CALLIHOO NEWSLETTER Market News for Writers of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Julia West, Editor Volume 12 Number 1 27 March 2008 Website: http://www.callihoo.net IN THIS ISSUE News Publication Notes Deadlines Anthologies CatsCurious Triangulation: Taking Flight Contests The Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest The Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest The 13th Annual PARSEC Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Story Contest Market Guidelines Baen Books Clarkesworld Magazine Doorways Magazine Escape Pod Fantasy Magazine Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show (IGMS) PodCastle Pseudopod Market Information Black Gate Jim Baen's Universe IGMS Talebones NEWS It's been more than four years since I stopped doing the CALLIHOO newsletter (due, mostly, to not having access to the internet). When I quit the job that was eating my life, I thought the best way to get back into writing was to reinstate the newsletter. So, here it is, number 1 of the new volume! PUBLICATION NOTES Ken Rand's humorous fantasy novel =Fairy BrewHaHa at the Lucky Nickel Saloon= is now available from Yard Dog Press (http://www.yarddogpress.com/fairy.htm). Read the first chapter on his web page at www.sfwa.org/members/Rand/ His fantasy novel =Pax Dakota= will be out soon as well. DEADLINES Where it says "GLs in Vol. X No. Y," these are volume and issue of the CALLIHOO newsletter. CatsCurious Anthology 1 Jan - 31 March 2008 [Print, 5k - 10k wds, 5 cents/wd, $500 max. E-mail subs only. Rewritten fairy tale. GLs in Vol. 12 No. 1] Triangulation: Taking Flight Anthology Deadline 31 March 2008 [Print, to 5k wds., 2 cents/wd., min $10. Reprints okay, theme: 'taking flight.' E-subs preferred. No mult or sim subs. GLs in Vol. 12 No. 1] The Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest Deadline 1 April 2008 [Print, to 8k wds, No entry fee. Near future. No mult subs. E- subs only. Grand prize winner pub in Jim Baen's Universe at normal rates + award package. GLs in Vol. 12 No. 1] The Thirteenth Annual PARSEC Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story Contest Deadline 15 April 2008 [Unpub writers only, SF/F/H to 3500 wds. 1st prize $200; may have 2nd prize $100 and 3rd prize $50. No entry fee. No reprints. Theme 'metallic feathers.' E-subs only by request. Winner printed in Confluence 2008 program book. GLs in Vol. 12 No. 1] The Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest Deadline 1 June 2008 [To 15k wds., $5,000 1st, $2,000 2nd, $1,000 3rd prize. No entry fee. No reprints or sim subs. E-subs only. GLs in Vol. 12 No. 1] ANTHOLOGIES CatsCurious [Print antho, rewritten fairy tale, 5k-10k wds, pays 5 cents/wd. to $500, e-subs only, open 1 Jan-31 Mar 2008] There are two sides to every story... And we here at CatsCurious Press think that our readers deserve to read BOTH! A Call for Submissions... of the Faery Taile Kynde! CatsCurious Press will open to submissions starting January 1, 2008 for all well-written, humorous fairy tale re-tellings! But there's a catch -- these stories must be written from ONE POV only... the protagonist's. Why would we be so strict, you ask? Because Jim C. Hines, author of =Goblin Quest=, =Goblin War= and =Goblin Hero= has already gotten on board to write a counterpoint story! That's right -- once I have plowed my way through the slush, Jim will review my favorite stories and then choose ONE from among them to write a counterpoint to. The end result will be a double-sided book with two covers (one featuring artwork for Jim's story, the other featuring artwork to coincide with the protagonist's point of view). Stories will be printed upside-down from one another -- flip the book over, and start fresh from the top! Here are the requirements: We prefer well-known Faery Tailes * Story length must be between 5000 and 10,000 words * Stories must be single POV, from the protagonist's point of view * Stories must be humorous * Stories must appeal to a broad range of folks -- from twelve years old to adult (so no raunchy humor, please!) Submission period: January 1st, 2008 to midnight March 31st, 2008 Purchasing First North American Print Rights (USA, Canada, Phillipines [sic] & Puerto Rico) with limited electronic rights, exclusive for one year. The payment? $.05 per word (up to $500 maximum) & sharing a cover with Jim C. Hines! Email Submissions ONLY in .rtf or .doc, standard Manuscript format with italics (instead of underlines, please!) to submissions@catscuriouspress.com with a subject of 'SUBMISSION: My