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Deadline: May 31st, 2022 Payment: $15 CAD upon publication ($10 for reprints) Theme: Exhaustion: Limited Reserves Note: Reprints Welcome “Exhaustion: Limited Reserves” Chapbook – Poetry and Flash Fiction Deadline: May 31, 2022 A common human experience is exhaustion in its many guises. Feeling used up or worn out. Reaching the limits of our personal and collective resources. Tapping out. Laying waste to the planet. Burning fuel until there’s nothing left but fumes. Covering a topic in its entirety, until everything that could be said has been said. This chapbook will engage these and other notions of exhaustion. Submission Guidelines: Flash Fiction: maximum 1000 words (no minimum). All genres welcome. The more imaginative, the better. Poems: maximum 60 lines each INCLUDING BLANK LINES (shorter is preferred – long pieces will need to earn their length). All styles welcome. Payment: $15 CAD upon publication ($10 for reprints) All payments through PayPal, Wise, or bank transfer. No submission fee. Multiple submissions: Yes. You can submit as many pieces as you like. Please submit each poem or story as a NEW SUBMISSION. Simultaneous submissions: Yes. Please email [email protected] right away if your piece is accepted elsewhere. Reprints: Previously published pieces will be considered, although we prefer original works. If you do send a reprint, please provide the name of the journal/date of publication, so that we can give proper attribution. Format: We aren’t too hung up on formatting. Just make it easy for us to read. No PAGES files. DOC or DOCX preferred. PDF accepted for poetry. Please title your file as follows: Title – Author Name SUBMIT TO “EXHAUSTION” HERE Via: Off Topic Publishing.

Submission Window: May 1st-31st, 2022 Payment: $.01 per word Theme: Quiet Horror We want quiet horror at Dread Imagings. No slashers, no zombies, no vampires, no werewolves (though transformation tales interest us). Also, no ghost stories. This last one is a personal preference. There are many fine ghost stories and authors who write them; we just don’t want them here. Stories of dread don’t need to be supernatural in nature. Think Poe. Or, better yet, think Shirley Jackson (The Lottery, The Witch), Flannery O’Conner (A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Good Country People), Ursula K. LeGuin (The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas). Not necessarily horror fiction at all but fiction that gets under your skin. In the vein of Thomas Ligotti is always welcome. We want new writers as well as established ones. We want voices from outside the U.S. and diverse voices from anywhere. We publish one story a month, and the collection of stories on our site should represent the full spectrum of human experiences. We’ll accept stories from 2,500 to 4,000 words. This isn’t a hard rule, but don’t stray too far from these limits. Use Shunn formatting (doc/docx/pdf). We pay $.01 per word. No reprints. No multiple submissions. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if your story is selected elsewhere. Authors retain all rights to their stories. We ask for first digital rights with no period of exclusivity and permission to keep the story on our site. Our response time should be within thirty days, and we respond to all submissions. If you haven’t heard back after six weeks, please inquire. Via: Dread Imaginings.

Deadline: May 31st, 2022 Payment: 8 cents per word (there is also a contest to win $3,000 though it has submission fees.) Theme: Open Road Write a story involving roads, and a glove. Does the road call to you? To some, it offers freedom, adventure, and opportunity. To others, injury and death. Or, as you slow for the shadowed hitchhiker, you wonder if the risks aren’t more sinister… Roadtrips, van life, and fugitives on the run. From deserts to coastline to deep-shadowed forests, the open road has a place in our hearts. Whether it calls you to drift or confronts you with the long road home, it’s undeniably a place of self-discovery. Of new faces and new attitudes. Just don’t take a wrong turn, blow a tire, or stop in ghost towns. Beware the long grass and mutant bikers. Don’t roll down the window for strangers, but do give them a lift. Travel by horse and buggy, sneaker and bag, or get behind the wheel, but hit the dusty trail and head into the unknown. Our Mission: Help new talent go pro, award life-changing prize money, and promote fiction writers worldwide. HOW IT WORKS Each month we hold a contest based on a short fiction prompt. You write a wonderful story and enter the contest. We choose the winner who receives the grand prize. We also choose the best stories, pay the authors above-professional rates, and publish them in our magazine. WHO CAN ENTER? Anyone can submit work to the magazine for free, but you must be an Elegant+ Member to enter the contests and win prizes. Membership is $10/month and includes over $250 in exclusive discounts from our partners like Scrivener, ProWritingAid, Novel Factory, and more. WHAT ARE THE ODDS? The odds depend on the number of members who...

