Distant Worlds

Library of Science Fiction & Fantasy Press is pleased to announce Distant Worlds, an anthology of novella length Science Fiction.

The novella is often neglected in modern genre fiction. Too short to print as a novel and too long for most short story markets, a novella has room for a lot of richness and growth, for fully realized characters, settings, and societies, and for concepts and ideas that just won’t fit into a short story but may not be big enough or complex enough for a novel. The Novella has the potential to deliver incredible stories.

We believe very strongly in that potential and invite you to help us find it.

The details:

While definitions may vary depending on where you look, for the purpose of this anthology, a novella will have a length of somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 words.

Your submission must be in standard manuscript format and attached to your e-mail as an rtf file. For a good reference on what standard manuscript format entails, please see William Shunn’s web page<http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html>on the subject.

Payment for inclusion in this anthology will be $100, two contributor’s copies of the book, and the everlasting knowledge of being involved in something special.

Submissions are now open and will close on 15 Jan 2010. This is a fairly large window, but we recognize the size and scope of a novella can require a great deal more time than a short story. If you don’t have one ready to go, we’d like to give you a chance to write one from scratch.

Submissions and Queries should be sent to distanteditor@gmail.com with ‘Submission – Distant Worlds’ or ‘Query – Distant Worlds’ in the subject line, as applicable.

Caveats:

There are a lot of themes that have been overdone in SF. Strange Horizons provides a wonderfully detailed (yet certainly incomplete) list of overused themes and plots<http://strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common.shtml>. We’re not saying don’t do it, but if you’ve picked something from this list as your main focus, try to stand it on its head.

Because there is only room for 4 or 5 stories in Distant Worlds, submissions will be taken in two stages, building a shortlist of possible inclusions. Rejections will happen, but final decisions on acceptances won’t be made until ALL submissions have been read.

The speculative elements you choose, whatever they are, must be integral to the story. If you can write the same story without them, then it’s not a genre story. That said, we subscribe to the Damon Knight theory of Science Fiction: Science Fiction is what we point to when we say it. Every story will be read. If you believe in yours, please send it.

Short Story Contest - “Old Mold New Milieu"

There’s still time to submit your winning short story to TRI Studio LLC for our current writing contest, “Old Mold New Milieu.” The deadline is June 30th. Winners will be published in The Fiction Flyer, our free ezine for writers with 1,000 subscribers. There are modest cash prizes, but you likely will survive without the ten dollars. More interesting, winning stories (and their authors) will receive the benefits of much promotion.

Okay, you can survive without the exposure, too, but wouldn’t it be nice? And your story only needs to be 1,000 words or less. You can write that much before lunch! AND you get to showcase a couple characters in your own books or stories, which of course begs readers to investigate further, which is why links to winners’ books and stories will be included. Details for the contest are here:

http://tri-studio.com/contestguidelines.html

We have some interesting judges, too, which include the well-known and mutli-published author and artist of youth fiction, Kevin Collier, his wife, Kristen Collier, author of critically acclaimed Christian literature, and Carolyn Howard-Johnson, promotional guru and multi-award winning author of numerous novels, books of poetry, and the best-selling how-to Frugal Book series on book promotion.

We hope you’ll take a look and decide to join in the fun!

Kathe and Ray Gogolewski
Editors/The Fiction Flyer
TRI Studio LLC www.tri-studio.com
http://tri-studio.com/contestguidelines.html

2008 Finding the Right Words Flash Fiction Contest

1st Prize: $60 plus publication
2nd Prize: $30 plus publication
Theme: Open
Genre: Fiction
Length: 500 words or fewer
Deadline: July 21, 2009 (postmark)
Entry Fee: $2.00 per story

THE RULES

- Write a self-contained short story in 500 words or fewer. No predetermined
theme this year, so let your imaginations run wild!
- Be original. Be concise. Be spelled correctly.
- Send your story in plain text in the body of an e-mail to
contests@inkspotter .com contests@inkspotter .com> (subject line =
"Annual Contest Submission") or to the address above. Do not indent
paragraphs. Leave one line space between each paragraph.
- All stories MUST have a title.
- Be sure to include your full name and e-mail address. If your story wins,
we'll contact you for your preferred method of payment.
- Enter as often as you like, but payment must be received for each entry.
- You retain copyright of your story.
- All entries will be acknowledged if an e-mail address is included.
- By entering the contest, you agree to have your name and email address
added to the subscriber list for InkSpotter News, our monthly ezine. Contest
news and winning stories appear in the newsletter. (Our subscriber list will
never be shared with or sold to a third party.)

