Events

Deadline: August 15th, 2024 Payment: $50 Theme: Urban Fantasy primarily followed by sword and sorcery, some gothic and supernatural horror will be accepted but it will be a harder sell Dirty Magick Magazine publishes short fiction, from 2,000 to 12,500 words. We pay a single-story rate of $50 which is halfway to SFWA qualification and fully HWA eligible. E-mail "submissions dirtymagickmagazine.com" with your story attached. We like a variety of stories but will only publish a few styles. Please read closely as these are the rules and they will not be broken. First and foremost, we are interested in urban fantasy which we define as fantasy adventure fiction which takes place in modern settings. These places can be real or imaginary (although we prefer the former), but the story must have some combination of those typical elements: magic, other sentient races, enchanted objects, and mythical backgrounds. These all may be underground and hidden, but they must play a part in the story. Next, we want sword and sorcery which we define as fantasy adventure fiction taking place in an ancient or alternative world where the protagonists must use their wits and weapons to survive. We contrast this with high fantasy (which we are not interested in) where quests taken on behalf of the rulers are world shaking. We are much more interested in the street level like the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales of Fritz Leiber and the Conan/Bran Mak Morn tales of Robert E. Howard. Finally, we will consider gothic and supernatural horror. We won’t define this directly, but this is a market to submit vampire, werewolf, ghost, and cryptid fiction. Be warned, it would be best to use these creatures in one of the previously mentioned genres as that would be a quicker path to publication. Now that we’ve...

Submission Window: August 1st - 16th, 2024 Payment: 5 cents per word Theme: Thriller + Suspense + Psychological Horror that deal with Little Red Flags about cults, cons, and control The warning signs were there: those little red flags. But in the beginning, it all looked rose-colored. You thought you were getting community, belonging, and purpose. Maybe a lucrative new career. Maybe even salvation. Instead, you got control, fanaticism, greed, manipulation, and terror. Bring us your fiction stories of fanaticism, fundamentalism, extremism, and control. We want to read about cons people pull off that make our jaws drop. The horrors hiding just beyond the edges of our better judgment. We want the kind of monsters who hide in plain sight: charismatic cult leaders with a god-complex (think: NXIVM, Twin Flames Universe) and systems built to prey on the vulnerable (think: Lularoe). Give us MLM puppet masters, unhinged homeschooling movements, manipulative or extreme doomsday preppers, and weight-loss cults. We want characters who will give us a peek behind the veneer of a megachurch, an insider's view of the pressure to recruit for a pyramid scheme, an up-close look at love-bombing in action, along with the emotional fallout. NOTE: We’re not interested in stories that revolve around ideologies or theologies. Instead, we’re seeking stories that focus on the ways charismatic predators and extreme ideas lure vulnerable, well-meaning truth-seekers and turn ordinary people into monsters. We will give preference to well-executed, fast-paced, and dark psychological and suspense thrillers. We want twists that are earned and stories that really move and engage. Grab the reader by the eyeballs and don’t let go. This means well-written commercial prose. Think: The Push by Ashley Audrain, or anything Gillian Flynn writes. We want to create the grown-up version of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Stories you’d want to read around the campfire to...

Deadline: August 23rd, 2024 Payment: Royalties Theme: Travels full of hijinks and strange circumstances, danger, humor, and odd encounters as we journey through the universe, the neighborhood, or across town. If you’ve watched our #RaconteurRoadTrip adventures in the North Texas Troublemakers Facebook group, you know we’ve had some…interesting adventures. So why not do an anthology? Tell us travels full of hijinks and strange circumstances, danger, humor, and odd encounters as we journey through the universe, the neighborhood, or across town. What about that time where you and your buddy got lost on the way to the great noodle bar on Asteroid B-643? Or that bunch of folks trying to deliver through a hostile corridor in space? Then there’s the endless side trips and NOW WHAT?! of travels interrupted by…a camel. The more adventure, the better! Opens: 6/23/24 Closes: 8/23/24 Contracts: 9/7/24 Publication: 10/4/24 Guidelines for all our anthologies: 5,000 to 8,000 words. Length and genre are negotiable, as long as the story fits the concept, and is entertaining.   Any submission must be in Times New Roman, 12PT, double spaced, with your name, title of the story, and your email on it. Please name the file as -— Send in a .docx format.  Please attach the file to your email, no links. Please see the submission guideline graphic on the Raconteur Press Facebook page. Raconteur Press will hold the rights for one year after publication, after one year the rights will revert to the author, but we continue to pay you as long as the anthology is selling. Authors receive an equal percentage share of the proceeds from the anthology, along with the Press, our editors, and administration. Yes, you read that right. We don’t take 80% off the top and split the 20% left over between all the authors. We’re...

