Events

Deadline: May 31st, 2025 Payment: Royalties Theme: Stories where liminal space is a priority  M Presents Publishing is looking for short stories for its forthcoming anthology: Liminal Madness. Liminal Madness is a slight departure from the straight horror that previous anthologies had focused on; while horror is definitely a theme in this book the stories can be about anything so long as the idea of liminal space is priority. Think of the popular Backrooms or any place that is an eerie transition between places, a place that seems normal yet there is something... wrong: a hallway in a school that is strangely silent or a staircase that seems to keep descending with no discernable bottom. Liminal: adj: relating to a transitional or intermediate state, stage, or period Liminal Space: noun: a state or place characterized by being transitional or intermediate in some way; informal: any location that is unsettling, uncanny, or dreamlike Let your imagination run wild as these spaces envelop your mind, whether you've no-clipped out of reality or wandered off the forest path. Looking for: fiction pieces with a horror element with a focus on Liminal Spaces. While there is only one planned anthology, if a sufficient number of entries are received, a second anthology will also be released, title TBD.  Stories by LGBTQ+ and POC authors are welcome, disclosure is unnecessary and won't be asked. Not looking for: erotica, pornography, stories suggesting sexual abuse or child endangerment in a tactless way; if you wouldn't want to read it, do you think I will? Stories written by AI. Payment: Royalties and a digital copy of the book. If you wish to buy a physical copy yourself, it will be made available to you at cost; but it is entirely optional if you wish to do that. Submission length: 3000-5000...

Submission Window: May 1st - 31st, 2025 Payment: $100 for the chosen story + 50% of subscription revenue Theme: Any genre, short story Mission = Revive the art of the short story, support artists, and produce something wonderful. Payout = Base Pay of $100 for the chosen story + 50% of subscription revenue to be sent by Paypal, Zelle, or check. Wait, you mean if this substack gets thousands of subscribers, the winner would get thousands of dollars? Yes! The New Yorker pays roughly $7,500 per story and I sincerely hope to go way past that. What does the timeline look like? Submit stories by the end of the month, winner to be announced on the 15th. There is ONE story that wins and receives the full payout. Where do I send submissions? [email protected] What are the rules for submitting? 1. No Fees 2. Send in Microsoft Word or Google Doc form 3. Any genre 4. 6- 10,000 words. Yes, just 6 words, like Hemingway's famous 6-word story "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn." 5. Reprints are ok so long as you still have the rights to distribute. 6. Acknowledge Distribution Rights on this Substack - You can still sell your story elsewhere but we need to be able to save and publish it here. The goal is to create a library for subscribers. 7. Only the winner will be published and rights will only transfer for the winning story. What do I get for subscribing? One beautiful story every month. The complete library. The joy of supporting artists and doing something interesting. What if I can’t pay right now? That’s ok! If you publish a blurb about this site on your website, blog, or social media, I will send you one full story of your choosing. Best of all, it is...

Deadline: June 1st, 2025 Payment: 2 cents per word for fiction, 3 words per word for poetry Theme: The history and power of Memento Mori artifacts or relics Memento Mori Ink Magazine, in collaboration with Crystal Lake Publishing has issued an open call for submissions to our 2026 anthology. In this collection, we explore the power of Memento Mori artifacts or relics. We want ancient objects or seemingly mundane items which have the power to whisper to those who possess them. We are looking for character-driven stories with a focus on the history and source of power behind their chosen object which must be tied to the afterlife, the passage of time, or the thin veil separating the living from the dead. As these objects reveal their secrets, characters must confront their deepest fears and the inevitable reality of their own mortality. Submission Guidelines: Short Stories: 3,000–5,000 words Poetry: 250–1,500 words (accepting three poetry pieces for this anthology) Compensation: Short Stories: $0.02 per word Poetry: $0.03 per word Important Details: •Deadline: June 1, 2025 •No reprints or simultaneous submissions •Email and word count at the top of your document •Payment via PayPal or Zelle upon acceptance; please include preferred payment method and details under your email •Submit a 100-word bio and a black-and-white photo •No AI-generated content; originality is essential Acceptance letters will go out approximately September 1, 2025 but we reserve the right to move this date. Submit here: https://form.jotform.com/243066993006055 Via: Memento Mori Ink Magazine's Facebook.