NOTE: Please, do not submit fan fiction.

FULL DETAILS at http://inkspotter. com/contests. htm

Chicken Soup for the Soul: True Love

Chicken Soup for the Soul: True Love
101 Heartwarming and Humorous Stories about Dating, Romance, Love and Marriage

Everyone loves a good love story. And we all love stories about how the love started and blossomed.

Join us in a fun new book about dating, romance, love, and marriage, scheduled for publication in January 2010, just in time for Valentine's Day.

We are looking for true stories and poems about your soulmate, your true love, the one that got away, and all the ups and downs of your love life. Stories can be serious or hilarious, or both.

We prefer stories and poems written in the first person of 600-1,200 words. Stories should not be pre-published unless in very small publications.

Here are some suggested topics, but we know you can think of many more:
Dating adventures - the good and the bad
How you met
Internet searching and dating
Speed dating and other strategies
When did you know?
Proposals
Wedding stories
Parental pressure and support
Pressure and support from children
Senior dating and love at a certain age
Making marriage work
Second chances

If your story is chosen, you will be a published author and your bio will be printed in the book if you so choose. You will also receive a check for $200 and 10 free copies of your book, worth more than $100. You will retain the copyright for your story and you will retain the right to resell it.

SUBMISSIONS GO TO
http://www.chickens oupforthesoul. com/form. asp?cid=submit_ story

DEADLINE IS May 31, 2009.

Teen relationships will be covered in a future book, so please do not submit them for this book.

Love Is the Theme

Since I didn't find an anthology to highlight today, here is a free writing contest.

Writing Sprint 3: Deadline - February 6, 2009

Challenge: Love is a theme which fuels many popular stories and novels. Writing about love can also be difficult. For this challenge, write a story about two long lost lovers who are suddenly reunited. The story should be between 500-2,000 words.

To enter, post your piece during the sprint period and include the tags Long Lost Love (entered as long_lost_love).

The entries will be judged on originality and poignancy. Make us experience what the reunited couple are feeling and do it in a way that is genuine and unforced.

Awards:

* The winner of each weekly competition will receive $30.

Submit online.

Rules and Regulartions

Short Story Competition

First prize: £1,000
Second prize: A Cross Sauvage fountain pen, worth over £100
Five runners-up prizes: excellent reference guides
All the prize-winning stories will be published next year in The Lady.


If you have always dreamed of having one of your stories published, now is the time to turn fantasy into reality by entering our Short Story Competition. We invite you to write a story in one of the following categories:

* COMEDY
* HISTORICAL
* MYSTERY

Prizes: You can make up your own title for your short story, which should be between 2,000 and 2,200 words in length. It must be printed double spaced, on A4 paper – on one side of the paper only. If you can, please include a floppy disk, on which your short story is saved, in a separate envelope, firmly secured to your print-out. Make sure that you keep a copy of your story as we cannot return either manuscripts or disks. Only one short story per person can be entered.
How to enter

Send your story in to: The Lady Short Story Competition, Editorial Department, The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER to arrive by 16 December 2008. Please include a daytime telephone number (and an email address, if you have one) with your details. All the winning stories will be published next year in The Lady .

First prize

The winner will receive a cheque for £1,000 from The Lady .

Second prize

Cross’ excellent range of pens includes the beautiful Cross Sauvage fountain pen, worth £115. Stylish and elegant, this luxury pen has a Giraffe design with a brown tourmaline finish. Call 01582-422793 (or visit: www.cross.com ) to locate your nearest stockist.

