Events

Taking Submissions: Hex Gunslinger

Deadline: March 1st, 2018 Payment: $0.01USD per word. Announcing Radiant Crown Publishing’s upcoming anthology of weird western tall tales in the Subterranean Series, Hex Gunslinger! UBMISSIONS WINDOW January 1st, 2018- March 1st, 2018 Anything submitted outside of this window will be deleted unread. THEME ISBN-10: Coming Soon ISBN-13: Coming Soon Hex Gunslinger is an upcoming anthology of speculative, mysterious, and romantic weird western tall tales! Framed as an unearthed secret library years after the civil war, each story should hold the ethos of western expansion beginning in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase, and ending around the 1850s not necessarily restricted to a North American audience. Do not take manifest destiny as a mantra to live by. Shape a world with all the magic and mystery of the frontier without letting the ugliness of conquest be consumed with fantastic whimsy. We want wide open plains where violence ruled, underground movements brewing with tension, and the Wild Wild West in all it’s beauty and madness. Bring us your stories marking the age of the gold rush, injustice, genocide, mass immigration, transcontinental railroads, vigilante justice, telegraphs, outlaws, gunslingers, slick talkers, setting suns, and the impending civil war that would rip a nation apart. Deadline March 1st, 2018 11:59 EST. INSPIRATION Preacher (TV)                 Jonah Woodson Hex (Comic)                 RIGHTS SOUGHT FOR FICTION Non-exclusive archival rights as long as the website(s) hosting the work are online If an audiobook is produced, payment is $0.01USD per word for non-exclusive electronic audio rights First world electronic and print rights in English with exclusivity for 8 months from the date of publication Please query if anything listed is of concern. Here is a good explanation of what this entails. LENGTH & GUIDELINES SHORT STORIES: 1000 to 7,499 words. Paid $0.01USD...

Taking Submissions: Baba Yaga Anthology

Deadline: March 1sst, 2018 Payment: $50 and a contributor's copy Baba Yaga Anthology (actual title TBD) Anthologist: Kate Wolford Open for Submissions: January 1 to March 1, 2018 Expected Publication: late 2018 Story Length: 7,500 to 20,000 words Payment: $50 per story + contributor copy Baba Yaga, the terrifying witch of the forest in Slavic folklore, lends herself to all kinds of interpretations. Notorious for traveling in a mortar while wielding a pestle, Baba Yaga sometimes wreaks havoc on humans, but can turn around and help when she feels like it. And she is an early Tiny House owner--hers moves on chicken feet. Baba Yaga may be recognizable from classic images by Ivan Billibin, but, in the US and some other countries, her qualities are not as widely known as they are in Slavic countries. A link to learn more is HERE. Kate is looking for stories from Baba Yaga’s point of view, or the point of view from those she helps or hurts, or from anyone who might be a protagonist worthy of the Baba Yaga story. You can set the story in the past or present. The story can take place anywhere in the world. It can include romance or action or tragedy or comedy. Kate wants well-developed stories that don’t disintegrate at the end because they’re rushed or major plot lines are unfinished. Develop characters. Draw readers in with specific details. Make them root for the protagonist. The audience is age 15 and up. Please, no sci-fi, dystopian, erotica, high fantasy, time-travel, futuristic, space travel, or western submissions. No love triangles, please. Kate will not provide feedback at any point during the submissions period. Submission Method: Send your story pasted into the body of the email. Attachments will not be opened. Please email with Submission: in the subject line....

