HIDEOUS EVERMORE HORROR ANTHOLOGY

Shadow City Press is seeking short story submissions for an anthology of modern day, creature-themed horror tales entitled Hideous Evermore. We are looking for edgy, thought-provoking dark genre fiction—horror only. We are not interested in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, or splatter punk for this anthology. What we are seeking are stories about creatures of unknown origin that have rarely been read about in horror fiction (however, please avoid stories that only present the origin of the villain/beast). We do not want stories about zombies, vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, psychopaths/serial killers, or any of the other horror clichés. Though many writers can present these types of characters in a new light, this anthology is focused on an original breed of creature to provoke the minds of readers.

At the heart of all submissions should be a theme of hideous terror. Scare us with something we’ve never seen! Generally, if you read your manuscript and it scares you, then it is probably a good fit for this anthology. In addition, we pride ourselves in publishing works that contain strong characters. Make your characters believable! Make us feel their struggles! Sex and gore are fine as long as they are an integral part of the story.

At Shadow City Press, we believe that horror is meant to frighten, disquiet, and strike deeply at the darkest places in the reader’s soul. Therefore, we ask that you only submit your darkest tales to us. If we do not like the tale, we will kindly pass on it. Submissions that do not adhere to the guidelines presented here, will automatically be discarded.

Submissions should be between 1,000 and 3,500 words. Payment for accepted stories is 1 cent per word and one contributor’s copy of Hideous Evermore upon publication. We will acquire first-time North American rights for original works, to appear in our anthology Hideous Evermore, slated for release in the Spring/Summer of 2009.

We are not accepting simultaneous submissions or reprints.

All electronic submissions should be in the following standard manuscript format:

· Microsoft Word Document (.doc)

· 12pt Courier New Font

· Double-spaced

· First page should include Author contact info, title of work, byline, and word count

· Last Name, Title, Page Number on upper right of every page after first page

ALL stories should be well-crafted. Numerous spelling errors will work against you. Take the time to edit your work before submitting!

As editor, we have chosen our first published author, Andrew Wolter (author of Nightfall) to head-up this anthology. Andrew is a great writer and has a good eye for well-constructed stories and characters. Please email your query/cover letter AND attachment to him with the subject line: Hideous Evermore Submission. It is important that you email both Andrew and Seth Drake (editor at Shadow City Press), so that all lines of communication remain open. Therefore, email your electronic submissions to andrew@andrewwolter.com and editor@shadowcitypress.com. Once you have sent your email, you should receive a response from Shadow City Press within 1 day that we received your submission. Once we have confirmed receipt of your submission, please allow 30 to 60 days for a response. If your story is rejected, we will do our best to give you feedback. However, we kindly ask that you don’t argue with our rejection. Our guidelines are stringent. We prefer that all writers we work with display the same respect and professionalism that we give.

We will be open to submissions for our Hideous Evermore anthology now until March 31, 2009.

Should you have any questions, email Seth Drake at editor@shadowcitypress.com.

GENERAL SUBMISSIONS

Shadow City Press is currently open to submissions via invitation only. We have a strong team of publishing scouts who search for our authors through buzz created via Internet message boards, author web sites and popular sites such as MySpace. We hope to be offering general submission guidelines in the future.

Since we primarily focus on providing limited edition books to a vast audience, we can currently only do so on an author by author basis.

Feel free to check back to our website on a regular basis to view the latest author/book we are promoting and our future publishing criteria.

Appalachian Holiday Hauntings

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Title: Appalachian Holiday Hauntings

Editors: Michael Knost and Mark Justice

Publisher: Woodland Press

Publication date: November 1, 2009

Word count: 1000 to 3000 words

Pay: three-cents per word plus contributor copy (one-cent per word on reprints)

Submit to: xmasanthology@yahoo.com

Format: Attached RTF or Word Document file. (do not copy and paste into email body)

No simultaneous or multiple submissions

No explicit language or sexual content (this project will be in regional school systems)

Deadline: September 1, 2009 (do not inquire on status of submission until after this date)

We are looking for traditional Christmas ghost stories set in the Appalachian region. Think Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with an Appalachian backdrop. However, given this example, we want to make sure you understand that stories may be set in any time frame, including the present.

We are not interested in tales that disrespect or alter the religious aspects of the holiday.

Return of the Raven

Submission Guidelines for Upcoming Anthology

Horror Bound Online Magazine publications is announcing a call for submissions for a future anthology called Return of the Raven. (temporary title only).

This is a tribute to the master of Horror, Edgar Allan Poe. If you are inspired by the work of the master and his themes, tone, characterization and style then read on:

Preference will be given to:
*paranormal themes
*psi phenomena
*spooky, ghostly tales
*psychological horror
*both short stories and poetry

LENGTH
3,000-7,000 words (for short stories)

DEADLINE
We will be reading immediately. Deadline for submissions is March 31st, 2009 or until the anthology is filled.

PAYMENT
0.01 cents (CAN) per word. Payment made upon publication. You must have a paypal account. Money will be deposited into that account.

PRINT RIGHTS
First print rights, exclusive print rights for three years from time of publication. Author retains copyright. No reprints please.