Prizes for the five runners-up

* The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2009 (A&C Black , £14.99) is an invaluable guide to the literary world. It offers advice on writing, copyright queries, societies, prizes and how to set up your own web page, and is recommended by The Writers’ Guild. Now it has been revised and updated, with a foreword by novelist Kate Mosse and advice including how to publish books from blogs, ebooks and writing for soap operas. (Visit the website: www.writersandartists.co.uk .)

* The 11th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press , £25) contains over 240,000 words, phrases and definitions and covers technical and scientific vocabulary as well as English from around the world. It has been updated with hundreds of new words and phrases, such as “sub-prime”, “social networking” and “carbon footprint”. (Visit the website: www.oup.com .)

* Writer’s Market UK 2009 (David and Charles , £14.99) has a foreword by Joanne Harris, the author of Chocolat . It is an annual resource for writers and one of the most comprehensive guides to writing and getting published today. Whether you are taking a writing course, dreaming of being published or have already been published this book has the latest information, listing over 4,000 publishers, magazines and other outlets for writers to approach. It is full of practical tips and recommendations from expert contributors and successful authors. (Visit the website: www.davidandcharles.co.uk .)

Time in a Bottle Anthology

Call for Submissions for Time in a Bottle anthology:

Time must figure prominently in each story. For example, the story could be about time travel. Or it might concern a wizard who uses spells that affect time in some way. It might be about people or things that have been displaced to a time other than their own. The story could even be about someone who’s time is running out, perhaps from a deadly disease or poison.

Stories that explore parallel events in time, the nature of time or in some other way are centered around time will all fit in this anthology.

Along with TIME as the central focus of the story, it must also fit in one of the following genres:

Hard Science Fiction

Soft Science Fiction

Fantasy

Space Western

The above genres can be mixed with each other if desired but stories that fall outside of these will not be considered. For example, a story that is Space Western/Fantasy would be perfectly fine but a story that was Horror would not. The only exception would be minor elements. A fantasy could have some horror elements as long as they weren’t so heavy as to turn the story into a Horror or Horror/Fantasy mix.

If you have questions whether your story idea qualifies, feel free to email and ask.

Stories may be set in any time period from prehistory to the far future.

Word count must be between 3000 and 6500. Stories that are too short or too long will be sent back to the author to revise and resubmit.

Submissions open on Nov. 1, 2008 and close on May 1, 2009. Submissions received before Nov. 1, or after May 1, will not be considered.

Send submissions as an attached .doc or .rtf file to:

timeantho@gmail.com

Submissions in other formats, or pasted into the body of the email, will be returned to the author with a request to resubmit in the correct format.

Those authors whose work is accepted will be offered the standard CWP anthology contract. Those terms are:

10 dollar flat fee to acquire the right to publish, and 1 free copy of the book. 5 year, non-exclusive contract for print format, paperback.

In addition, all contributors will have the right to buy as many copies as they would like for the base cost of printing and shipping, then keep the profit from any copies they personally sell.

Bathsheba Monk's Second Annual Short Story Contest

I don't have an anthology market today but came across this short story contest, and it's FREE! And the first place winner gets a $500 award! Read on for all the details.

Enter the Second Bathsheba Monk Short Story Contest. No entry fee, no word or entry limit (although please be reasonable and remember that your best work has the best shot of winning). $500 award to first place and publication on Bathsheba Monk's website http://www.bathsheb amonk.com/ and on his blog http://bathshebamon kssc.blogspot. com/2008/ 10/bathsheba- monks-second- annual-short. html.

No electronic submissions. Please, send manuscript(s) via USPS mail to:

The Bathsheba Monk Short Story Contest
2435 W. Walnut St.
Allentown, PA 18104

Please double space manuscripts and make sure you have toner in your printer. Tell them about yourself in a cover letter. Simultaneous submissions are okay, but please let them know if your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere in the meantime. Manuscripts cannot be returned, and Inotification of final results will be sent via email. Deadline is December 31, 2008. The winner will bel announced in February.