Deadline: June 1st, 2025 Payment: 15GBP Theme: Eldritch (Vol 110) ELDRITCH, 1st June 2025 Peel back the curtain of reality and reveal the ultimate indifference and the horror of the infinite beyond. If you think you’ve got what it takes to terrify, scar and haunt our audience of 10,000 daily listeners, then we want your stories! If accepted, we'll get our fantastic narration team to lend their voices, our editor will sprinkle some magic pixie dust on the track, and you could have your story heard by thousands of listeners each week. *** WHEN WILL I HEAR IF MY STORY HAS BEEN ACCEPTED OR NOT? We carefully review every single submission that comes through our door. If you’ve submitted a story to us, please be patient. We WILL let you know if your submission has or hasn’t been successful. Having said that, if you haven’t heard anything up to twelve weeks after the deadline has passed, feel free to ping us an email to check in on it. Submission Guidelines • Stories must be 2,000 (10% tolerance +/-) • Save stories in a Word document - Times New Roman font, size 12 • Include a 1-2 sentence log line for your story at the end of the document • Ensure that your name and an email address are somewhere on the document • Stories must fit an upcoming theme • By submitting your story to us, you are confirming that you are the original creator of the story • We will consider entrants whose work has been entered and published elsewhere, however please ensure you state where and when your story has been used elsewhere on the document • You will be allowed to place one call-to-action for your own work at the end of the episode. Be sure to...

Deadline: June 1st, 2025 Payment: AU 1c/word Theme: What happens to a person after a major transformation Submissions open until 1st June 2025 The Morning After is an anthology about what happens after a sudden transformation. This could be an individual person transforming into something new or a mass change that effects humanity as a whole. How does this person or society react to no longer being human? As an editor, I am keen to see how people react in this unique situation. Focus on struggles and adaptation to new forms are highly encouraged. Despite the name of the anthology, the story does not need to begin with waking up in this new reality - but it should start shortly after the transformation has taken place. Submission guidelines Stories should be within 2000 words and 10,000 words. Please enquire with stories above or below this wordcount. Stories may be of any age rating including explicit 18+ stories. Stories may be of any genre so long as they include the transformation elements. As a variation to our usual guidelines, authors do NOT need to be trans, non binary, or female. Cis male authors are encouraged to submit. Payment will be AU 1c/word. Original/unpublished stories only for this anthology. how to submit Submissions should be sent to [email protected] Please use the subject format of: MORNING AFTER SUBMISSION: , by . Include the story as a .doc or .docx file attachment. Via: Transcendent Fiction Publishing.

Submission Window: April 15th - June 1st, 2025 Payment: 40% royalties for net eBook sales with a chance to increase to 50% should a specific threshold of sales be met. Theme: Novels and novellas in dark fiction, horror, dark romance, and horror romance. Publishing Opportunities for 2026 We are happy to announce that our focus for 2026 is to highlight the voices of underrepresented Canadian authors. We are seeking submissions from Canadian authors who identify as BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+, or are from marginalized communities. We are seeking two novels or novellas in the genres of dark fiction, dark romance, horror romance, or horror, to be published in the latter half of 2026. If you are a Canadian author with a unique story to tell, we encourage you to submit your work for consideration. Let's bring your voices to the forefront of the literary world. Our submission window will be from April 15 - June 1. We are seeking completed manuscripts. Eerie River Publishing only publishes a handful of novels a year. Regrettably, this means we will have to pass on some fantastic writing. We wish we could publish them all but the truth is we wouldn't be able to put the resources needed behind each project to make them a success. And that is what we are here to do. We are an inclusive company that accepts submission from anyone regardless of race, gender or sexuality. We accept agented and non-agented submissions during our submission window. What are we looking for?IN DARK FICTION ​​ We are seeking high-quality, novel and novellas in dark fiction, horror, dark romance,  and horror romance.  ​ We want unique, well-crafted stories with compelling plots, terrifying twists, and entertaining characters, for mature audiences. Give us your grim, heart-wrenching twist. The perfect story would balance the light and...

Submission Window: May 1st - June 1st, 2025 Payment: $5 Theme: Poetry or short fiction about the Gods and Goddesses and heroes of the world’s many Pagan/polytheist traditions that somehow features Music Summer Solstice 2025: Music. Submission Period: 1 May through 1 June 2025. Jazz and blues. Rock and opera. Ballads and filk songs. Music has been an integral element of human creativity and culture since we first learned to carve holes into bones. Send us your best poems, short stories, and essays about music — in all its forms — from a Pagan/polytheist, witchy, and mythological point of view. Send us poems about the duel between Apollo and Marsyas, Bragi wooing Idun, and Pan stalking a poacher with madness-inducing pipe music. Send us short stories about a desperate musician making a crossroads deal with Dionysus, a composer praying to Hymen for inspiration, an archaeologist uncovering a temple and sacred instruments of Kothar-wa-Khasis. Send us essays about Väinämöinen as archetypal musician, Mozart’s opera Apollo et Hyacinthus, and the rise of the modern Pagan music scene. What is Eternal Haunted Summer? EHS is an ezine dedicated to 1) original poetry and 2) short fiction about the Gods and Goddesses and heroes of the world’s many Pagan/polytheist traditions. We feature 3) reviews of books, graphic novels, academic journals, magazines, movies, plays, and so forth which have a Pagan focus, or which otherwise might interest our Pagan readership. And 4) interviews with established and new Pagan authors, or authors of texts that interest a Pagan audience. And finally, 5) essays concerning the Gods, Goddesses, heroes, myths and folklore of the world. What do we mean by “original?” The submission must not have been previously published in hardcopy, or on another ezine, or website, or blog. Since people often discuss their writing on email lists and messageboards,...