Taking Submissions: Untitled Horror Short Story Anthology

Deadline: March 1st, 2018 Payment: $50 and a contributor's copy Calling all authors—we've got a new collection of short horror in the works, and we want you! See below for details. Deadline: March 1, 2018 Length: 5,000 to 8,000 words Payment: $50 plus contributor's copy ​Submission Criteria We are interested in short horror fiction about people who sneak into abandoned, forgotten, shunned, or cursed communities and survive to tell the tale. For example: Centralia, Pennsylvania—the mining town abandoned because of an uncontrollable underground coal fire; Love Canal—the New York neighborhood declared off-limits due to extreme environmental pollution; and Pripyat—the Ukrainian city evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster. The emphasis is on communities—a haunted house or other such localized place is not large enough to qualify. The place in your story must not ever have existed in the real world (i.e., no stories about the vanished Roanoke Colony), but must be described as a place that could plausibly exist. For instance: Stephen King's fictional town of Derry. Your story must be set in the present, told in first person after the fact, from the point of view of someone who visited that place and returned to tell the tale. Supernatural elements are permitted, but not required. Your story's title must be the name of the place that is the subject of your story and the larger region in which it is located; for instance, "Derry, Maine." The horror of your story should lie in the characters discovering the long-lost reasons why that community was abandoned in the first place. Via: Dark Water Syndicate.

Taking Submissions: Sword & Sonnet

Deadline: March 1st, 2018 Payment: 6 cents per word Stories featuring a woman or non-binary battle poet as a main character. Word Count: Up to 5000 words Payment: US 6c per word Originals only.  No reprints. No multiple submissions.  No simultaneous submissions. Standard Manuscript Format. Doc, Docx or RTF. The Sword & Sonnet Kickstarter successfully funded and a wonderful group of writers — Alex Acks, C. S. E. Cooney, Malon Edwards, Spencer Ellsworth, Samantha Henderson, S. L. Huang, Cassandra Khaw, Margo Lanagan, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Tony Pi, A. Merc Rustad and A. C. Wise — have agreed to write for us. We’ll be holding an open submission period in February 2018 and actively encourage writers from all backgrounds to send us their stories. What kind of stories are you looking for? Stories featuring a woman or non-binary battle poet as a main character. Although we envision the bulk of the stories will be fantasy, we’re also open to science fiction or horror. We’re looking for lyrical Shimmery stories, epic fantasy tales, and gritty poetpunk. Stories could feature secondary, historical or contemporary settings. Although they don’t feature battle poets (and we’re not looking for carbon copies) here are some stories which give some examples of some of the flavors we’re looking for: Feed Me the Bones of Our Saints by Alex Dally MacFarlane The Half Dark Promise by Malon Edwards Piety, Prayer, Peacekeeper, Apocalypse by Rati Mehrotra What do you mean by battle poet? A poet who fights. We’re flexible on the definition. Does my story have to have lines of actual poetry in it? No. We’re looking for stories, not poems. Can I submit a poem? No. Your story can have some lines of poetry in it, but it doesn’t have to. We want stories, not poems. Are you accepting reprints? No. Original stories...

Taking Submissions: War on Christmas

Deadline: March 4th, 2018 Payment: 8 cents per word CA, 1 cent per word for reprints Note: Reprints allowed If it isn’t perfectly clear by now, we are looking for Ho ho, oh hell, is it that time of year again? Already? When the muzak starts cranking out lousy Casio versions of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” non-stop? When the flavour du jour switches from pumpkin spice to eggnog every goddamn thing? When everything gets all twinkly and glittery and your eyes just want to roll out of your skull from the sparkle overload? Worse: how about when every other person you come across wants to infect « Back to War on Christmas We’re looking for deranged and demented stories and poems that snap back against all that holiday schmaltz. Our leanings are toward the dark, the speculative (SF, fantasy, horror), the flat-out weird, the humourous, but that covers a lot of ground. But basically, if it would piss off Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly or that stuffy old grandma that always gave you hideous socks for Christmas, we’re in. One cautionary note: it’s likely there will be a lot of Santa stories submitted. We’d urge you think more widely, especially outside the white, Judeo-Christian canon. There’s really plenty to hate about Christmas, so it shouldn’t be that hard. Some guiding stars, if you like: The Ice Harvest Robert Devereaux’s Santa novels Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star” (not the wussed-out version they did on the Twilight Zone, neither!) Donald E. Westlake’s “Nackles” Neil Gaiman’s “Nicholas Was . . .” Joe Hill’s NO54A2 Damon Runyon’s “Dancing Dan’s Christmas” Don Bassingthwaite’s Cocktails at Seven, Apocalypse at Eight SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Submission window: Monday, January 15, 2018 to Sunday, March 4, 2018, at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Open to submissions by authors of all backgrounds, from...

