Hello Internet!

I am back and I bring with me news of lots of lovely writing opportunities for you to sink your teeth into!

I got these submissions from scouring the depths of my twitter feed and the excellent Horror Tree website. The latter is an excellent source of publishers looking for writers for all sorts of stories. It is a website that deals predominantly with horror, so you might notice that most of the themes being requested have a certain horror-y slant. Interestingly, the one I got from Twitter also has a monster theme, so I guess it’s just the allure of Hallowe’en starting to cast its spell on the world!

Anywho, here are some fantastic opportunities for writers. Leave me a comment if you send anything to them, I love to hear if my website has helped anyone, it makes doing the work much sweeter.

August 6th

Starward Shadows Quarterly are looking for short stories and flash fiction. This means that they are open to stories from 500 to 8,000 words across the two brackets. Flash fiction pays a flat $10 per story, while short fiction pays 1 cent per word. They are looking for dark, nightmarish stories within the SFFH umbrella. They are explicitly not looking for anything dealing with politics, post apocalypses, dystopian settings, or pandemics. Absolutely no animal harm or abuse.

August 7th

Fantasy Magazine are looking for short stories and flash fiction from 0 up to 7,500 words. They publish both dark fantasy and original fantasy and they pay 8 cents per word. They also welcome stories that were declined from their sister publications, Lightspeed, and Nightmare.

August 12th

Violet Gaze Press are looking for short stories in the 15,000 to 20,000 word area for an anthology on the theme of Monster Lover. This is a romance publisher so get your feather quill, the one stolen from Cupid’s wings! They particularly want stories featuring monsters that are not the traditional cliché’s in romance. All writers for the anthology will get a share of the royalties.

August 15th

Planet Scumm are looking for stories for their Winter Horror Anthology! They want horror stories with a speculative or Sci-Fi theme and are particularly looking for stories that incorporate the themes of Winter. The stories should be between 2000 and 6000 words. All contributors will receive a payment of 3 cents per word, as well as two contributors copies.

August 16th

Deadsteam II are taking submissions of gaslamp and dreadpunk stories that embrace the Victorian Gothic. The editor is hoping to include stories featuring as many different monsters as possible, if you have an idea for a more obscure creature send it along. The payment is a flat $25 and a contributor’s copy.

August 20th

Life Beyond Us is an anthology looking for short stories themed around Astrobiology, alien life, and similar ideas. There are currently only two slots open on the anthology so get in quick to secure your place! They want everything to be between 1000 and 5000 words and will be paying writers 8 cents per word. Each of the stories will be accompanied by an essay written about a scientist about the science your story uses. This sounds fantastic and I really wish I had the slightest idea what to write, because I love the idea of the accompanying essay!

That’s it for the first two thirds of this month, I hope you’ve found something here that catches your eye! There are a couple of opportunities this month that I will be looking out to buy as well as to submit my writing too, which is always a good sign. 

Again if you end up submitting anything to these opportunities please leave a comment on this page because I am a terrible gossip and I like to feel as if I contribute to the writing community. 

I should be doing a second post about the opportunities available in the latter half of this month. As tends to happen the amount of opportunities massively increased over the last two to three days of the month and as I’ve already got a lot of links to add to this page I’ll save it for now.

Stay safe out there,

K