HOW DO I KNOW YOU’VE RECEIVED MY SUBMISSIONS?
Within one (1) week of your submission, you'll receive an e-mail confirming that we received it. If you don't receive this confirmation, feel free to email and ask. After that you will NOT hear back from us unless we confirm that your story will appear in our anthology.

ARE MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS OKAY?
Yes.

WHAT ABOUT SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS?
Simultaneous submissions to other publications are fine but please inform us if your story is placed.

WHAT ARE THE LIMITS ON SEXUAL/EROTIC CONTENT AND PROFANITY?
No sexual/erotic content or profanity.

LIMITS ON VIOLENCE AND GORE
The editors of this anthology are not big fans of either violence or gore. If there is going to be violence and gore, it better be a very compelling read!

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE
Send the file to admin@horrorbound.com. Must be in .doc format or .rtf. NO PDFS PLEASE.

ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS?
Send an e-mail to admin@horrorbound.com

PSYCHO BOY/PSYCHO GIRL

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR:
PSYCHO BOY/PSYCHO GIRL

Ah…romance. We all want it. We all want to find that special someone. Someone to share our hopes and dreams with, someone to confide in and just sit next to on a cold, rainy day. But finding that special someone usually means dating, which for lack of a better definition means a roller coaster ride into the minds of the insane. You may meet some nice people who just don’t fit with your qualifications, sure, we get that, but it seems more often than not you end up sitting across a restaurant table listening to Joe Blow’s reason for eating human flesh and Jane Blow’s explanation for setting her ex’s house on fire.

And those are the good dates. Oh yes, it can get much much worse.

We here at Rapier Press want to hear about the WORST DATE YOU’VE EVER HAD and we want you to spare no detail. We are looking for stories in the 1500-4000 word range (query for longer/shorter tales). These stories will be included in our first ever anthology: Psycho Boy/Psycho Girl: True Tales of the Worst Dates Imaginable.

Reading Period: February 1st to March 31st or until filled.

What we want: True stories of dates gone bad. Everything from the time you and your date ended up in jail to the time you found yourselves tied to a motel bed in Nicaragua. The crazier the story, the more chance it has of being accepted. We’re really looking for funny, exciting, and benignly nightmarish stuff. We are striving for an equal number of stories from both sexes.

What we don’t want: We don’t want full names. This is not about getting revenge on the girl or guy who broke your heart or stole your money. Any stories that come in with people’s full names will be immediately rejected. Stick to first names or some other kind of description (Mr. BuckTooth, Mrs. Crazy Eyes, etc). We also don’t want GRAPHIC sex. Stories of sex are fine, and you are welcome to include sex (this book is for adults after all) but try not to be gross about it. Look at it this way, we’d happily print a story like Cameron Diaz’s hair gel moment in Something About Mary—that’s funny—but a 5000 word story about deformed genitalia will likely be rejected. Also, this book is meant to be fun, so nothing depressing or involving people getting seriously hurt.

DO NOT MAKE UP YOUR STORIES. We are hoping to build some nice writer/publisher relationships here. Impress us once and we’re likely to offer invites to future books. If we find out you lied about your tale, you will never work with us again and your story will be cut from future runs of the book.

Payment: Authors will receive a flat payment of $15 via paypal and a contributor copy of the book. Yes, we realize that is a horrendously low payment and we should be flogged repeatedly for the insult, and rabid monkeys and venomous tarantulas should be set loose in our bedrooms, but this is our first book and we are paying for it ourselves. We will increase our rates for future books as sales go up. You’re welcome to sub elsewhere if you don’t agree with the rate. Or you can toilet paper our houses if you can find them.

Book Format and Accessibility: The book will be printed in POD format. This means it WILL be available through online retailers such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Borders.com, etc. We will do our best to get it in stores but brick and mortar stores often will not buy POD books until a certain sales figure has been reached online. It can be done and we hope to get there eventually, but chances are that won’t happen with this first book.

Submission guidelines: Email your manuscript as a WORD DOC or RTF attachment to rapierpress_AT_hotmail_DOT_com. Please use a 12-point readable font -- SINGLE SPACED. Yes, we repeat, single spaced. If we want to make liner notes later we will adjust the line spacing ourselves. Why single spaced? Because this email is attached to our Crackberrys, allowing us to read submissions whenever and wherever, and it’s way easier to read the stories if they’re single spaced. One more time: SINGLE SPACED.

Include your name and email on the cover page. Place the title of the story, page number, and your name in the header of each page. Please only submit one story at a time. No simultaneous submissions.

Return time: We will get back to you as quickly as we can.

Escape Clause

SUBMISSIONS FOR ESCAPE CLAUSE

This is Ink Oink Art Inc.'s first annual speculative fiction anthology.

If you're looking for this, you probably know that the proper website is down today-- but here is most of the pertinent information.

Escape Clause:

Who we are: a predominantly, but not exclusively, Westcoast anthology of speculative stuff—fiction, poetry, and art. We’re published by Ink Oink Art Inc. and edited by Clélie Rich. Our splendiferous cover is by Thomas Anfield, and our interior illustrations by Lee Tockar. Our writers so far include award-winners Eileen Kernaghan, Linda De Meulemeester, and Rhea Rose. We’ve got space left, and we’re looking for new friends. Original unpublished work only, my lovelies.

