Events

Taking Submissions: Freeze Frame Fiction Issue #1

Deadline: June 15th, 2014 Payment: 1cent/word What are we looking for? Flash fiction, pure and simple. No genre or content restrictions. 1000 words or less. Possible themed submission windows in the future. Good flash fiction is like a freeze frame—a snapshot of a real story about real characters. The word count is low, so many of the details are left to the reader to fill in, but they’re there. Flash fiction is not the same as a vignette, or a scene; it hints at much more. Give us something real (though not necessarily realistic), unique, and interesting. What is our submission and publication schedule? Open for submissions for Q1. We will publish online quarterly. Schedule subject to change. SUBMISSIONS PUBLICATION Q1: 1 April–15 June 1 July Q2: 1 July–15 September 1 October Q3: 1 October–15 December 1 January Q4: 1 January–15 March 1 April How do you submit? During submission window, please email submissions (as .pdf, .rtf, .doc, or .docx attachments) to [email protected] with the subject “Flash fiction submission”. Please include contact information in the email itself, and withhold it from the manuscript. All submissions must be double-spaced and in a legible font and font size. Feel free to follow Standard Manuscript Format, apart from contact information. Emails should be formatted as follows: Author’s name: Submission title: Simultaneous submission: (y/n) Cover letter / bio: not required, but welcome Will we pay you? Yes, 1 cent/word. How will your work be published? Initially, online, free to read. Future plans exist for an ebook version of an annual anthology of select pieces. How and when should you query? Expected response time will be updated on an on-going basis. As publication occurs three months after submission windows open, we don’t expect this to be a big issue. Please feel free to email [email protected]...

Taking Submissions: Dia de los Muertos Volume 2

Deadline: June 15, 2014 Payment: $30 and a contributor copy   Motorcycle Themed Anthology: Elektrik Milk Bath Press is seeking stories for a new motorcycle-themed anthology.  What we are looking for: 1. We are looking for unusual, original stories that, in some way, shape, or form involve motorcycles and/or their riders, surroundings, etc.  Perhaps the entire story revolves around a particular motorcycle and/or its rider.  Maybe a motorcycle is important to the setting or the background, maybe it’s just passing through...  While motorcycles or their elements must figure into the piece, the actual degree of involvement in the story… well, we’ll leave that up to you.  If you want an idea of what we like, check out one of our favorite motorcycle-themed stories, Julio Cortazar’s “The Night Face Up.”  2.  The above mentioned stories are just ideas.  We want to see what you come up with, so show us your creative best.  Stories can be dark fantasy, horror, magic realism, literary, etc.  Humor is okay, too.  What we want, more than anything, is a good, solid story—stores that touch us, as readers, in some way.  We love stories that are written from an unusual perspective, contain unusual but believable characters, or show us something we’ve never seen before.   We don’t mind sex or blood—not even a bit—but we are not huge fans of excessive gore.   If it is necessary to the story, no problem at all—we get that.  Gore for gore’s sake... not so much. 3.  A word about word count:  We are accepting stories from 1000—5000 words, with the majority of stories probably falling in 2000-5000 word range.  We are pretty flexible with word count as long as it’s a great story.  Impress us and even if you are a little over or a little under, we...

Taking Submissions: Rejected

Deadline: June 30th 2014 Payment: $5 and a Digital copy Submissions Dates: 3/1/14 - 6/30/14   Publication Date: Late 2014 (November-December)   Rejected Overview     We, at Harren Press, are hosting a REJECTED anthology! Any short story that you have written, submitted, and been rejected with; we are interested in seeing it and the rejection letter. We are accepting any genre, so feel free to submit anything you have.     What we ARE looking for: Stories that have been polished by the writer, but for one reason or another were not accepted by the intended publisher.     What we are NOT looking for: Stories that have obvious reasons for rejection. We do not want stories that are filled with several grammatical and spelling errors. We do not want stories that have no ending, have no plot, and have no character building. Your story should be a complete short story.     Within this anthology, there will be a forward that discusses the various reasons that stories, even perfectly written stories, can sometimes hit the rejection pile at different presses, small and large. The foward will be written by Brian Woods. Stories will be selected by Brian Woods, Jesse Duckworth, and the Harren Press staff.   Rights   We purchase First Electronic, First Print, and Anthology Rights. Please remember that you can only sell your various “First” rights once. You will only be able to market your accepted story as a reprint, once we have published it, which may limit where you can submit it to in the future, and how much you may be paid for it. Only you can make this business decision for yourself.   Submission Requirements 1. We are looking for short stories between 2,500-5,500 words.   2. We pay $5 for your story and a...