Taking Submissions: Untitled Gothic Short Story Anthology

Deadline: March 11th, 2018 Payment: $25 and a contributor's copy FunDead Publications is now seeking traditional literary gothic stories with a non-traditional spin. We are looking to re-awaken a sleeping genre by putting a new spin on an old style. This anthology, (title TBA), is slated for release in late spring/early summer of 2018. Please read the guidelines and requests below for the best results, they are here to help YOU! Yes, there’s a lot of info there, but we want you to succeed, so utilize the guidelines and content requests. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Submit by midnight, March 11, 2018  Word Count: 6,000-15,000 words (Yes, that’s a lot for us, so use them wisely!) Payment: Accepted submissions will be awarded payment in the way of $25 upon printing, paid via PayPal, along with a print copy of the anthology. Previous calls have been limited to $10 per story, so this is the highest payment we have been able to offer thus far! Accepted authors will also be promoted via social media and beyond (we post daily, often, and spotlight our writers regularly). Format: Format should be in standard manuscript format and submitted as .doc or .docx. We expect the proper information to be stated at the top of the first page (name, title, word count, author’s info, etc.). Unfortunately, we cannot accept reprints at this time. Please include a brief cover letter introducing yourself along with your submission, this may be pasted into the e-mail, or attached as its own file. Please let us know if this is a simultaneous submission. Response Time: Please be aware that it may be AFTER THE CLOSE of the submissions call (in March) before you receive a response from FunDead Publications, we often wait until after the close date to send acceptance e-mails to ensure we select the best...

Taking Submissions: Cenorot

Deadline: March 15th, 2018 Payment: .006 per word Scheduled Release Date: November 2018 Title: CENOROT Anthology Word Count: 2500-6000k max Theme-futuristic undead The year is 2025. The planet has been riddled with radiation and in an effort to sustain life the world's leading scientists have come up with a new procedure to keep humans and animals alive. The success rate was high ... until the new creatures began to show signs of rot. Genetically and physically enhanced, these monsters begin to turn on each other and their makers. Genre: horror, science fiction Submissions of high quality should be original, unpublished works. Submission guidelines can be found here: http://www.writersdigest.com/…/what-are-the-guidelines-for-… Email: [email protected] Deadline: midnight (cst) March 15, 2018 Pay: .006 per word Acceptance letters will be sent by May 15, 2018 please do not inquire prior to that date regarding submission status. Poetry may be submitted 200-1000 word max.

Taking Submissions: Untitled Anthology On Dreams, Nightmares, Visions, And Hallucinations

Deadline: March 15th, 2018 Payment: $5-20, depending on length and a contributor's copy An untitled anthology on DREAMS, NIGHTMARES, VISIONS, and HALLUCINATIONS. ​DEADLINE: 15 MARCH 2018 Everything is not as it seems. The world appears normal, but something is off. Is the hallway stretching? The windows and doors too wide?  Are colors this vibrant, this alive? Sharp claws and jagged teeth closing in. You run, but everything slows.  The creature's breathing intensifies, its poisonous breath slaps the back of your neck. A crack appears, the seams split, and reality crumbles.  Are you falling or floating?  The music echoes, raindrops against memories.  The past, present, and future are one, birth and death the same moment. You scream—awaken, covered in sweat. The nightmare fades, shards of the dream fade into the ether. *** The wise one kneels before the altar, meditates as candles and incense burn.  Through rhythmic breathing and concentration, spirit separates from body and roams the astral plane.  The wandering soul happens across a curtain of blue velvet, blowing in the gentle breeze.  The answers are behind the fabric—once pulled aside, everything shall be revealed. *** What is that?  Is it real?  It can't be… *** TRANSMUNDANE PRESS proudly announces a new anthology, this time exploring DREAMS, NIGHTMARES, VISIONS, and HALLUCINATIONS. We are looking for stories centered upon the mysterious powers of the mind—the images that bewitch us while we sleep, the terrors that make us dread bedtime, the prophecies delivered from the divine, and the illusions that appear tangible. SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES: Send stories that are heavily edited and ready for us to read. These must be original pieces for first-time publication. WORD COUNT:  No longer than 6,000 words. FORMATTING: Your submissions must be in 12 point, Times New Roman font, double-spaced with page numbers. We like headers in the top right...