What we want: short fiction (2000 to 5000) for which we will pay $200; and poems up to 50 lines in length, for which we will pay $50. We’re looking for character-driven pieces; for whimsical, absurdist, elegant, horrific, heart-felt, energetic, sad, scary pieces; for hard sf, sf with a bit of give in it, fantasy, and everything in between. Pick one or all of the above. If you’ve put your heart into it, we want to see it. Just respect the word limits.

How we want it: one story per submission please, or up to five poems; as an attachment only (not in the body of the message) in either Word or RTF, with your name/[PTY or FCT]/title in the heading, and send it winging through the ethers to escapeclauses@shaw.ca

Reading period: January 15th to February 28th 2009.

Who's publishing? Kit St. Germain, a writer/actor who lives in Vancouver B.C. and says:

In 2002, I self-published a novel. It was a real learning curve. One thing it taught me was that I wasn't the genius I thought I was, and that I had to find out what the real world rules were-- because everyone else was playing by them. Shortly after the book, I joined the writing group, Helix,(nothing to do with the former online magazine) and I've been there since. Not to put too fine a point on it, the ladies beat me up but-good, and I know I'm a far better writer for it. As I told the folks at Strange Horizons, these girls are so pithy they are practically an orange. I know, I know, I should've been in a writer's group for five years and THEN written a novel. Yes, yes, we're all sooo clever five years from now.

So here we are, I got an insurance reserve cheque and I thought: _Any idiot can renovate their kitchen. It takes god's own egg-splattered numpties to make books._ So that's what we're(I'm) doing. The main reason I want to do this, is that I am surrounded by utterly extraordinary people-- writers, actors, artists, and there are so many more I have met in the ethers. I want to establish the mother of all geeky kitchen parties and bonk a cover on it. And then do the same thing next year, and the next.

Already signed on are award winners Eileen Kernaghan(Helix), and Linda DeMeulemeester(winner of the Silver Birch award for the Secret of Grim Hill) New to me is Ari Goelman whose submission got me fired up all over again. (although I must emphasize that I am not editing, or choosing or anything) The prolific C. June Wolfe, author of 'Finding Creatures,' joins us, as does the charm queen, the ineffable Rhea Rose whose sense of humor and a dash of daredevil shines through everything she does.

Cleie Rich is everyone's go-to person to find out how a thing is really done-- She's an expert's expert, and now she's ours.

Thomas Anfield(cover) is a loquacious(He paints for a living, but people should be paying just to hear him talk) much loved local performance artist and a painter -- take a look at his site http://www.thomasanfield.com/

Lee Tockar is a fellow actor(have a look at the IMDB Movie base) who spends his bench time with his nose pressed into his sketchbooks meticulously handwriting children's stories and illustrating them with a skill to rival Maurice Sendak's-- I've known him ten years. He lives in luminous cocoon of creative electricity. I can't wait for everyone to meet him. I'm so glad we could get him while we can still afford him!

We will add to this site as we go along-- we'll be posting bios and things so keep an eye peeled(ick) and welcome to Escape Clause.

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

Friendship Star

Mention friends and everyone has a memory or story to share. Choice Publishing Group (CPG) is collecting these stories and memories about, by, and from friends for their new book Patchwork Path: Friendship Star.

CPG is looking for original stories and essays from 250 to 2000 words about friendship. Each submission will be reviewed and considered based on creativity, originality, concept, and style. Reading will be continuous and submissions will be considered as they arrive. Not all works will be accepted. There is NO Entry or Reading Fee. The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2009.

Submissions will be selected for publication in Patchwork Path: Friendship Star by Choice Publishing Group president Tena Beth Thompson and bestselling author Gregory A. Kompes.

The Patchwork Path story collection titles are all based on quilt block names and have quilt and quilter themes. In addition to Friendship Star (to be published fall 2009) other titles include Grandma's Choice (November 2008), Dad's Bowtie (June 2009), Wedding Bouquet (2010), Treasure Box (2010), and Star Spangled Banner (2011).

Miss Thompson writes about her life experiences with humor. "If I can put a smile on one person's face for a second, easing their pain, I will consider my book a huge success," she says with conviction. Thompson's book, Separation Survival Guide, When Your Marriage Catapults into Limbo, will be available in 2008.

Mr. Kompes, Patchwork Path Production Director, holds a degree in English literature from Columbia University, New York, and an MS. Ed. from CSU, East Bay. He is the author of the bestselling 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Places to Live (Career Press) and editor of The Fabulist Flash, a newsletter for writers and the Eighteen Questions, a
Writer's Digest "101 Best Website for Writers" 2007 & 2008.

Choice Publishing Group (CPG) publishes books that touch people's lives and offer a respite from everyday pressures. CPG books inspire readers to view life with a positive attitude, count their blessing or make them laugh.

For more information, including complete submission guidelines, visit Patchwork Path: Piecing Together Our Lives online at http://www.Patchwor kPath.com.