Taking Submissions: Daylight Dims Volume 2

Deadline: $0.01 a word and an ebook Payment: June 30th, 2014 We want unique, strange, and compelling horror fiction. The writing style should be unusual but mesmerizing. The characters should be believable. Awe us, make us cry, make us laugh, make us sigh. The ideal story should stay with us for a long time after reading. Expectations: We will not accept reprints, multiple submissions, or simultaneous submissions. To clarify, this means that we will not accept a story that has already been published, you can only submit one story, and you cannot have the story you submit to us also submitted to other publications. Response time: We will back to you as soon as possible, but many things factor into our response time. The goal is to have it back to you within four to six weeks from submission date. Length: The best stories are those written in the right amount of words. There is no word minimum, but the ideal maximum is 10,000 words. The preferred range is 2,500–7,500. Compensation: You will be paid $0.01 a word and an ebook for original work and first-printing, world exclusive rights (text and audio) for 12 (twelve) months after the anthology is released. About Us: Volume 1 released Halloween, 2013. It featured thirteen stories that crossed the genres of surreal horror, dark fantasy, and heart pounding dread. The debut horror anthology lived up to the guarantee to twist the reader's perception, and we can't wait to do that again. From the common, comfortable tropes, to the more taboo, the tales should have a literary aspect designed to expand the readers understanding of what true horror can be. If you would like to get an idea of what we are looking for, please check out the wonderful thirteen stories that made it through...

Taking Submissions: People Eating People – A Cannibal Anthology

Deadline: June 30th, 2014 Payment: Even split of net profits between Editor, Authors, and Illustrator. Paid quarterly. This will be a very small project. Many of the stories will be solicited from friends of mine, both IRL and online. That doesn't mean they aren't accomplished authors. So, there aren't many open spots. This idea was born as a reaction to an editor's complaint about the volume of cannibal submissions he received through Apex's slush pile. With large markets, themes and tropes tend to come in waves. Apparently that wave includes cannibals right now. So some of his friends, and mine, started joking about starting a cannibal-themed anthology. Well, here we are. What are we looking for? Cannibals, obviously. But we aren't looking for the same tired stories that feature inbred hillbillies capturing college spring-breakers and serving them up for lunch. You see it in film even more than fiction; The Hills Have Eyes, Dying Breed, Wrong Turn etc... Give us something fresh. Sexy cannibals. Philosophic cannibals. Lawyer cannibals. Quiltbag cannibals. Cannibal angels. Cannibal steampunk. Alt. History with cannibals. A cannibal family drama. What we are not looking for. Rapey cannibals. Hillbilly cannibals. Racist cannibals. Tribal cannibals. There's always exceptions to the rules, but if you use any of these things it better be a damned good story. Poetry - Query, you never know. Word Limit: 8,000 - Query for longer. Format: Standard Manuscript Format http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html Response Time: 2 weeks or less, depending on volume. Pay: Even split of net profits between Editor, Authors, and Illustrator. Paid quarterly. Fewer authors = more money. So I'll be favoring longer stories, though won't rule out shorter ones depending on the quality and other factors. Publisher: Self published in Kindle Format and possibly Createspace depending on interest. Please send submissions to [email protected] using "Submission" in...

Taking Submissions: Wicked Women

Deadline: June 30th 2014 Payment: £10 on publication, copy of the paperback and profit share for two years. Darlings! The awesome team of Jen & Jan are doing a Fox Spirit anthology and we are open for submissions! Official blurb type thing - Wicked Women  Edited by Jan Edwards and Jenny Barber Regular readers of Fox Spirit books know that women are pretty bad-ass – be they evil queens, goddesses, super-villains or anti-heroes, warriors, monsters, bad girls, rebels, mavericks or quietly defiant – so with that in mind, we’re looking for stories of women who gleefully write their own rules, women who’ll bend or break the social norms, skate along the edge of the law and generally aim to misbehave. Genres: any variation of fantasy, SF, horror and/or crime. Length: 4000 – 8000 words Format: doc/docx/rtf files – see the Fox Spirit house style guide for formatting requirements Email as an attachment to: [email protected] Please put ‘Submission: Wicked Women/story title’ in the email subject line Deadline: 30th June 2014 Payment: £10 on publication, copy of the paperback and profit share for two years. Odd notes - Yes, we’re accepting stories from men too! Just make sure your lead is a woman. A leading woman can be cisgender or transgender or any person who chooses to self identify or present as a woman in the space of the story. Via: Jenny Barber

Taking Submissions: Yesterday You Said Tomorrow

Deadline: June 30th, 2014 Payment: An equal percentage royalty split of 50% of sales p.o.d. and e-book. Burnt Offerings Books is planning on publishing a series of anthologies. The theme of the next anthology will be fixed-timeline time-travel. Why fixed-timeline time-travel? Because I love books and films about time travel. And I hate books and films about time travel. I love the idea of time travel but I hate paradoxes. One of the only films I know of that successfully used the concept of fixed-timeline time-travel is 12 Monkeys. With almost every other film that uses time travel as a plot device, the plot holes and paradoxes ruin them for me. The most recent time-travel film I've watched was Looper. If the premise they were using was fixed-timeline time travel, then much of the film would be completely untenable. The plot holes could have been fixed if they had taken the time to work on the screenplay, but they weren't because they didn't. It's things like that which set me to thinking. What is "fixed-timeline time travel"? I think that this infographic explains it fairly well.   What kind of stories are we looking for? A good story trumps genre classification but we are generally looking for stories about time travel. We are going to be very discriminative in our selection process. We are looking for literature.   Not just stories. If you’re going to explore a traditional genre, we expect you to do something new with it. If you send us another textbook genre story, you will receive a polite letter of refusal and suggestions for other markets that may be better suited for your work. What we’re looking for is writing that is evocative and actually effects readers emotionally. If you’re going to go for scary, we want terrifying writing...