The Angler

Since I haven't come across a new anthology market, today's post will include a writing market looking for short stories:

Submitting to The Angler

Note: Submissions are open.

Thank you for your interest in The Angler. If you have a story you wish to submit, please consider the advice in the “What to submit” section below. In a lot of cases you will probably have to make some small revisions to your story to make it suitable for The Angler. If you haven’t noticed already, The Angler is published by an active beer writer, amateur craftbrewer, fisherman, and idler. Most of the readers coming to this site are craft beer enthusiasts, folks that are into the do-it-yourself mode, and people in life’s slow lane. I don’t insist that you must have a reference to craft beer or fishing in your story, but it helps. If you do reference a craft beer, I’ll leave the choice of which one to reference up to you. (Think about the one brewed locally in your area.)

I accept less than 25% of the stories submitted to The Angler. Depending on the backlog, it might take me a month or so to get back to you with a decision. I’ll do my best to get back to you promptly. If you don’t hear from me in one month. Please send a follow-up. Occasionally things get gobbled up by the spam bucket.

Submission Guidelines

Flash fiction and short stories under 1000 words can be submitted by email. For works longer than 1000 words, please send an excerpt and a summary of the whole work.

Paste the plain text of your story into the body of the email. The subject of the email should begin with the word “Submission”. You may also include the title of your story. If you send an attachment, make sure it’s in Rich Text Format (.rft). If you story is accepted, you’ll need to send in this file anyway.

Together with your submission, please include a cover letter stating where you heard about The Angler. Also include a contributor biography written in the third person, not to exceed 250 words. In your biography, please provide a selection of your prior publications, if any, and links if the publications are in online magazines or journals.

Simultaneous submission of the same story to a different magazine is fine, just let me know if some other lucky editor has the privilege of publishing your story before I do. Also, previously published work is fine, as long at you hold the copyright and have permission from the original publisher. If you have posted your story on your website, that’s fine with me. I don’t consider posting of stories on personal, author websites as being prior publication. You should include information about simultaneous submission and the prior publication history of the story in your cover letter.

Please limit yourself to only one submission per author at a time. Once I have made a decision concerning your submitted work, you may then submit another work for consideration.

Authors retain the copyright for the work submitted to The Angler. All I ask for is the permission (1) to keep a permanent archive copy of the work on the magazine’s website, and (2) to reprint your story in a future print or online anthology. If your work is published originally in The Angler and then some other publisher with excellent taste in literature reprints your work, I ask that The Angler be acknowledged as the original publisher and a link provided to this web site. Submission implies consent to this request.

What to submit

What I’m looking for are well written stories. I’m interested in literary fiction. Rarely will I consider a genre-piece for publication unless the story pushes or bends the genre formula. I prefer works with strong characters, an original voice, and fresh situations.

I am especially interested in publishing experimental fiction. Here’s a list of some of the writers whose experimental writings I enjoy: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, and Julio Cortazar. I’m also a consumer of books by the OuLiPo-ists, cf. Raymond Queneau, George Perec, Italo Calvino, etc.

Important: Because the readership of The Angler consists primarily of intelligent craft beer and whiskey drinkers who appreciate fine food and stimulating conversation, stories that contain references to the following elements have a higher chance of being accepted: craft beer, brewing (at home or commercial), scotch and other whiskies, pubs, bars, restaurants, etc. Also, I like a good fishing story. Stories which explore pub culture are especially welcome. I’m looking for “mundane” stories — not boring stories, but stories that are in and of the world — stories about people living.

Please do not send poetry. I am not qualified to evaluate poetry. I enjoy reading poetry, but am not in a postion to publish it.

I’m also looking for creative non-fiction on the following topics: literature, writing, the writing life, authors, food, dining, beer, brewing, wine, cheese, the gourmet life, travel, jazz, film as art, fishing, loafing, doing-it-yourself, the craft lifestyle, quitting your day job, etc. Please send a query letter first.

