Monday, September 27, 2010

Bad-Ass Faeries 4

Bad-Ass Faeries 4 - It's Elemental


edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Lee C. Hillman, and Jeffrey Lyman

Submit To: Danielle Ackley-McPhail, greenfirephoenix (at) aol (dot) com

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Deadline: June 2011, Release Date: May 2012, Word Limit:3500-7000 words


Familiarity with the existing Bad-Ass Faeries titles is recommended if you have not submitted to us previously. They are your best guide to the types of stories we are looking for in this series. You can fine excepts at www.sidhenadaire.com/excerpts.htm or you can find the complete books for sale in print or ebook via the publisher's website or on the major book-selling sites.Genre: Urban Fantasy

Premise: A collection of unconventional stories about bad-ass elemental faeries with a focus on urban fantasy. Faeries should interact with the human world in some capacity visualized as tough, and for this collection, in a logical profession that is linked to their element: truckers, deep-sea fishermen, cowboys, police, firemen, freedom fighters, crocodile wrestlers, paratrooper, sled-dog driver, etc. We are not really looking for specific known figures from faerie mythology so much as types of faeries from myth and legend with a very clearly defined affinity for one specific element. (Please see below for some recommendations, and also note the category for those already spoken for).

Earth Air Fire Water Spirit Taken

Book will have four (or five) sections, one for each element: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, (Spirit). This means that competition will be fiercer because we will be accepting stories by section as well as by overall quality.

Submission Don’ts

1) Don’t call your faeries elementals, we want specific faeries from myth and legend that are affiliated to one of the elements. Please see below for some recommendations.

2) Don’t include faeries from all of the elements in your story…it will not improve your chances and it will limit us in our ability to select and place a story. Each story should have one primary element incorporated into the plot. Not saying you can’t mention the others or have them as secondary aspects of the story, but we don’t want a bunch of submissions that are Gang of Four style or this element against that element. We want bad-ass stories of elemental faeries using their unique natures to get the job done…whatever it is.

3) Please note that we are not looking for erotica, or extreme violence, language, or gore.

Submission Do’s

1) Use standard submission format: Double spaced, tab indent (NOT auto indent), double hyphen with no spaces before or after to indicate emdashes. Ellipses with no spaces before or after. Use the actual formats for bold, italics and underline. Formatting Guidelines.

2) Include COMPLETE contact information at the top of your submission. Snailmail and email address, including phone number.

3) Include a short author bio with your submission (do NOT use all caps or quotation marks to indicate titles, please make sure they are Title Case and in italics.)

4) Authors MUST submit a proposal before writing and submitting their stories. This is the only way we can avoid overlap among the submissions. The editors do not want to be put in a position of having to reject an otherwise exemplary story because it happens to have too many similarities to something we have already accepted.

5) Include an author’s note about the specific type of faerie you have selected for absolute clarity and to provide some background information to the editors about the particular myth dealing with that faerie. This is optional, but helpful. Anything that makes the editors’ jobs easier is a good thing.

Specifics:

Publisher: Mundania Press, www.mundania.com

Collection will be published in print, ebook and possibly limited edition hardcover.

Contributors will receive one comp copy of the book and an equal share of the royalties, which are 20% for print and 50% for electronic.

More information.


Monday, September 6, 2010

Historical Lovecraft Anthology

Historical Lovecraft anthology opening this September to submissions. The anthology will be available in print and as an e-book in 2011, and is produced and edited by the eldritch duo of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles.

What They Want

Historical fiction with a Lovecraftian twist. Stories should be set in a variety of places, cultures and time periods. While they might buy one story set in 1920s New England, they want to stray far from the normal Lovecraft milieu. If you’re going to do 1920s, why not ship them off to China and tell the story from the point of view of a native of Shanghai? Some examples of ideas they’d like to see:

  • There’s something afoot in Henry VIII’s court.
  • A Mayan warrior discovers evil lurking in Tikal.
  • A trader in Byzantium finds a rare artifact.
  • The Pharaoh’s latest advisor is a man of vast knowledge and even vaster secrets.
  • The Necronomicon! Take them to Damascus as Alhazred pens the manuscript. Or to the printing of the 17th century edition in Spain.
  • Journey to Inuit Canada, where the ice holds prisoner an old foe.
  • Political intrigue in Edo leads to blood, tragedy and a brush with a fearsome entity from beyond the stars.
  • What happened to Machu Picchu? How bloody were its last days?
  • How did the jungle really claim Angkor Wat?
  • The rainforests of the Congo groan under Belgian tyranny at the turn of the 20th century. What deadly deals are made to free it?