Title' http://www.catscuriouspress.com/guidelines.aspx Triangulation: Taking Flight [Annual print antho, spec fic to 5k wds, pays 2 cents/wd. on accept., prefers e-subs, no mult or sim subs, RT 1-2 mo., deadline 31 Mar 08] Contributor Guidelines What We're Looking For: =Triangulation: Taking Flight= is the latest edition of the Triangulation print anthology series. (Last year we went the POD route with Lulu.com, complete with option of letting the buyer download the PDF for cheap instead, and were quite pleased with the results. We'll almost certainly go through Lulu.com again this year, so if the whole POD thing squicks you out, you probably don't want to submit to us.) We're looking for short speculative fiction that fits our theme. As with last year, we define "short" as "up to about 5,000 words or so." We have no reason to impose hard and fast arbitrary word limits, but we are interested in publishing a wide variety of stories. So the more space a story will take, the more it will need to impress us. If you have a kick-ass story that exceeds 5K then by all means send it; but be warned that if you're closer to 10,000 words, your story will need to lay-down a Chuck-Norris- grade ass-kicking on the editorial staff to make it in. There is no minimum word count. We dig flash. As with last year, we have no interest in getting more specific about the term "speculative fiction." Science fiction, horror, fantasy, alternate history, whatever; if there's a speculative element vital to your story, we'll gladly give it a read. And as with last year, we welcome creative interpretations of our theme. This year, the theme is "Taking Flight." What's that mean? Come up with your own answer, and give us a story that convinces us you're right. We will run mature content, as long as we like the story. So make sure there's an actual story in that mature content. We will gladly consider reprints. (If the story ran someplace obscure, then chances are it will be new to almost all our readers; and if it ran someplace high-profile, then chances are it's really good. Either way, we win!) We're still not interested in fanfic. Submission deadline is March 31, 2008. All electronic submits must be sent by that time, all snail mail submits must be postmarked by that date. Working the Senior Editor: Many markets will advise you to buy a back-issue to get the best idea of what the editor is looking for. This is my second stint as the anthology's editor, so buying a copy of last year's edition might indeed be helpful that way. But the truth is, these guidelines contain everything you need to know in order to get your story accepted. (If they didn't, they'd be some suck-ass guidelines, wouldn't they.) Don't buy "End of Time" to get some insight into submitting a story to me; buy it because you like good fiction. Here's what it would probably tell you about how to sell a story to me: I have eclectic tastes. Last year's antho had everything from tender love stories to splatterpunk horror. Some were very personal and focused on just a few people; others blew-up the friggin' universe. There may be some common element to all the stories I bought last year (other than "well-written" and "somehow relating to the theme"), but if there is, I'll be damned if I can spot it. If you do notice a bias in the fiction I selected, please let me know so I can kill it. I'm a sucker for interesting ideas. Okay, I guess I do have this bias, but it ain't going anywhere, so live with it. All the stories I ran last year had some strong idea at their core -- maybe it was obvious from the outset ("Continents run amok!" "Cowboy zombie apocalypse!"), maybe it didn't become clear until the very end. If you give me a story based on a trite, overused idea but explore it with brilliant characterization and excellent prose ... hmm. I guess I'd accept it. Grudgingly. You're better off having a really cool idea in there. Show me something I haven't seen before. Maybe your story is off- the-wall creative from start to finish. Maybe you just came up with an interesting twist on something I've already seen. Either one works; but the sensation that you're not showing me anything new is the kiss of death. Get on with it. Readers are an impatient lot, this reader doubly so. If you haven't captured my attention after a page or so, rejection is almost certain. (And if the story actually does start to get interesting in the next few pages [it happens -- rarely, but it happens], then you'll probably get a letter from me saying that I'll run the story if you can fix that lousy beginning. So you may as well fix