Downstate Story Journal

Deadline: 30 June of each year

Writers Guidelines:

* Downstate Story is published every fall. Each issue contains 10 original short stories and original illustrations. We accept a variety of genres so that every reader who looks at Downstate Story will find something fascinating.
* The deadline is always June 30.
* Meanwhile we also promote Downstate Story, as well as the reading of fiction in general. We hold readings, and our writers have read and been interviewed on radio and TV.
* As a not-for-profit venture, our goal is to break even financially through sales, so that Downstate Story can support itself and need not depend on subsidies, grants or advertising - though we're flexible, and not ruling these out entirely. People can help by mentioning Downstate Story and similar publications to friends, encouraging libraries to order copies, or buying copies for themselves or friends. It costs $8, postpaid in the USA, and makes a good gift. Add $2 more for non-USA postage. You can reach an order blank at the end of this page.
* We encourage potential contributors to buy a copy to support the magazine, and to become familiar with it.
* Story guidelines, in general: short fiction or narrative written to the standards of fiction, under 2000 words, never published before. Shorter is better. We prefer some connection with Illinois or the Midwest. We also need illustrators. All contributors are paid $50 on acceptance for their work. We buy first rights, including Internet publication. Anyone can submit work.
* Please enclose an SASE for a response. In this age of cheap copies we do NOT return manuscripts. We do NOT accept e-mail manuscripts, but we REQUIRE correspondance via e-mail for the speed and cost savings. If you plan to send us a manuscript, be sure you have access to e-mail. All manuscripts should have a valid e-mail address, as well as a valid phone number on the manuscript itself!
* We notify all authors of our decisions in late fall. Don't call us -- we will notify you!

Send manuscripts to:

Downstate Story
1825 Maple Ridge
Peoria, IL 61614

Questions? Email ehopkins7@prodigy.net

Beta City, POW!erful Tale

The first book about the superhumans of Beta City, POW!erful Tales, cast a wide net. Their authors spun a wide variety of tales--humorous, exciting and tragic. This collection will hopefully be just as varied, but with a more focused over-arcing plot.

POW!erful Tales ended with the threat of an alien invasion--and the implication that meeting this threat was the reason for Beta City's existence. In this volume, the threatened invasion from Gehenna (also known as Jupiter's moon, Io) arrives on Earth, and only the heroes of Beta City can stop it.

They are looking for finely-crafted tales of superhero fiction, set during the invasion of Beta City. The forces attacking from Gehenna are diverse and cosmopolitan, so any alien rabble you can dream up can be used. Their methods are up to you -- classic spacecraft assaults, subtle sorcerous schemes, and unspeakable horrors let loose in dark alleys are all fair game. Whether your preference leans toward science fiction, fantasy, horror, or something else entirely, your story can find a home here. Similarly, while they love well-written superpowered action, they don't want to fill the book entirely with tales of hero vs. alien combat. With the invasion as a background, all sorts of stories are possible -- consider how many different kinds of stories have been set during World War II, from Saving Private Ryan to the Indiana Jones films to Casablanca. Find your own angle, and surprise them!

That said, stories need to keep the following invasion timeline in mind. While an ingenious story will get you past almost any requirement, you have to fit into the book somewhere. Your story should take place during one of the sets of events listed in the timeline below. You can stretch your story across more than one if you desire, but it's not recommended; doing so makes it harder to place your story, and lowers your chance of acceptance. Also keep in mind that they will probably need more stories from the middle than from either end; stories set at the beginning or end of the invasion will probably have fewer competitors, but will be competing for fewer spots.

INVASION TIMELINE

1. The first ships arrive. Stories set in this period should start with things relatively normal, and in some manner touch on the chaos as the invasion begins and no one yet knows what is happening.

2. Conventional forces, aided by superheroes, attempt to stave off the invasion before it can get a foothold on the ground -- and fail.

3. The invasion fleet has landed. Superheroes continue to fight on their own, or conduct guerilla actions as the Gehennan forces establish themselves in Beta City. Why is Beta City so important? Apparently it sits on the one place on Earth suitable for the construction of... (see #4)

4. The invasion has succeeded and Beta City is occupied. Citizens march off to work camps to construct a huge pit in which Kharsear plans to create a new singularity to swallow the Earth. Heroes do what they can, particularly to sabotage the singularity project. For the most part they are disorganized and working solo.

5. The resistance becomes organized. Superheroes (perhaps working with surviving military or even some of their old supervillain enemies) have become resistance cells, and are working together to disrupt the occupation.

6. The resistance launches a counterattack. Together the heroes assault the occupation headquarters on a do-or-die mission to finish off Kharsear or drive him away. Note that the main story dealing with the counterattack has already been assigned; submitted stories can take place at the same time, but the final battle itself will be resolved elsewhere.