Please note that for their purposes they consider historical anything up to 1937 (the year of Lovecraft’s death).

If you are curious to know what they enjoy reading, look at some of the fiction issues ofInnsmouth Free Press. The latest one is here.

Length

From flash fiction (1,000 words or under) to novelette (10,000 words). Keep in mind they have a payment cap of $50 CAD, so your long novelette might be better served by finding another home.

Payment

One cent per word up to a maximum of $50 CAD. One physical copy of the anthology and one e-book copy.

Payment made via PayPal or Canadian check upon acceptance.

They are purchasing first English print and electronic rights for the anthology.

Reprints

Considered, with a few caveats:

1. Indicate where and when the story was originally published in your cover letter.
2. Reprints offered should not be easily available in print or online.
3. Payment is a flat $25 CAD for reprints.

If you published it in a small collection in 1985 and it’s no longer on the market, that’s fine. If it was published in a German magazine and never translated to English, they’d like to see it. If it appeared in a now-defunct zine, that’s okay, too. If it was in a recent issue of an English-language zine that is currently online, no.

Submitting

E-mail them at innsmouthfp AT gmail.com. Subject line: Historical Antho, [Title of your Story, Author's Name]. The subject line is important; otherwise, the story might go into the wrong pile.

Do not send simultaneous submissions. Do not send more than one submission. If they reject one story, you can send another one.

Include a cover letter with the story word count, salient writing credits and any reprint information (if applicable). Yes, they do read cover letters, so please include the information (Paula gets cranky when stories arrive sans byline, title or cover letter).

Attach story as RTF (preferred) or Word (doc, not docx) document. Use standard manuscript format. Italics as italics, bold as bold. No fancy fonts.

Stories can be sent in English, French or Spanish.

Submissions are accepted from September 1, 2010 to January 3, 2011. Do not send anything before or after that date.

They will reject some stories as they come in and send others to the hold pile. Final story selection will take place in January 2011.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

It Came From Her Purse

Sam's Dot Publishing is pleased to announce the opening to submissions of an anthology to be titled It Came From Her Purse. We are looking for original short stories in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, and we will consider a very few horror stories. We will also consider original poetry and illustrations. We will remain open to submissions from 1 May 2010 until we are filled at 65,000 words, and anticipate publication in the spring of 2011.

We leave the subject matter up to the writers, so long as the story is related in some way to the title of the anthology and especially to the tone of the title. It may be helpful to think of the title as that of a Roger Corman movie. We also hope to receive some humorous submissions, but please bear in mind that trying to be funny often falls flat. If you wish to write something humorous or off-beat, use a light touch. Subtlety and absurdity combine well for humor.

All submissions must contain contact information both in the e-mail and on the first page of the manuscript. D'you get that? We may delete without comment or reply any submission that does not contain this information.

Lead editor for the "Purse Project" is Karen L. Newman. The associate editor is Georgia Middleton. Just so you know . . .

Response time is expected to be one month. Stories will be either declined or held over for consideration; in either case you will be notified within a month. If your story is held over for consideration, it could be up to three months before a decision is made.

You may submit more than one piece, but please submit only one piece at a time. The subject line of each submission must read Submission: and the title of the submission.

We will consider reprint stories and poems. However, we will accept no more than two reprint stories and two reprint poems.

Stories:

Stories should be between 2,000 and 5,000 words. Submit your story as a Word or rtf attachment to fromherpurse at yahoo dot com [you will have to combine the elements of this e-mail address. We're fighting spam].

Poems:

Poems should be no longer than 100 lines. Submit your poem in the body of an e-mail to fromherpurse at yahoo dot com [you will have to combine the elements of this e-mail address. We're fighting spam].

Illustrations:

Black & White illustrations should be submitted as jpeg attachments. The preferred size is 800 by 1100 and 300dpi. Submit your illustration as a jpeg attachment to fromherpurse at yahoo dot com [you will have to combine the elements of this e-mail address. We're fighting spam].

Cover Art:

Again, submit your art as a jpeg attachment. The preferred size is 800 by 1100 and 300dpi. Submit your cover art as a jpeg attachment to fromherpurse at yahoo dot com [you will have to combine the elements of this e-mail address. We're fighting spam].

Payment:

Stories: $10.00 each

Poems: $3.00 each

Illustrations: $5.00 each

Cover art: $20.00

If you have any questions, please query the submissions address and put query in the subject line. Good luck, and we're looking forward to reading your work.

Guidelines.