Ongoing Submissions: The Deadlands

Payment: 10 cents per word, 1 cent per word for reprints
Theme: Speculative fiction that concerns itself with death–but also everything death may involve.
Note: Reprints welcome

The Deadlands exists in liminal spaces between life, death, and elsewhere. We are looking for speculative fiction that concerns itself with death–but also everything death may involve. A ghost in a shadowed wood. An afterlife discovered through a rusted door. An abandoned house in the middle of a haunted field. A skeletal figure moving with intent toward something unseen. Death personified. Burials in troubled lands. A raised scythe against a clouded sky. Memento mori. The rivers of the dead. The sprawling underworlds beneath our feet.

The Deadlands would love to see stories from a worldwide perspective, different cultures, different approaches to death. We welcome stories from everyone, everywhere. Stories that feature characters impacted by someone passing away and processing the event of death, are fair game, but will likely be a hard sell. Stories about related subjects—zombies, demons, vampires, apocalypses, and the various undead—are not for us. An apocalypse may be your setting, but it isn’t your story. We are absolutely not interested in seeing weird West stories, or steampunk tales. Humor will be a harder sell than heartbreaking.

Explore some influences we’re drawing from.

The Deadlands accepts stories up to 5000 words. Stories should be original and unpublished (this includes your blog, your website, your newsletter, your Patreon). The sweet spot for length is probably around 3-4k. One submission per author; no multiple submissions or simultaneous submissions; if you are submitting fiction, you cannot also submit poetry or nonfiction. If a story is on submission somewhere else, please wait before sending it to us. The Deadlands pays 10¢/word for original fiction.

Fiction Reprints

The Deadlands will consider reprints, up to 5000 words, 1¢/word. Please note that the story is a reprint when submitting, and please list the market where it originally appeared.

Non-fiction, Editor David Gilmore

The Deadlands exists in the preparation of a burial shroud, the candlelit vigil, the etching of the epitaph. We are looking for essays that explore the relationship between humanity and death. We are looking for a wide range of subjects, including but not limited to: cultural funerary practices, rituals of remembrance, historical explorations of death imagery, death imagery used in art and by artists, death imagery found in graveyards and on tombstones.

The Deadlands wants critical, academic, and personal essays from everywhere and from everyone. We are specifically not interested in reviews, or examinations of death portrayed in media, as these will be covered by our in-house reviewer. Essays should be between 1-4k words. We want clear, thorough work that shows an appreciation not appropriation of culture. If it is your own culture, and you have personal knowledge or experience or with your subject, all the better. We want to read ritual not spectacle. These essays should show the proper tone and respect that the final embrace deserves.

Essays should be original and unpublished (including blogs and Patreon). One submission per author; no multiple submissions or simultaneous submissions; if you are submitting nonfiction, you cannot submit poetry or fiction. If a piece is on submission somewhere else, please wait before sending it to us. The Deadlands pays $100 per essay.

Poetry, Editor Sonya Taaffe

When I enter the earth
I take this sky with me, an offering
to the gods of those whose graves I opened.
—Rika Lesser, “Lucien’s Ploughman 1848”

The Deadlands are a liminal space reached by a broad road and we are looking for the same diversity in our speculative poetry. We welcome the weird, the mythic, the interstitial, and the unclassifiable; we are as interested in the underworld and its denizens as we are in ghosts, grief, and history. We prefer the uncanny to the gross-out, although we do not shy from physical realities. Death may be personified or not as you please.

We are at home to the hauntological in a major way. We value boundary-crossing in style as well as subject and will consider both experimental and formal verse, although we are a hard sell on full-scale epic poetry; we would love to see bilingual or multilingual work. We are especially committed to the voices of marginalized poets. Please try us rather than self-reject! Whichever way you approach these ambiguous lands, we want to read what you find there.

Please send us no more than three poems per submission. We do not accept simultaneous submissions or unsolicited reprints. Payment is $50/poem, no length limit. One submission per author; if you are submitting poetry, you cannot also submit fiction or nonfiction; no multiple submissions or simultaneous submissions. If a piece is on submission somewhere else, please wait before sending it to us.

Via: The Deadlands’ Moksha.