Deadline: June 1st, 2025 Payment: $10 and a contributors copy Theme: New and unique takes on the legends and realities of the Lizzie Borden story Everyone knows the legend of Lizzie Borden, especially the dark nursery rhyme...   Lizzie Borden took an axe Gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, Gave her father 41 Riverdale Avenue Books has teamed up with the Historical Lizzie Borden house to put together an anthology of stories, under the direction of award-winning horror author Sèphera Girón, who has visited the house multiple times over the past few decades. The “Official” Story of the Lizzie Borden House Lizzie Borden was born in 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Since her mother had died when she was young, she had been at odds with her stepmother, Abby, who she and her older sister, Emily, believed married her father for his wealth. Their father, Andrew, was a prominent developer in Fall River. Lizzie grew up an upstanding member of her community, being heavily involved in the church and performing services for the poor. As Lizzie grew older, the tension between the parents and the daughters grew. Lizzie and Emily remained unmarried, bringing negative attention to the family from their peers and the sisters were critical of the way their father was distributing his wealth to their stepmother’s family.. The story says that Lizzie, blind with rage, hacked her father and stepmother to death in the house. The trial that followed became one of the most sensationalized courtroom cases in American history, attracting hundreds of tourists to Fall River. Lizzie was acquitted due to lack of evidence and reasonable doubt although the fact that she destroyed the clothes she wore have convinced some of her guilt. She lived the rest of her life in relative anonymity, but...

Deadline: June 1st, 2025 Payment: $5 for poetry sets (up to 5 pages), $10 for flash fiction (up to 1000 words), $25 for fiction stories up to 5000 words, +$2/1000 words for over 5000 for fictions stories up to 10,000 words Theme: Canadian authors telling stories about community: finding it, building it, maintaining it, being expelled from it. SF and F are called out as acceptable, no word on H so probably a hard sell This anthology’s theme is “It Takes a Village” – I’m looking for stories about community: finding it, building it, maintaining it, being expelled from it. How do we build our villages as adults? How do we grow connections with those around us? What do we do when we’ve lost them? We’ve heard the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” but also “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” How do we tackle these emotions as adults? As this is a bit trickier of an anthology theme than the last one, the reading period is going to be much longer, and the final evolution of the anthology’s theme will come from what the overarching theme and tone from the submitted and accepted pieces create. What I am looking for: Poems, flash fiction, short stories, science fiction, fantasy, romance, literary, contemporary, and more. We want a wide variety of fictional stories! Works from Canadian writers/authors only, with some preference for writers from British Columbia. Special consideration/interest for writers who are Former Foster Youth or Adopted Flash Fiction up to 1000 words Short Stories up to 10000 words – very limited spots for over 5000-word stories Poetry sets of up to 5 pages Polished works – please don’t send your first draft. Make sure to...

Deadline: June 15th, 2025 Payment: $125 and a contributor's copy Theme: Insert Sherlock Holmes into the realm of Lovecraftian Horror Edited by Derrick Belanger & Brian Belanger Description: Imagine Holmes investigating the disappearance of a college student in the mysterious town of Innsmouth, matching wits with a man who can reanimate the dead, or using his deductive skills to help fight creatures from beyond the realm of time and space. These are just some of the stories which could be included in the new anthology The Necronomicon of Sherlock Holmes. The anthology will feature traditional Sherlock Holmes stories blended with one or more of Lovecraft’s tales. Belanger Books is calling for submissions from writers, new or established, which are between 5,000 – 10,000 words (it is okay to be over some). Guidelines: The stories must feel like traditional Holmes and Lovecraft stories. The stories should have the traditional Holmes and Watson working with the traditional characters, creatures, and/or gods of H.P. Lovecraft. Remember, there was a logic to the writing of Lovecraft, a rationale behind the otherworldly beings even if humans couldn’t conceive it, that should blend well with the deductive skills of Sherlock Holmes. Payment: Authors shall receive a payment of $125 and a paperback copy of the anthology. Rights: Authors shall retain rights to their work. We only retain the rights to the story within the publication. Authors are welcome to submit more than one story for the anthology. Send submissions in a word document that is double spaced, in Times New Roman, and in 14 point font to [email protected] with the subject line ATTN: SUBMISSION FOR THE NECRONOMICON OF SHERLOCK HOLMES Submission Deadline: June 15, 2025. Publication Date: Winter 2025/2026 Via: Belanger Books.