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Taking Submissions: Broken Antler #1

 

Deadline: August 31st, 2023
Payment: $20 + a contributor copy of the magazine. We pay $10 (per piece) for work published in our online venues.
Theme: ALL genres of horror, as well as sci-fi and dark fantasy

Broken Antler is a literary magazine and publisher of work that is dark, speculative, experimental, unsettling, and absurd.

BAM Quarterly, Broken Antler’s online journal, publishes creative work four times a year (during the months of October, January, April, and July). Submissions for Issue 1 open June 1 and close August 31.

The Marrow, Broken Antler’s blog and home of our LGBTQIA+ creator series, is updated biweekly and currently accepting pitches for interviews, reviews, and essays, as well as creative submissions of micro fiction, poetry, and art.

And Broken Antler Magazine is our annual print publication, featuring creative and critical work from emerging and established writers, artists, creators, and individuals working within the horror space.

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Articles

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Best of the community: the Stoker Award winners for 2022

Best of the community: the Stoker Award winners for 2022

By Lauren McMenemy

 

The time has come and gone—”horror prom” was a few days ago, which means the winners of the 2022 Bram Stoker Awards are now public. Winners reflected the diversity of the horror community, including the first, then second, ever Puerto Rican-born winners of a Stoker—much-loved community heroes Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo and Gabino Iglesias.

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Events

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Taking Submissions: Short Story Substack July 2023 Window (Early Listing)

Submission Window: July 1st – 31st, 2023
Payment: $100 for the chosen story + 50% of subscription revenue
Theme: Any genre, short story

Changing the world, one story at a time

Mission = Revive the art of the short story, support artists, and produce something wonderful.

Payout = Base Pay of $100 for the chosen story + 50% of subscription revenue to be sent by Paypal, Zelle, or check.

Wait, you mean if this substack gets thousands of subscribers, the winner would get thousands of dollars?
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Articles

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Chilling the *Bleep* Out: Cultivating Calmness for the 2023 Summer Solstice

 

 

Summer’s here…it’s time to chill the *bleep* out! It’s been a stressful time over the past few years, and even this industrious Virgo is dreaming of long days spent doing absolutely nothing. So, to honor the indolent spirit of summer, I’m going to further break with tradition, and suggest we find creative inspiration in hues that soothes the spirit. While I’m not typically a fan of the more pastel spectrum of the colour wheel, I think we’ll find the calmness we seek in pale pinks, delicate violets, frosty greens, and ice-cold blues.
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Events / Flat Amount / Magazine

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Taking Submissions: Mythaxis July 2023 Submission Period (Early Listing)

Submission Window: July 23rd-30th, 2023
Payment: $20 per story
Theme: Diverse sci-fi and fantasy fiction.

Mythaxis is published four times a year, and is open to submissions within the following periods:

  • January 23rd-30th
  • April 23th-30th (this window cancelled in 2023)
  • July 23rd-30th
  • October 23rd-30th

Submissions received outside of these dates will unfortunately be lost and therefore not responded to. When open, we seek and offer the following:

  • Length: 1,000-7,500 words. This is a firm limit. Generally speaking, the further a story goes beyond 5,000 words the more it will need to impress, but the door is not shut in advance.
  • Compensation: $20 on acceptance and return of contract. Please be aware that payment is via PayPal only.

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Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Shanghai Immortal by A. Y. Chao

Disclosure:

Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Shanghai Immortal
Author: A.Y. Chao
Publisher: Hodderscape
Genre: Fantasy, Folklore, Sword & Sorcery, Romance
Release date: 31st October, 2023

Synopsis: This richly told adult fantasy debut teems with Chinese deities and demons cavorting in jazz age Shanghai.

Half vampire. Half fox-spirit. All trouble.

Pawned by her mother to the King of Hell as a child, Lady Jing is half-vampire, half-hulijing fox-spirit and all sasshole. As the King’s ward, she has spent the past ninety years running errands, dodging the taunts of the spiteful hulijing courtiers, and trying to control her explosive temper – with varying levels of success.

So, when Jing overhears the courtiers plotting to steal a priceless dragon pearl from the King, she seizes her chance to expose them, once and for all.

With the help of a gentle mortal tasked with setting up the Central Bank of Hell, Jing embarks on a wild chase for intel, first through Hell and then mortal Shanghai. But when her hijinks put the mortal in danger, she must decide which is more important: avenging her loss of face, or letting go of her half-empty approach to life for a chance to experience tenderness – and maybe even love.

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Articles / Interviews

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The Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction Stephen Kotowych Kickstarts a New Anthology

The Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Stephen Kotowych Kickstarts a New Anthology

By Angelique Fawns

Stephen Kotowych is finding the best hidden gems in the Canadian short speculative market and putting them in an anthology for all of us to enjoy. His Kickstarter funded in 45 minutes and closes on Thursday, June 29th.  

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kotowych/years-best-canadian-fantasy-and-science-fiction-volume-one

 

The Kitchener, Ontario-based Kotowych is no stranger to creating top-notch fiction. He is a winner of Writers of the Future, a two-time finalist for Canada’s Prix Aurora Award, and has been published in numerous anthologies. He shares more of his vision for us.

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Trembling With Fear

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Trembling With Fear 6-18-23

Hello, children of the dark. As I’m putting together this week’s issue for you, I’m also listening in to a talk on how we can use AI for creative collaboration. The speaker is passionate and knowledgeable and tends towards the speculative side of writing. I’m finding myself getting swept up in the possibilities.

But then.

Yes, but then.

I’m just not sure. AI, and particularly Chat-GPT, has turned the fiction world on its head. Lots of publications—ours included—have updated submission guidelines to say we are only looking for human-generated stories. And I agree with that. But I also know that this thing is here to stay, and we need to find a way to adapt. To grow. To evolve. 

At the moment, we’re scared because there’s a lack of transparency. There’s also the ethical question of where, how, and on what these AI models have been trained on. These are Very Large Questions that we won’t easily solve or answer. And then there’s this, which I put to this speaker via the chat: it does make me wonder what new ideas or new spins on things will be left if we’re just consuming stories based on stories based on stories based on… Or maybe we’re already doing that anyway? Is there anything new left?

The human element is essential. I’d like to believe that will never go away. But then, there are enough people out there getting so excited about possibilities that they are maybe not thinking straight, or thinking ethically, or logically, or with a future-proofed-for-humanity mind. Who knows what they’ll throw at us.

And all of this just makes me want to turn to writing sci-fi to figure out what I think!

How about you? Have you got a speculative tech-based story that is burning a hole in your pocket? Duncan Cave did, and this week he brings us a very different conversation with the Administrator—one with world-changing consequences—for our short story. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

  • Nancy Pica Renken has a very dangerous shower,
  • Emma Burnett struggles for an idea, and 
  • Catherine Berry finds out what happens when you mess with nature.

Over to you, Stuart.

Lauren McMenemy

Editor, Trembling With Fear

I don’t have too much to say quite yet! I’ve been starting to spot-check the Trembling With Fear collected anthology and have been reading short stories for our Best Of anthology. Outside of that? Work and school have been killing me this week so I don’t have too much to really add in that is new. More to come!

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

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