it it before you send it in.) Make sure it's actually speculative. If the speculative element feels grafted-on or could be removed without really altering the story, I'm going to pass. Compensation: We pay two cents per word on acceptance (rounded to the nearest 100 words, $10 minimum payment) and a single contributor's copy. Contributors will also have the option of purchasing additional copies of the anthology at cost, exact price TBD. How To Submit: We prefer electronic submissions as they make our lives easier. Please send your story to editor@parsecink.org. Please put your subject line in the format of "SUBMISSION: Story Title" so that our software knows you're not spam. We'll consider stories in the following formats: * .odt (OpenDocument Text -- format used by the OpenOffice.org suite) * .rtf (Rich Text Format -- generic document format that most word processors can create) * .doc (MS Word -- if you really must) Please use standard manuscript format. There's disagreement on some of the finer details of the "standard" -- we're cool with that. We're not testing you to see if you can follow each and every niggling detail, we just want a manuscript that looks professional. If you absolutely positively can't use email, please send the manuscript (with either a SASE or a return email address) to: Triangulation 2008 134 Orchard Dr. Penn Hills, PA 15235 No hand-written manuscripts. We gotta draw the line somewhere. Please, no multiple submissions (sending us multiple stories at once) or simultaneous submissions (sending the story to us and other markets at the same time). We'll get back to you promptly, we promise. Response: Expect to hear back from us within a month. Feel free to start sending us nagging emails if you haven't heard from us after two months. Who We Are: Triangulation is an annual anthology produced by PARSEC Ink, the publishing wing of the PARSEC science-fiction association in Pittsburgh, PA. Yes, PARSEC used to be an acronym for something. Now, it isn't. A new edition of Triangulation has been published every year since 2003 (save for a brief hiatus in 2006). Triangulation shares an informal relationship with the annual Confluence short story contest, and has in the past published stories that placed well in it. Authors who do well in the contest may be offered publication in Triangulation solely at the discretion of Triangulation's editors. However, contest entrants are encouraged to also submit their work separately to the anthology. The contest stories are accepted on an "all-or- nothing" basis; either we like the story well enough to run it with no more than minor edits, or we pass. When we find a "near miss" in the slushpile, we do try to give the author an opportunity to correct the problem and try again; stories read only as contest entries will get no such consideration. Thank you for considering Triangulation: Taking Flight as a market for your work; we look forward to reading it. -- Pete Butler, Editor, Triangulation: Taking Flight http://parsecink.org/triangulation/2008/guidelines.html CONTESTS The Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest [Contest, near future space exploration, to 8k wds. Grand prize winner pub in Jim Baen's Universe (at normal pmt) and prize package. No entry fee. No mult subs. E-subs only. Deadline 1 Apr 08] Since its early days, science fiction has played a unique role in human civilization. It removes the limits of what "is" and shows us a boundless vista of what "might be." Its fearless heroes, spectacular technologies and wondrous futures have inspired many people to make science, technology and space flight a real part of their lives and in doing so, have often transformed these fictions into reality. The National Space Society and Baen Books applaud the role that science fiction plays in advancing real science and have teamed up to sponsor this short fiction contest in memory of Jim Baen. CONTEST RULES: Please read carefully, because we have made a few changes from last year's contest requirements. * Write a short story of no more than 8,000 words, that shows the near future (no more than about 50-60 years out) of manned space exploration. * No entry fee. But please only submit one story...your best one! * All entries must be original works in English. Plagiarism, poetry, song lyrics, or characters from another person's works will not be considered. * E-mail submissions only. Send entries as .rtf attachments to: isdc.jbu.contest@gmail.com * Please put the word SUBMISSION in the subject line when sending a contest entry and QUESTION in the subject