Deadline: August 30th, 2024 Payment: $5 Theme: Following on from the resounding success of HellBound's satanic anthology "Satan Rides Your Daughter," our loving homage to the late, great British author Dennis Wheatley, we decided another outing for stories concerning Beelzebub and his denizens of Hell was in order! We want your very best devilish and demonic tales - horrify us with your depictions of the darest, deepest pits of Hades or Hell on Earth... PLEASE read and adhere to our submission guidelines... * Word format saved in .doc, or .docx * 12 pt times new roman * Double spaced * Absolutely NO extra lines between paragraphs! * 4K-10K word count * Write 'SATAN' along with your name and story title in the header of your email *The body of your submission email will be considered the cover letter. * The submission documents are to be separated and Word (.doc or .docx) documents are to be attached to your submission email. To submit, email your polished story to [email protected] - Make sure that you check your mss for grammar and punctuation, use our guidelines to help you: DOWNLOAD YOUR HBB GUIDE TO GRAMMAR HERE (PDF) Deadline: 30 August 2024 NO REPRINTS - ORIGINAL UNPUBLISHED WORKS ONLY Payment - $5.00 for first rights. Capped at 100K words in total. Via: Hellbound Books Publishing.

Deadline: August 30th, 2024 Payment: $5 Theme: A new take on pre-existing creatures. So many of God's creatures have been used to gruesome, horrifying effect over the decades - rats, spiders, giant centipedes (HBB's very own 'Pede!), crabs, rabbits, frogs, slugs, worms, myriad members of the insect class, and so many, many more... Our challenge is for you to create something wholly unique using creatures that have been featured before, those who have not recieved a mention thus far (killer koalas, anyone?), or some hideous, creature of your won design - which ever way you choose, make it blood-curdling, terrifying, and as scary as Hell! PLEASE read and adhere to our submission guidelines...  * Word format saved in .doc, or .docx * 12 pt times new roman * Double spaced * Absolutely NO extra lines between paragraphs! * 4K-10K word count * Write 'CREATURES' along with your name and story title in the header of your email *The body of your submission email will be considered the cover letter. * The submission documents are to be separated and Word (.doc or .docx) documents are to be attached to your submission email. To submit, email your polished story to [email protected] - Make sure that you check your mss for grammar and punctuation, use our guidelines to help you: DOWNLOAD YOUR HBB GUIDE TO GRAMMAR HERE (PDF) Deadline: 30 August 2024 NO REPRINTS - ORIGINAL UNPUBLISHED WORKS ONLY Payment - $5.00 for first rights. Capped at 100K words in total. Via: Hellbound Books.

Deadline: August 30th, 2024 Payment: $5 Theme: Horror, Noir, and all Things Dark, up to 1,500 words Announcing a new venture into short horror fiction - curated by Theresa Scott-Matthews. We are looking for the very best short horror fiction stories - up to 1,500 words (approximately - we're not going to to turn away cracking tales for being a tad over the word count!). Anything goes, subject-wise, as long as it fits HellBound Books' "Horror, Noir, and all Things Dark" philosophy! PLEASE read and adhere to our submission guidelines...  * Word format saved in .doc, or .docx * 12 pt times new roman * Double spaced * Absolutely NO extra lines between paragraphs! * up to approx. 1,500 word count * Write 'FLASH' along with your name and story title in the header of your email *The body of your submission email will be considered the cover letter. * The submission documents are to be separated and Word (.doc or .docx) documents are to be attached to your submission email. To submit, email your polished story to [email protected] - Make sure that you check your mss for grammar and punctuation, use our guidelines to help you: DOWNLOAD YOUR HBB GUIDE TO GRAMMAR HERE (PDF) Deadline: 30 August 2024 NO REPRINTS - ORIGINAL UNPUBLISHED WORKS ONLY Payment - $5.00 for first rights. Capped at 75K words in total. Via: Hellbound Books Publishing.

Deadline: August 30th, 2024 Payment: $25 plus contributor's copy Theme: A story about a store that sells Gods who are attached to items, or more importantly, the items themselves, further details below This is an anthology different from most we have done. It is the follow-up to the original GODS & SERVICES, and there is a definite theme to which we will require far stricter adherence. There is a store. It wasn't there yesterday. It won't be there tomorrow. There's no way it could have fit where it is. The sign in the window obviously is meant to read GOODS & SERVICES, but one of the Os has fallen. The proprietor is a sort of short, tall, fat, thin, young, old, sometimes a woman fellow named Hiram Priest. The merchandise is flea market quality mixed with priceless and rare antiques all sharing the same space with no apparent organization. Hiram sells gods. He sells gods by selling items to which a god, long out of work, is attached. After an unwary buyer has purchased an item (and the item can be anything), the god attached to it is then obliged, in exchange for the worshipful offering, to make the character's life better -- in the opinion of the god in question. (For inspiration, watch Tony Randall and Burl Ives in "The Brass Bottle" -- or better yet, read the first book.) Your story does not have to reflect any of the information about Hiram, or indeed have any interactions with him. The key ingredients are the item, the god, and what follows after. The story can be horror, fantasy, or comedy. All the stories will be inserted into a larger framework , with Hiram Priest relating them to a prospective buyer. Again, the best advice here is to read the...