Each issue of The Angler will have a title. The title of the first issue is “Repetition.” The title is not intended to dictate a strict theme; if authors have stories that fit with the title then that’s a bonus.

Submit all work and query letters to theangler at donavanhall dot net. I’ll try to be prompt in letting you know my decision concerning publication.

The Angler is listed with the Duotrope Digest. Please use their response tracker to report my response time in providing you a decision concerning publication.

A Cup of Comfort for the Grieving Heart

When a loved one passes away, comfort is often fleeting and hard to come by. Yet, even a small comfort, like a personal story of how someone has faced a similar loss, does help to ease the sorrow. This volume will feature uplifting personal stories that reveal the special relationships and extraordinary experiences shared by the deceased and his/her loved one(s) immediately before, during, and after the loved one's passing; it will also includes stories about the internal and external processes by which one deals with and heals from the loss of a loved one. The stories will vary with regard to subject matter, circumstances of death, and the relationship of the author to the individual who has passed away. The book will not include eulogies, profiles/memoirs of people who have passed away, or clinical depictions of death and dying.

Submission Deadline: 2/1/2009

• Payment: $500 Grand Prize awarded to one story per volume; $100 (each) all other stories published in book plus complimentary copy of book on publication.

• Story Length: 1,000-2,000 words

Submission Guidelines

Call for submissions for 2009 Legend Press short story collection

We are publishing the fourth in our acclaimed series of short story-collections and are looking for talented, vibrant authors to submit stories for consideration. Our short-fiction series, called ‘The Short Story Reinvented’, is designed for today’s busy, but discerning, reader. Short fiction is the perfect answer for the modern reader on the move who wants to read easily accessible, sleek contemporary fiction. Through this series we hope to reaffirm the short story’s inimitable place in the mainstream market.

We plan to publish the new collection at the end of March 2009 and are calling for writers to send in their submissions by 31st October 2008. A summary and full description of the brief are given below. We look forward to reading, and hopefully publishing, your work!

Guidelines

· Short-story of approximately 9,000-12,000 words

· Actions/thoughts to occur/take place in a single room

· Stream-of-consciousness-style

· Non-genre-specific

· Thought-provoking and original. We want to feel moved and inspired by these stories.

Submission procedure

· Please submit stories to Lucy Boguslawski, Publishing Assistant by email to submissions@legend-paperbooks.co.uk by 31^st October 2008. If you would like to organise an alternative method of suubmission please email the same address.

· Any questions or queries, just let us know and we’ll try to get back to you as soon as we can – email submissions@legend-paperbooks.co.uk.

· Visit the books and reviews page of our website for details of the first three collections in the series, The Remarkable Everyday, Seven Days and Eight Hours.

* * *
Check out my new young adult fantasy Beyond the Fifth Gate.

Criminal Tendencies

Crème de la Crime’s raison d’etre is to offer a unique opportunity to previously unpublished crime novelists. Until October 31st 2008, we’re offering the same opportunity to short story writers.

CRIMINAL TENDENCIES 2009 is a short story competition which offers a writer previously unpublished in the crime genre the opportunity to see his or her work on sale in bookshops throughout the UK, in a high-profile anthology alongside household names from the crime writing world including Reginald Hill, creator of the top-selling Dalziel and Pascoe series; Sophie Hannah, whose suspense chiller Little Face was a 2007 Richard and Judy’s Book club selection; and top-selling author Peter James.

The winner of Criminal Tendencies 2009 will be selected by Mark Billingham, award-winning author of the bestselling Tom Thorne series of gripping crime novels – and also an accomplished short story writer.

The anthology, also titled CRIMINAL TENDENCIES, will be published in spring 2009, and for every copy sold, £1 will go to the Genesis Appeal, the only charity in the UK entirely dedicated to the prevention of breast cancer. Based at Europe’s first purpose-built breast cancer prevention centre, the Genesis Appeal funds vital research into prevention and early diagnosis; their aim is to create a future without breast cancer. Currently one woman in ten in the UK will develop this terrible disease; the Genesis Appeal aims to make 1 in 10, none in 10.