line for questions to the contest administrator. * Please include the following in the body of your email: The title of the work, the author's name, address and telephone number, and an approximate word-count. The manuscript should be an RTF attachment, in standard manuscript format and should be titled and numbered on every page, but the author's name MUST BE DELETED to facilitate fair judging. * Employees of Baen Books, Jim Baen's Universe, NSS and 2007 Grand Prize Winner are not eligible. (Sorry Mike) 2007 Second and Third place winners are eligible. * Deadline - April 1, 2008. WHAT WE DO WANT TO SEE: Moon bases, Mars colonies, orbital habitats, space elevators, asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, nano-technology, realistic spacecraft, heroics, sacrifice, adventure. WHAT WE DON'T WANT TO SEE: Stories that show technology or space travel as evil or bad, Star Wars type galactic empires, UFO abductions. JUDGES: Judging will be by Baen Books senior editor Hank Davis and Jim Baen's Universe editors Eric Flint and Mike Resnick. PRIZES: * The GRAND PRIZE winner will be published in a future issue of Jim Baen's Universe* and paid at the normal paying rates for professional story submittals. The author will also receive a specially designed award, free entry into the 2008 International Space Development Conference, a year's membership in the National Space Society ($45 level) and a prize package containing various Baen Books, Jim Baen's Universe and National Space Society merchandise. * SECOND and THIRD place winners will receive a year's membership in the National Space Society ($45 level), and a prize package containing various Baen Books, Jim Baen's Universe and National Space Society merchandise. * Winners will be announced and notified no later than May 5, 2008. (only the winners will be notified) The winners will be honored at the 2008 International Space Development Conference in Washington D.C., May 29-June 1, 2008. (though we would prefer the winner attend the conference, it is not required.) ( * Note: Publication details will be worked out between winner and JBU. In the unlikely event that none of the stories qualify for professional publication, a cash prize, of an amount determined by contest organizers, may be substituted in lieu of publication.) http://www.williamledbetter.com/contest.htm The Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest [Contest, SF to 15k wds. 1st prize $5,000, 2nd $2,000, 3rd $1,000. No entry fee. No reprints or sim subs. E-subs only. Deadline 1 Jun 08.] Three prizes will be given for the best original short stories reflecting the spirit, ideas, and philosophies of Robert Anson Heinlein. $5,000 first prize, $2,000 second prize, $1,000 third prize Contest Rules 1. The winning entries will be short stories (not to exceed 15,000 words) judged best in terms of * General literary quality, * Reflecting the spirit, ideas, and philosophies contained in the works of Robert A. Heinlein 2. All entries must be in English. 3. All entries must use an original (i.e. not Heinlein's nor any other author's) universe of characters and settings. 4. Plagiarism will result in disqualification. 5. Entries shall not include stories that have been previously commercially published. Simultaneous submissions to commercial publishers or other contests are not allowed. 6. Rights of first publication for entered stories and the right to use contestant's name and image for publicity purposes shall be granted to The Heinlein Society for duration of one year following the contest, i.e., until July 7, 2009. 7. Each entry will be judged so that the identity of the author is anonymous to the judges. 8. Entries will be judged by professional authors and editors. The decisions of the judges are entirely their own, and are final. 9. All stories submitted for the contest may be considered for publication in an anthology. 10. If an anthology is published: * The First, Second, and Third prize winning entries shall be included. * All authors to be published will be required to sign a publishing contract. * Non-prize winning entries may be selected in any order, at the sole discretion of the Heinlein Society or its agents. 11. Authors shall be compensated at standard SFWA professional rates. Eligibility 1. Anyone published or unpublished is eligible except individuals involved in judging the entries, members of the Society's committee concerned with this contest, board members of The Heinlein Society, and their immediate families. 2. No entry fee is required. 