Taking Submissions: 13 Quick Shivers

Deadline: July 1st 2014 Payment: $10 and digital copy DailyNightmare.com is accepting submissions for its second annual anthology of 100-word prose poems based on any of the 350-plus nightmares currently posted on the site (http://dailynightmare.com/category/nightmares/). Payment will be $10.00 made via PayPal and a .pdf of the final anthology in exchange for First World Serial Rights, electronic rights, and reprint rights for posters and postcards. (After one year, rights can be reassigned to the author.) In addition to professional word-rate, this will be a cool-looking publication since we intend to exploit all the tricks of expressive digital typography. The deadline for submissions is July 1. A couple extremely specific criteria: 1) All submissions must be “inspired by” one of the nightmares posted on the site. (Hint: Want to submit a story based on one of YOUR nightmares? Then submit a non-fictional account of the nightmare along with the art or story that it inspired. We’ll assign it a Nightmare Number.) 2) Written submissions (stories or poems) must contain EXACTLY 100 words including title. Email submissions to: anthology @ dailynightmare.com and include the number of the inspirational nightmare in the SUBJECT line Include a brief bio (~ 25 – 50 words) with the submission so we don’t have to track you with our hellhounds. What are we looking for? We at the DailyNightmare groove on the idea of inhabiting each other’s dreams, even the nasty, ooky ones, and this anthology is one step toward that kind of communal nightmare-scape. 100 words aren’t many, so sharpen at least one point of the narrative pentacle: mood, character, plot, setting, theme, and try to imbue your piece with a “sense of completion.” Poetry or prose, matters not; word count does. DailyNightMare.com celebrates literate terror (or “snob horror” if you will), so heighten the language,...

Taking Submissions: Spooklights Anthology

Deadline: July 6, 2014 Payment: 10 contributor’s copies Our first-ever publication, Spooklights, will feature literary horror and supernatural tales by authors around the country. We’d love to feature a few additional stories by up-and-coming authors in literary genre fiction! Deadline: July 6, 2014 Payment: 10 contributor’s copies Length: 1000 – 5000 words Looking for: horror, supernatural, or generally weird original tales; well-written with a good sense of voice, atmosphere, and originality; unique settings, characters, or perspectives; creative use of horror standbys; stories that are creepy, scary, or just plain fun. Not looking for: tired tropes used in conventional ways (zombies, unless you do something new with them), straight serial killer tales, or cliche-ridden fiction . Gore, violence, sex, etc. okay if used tastefully. The point of a good literary horror story is not death, violence, and dismemberment, but a message that says something about fear, humanity, and evil. The collection will be sold as an e-book through major distributors, and as a print copy in local book stores, conventions, and artist outlets. Publication will occur in August or September. Every submission will receive a personalized response. To submit: Send an email with the story attached as a .pdf, .doc/.docx, .odt, .rtf, or pasted into the body of the email. Use a simple font, 12-point, one inch margins, with your name, phone number, and email address on the title page. Number your pages if sent as an attachment. Colored or wacky fonts will send your story to the recycle bin. In your email, state the name of the story, the basic premise, the word count, and any previous publication information (if you have any; not necessary). Tell us what the story means to you personally, and why you wrote it. Send submissions to: [email protected] Please see our Submission and Guidelines page...

Taking Submissions: Killer Bees from Outer Space

Deadline: July 14th, 2014 Payment: 4% royalties after cost per story published in ebook and paperback form. We all like a good B Movie. Especially those wonderfully cliche films from the 1950s and beyond such as Plan 9 From Outer Space, I Was a Teenage Werewolf or even the most recent additions to the genre such as Sharknado. There is a sort of guilty pleasure and a sense of fun to be found in these films, and we are hoping that the sense of fun can be transferred to the short story form. To be edited by Theresa Derwin and published by KnightWatch Press, Killer Bees from Outer Space will be an anthology of stories playing with the cliches and ideas found in B Movies. But bee-ware, I do not want to be swarmed by stories about killer bees or other forms of insects, after all there are so many fun tropes to be used from the many examples out there. I have already received two bed stories so do not wish to receive anymore. Think outside the box. Escape of the 50ft Gorilla anyone? All submissions should: Be between 2,000 and 6,000 words in Standard Manuscript Format (http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html). Be typed in Courier or Times New Roman 12 Include your full details (name/address/telephone number/email address) Be sent to [email protected] as .doc or .rtf documents with the email subject header “SURNAME/BEES/WORDCOUNT”. Previously published stories WILL be considered for this anthology. Authors will retain copyright. Multiple submissions up to a maximum of two stories per author can be submitted. We will write to you within approximately four weeks of the submission deadline to let you know if you have been successful. We will pay royalties after cost per story published in ebook and paperback form.