Criminal Tendencies 2009 invites entries in the crime genre, maximum length 3000 words, by post to the address below or on-line using the submission form.

The closing date for Criminal Tendencies 2009 is 31st Oct 2008. For on-line entry this means midnight on that date local time wherever you are.

An entry fee of £5.00 per story, which includes a donation to Genesis, should accompany each entry, by cheque if you enter by post, or by MasterCard or Visa via the secure facility on the submission form. Card payments will be processed by our sister company, Real Writers; this is the name which will appear on your statement.

Please attach a cover sheet to postal entries, with the title and length of the story, and full contact details: address, daytime phone number and e-mail address. For on-line entries, please complete the submission form.

Entrants should be previously unpublished in the crime genre.

We also offer all entrants a chance to sample Crème de la Crime’s wide range of top-class full-length crime fiction at half the bookshop price. Choose any TWO of the titles listed on the Backlist page (link), for just £8 post free. Please note your order on your submission form or cover sheet; payment will be taken with your entry fee, and your books despatched immediately. DO NOT click the Buy Now at Amazon button.

For full details of and conditions of entry for Criminal Tendencies 2009 click here.

STRANGE HORIZONS MAGAZINE

Every once-in-awhile I find a short story market for writers that is worthy of posting here. Today it is STRANGE HORIZONS mag - http://www.strangeh orizons.com/ guidelines/ fiction.shtml

Guidelines:

We want good speculative fiction. If your story doesn't have a clear fantasy or science fiction element, or at least strong speculative- fiction sensibilities, it's probably not for us. We'd like to
help make the field of speculative fiction more inclusive, more welcoming to both authors and readers from traditionally underrepresented groups, so we're interested in seeing stories from
diverse perspectives and backgrounds.

We want stories that have some literary depth but aren't boring; styles that are unusual yet readable; structures that balance inventiveness with traditional narrative. We like characters we can care about. We like settings and cultures that we don't see all the time in speculative
fiction. We like stories that address political issues in complex and sensitive ways. However, we don't like heavy-handed or preachy or simplistic approaches. We like the idea of hypertext stories, but we have not yet published any. If you want to send us a hypertext story, query us to discuss how to submit it.

As with any magazine, the best way to get a sense of the kinds of things we like is to read some of the fiction we publish. Since our magazine is free, the only cost to you is some of your time. Visit our fiction archives to see what we've published. We're not generally interested in:

* horror (especially stories in which the main goal is to evoke feelings of fear, terror, or revulsion in the reader)
* stories that explain a scientific or technological phenomenon in great detail
* plots we see all the time
* stories with twist endings
Any sex or violence in the story should be artistically justified; no excessive gore.

Except as noted above, we welcome all subgenres and forms of speculative fiction. Please don't query to ask if we're interested in some particular subgenre; you can assume that if it's not listed above, it's okay. Sorry, no simultaneous submissions or unsolicited reprints. (Like most magazines, we consider material that has appeared on publicly-accessible websites to be published, and therefore cannot consider it.)

We welcome submissions from anywhere in the world. Material other than fiction should be submitted to the appropriate editor.

Pay Rates and Lengths
We strongly prefer stories under 5,000 words long. We will consider stories up to 9,000 words, but the longer the story, the less likely we are to be interested. We can't consider stories significantly over our wordcount limit, not even as serials. In particular, we can't consider
novels. We also can't consider partial or incomplete stories. Please don't send us part of a story and ask us to request the rest of it if we're interested.

We have no minimum wordcount requirement; we will consider short-short stories. However,
we generally aren't interested in stories with twist endings. We pay 5 cents/word, with a minimum payment of $50. SFWA officially considers us a professional market.

We buy first-printing world exclusive rights for two months. After that period, you are free to republish the story elsewhere. We hope (but do not require) that you'll allow us to post the story in our archives indefinitely after it's rotated off the main table of contents, but you have the right to remove your story from the archives at any time.