3. By entering, all entrants expressly agree to be bound by all the terms of the Contest Rules. Time frame for contest All entries must be received before 12:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time on June 1, 2008. Submitting your entry 1. Entries must be submitted as an attachment to an email sent to the email address HeinleinContest@heinleinsociety.org The entry so attached must be in .txt, .rtf, .pdf, or .doc format. 2. Entries shall be acknowledged by return email. 3. Each entry file must begin with the following header. Header information must only appear one time, and at the beginning of the file. Do not repeat on each "page". * Title * Author's name * Email address * Mailing address * Telephone number * Word count Miscellaneous This contest is void where prohibited by law. Any taxes due on contest winnings, levied by any taxing agency or jurisdiction are the sole responsibility of the prize winners. http://www.heinleinsociety.org/contest.html The Thirteenth Annual PARSEC Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story Contest [Unpub writers only, SF/F/H to 3500 wds. 1st prize $200; may have 2nd prize $100 and 3rd prize $50. No entry fee. No reprints. Theme 'metallic feathers.' E-subs only by request. Winner printed in Confluence 2008 program book. Deadline 15 April 2008] Prizes and eligibility: The contest is open to non-professional writers (those who have not met eligibility requirements for SFWA or equivalent). Previous multiple winners and current contest coordinators are also ineligible. The best story which relates to and features the contest theme will be published in the Confluence 2008 program book, and the author awarded the first prize of $200. At the discretion of the judges a second and third prize in the amounts of $100 and $50 may be awarded, with possible publication in a PARSEC INK publication. Submission to the contest implies consent for publication, but all rights revert immediately to the authors upon publication. The coordinators will screen the entries, and the best submissions will go on to our panel of three Judges. Decisions of the judges and coordinators in all these matters are final. There is NO entry fee. Judges: Wen Spencer, winner of the 2003 Campbell award for best new SF author, author of the Ukiah Oregon series, Tinker (won the Sapphire award), Wolf Who Rules, and A Brother's Price (Tiptree Honorable Mention); Mary Turzillo, Nebula winner for novelette "Mars is No Place for Children," author of An Old-fashioned Martian Girl, and many, many published poems, who taught English for years at Kent State; and Joshua Palmatier, author of The Skewed Throne, The Cracked Throne, and, coming in January, The Vacant Throne. Format: Stories must be Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror in genre. Stories must be original, unpublished, unsold and no more than 3500 words in length. Submit in standard contest format (title and page number on each page, but author name only appears on separate cover page; otherwise as in any professional submission). Email submissions accepted only upon request (see below). Include SASE for notification only, as manuscripts will not be returned. Incorrect format will make the entry ineligible. Stories must Relate To The Theme. Theme: "Metallic Feathers" We think this theme is broad and challenging enough to give everyone scope for new and interesting stories. Please remember, though, that Confluence attracts many families, and the story will be printed in the program book. A certain restraint and subtlety is called for. Too much explicit gore will definitely count against you. Deadline: Entries must be postmarked by April 15, 2008. The results are generally in by the end of May and all entrants notified by June 15th. Address: Send entries to: Ann Cecil PARSEC Short Story Contest 2966 Voelkel Avenue Pittsburgh PA 15216-2036 For questions or clarifications only you may email to cecil@city- net.com http://www.parsec-sff.org/contest08.html MARKET GUIDELINES Baen Books [Novels, SF/F, 100k-130k wds., payment very competitive. Complete ms. with synopsis. No sim subs. E-subs by form at Baen website (preferred). RT 9-12 mo.] Manuscript Submission Guidelines Dear Author: We publish only science fiction and fantasy. Writers familiar with what we have published in the past will know what sort of material we are most likely to publish in the future: powerful plots with solid scientific and philosophical underpinnings are the sine qua non for consideration for science fiction submissions. As for fantasy, any magical system must be both rigorously coherent and integral to