Taking Submissions: Sockhops and Séances

Deadline: March 15th, 2018 Payment: Stories under 1,500 words are 4% of gross profit, Above that is 5% Anthology curated by Nicole Petit It seems like everything’s finally settled down, fifty years into the twentieth century. War is over. The economy’s booming. People are on a long exodus from the city. It’s all settling. But the occult lurks everywhere… In sleepovers, as teenagers intone, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” Or stare into the mirror, calling upon Mary. They scream, convinced something looks back from inside the glass. New music dominates the airwaves, discordant and wild. They say it’s the devil’s music. Strange lights dominate the sky. Are they Russians? Little Green Men? Or something altogether stranger? Perhaps things are not as settled as they feel… What We Want THE BASICS: Supernatural stories set in the 1950s. Not horror stories, necessarily, but stories that use the 1950s and its spook culture (and spook-busting culture) in an engaging way. Bring us supernatural adventures, supernatural mysteries, supernatural fantasy, or supernatural pulp. First and foremost, aim to capture the spirit of the era. That’s something we felt Speakeasies and Spiritualists succeeded with, in regards to the 1920s. THE SOCKHOPS: Historical accuracy is required. This extends beyond technology to attitudes, beliefs, and so on. See below for a full discussion of historical accuracy. We are open to stories starring (or featuring) historical figures. THE SÈANCES: Creative, fresh supernatural elements are preferred. Think more The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, and less Godzilla or The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. While we’re not closed to submissions featuring traditional occult threats such as vampires, werewolves, etc., stories featuring these monsters will be a hard sell. Only the most outstanding stories will catch our eye. If you chose to use a monster—or someone pretending to be a monster—we’d prefer something wild. Think of The Blob,...

Taking Submissions: Hinnom Magazine (LIMITED WINDOW!)

Deadline: March 15th, 2018 Payment: $30 for stories under 3,000 words, $55 for those over 3,000 words Greetings from the Valley of Hinnom, With the amazing success of Hinnom Magazine during the year of 2017, we have decided to move onward with this publication and to make several big changes that will not only widen our reach to the darker side of literature, but will also benefit the authors. The issues will release bi-monthly, on the last day of every other month, starting in February 2018. We seek authors who have a unique voice, interesting writing styles, and unparalleled storytelling talents. We also encourage prospective authors to read one of our previous publications to get a feel of the atmosphere and themes we favor. We know a lot of publishers say this, but there is good reason for it. FICTION SUBMISSION DETAILS: Whereas last year’s issues of Hinnom Magazine were a bit more lenient, the 2018 volume is going to be much more specific in our themes since we have found our voice as a publication. Below, you will find the genres and subgenres that we adore. Again, if you read our previous releases, you will likely develop a solid understanding of what Hinnom Magazine represents in dark fiction. We are looking for stories that fit the themes of Weird Fiction and Cosmic Horror. Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy are all welcomed, as long as they fit in the realms of Weird and Cosmic. All stories must also be speculative in some way. What we mean by this is that we don’t want stories based in realism. While many great horror stories are plausible in modern reality, these stories are not for Hinnom Magazine. Thus, all horror MUST BE otherworldly or supernatural in some way. Science Fiction MUST BE dark and speculative. Fantasy MUST BE morally ambiguous and grim. Any combination of the above genres is fine. In fact, we encourage it. ...