Deadline: May 31st, 2022 Payment: Royalties on 4k+ stories Theme: Pirate stories that involve but don't focus on famous pirates. Title: The Call of the Sea Opens: 1 February 2022 Closes: 31 May 2022, 11:59 EST Theme: Gather round, ye bilge rats, and send the landlubbers back whence they came! These tales are for the strong of heart, the courageous corsairs, adventurous scallywags, and lads and lasses loyal to the lawlessness of the sea. Give us ADVENTURE, searches for treasure, sea battles, the perils of loving a Jack Tar, and the dangers of the briny deep. You can use any of the big names in your story (Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Ching Shih, Sir Francis Drake, Black Bart, etc.), but they should be secondary characters, with your MC as an ordinary, unknown person. These are the stories that created legends. Word Limit: 2-8k Author Eligibility: Open to all Reprints: Allowed if rights belong to author, royalty paid at a lower percentage Simultaneous Submissions: Not allowed Multiple Submissions: Max of 2 acceptances Author Compensation: One digital copy and wordcount-based royalty split Send your story and up to a 100-word author bio with 2 (two) links as a Word doc attachment to: [email protected] Please include the Anthology Title, Story Title, and Author name in your email subject line, with your document file name as: Author Name - Story Title. Via: Black Ink Fiction.

Deadline: May 31st, 2022 Payment: $0.03 per word for the winner, and 2 cents per word and 1 cent for second and third place respectively Theme: Open Water Your June theme is... ...Open Water. Whether it’s lost at sea, trapped in a boat, being a stowaway, kidnapped, going down with the ship, etc. But keep it dark and psychologically disturbing. Bonus challenge: write the story in a pre-21st century setting. The winner will receive $0.03 per word, publication, and an Author Spotlight on our newsletter and Patreon page. Since we’ve reached out goal of 180 patrons, we can once again offer $0.02 a word to 2nd and $0.01 per word to third place respectively. Submission guidelines: -Max 1,500 words -Submit your entry in the body of an email to [email protected] (no attachments) -The email subject line should be the story’s title and your author name / pseudonym -The deadline is midnight at the end of May, wherever in the world you may reside. -No multiple submissions (only your best story) Please take note… You do not need to be a Crystal Lake Patreon patron to enter. This is a contest and only the top three placing stories will receive payment. I'll personally read all the email submissions and post the best 10 to 20 stories on the Crystal Lake Publishing Patreon page (to our $5 a month and higher tiers). Our patrons will then read all the entries, posted one per day, and vote for a winner. Some editors/publishers may consider having your story posted on a subscription-based platform, like Patreon, as a first publication. If your story does not win, we will remove it upon request.   Via: Crystal Lake Publishing's Patreon.

Deadline: May 31st, 2022 Payment: £10 Theme: Earth Song—Stories of animal or ecological-themed horror, or of Mother Nature’s wrath, in support of World Environment Greetings boils, ghouls, and other creatures of the night! Starting in December, 2021, we are open for submissions of flash fiction horror stories on a different theme each month. We will be seeking horror fiction of all forms and flavours to be published as part of a new and ongoing series from Night Terror Novels Publishing, titled The Theatre Phantasmagoria. If this has piqued your interest, please scroll down for the full details! What are We Looking For? Each month, a new theme will be announced, and we will be accepting flash fiction submissions based around this theme. From these submissions, four stories will be chosen to be published each Friday of the subsequent month, and at the end of the year, these forty-eight pieces will appear in a similarly titled anthology. As always, if your story is blatantly racist or homophobic it will be instantly rejected. We also encourage submissions from female, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors, as we’re striving to offer a range of experiences and perspectives in this series. Our current lineup for The Theatre Phantasmagoria, January to April, includes Mia Dalia, Paul Wilson, Angela Sylvaine, Yvonne Lang, Mark Robinson, James Van Pelt, D. Matthew Urban, Ali Seay, Alex Ebenstein, Nikki R. Leigh, Andrew Jackson, Safia Mlani, Michael H. Hanson, Matt Bliss, Megan Kiekel Anderson, Andrew Gehlsen, and Samuel M. Hallam. If you want to see your name alongside these terrific writers, then send a piece our way! The anthology will be edited, and the stories selected, by J. D. Keown. He can be found on both Instagram and Twitter @JDKAuthor, and we can be found on Instagram @nightterrornovels. All updates and announcements regarding this project will be posted on each of those accounts, so give us a follow...

Deadline: May 31st, 2022 Payment: £10 Theme: A non-zombie outbreak O is for Outbreak – Submissions open April 1st. Deadline May 31st. Think outside the box for this one, and no zombies please! We’re sure Book 26 will cover that! We are currently calling for submissions for a series of horror anthologies – The A-Z of Horror. The series will be based on a variety of themes and will consist of twenty-six books in total. We are looking for short horror stories, between 4000 and 8000 words, on each of the themes listed below. You may submit to more than one book, but we will only include a maximum of one story from each author, in each book. Being accepted into one book does not guarantee acceptance into one of the others. The story must be your own work, to which you hold the rights. The story must not be available elsewhere and, if accepted, we will hold the rights to it for three months from the date of publication. After that time, you may use the story however you wish. Any sub-genre of horror is suitable, even extreme, so long as the story fits the theme of that book and does not include anything which may unnecessarily cause offence (glorification of child abuse, rape, etc.). Payment for the story will be £10, to be paid by PayPal, as well as a contributor’s e-book of the finished book. Please send submissions in a Word document (ideally Times New Roman 12pt, single spaced) to [email protected] with the title of the book you are submitting to in the subject line. Please ensure you have included your name on the Word document. If you have any queries, feel free to get in touch using the Contact page. We aim to respond to submissions within 2 weeks...