the plot, and overall the work must at least strive for originality. Those manuscripts which survive the "first cut" as outlined above are then judged primarily on plot and characterization. Style: Simple is generally better; in our opinion good style, like good breeding, never calls attention to itself. Payment rates: very competitive. Preferred length: 100,000 - 130,000 words. Generally we are uncomfortable with manuscripts under 100,000 words, but if your novel is really wonderful send it along regardless of length. Submission procedures: Query letters are not necessary. We prefer to see complete manuscripts accompanied by a synopsis. We prefer not to see simultaneous submissions. Electronic Submissions: Electronic submissions are strongly preferred. We no longer accept submissions by email. Too much spam. Send your manuscript by using the submission form at: http://ftp.baen.com/Slush/submit.aspx No disks unless requested. Attach the manuscript as a Rich Text Format (.rtf) file. Any other format will not be considered. Send the manuscript as a single file (do not break it into separate chapter files). Your submission must include your name, email address*, postal mailing address, and telephone number on both your cover letter and the first page of the manuscript. *[If you have an alternate permanent email address, please include it in case your primary account changes or goes out of service.] Include a plot outline if possible. Spelling checkers and grammar checkers are tools, nothing more. Do not trust them to proofread your manuscript for you. Minimal formatting, please. Do not format text boxes or sidebars into the manuscript; use block quotes. Indent paragraphs with a left tab; center chapter headers and scene break indicators (###, ***, etc.); use page breaks only at the ends of chapters. For emphasis, choose underline or italics and use it throughout. Try to avoid bold face, as it tends not to show up. Do not use "smart quotes"/curly quotes, or single-character ellipses, m-dashes, etc. These often show as codes, not characters, when read on other systems. Use straight quotes and apostrophes, . . . , --, etc. Avoid non-standard fonts and unnecessary changes in font face, size, etc. Publisher likes CG Omega and Lucida Bright. Typesetter likes any standard bookface, Times Roman or Courier. Make it readable, or we won't read it. If something needs special formatting--e.g., small caps for a certain entity's dialog-- explain it in a cover letter. Include, if you like, your ideal cover treatment, including cover copy, a teaser page, and whatever else you would like. (But don't try to "sell" the story in a cover letter. It will stand or fall on its own merits.) After submitting, send email/postal address changes, and any queries, to e-editors@baen.com. NOTE: Any viruses attached to your submission will send your manuscript straight into the bit-bucket. Hardcopy Submissions (for those who cannot submit electronically): Standard manuscript format only: double-spaced, one side of the page only, 1 1/2" margins on all four sides of the page. We will consider photocopies if they are dark and clear. Font must be readable, or we won't read it. This means seriphed or at least semi-seriphed, 12-point or greater. Publisher likes CG Omega and Lucida Bright. Typesetter likes any standard bookface, Times Roman or Courier. Title, author (last name only is okay), and page number at the top of each page are mandatory. Include your name, mailing address, and telephone number on the first page. All submissions should be accompanied by a stamped return envelope. Submissions from outside the U.S. should be accompanied by sufficient International Reply Coupons. Please send manuscripts to: Baen Books P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 Reporting time: usually within 9 to 12 Months. (Sorry, we get a lot of manuscripts.) Thank you for thinking of Baen Books. The Editors, (From Deann Allen, 18 Apr 2007) http://bar.baen.com/Default.aspx Clarkesworld Magazine [Monthly webzine/print, SF/F/H 1k to 4k wds. Pays 10 cents/wd. E- subs only with cover letter. RT 50 days.] Clarkesworld Magazine is an online venue and chapbook series for short works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Each month, Clarkesworld will publish two pieces of fiction, one solicited from an author with one or more books published, and one chosen from the rolling open call for submissions below. Clarkesworld will be closed to submissions for the entire month of February. Submissions received during this period will be deleted, but can be