Deadline: August 31st, 2024 Payment: $150 - $250 Theme: Original weird tales and essays set in the Middle East that explore the human (and inhuman) experience through the lens of weird fiction and horror Sentinel Creatives has opened up for submissions for our anthology of Middle Eastern Horror: “Children of the Blind Owl”. Deadline for Submissions: 31 August 2024 Wordcount: 3,000 - 6,000 Remuneration: $150 - $250 Simultaneous Submissions: Yes WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR We’re looking for original weird tales and essays set in the Middle East that explore the human (and inhuman) experience through the lens of weird fiction and horror. We are looking to secure 11-13 tales of weird fiction and 1-3 essays (any length). Submissions should delve into the history, folklore, ideas, experiences, identities, religion, and philosophies of the region in some way. Time Period: We are looking for stories in both historical and contemporary settings. As the title of this anthology suggests, one of the inspirations behind this project is Sadegh Hedayat's "The Blind Owl," a surrealist, horror, weird fiction, novella completed in the 1930s. Though we hope the stories in this anthology take inspiration from Hedayat's work, we are not looking for stories set in or derived from his novella or other works. Rather, we are hoping writers will take cues from the themes Hedayat grappled with: alienation, futility, despair, rage, transgression, to name a few. Ahmed Saadawi's "Frankenstein in Baghdad" is another work that serves as a good example of what we'd like to see from the stories in this anthology. Saadawi uses, to great effect, some of the vocabulary and motifs from horror to illustrate the problems facing modern-day Iraq, with the corpse itself representing, in some ways, the various ethnic and religious groups and ideologies sewn together as Iraqi pluralism. Give us your tales of the uncanny, of the monstrous and surreal! Contributing...

Deadline: August 31st, 2024 Payment: $25 Theme: Crime Fiction Inspired by Heavy Metal Hits Ozzy Osbourne. Lita Ford. Metallica. Megadeth. Kiss. So many heavy metal bands have put their stamp on the music industry. With searing guitar riffs, fierce drums and a headbanging attitude, heavy metal continues to rock out and melt faces from their origins in the 1970s through today. The intensity of that music genre lends itself perfectly to crime fiction. That’s where you come in. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES 1. Your work must be based on a song that’s an original heavy metal song and cannot be a cover of a pop song. For example, although Peyton Parrish has an amazing metal cover of “Let It Go” from Frozen, it is not eligible for this anthology. Feel free to reference the list HERE for inspiration. 2. Your work must relate strongly to the song it’s inspired by, whether that’s by the lyrics or the name. 3. You still must have a STORY and a good crime/mystery. 4. LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC characters and authors very, very strongly encouraged. Be authentic! 5. All works must be original to this publication and cannot have been published or self-published previously. 6. We’re perfectly ok with simultaneous submissions to other publishers, but please let us know if you’d like your story withdrawn from consideration. 7. Please make sure your song choice is not too obscure. From past musical mystery anthologies we’ve found that readers have a lot more interest if there are songs they immediately recognize. TECHNICAL GUIDELINES 1. We’re not looking for flash fiction, but we’re not against it if it works. Prefer more in the regular short story length (3000-5000 words). 2. All submissions need to be in DOC, DOCX or Pages format. Everyone knows by now that we don’t care about fonts and spacing...

Deadline: August 31st, 2024 Payment: ~2,000 to 5,000 words - $20 USD, ~5,001 to 10,000 words - $25 USD Theme: Tumbleweed. Inspired by the eerie spectacle captured in this video Do you have a tale to tell that will send shivers down our spines? Are you ready to explore the sinister depths of a mysterious phenomenon lurking in the desolate landscapes of Utah, or any other real or fictional setting of your choosing? Black Hare Press is thrilled to announce an open call for submissions to our upcoming anthology: Tumbleweed. Inspired by the eerie spectacle captured in this video, we invite you to unravel the secrets hidden within the relentless advance of thousands of tumbleweeds. What if tumbleweed isn’t just tumbleweed? Where does it originate? What dark forces propel its relentless advance? What horrors does it bring with it? Does it herald the onset of an apocalyptic upheaval, a world consumed by its sinister presence? If your story is post-apocalyptic, delve into the shadows and unleash your imagination upon a world gripped by the Tumbleweed Apocalypse. Submission Guidelines: Word count: 2,000 – 10,000 words Ensure your first 500 words compel the reader to want to go further. Follow our blind read process; do not include personal information in your manuscript. Include your personal information (name, bio, etc.) in the email body. Co-authored submissions are allowed. Reprints and simultaneous submissions are not accepted. Author Compensation: Monetary awards based on wordcounts after edits: ~2,000 to 5,000 words - $20 USD ~5,001 to 10,000 words - $25 USD Plus one digital copy and print discounts. Publication Formats: Paperback, hardcover, digital, and audio. Submission Email: [email protected] Submission Deadline: 31st August 2024 Please allow 12 weeks after the call closes for a response. Dare to venture into the sinister world of Tumbleweed, where each gust of wind may bring...