Deadline: November 15th, 2022
Payment: Royalty
Theme: Fantasy humor with grumpy old dragons

Spring is coming and so, with spring, the thoughts of editors naturally turn to… dragons.

Well, maybe that’s just us.

It does mean that the time is finally here to introduce an anthology especially for those weird and wonderful draconic characters, that so many of us have held dear to our hearts since childhood.

Did you grow up reading Patricia C. Wrede or Piers Anthony’s various books?  Ever wish you lived on Pern?  Then my friends, come on in and get comfortable, you are going to love writing for this anthology!

We’re looking for stories where the dragon takes center stage (or at least steals the show).

We’re open to any setting: maybe your dragon is disguised as a human and runs the local library and takes a very dim view of those who don’t return their books.  Perhaps your dragons took over the world in 1180 and the future now is kinda…dragon-shaped?

We’re perfectly happy to get a pile of typical DND styled dragon stories, as long as you subvert our expectations and make us laugh hard enough to be a danger to ourselves and others.

To be considered for the anthology, the story must contain at least one loveable ‘grumpy’ character – it can be the dragon’s human mentor, a disembodied ghost of a former dragon snack, or the dragon themselves.  Have fun with it and go berserk.

We’d prefer the dragon to be the MC but will consider stories with the dragon as antagonist, if the twist leaves us with our mouths open, and our tongues lolling out.

We have a distinct preference for clever characters that manage to get themselves into and out of deep trouble.

If you give us sparkling dialogue, well-drawn characters, and (most of all) a real ending with a twist, it will make our little editing hearts skip a beat.

So, let that inner Muse out! Feed her Pixie Stix and see how much awesomeness she can cram into 4000 words.

(All Muses must be convinced to write in American English since the Editors of this anthology do not speak Ancient Greek, Latin, Gaelic, Phoenician, or Egyptian.)

What’s better than dragons?

GRUMPY OLD DRAGONS.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION:  November 15^th, 2022

Words: 3000-4000

Genre: Humor

Rating: PG13-PG17

Submission Format:  Word Doc / RTF format

Subject Line:  Grumpy Dragons

(No PDFs or Google docs please.  We’re willing to work with you if you need to submit in a different format, just contact us!)

What rights are we asking for?

We’re asking for the exclusive rights to publish the stories for one year in the anthology and non-exclusive rights thereafter. We prefer first-run rights but will judge each story on its own merit.

Payment:

All authors who participate in the collection will receive an equal portion of the profit per a contract will be signed between the authors and Stormdance before publication.

Editors:

Vanessa Wells, Juneta Key, and Vanessa Finaughty.

Submit to: [email protected]

Who we are:

Vanessa Wells: Self-professed short story junkie, writer, and editor of anthologies. She has at least a hundred tabs always open on her browser and is the author of the Magus trilogy, Topeka Cozy Mysteries, and the Area 52 series, because sticking to one genre is boring. Amazon Page

Juneta Key: Juneta is a speculative fiction writer. She writes fantasy, sci-fi fantasy, space opera, paranormal fantasy while playing with the complexity of human nature. She wears a lot of hats: story development coach, Ninja Writers Team member, Insecure Writer’s Support Group admin, one of seven founders of the Storytime Quarterly Blog Hop, and published author. Learn more about Juneta here.

Vanessa Finaughty: A talented editor and fantasy author. She has written and edited for magazines, national newspapers, Oxford University Press Southern Africa and the International Trade Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, among others. Author Blog

Via: Storm Dance Books.