resubmitted in March. Starting in September 2007, Clarkesworld will be accepting queries for non-fiction and art. Fiction Guidelines Clarkesworld Magazine pays 10 cents a word for works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. We have a firm word limit of 4000 words. Please do not query about word lengths. We will not consider stories longer than 4000 words or shorter than 1000 words. We claim first world electronic rights, first print rights for the production of signed/numbered limited edition chapbooks (author must be willing to sign 100+ chapbooks), and non-exclusive anthology rights. Stories must be: * Well-written. Language is important. If your story is only a story because you didn't have the funds to produce and direct a short film or a sufficiently large live audience for the telling of a fanciful anecdote, then I don't want to see it. There is no distinction between "style" and "substance" or "story" and "writing" - stories are made out of words. If your story isn't worth reading as a collection of words, sentences, and paragraphs, it isn't worth experiencing in story form. * Convenient for on-screen reading. Very long paragraphs or typographical trickery may work against you. Science fiction need not be "hard" SF, but rigor is appreciated. Fantasy can be folkloric, medieval, contemporary, surreal, etc. Horror can be supernatural or psychological, so long as it is frightening. There are no barriers as to levels of profanity, gore, or sexuality allowed, but high amounts of profanity, gore, and sexuality are generally used poorly. Be sure to use them well if you do use them. Though no particular setting, theme, or plot is anathema to us, the following are likely hard sells: * stories in which a milquetoast civilian government is depicted as the sole obstacle to either catching some depraved criminal or to an uncomplicated military victory * stories in which the words "thou" or "thine" appear * talking cats * talking swords * stories where the climax is dependent on the spilling of intestines * stories where FTL travel is as easy as is it on television shows or movies * time travel too * stories that depend on some vestigial belief in Judeo-Christian mythology in order to be frightening (i.e., Cain and Abel are vampires, the End Times are a' comin', Communion wine turns to Christ's literal blood and it's HIV positive, Satan's gonna getcha, etc.) * stories about rapist-murderer-cannibals * stories about young kids playing in some field and discovering ANYTHING. (a body, an alien craft, Excalibur, ANYTHING). * stories about the stuff we all read in Scientific American three months ago * stories where the Republicans, or Democrats, or Libertarians, or the Spartacist League, etc. take over the world and either save or ruin it * your AD&D game * "funny" stories that depend on, or even include, puns * sexy vampires, wanton werewolves, or lusty pirates * stories where the protagonist is either widely despised or widely admired simply because he or she is just so smart and/or strange * stories that take place within an artsy-fartsy bohemia as written by an author who has clearly never experienced one * your trunk stories Fiction Submissions Process Guidelines Email subs only to Nick Mamatas (clarkesfiction@gmail.com), either RTF or with text appended to the body of the email. Include a cover letter - text appended to the body of the email - with publishing history and any other relevant information (e.g, if you send us a lusty pirate story and happen to BE a lusty pirate, mention that). Some editors dutifully ignore cover letters until after reading the submission so as not to be influenced by their contents. Those editors do not work for Clarkesworld Magazine. A cover letter is what you wear and how you groom yourself for a job interview. It is your first impression. * You will receive an emailed response to your submission within 50 days. * Please do not send queries until after this 50-day period has passed. * Do not send revisions to a submission at any time. * Writers may not submit another story for a period of seven days after receiving a rejection. * Please do not re-submit stories that have been rejected. Do not query for permission. * Writers whose work is accepted may not submit again until six months after their story is published. * Please do not argue with rejection slips. If you are uncertain that what you are about to submit or email to us if in accordance with these rules and guidelines, it is in your best interest to ask before acting on a possible misinterpretation of the rules. Attempts to "game" these submission guidelines will not be well received. