Payment: $20
Theme: Cyberpunk
We have a pretty broad idea of what cyberpunk as a genre is and isn’t. We’re living in it, so why stamp it down to some cookie cutter bullshit? Neon Dystopia looks for nuanced takes on genre fiction, talks on the writing process, the world around us, and what these things mean to us NOW, not later or then.
By Angelique Fawns
Wendy N. Wagner is no stranger to horror and speculative fiction. She’s the editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine and the Managing Senior Editor of Lightspeed. Hugo-award winning and Locus-award nominated for her editing, she’s also been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award with her short fiction. Her latest book, Girl in the Creek will be released by Tor Nightfire in 2025. Wagner uses cli-fi cosmic horror to explore the dark side of beautiful places.
Nightfire teases the storyline with this:
“Deep within the wild Clackamas National Forest, the shadows of looming trees and long-abandoned mines have sheltered hikers and harbored serial killers. Hidden in the forest are ghost towns with deteriorating buildings overrun by glowing fungi and phosphorescent spores that even local experts can’t identify. Not to mention the missing persons posters multiplying around town, many of hikers who never returned.”
I finally managed to track Wendy down on twitter and ask her if she would talk to us.
Deadline: May 15th, 2024
Payment: $300 and 50% royalties on all sales
Theme: Horror novels between 50k-100k words
Third Estate Books, publishers of Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology and the forthcoming The Monologist, is proud to announce our first Open Submission period.
From April 15-May 15, 2024, we will be accepting submissions for horror novels that give voice to the voiceless. Three books will be selected for publication in 2025.
We are looking for:
works that align with the philosophy of Third Estate Books. Click here to read the vision statement.
horror, and only horror. If you have any doubts if your book is horror, don’t send it to us.
previously unpublished novels. Do not send us previously published material. This includes self-published and traditionally published material.
word ranges of 50k-100k. Anything more or less will be rejected outright.
Deadline: May 6th, 2024
Payment: $25 and a contributors copy
Theme: Hilarious short stories that are character-driven and culturally striking
Eggplant Emoji, the comedy literary journal is currently seeking previously-unpublished comedic short fiction submissions for its fourth volume.
Psychological horror occupies a special place at the top of the horror genre. But it grows in the strange shadows of the mind, not in overt acts or visible monsters. This article does just that by exploring the central role psychological horror plays in penetrating our deepest fears and penetrating the veil of consciousness.
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Greetings, children of the dark. Sad to say our April short story submissions window is now closed, and I thought I’d bring you a very real statistic to show why we moved our submissions process to this strange quarterly beast.
The statistic is this: in that 2-week window, we got more than 50 submissions.
Yes, 50 stories. Each of you should have now received an email to acknowledge your story is in the system, but if you haven’t and were expecting one, please do get in touch. We are very old-school here at TWF Towers and there is no automated email immediately going back to you to say “hey, we got it!”—it does take an actual human (i.e. me!) to go into the inbox and fish them out, catalogue them, and put them into our system—but I’ve now moved every submission into the next step of the process. From here, Stuart, Shalini and I get to reading, reviewing, analysing, arguing, and finding those stories that we’d like to accept. Of course, with 50+ stories for essentially about 12 spots, we’re going to have to be very critical and maybe let go of something that would’ve made it once upon a time. For that, I’m sorry.
Before the move to a staggered submissions process, we would be getting around the same number of submissions every single month. And there are just a handful of us, all volunteers, trying to make our way through those submissions. And we can only publish one short story a week, alongside our three drabbles. (If you want us to be able to afford more, get to supporting us on Patreon!)
If we didn’t try to limit the opportunity to submit, we would currently be scheduling stories several years in advance—and no one wants to wait a decade to see their story in digital print! (And yes, we still haven’t made our way through all of the stories from the last window, and there’s actually a handful of stories I need to edit and send back to writers who submitted in the last half of 2023. Life, sorry, etc.)
This process is to protect our writers from frustration as much as it is to protect our tiny team from burnout. We do, of course, have many other opportunities within the Horror Tree ecosystem to flex your creative muscles and submit your works. Your story might fit one of the many open calls we list on this site—the very reason for our being!—or maybe you’d like to write for a special themed edition or submit a story for serialisation. We also have our short sharp speculations, aka the drabbles, of which we publish three every single week! Maybe try your hand at some teeny tiny stories, or stringing three of those together on a theme to tell a longer story as an unholy trinity?
