yet. > At this time, I am ONLY looking for stories that fall on the hopeful end of the spectrum. A few descriptors might be: optimistic, funny, fun, hopeful, lighthearted, joyful, loving, quirky, delightful. (But as always, do not self-reject.) > <3 #####     What to Submit: > Toasted Cake is a speculative fiction flash fiction podcast. At this time, please only send stories between 650-1200 words. (Sweet spot is 700-1000.) > A few descriptors I like are weird, quirky, twisted, funny, fun, literary, puzzling, bizarre, tongue-twistable, singable, patter-friendly, elocutionary, experimental, witty, and wistful. > I mostly run reprints. Original stories fine too (given that I like rather odd things, and sometimes these are hard to place, feel free to try me.) You may send stories that have been previously podcast if it has been at least 2 years since they aired. Please let me know all publication details. > I am incredibly interested in stories told from all the myriad diverse perspectives of our world. Please send them to me. How to Submit: > Send your submissions to tinaconnolly at gmail. > Subject line should be "Toasted Cake Submission: " > You may send up to three flash during the submission period (all in one email is fine), as text in the email or as attachments. >...

Deadline: March 31st, 2020 Payment: .05 per word Since 2010, Mocha Memoirs Press’s mission is to amplify marginalized voices in the areas of speculative fiction (science fiction, horror, and fantasy). SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire will follow the steps of our previous published bestseller anthologies An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Black Magic Women: Terrifying Tales by Scary Sisters (A Bram Stoker nominee). What we are looking for: Vampires have been around in the horror genre for centuries. We are looking to tell a different vampire story. Ones where they may sparkle, but it is a dark one. This call is seeking unpublished short stories that tell stories of the vampire noire, the black vampire. We want stories of vampire hunters, of anti-vampiric heroes/heroines, and more. If you can take the story out of westernized culture, we’d love to see those, too! We want stories that speak of inclusivity. So, if your vampire is disabled or suffers from an alignment, send those stories too. LGBTQ+ stories are also encouraged. To point, we want stories from the African diaspora. If you do not follow the guidelines, your submission will be deleted unread. Seriously, read the guidelines. Follow them. Upon results of a successful crowdfunding campaign, we will pay HWA pro-rate of .05 per word for publication for First World Rights. Still interested? Here are the guidelines. • Stories for this anthology must be original (no reprints or previously published material), no more than 5,000 words in length, and must satisfy the theme of the anthology, meaning the protagonist must from the African Diaspora. Remember, this entire anthology is dedicated to stories of the black vampire. They can be in space, superheroes, but they must be from the African Diaspora. • Manuscripts should be in Shunn manuscript...