Deadline: June 20th, 2019
Payment: $10

Send us your yin/yang stories, your tales of good twin/bad twin, your thoughts about anything and everything twinnish, even the astrological sign of Gemini. Stories should contain strong plotlines or strong characters … and be creative. We want our readers to be immersed in each story and invested in each character. You needn’t stick solely to humans. Feel free to write a fairy tale and/or a dark tragedy—or anything in between.

We want stories from 500 to 3,000 words in length, fiction or non-fiction. Uninvited are screenplays. Also uninvited are stories that are publicly available on any website, such as your Facebook page or Wattpad. [Editor’s Note: This market has specific guidelines for things they do not want to see. Please click on the link at the bottom of this post for all the details and follow their guidelines: it’s the polite and respectful thing to do. Also, it will help those submitting avoid being rejected on anything other than the quality of their work.] We want YA readers to enjoy the published anthology without parental balking.

Submissions will open on at 12:00:01 a.m. May 21, 2019 and will close at 23:59:59 EST on June 20, 2019. The judges will not read submissions as they arrive; they will begin to read submissions on June 21. You will receive a status notification (rejected or accepted) approximately three months after submissions close (around September 21). Judges will only offer an acceptance or rejection email, without feedback. Along with their thanks for submitting of course, either way.

There Is No Reading Fee

You may submit up to three stories, but we will accept a maximum of two stories per author. We will pay $10 USD via PayPal per story accepted. Contributors will receive one copy of the book electronically (even if two stories are accepted). We will plaster your name around the universe as best we can. In other words, wherever we market the book, publicize the book, or mention the book, the contributing authors’ names will be mentioned. We expect to publish paperbacks and eBooks, which will be available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and online. For authors local to Southeast Pennsylvania, we will attempt to provide as much face-time as possible, including book signings.

Submissions must be via Moksha. Do not put your name on your submission, but follow the instructions on the site to ensure your work is attributable to you. Format: Use Word, 12-point font in Georgia, Times New Roman or equivalent, in black ink, and double-spaced (Shunn formatting). If you need a reminder about formatting: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

Your work should be as perfect as possible prior to submitting. We want to read your best writing. We are editors by trade so grammatical, typographical, and syntactical errors will be glaring to us and will take us out of your story. We will notify you if we feel your story is excellent but could use a few edits, and we will work with you to elevate the writing.

We will accept reprints if you have the rights back; please note in your cover letter if this is a reprint. If you submit your story simultaneously to other markets, you must notify us via email by close of submissions on June 20, 2019 if it has been accepted elsewhere.

We anticipate approximately 120K words in the anthology.

Now the legal jargon: We’re asking for first rights nationally and internationally, but all rights will revert back to you six months after initial publication release. After those six months, you can publish it wherever you like so long as you note that it was first published in our anthology. If for some odd reason the book is not published within 24 months from the date of acceptance (as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,”) we will return first rights to you immediately. Once your story(ies) is/are accepted, you will receive a contract with details of rights and how you get paid. Accepted authors under the age of 18 must get a parent to sign the contract. You will get a galley sheet of your story(ies) prior to printing to ensure that you are a part of this process.

We will accept a maximum of two stories to be published.

Via: Gemini Word Smiths.