Anyways, this week’s TWF menu. Our main course is a silent one, and it comes from the dark mind of Mitchell Strickland Jr—and it’s so great to put a strong disabled protagonist on these pages. That story is followed by the short, sharp speculations of:
Over to you, Stuart.
Last week, I was busy with my youngest being home all week sick; this week, it’s been my oldest. (I swear… if I’m sick next week…) So. I’ve been doing a lot of prep work. There’s not much to show off quite yet, but there is more progress on Shadowed Realms, which is long overdue, and we are starting to hone in on our new layout as well as starting to plan for our next physical release. On the upside, we have a few new contributors interested in helping out on the site, which is exciting news!
And now the regular announcements:
Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.
“In the morning, we shall find that tree.” His voice was deep, confident. The book on the table was fully illustrated. The picture of a tree resembling the torso of a senile lady stared vividly. Its head was filled with thin grayish leaves and vines shot to the ground like locks of uncombed hair. The branches looked like crooked hands with long fingers.
In the morning, he was nowhere. The police searched. Nobody believed me when I said that a two-legged monster with antlers, a body filled with dark long hair, stared at me ominously before disappearing in the haze.
The tree was more alive and darker than what I had imagined it to be from its picture. The roughness of the barks, the silky leaves, the subtle smell that was sweet and rotten simultaneously, made me nauseous. Yet I felt addicted.
The crack in the bark was the entrance to another world and I walked along, surrounded by moss and rodents, bones of rotting corpses.
He lay at the end, now reduced to a skeleton. His eye sockets were two holes gaping at the universe.
It was the tree who had devoured the hunter. Now it was my turn.
Encased by the mythical tree of death I weep at the skeleton I know belongs to my beloved. “You shouldn’t have pursued this tree!” I curse. The tree is silent, but his emotions prevail: “ It called me.”
Now I’m sensing the darkness of this world beneath.
Suddenly, I see a shadow, the same two-legged monster I had glimpsed when he had disappeared.
I am ready to die.
Then I hear a howl with a familiar humanness buried underneath.
“You?”
“Mankind gave me nothing.” His silence mocks.
“This tree gave me a new life,” he derides as I cry out hysterically.
Fariel Shafee studied physics. However, she loves to wander in the land of impossibles. Her writing has been accepted by 34 Orchard, Black Hare Press anthologies, Sirens Call etc. She has also exhibited art internationally. Her writing credits and art portfolio can be seen here: http://fshafee.wixsite.com/farielsart.
Deadline: June 24th, 2024
Prizes: First place: $3,000, Second place: $2,000, and Third place: $1,000
Theme: Near-future to 2200 stories that are rooted in creative climate solutions and community-centered resilience, showing what can happen as solutions take root, and stories that offer gripping plots with rich characters and settings, making that future come alive.
Grist is excited to open submissions for the fourth year of our Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors short story contest.
Imagine 2200 celebrates stories that envision the next decades to centuries of equitable climate progress, imagining futures of abundance, adaptation, reform, and hope. We are looking for stories that are rooted in creative climate solutions and community-centered resilience, showing what can happen as solutions take root, and stories that offer gripping plots with rich characters and settings, making that future come alive.
In 2,500 to 5,000 words, show us the world you dream of building.
Your story should be set sometime between the near future and roughly the year 2200.
A great Imagine story is not afraid to explore the challenges ahead – the path to climate progress will involve struggle and adaptation, and we invite you to show that – but ultimately offers hope that we can work together to build a more sustainable and just world. We want to see stories that incorporate real world climate solutions and climate science, as well as cultural authenticity (a deep sense of place, customs, cuisine, and more) and characters with fully-fledged identities. We especially want to read – and share – stories that center solutions and voices from the communities most impacted by the climate crisis.
If you’re newer to climate or climate fiction, check out our FAQs page for some resources to get you started in finding inspiration from existing solutions, and some past Imagine stories to look to for examples. Feel free to use these as a jumping off point, or to bring in any climate and justice solutions you find inspiring.
Your story can bring these principles into any genre – we love seeing climate themes show up in love stories, mysteries, adventure, comedy, and more. Climate connects to every part of life, and all sorts of stories can be climate stories, so dream big — envision a world where climate solutions have flourished, and where we prioritize our well-being, work to mend our communities, and lead lives that celebrate our humanity. We can’t wait to read what you come up with.
I’d like to take this time to give special thanks to our Patreon Sponsors who are at the Level 3 reward level and above!
– Ryan Benson.
– Jane Nightshade.
– Rebecca Rowland.
– James Aitchison.
– Robin Ginther-Venneri.
– Burial Books.
– Craig of Write my paper.
– Celltrackingapps.