WHAT THEY DON'T WANT

One thing they're not looking for this time is the ironic, tongue-in-cheek sort of superhero story that brings out the various tropes of the genre in order to poke fun at them. Those kinds of stories can be enjoyable -- they published a few in POW!erful Tales -- but for this book they're looking for stories that take the genre seriously and try to make it cool and exciting. Light-hearted and comedic are acceptable, but try to work within the genre.

Another unacceptable category is fan fiction. No characters (or anything else) owned by third parties, please. Not even the most vague or oblique reference is acceptable. They love the classic heroes of comics too, but they're not authorized to include them here.

FORMATTING YOUR SUBMISSION

Include a cover letter in the body of your e-mail with a brief (and I do mean brief) bit about yourself and your publication history. Please indicate in which part of the timeline your story is set (just the number from the timeline is enough).

Word Limit: 1000 - 8000 words
Deadline: March 15, 2011
Payment: 1 cent per word + 1 contributor’s copy
Reprints: No
Multiple Submissions: No
Simultaneous Submissions: No
Postal Submissions: No
Format: Use standard manuscript format. If you don’t know what this is, find out quickly.

Send the story as an .RTF file to betacityantho@gmail.com with the story title, your name, and the word count in the subject line. You should get a “story received” email within a week. After that, you may not hear from me until submissions close. Stories may be rejected before the deadline, but no stories will be accepted until after the deadline. You may only get one shot, so send in your best work!

CANDLE IN THE ATTIC WINDOW

Candle in the Attic Window, an anthology of Gothic fiction, will open to submissions January 1-February 28, 2011. Do not send any submissions before this date. Yes, they mean it.

The anthology will be available in print and as an e-book in 2011, and is edited by the eldritch duo of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. Cover art work is by Nacho Molina Parra.

What They Want

Remember those Gothic paperbacks of the 60s? Yes, the ones featuring the heroine in the white gown running from the creepy mansion. Well, they want her (or it could be him) back!

They are seeking tales and poetry of Gothic horror. While they will consider different time periods, they are not fixed on only exploring an English Victorian country manor. They want a variety of settings. Can you do Gothic Brazil? Gothic Malaysia? How does Gothic take shape in the modern, blue-glass towers of Vancouver? Show us how the terror-stricken governess can morph into the computer programmer that discovers a deadly secret in Hong Kong. Or transport us to 18th century Moscow, where that candle burns bright – and deadly. They want Gothic tales reimagined for a modern audience.

Take the classic Gothic and shake it up a bit. Surprise us. But most of all, scare us.

Further fiction guidelines below. For poetry, send up to three poems pasted in the body of the e-mail with a cover letter. Poems paid at $10 CAD per poem. A physical contributor’s copy and e-book copy are provided.

Length

Short fiction (2,000 words) to novelette (10,000 words). Keep in mind they have a payment cap of $70 CAD, so your long novelette might be better served by finding another home.

Payment

One cent per word (minimum $30 CAD) up to a maximum of $70 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 $30 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: Gothic 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 because they will not consider more than one at a time and will make you resubmit any simultaneous submissions after they answer on the previous one. 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 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 January 1-February 28, 2011. Do not send anything before or after that date. If you do, they will ignore it.

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

Tremblers - A Brand New Market

Trembles is a brand new horror magazine slated for its first release in January 2011 and released 5 times a year (Jan., Mar., May., July., and Sept.) with a double year-end issue in November. The publication will appear online and in electronic and print form and all stories accepted will cross into all three formats.

Guidelines

Horror. Simple as that. To give you an idea of what to send, some authors we like are Brian Keene, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Richard Laymon, Clive Barker, Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft.

• Flash Fiction (1,000 words or less)
• Short Story (1,001 to 6,000 words)
• Poetry (up to 50 lines)

Format

Please send manuscripts as a .DOC, .DOCX or .RTF attachment totrembleshorrormag@gmail.com with a cover letter in the body of an e-mail. Do not send your manuscript in the body of an e-mail, it will automatically be deleted. Make sure your manuscript uses standard formatting like 12-pt New Time Roman font and double-spacing. On the first page of your manuscript, please include your name, address, phone and e-mail in the upper-left corner and the word count rounded to the nearest hundred in the upper-right.

Payment

Trembles provides a token payment of $5 for short stories and $2 for flash fiction and poetry in exchange for First North American Serial rights. You will also receive a contributor’s copy in electronic form.

Please send any questions to the above e-mail address.

Bad-Ass Faeries 4

Bad-Ass Faeries 4 - It's Elemental

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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.

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.

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.