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/submissions.html Doorways Magazine, Journal of Horror and The Paranormal [Horror. Short fiction quarterly, 500-3500 wds., pays 5 cents/wd. on pub. Novellas 2-3 times/yr., 15k-20k, pays $200, pitch first. E-subs only. RT 1 mo. Doorways Magazine is pleased to announce its new guidelines for fiction, including payment per word count. Every three months Doorways will feature up to 7 fiction pieces, of which 1 or 2 will be from guest or 'spotlight' writers. In the past these spotlight writers have included Gary Braunbeck, Graham Masterton, Angeline Hawkes, and Jack Ketchum. The October 2007 issue included Joe R. Lansdale, P.D. Cacek, and Mort Castle. What you need to know... Fiction Guidelines: Guidelines: Fiction that runs 500 - 3,500 words. Paranormal, supernatural, contemporary fantasy, new fabulist, magic realism, shock suspense, sci-horror, character oriented: We like Colin and F. Paul Wilson, J.N. and Jack Williamson, Stephen King and Joe Hill, and of course, Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, and Richard Matheson, who taught so much to so many of us. If your subjects and verbs are not only not in agreement but cannot tolerate each other, if your spelling is remarkably creative, and you have a decorative approach to comma and apostrophe usage, we're not the right market for you're kreashuns'. (Get it? Sic! Huh?) We've recently accepted stories by Stephen Graham Jones, John Everson, Wayne Allen Sallee, Stephen Mark Rainey, Richard Payne, Bruce Holland Rogers, and Joel Arnold, all of whom write good stories. If you do, too, then let Doorways have a look. Payment: Payment is a free copy of magazine and five cents per word; payable upon publication. Send to: doorwaysmag@yahoo.com Notes: We will stay open for submission until we become overwhelmed. No reprints. Novella Guidelines: Guidelines: We're looking for 15 to 20K of superbly crafted otherness fiction. The work might be labeled horror, fantasy, modern or post-modern, slipstream or experimental we leave categorizing to others but it must be successful storytelling. We don't want to see experiments that shouldn't have left the lab, insulin-required fantasy with elves, orcs, or ickies, or horror-fantasy about "they hunt the night" or scatological succubi. We love Thomas Ligotti but have no desire to see Ligotti imitations. We admire Joe Lansdale, Master of Western Weird, James Ellroy's and his Heart of Noir, Peter Straub, Horror's own William Styron, and so many more, but if you're doing copycat appropriations of their style and themes, no thanks. We want memorable fiction. Think the old masters: Sturgeon, Beaumont, Matheson, and current writers, Gary Braunbeck, Norman Partridge, Stephen King, Sara Langan. Give us 250-300 words your pitch. (Yeah, we know it's difficult, but we can boil down the NEW TESTAMENT to Jesus Saves.) If you've got meaningful credits, tell us about them. We'll proceed from there. Payment: $200.00 and 5 free copies Send to: doorwaysnovellas@yahoo.com Notes: We will publish 2 to 3 a year, the first batch starting in 2009. These will be published as limited editions: 100 copies printed. All novellas will have some art done for the interior. If you've seen the art in Doorways magazine, that's the quality of work you can expect to see. Editors: Mort Castle and Brian Yount. Non-Fiction Guidelines: Guidelines: Articles must be no more than 1,500 words and must be based on the paranormal or have supernatural elements, which could include myths and/or legends. Put the title of your piece and non-fiction in the subject line. Format Requirements: Double-spaced, 12 point font, Courier or Times New Roman, etc. Payment: Payment is five cents per word; payable upon publication. Send to: doorwaysmag@yahoo.com Notes: Reading period is now. Response time is one month. Poetry Guidelines: Guidelines: Starting in Feb. 2008 I will be reading for issues 9-12 of Doorways Magazine--issues 4-8 are already full except for the quarterly contest (see contest guidelines below). Doorways is a "Journal of Horror and The Paranormal" so please keep that in mind when submitting poetry. Horror poetry should lean more toward the supernatural. Possible subjects: death, ghosts, UFOs, seance, tarot, psi, numerology, EVPs, distant viewing, secret societies, cryptozoology, fairies, angels basically anything that fits under the broad "paranormal" heading. When using tropes, please be original. Science fiction and surrealism are acceptable as long as the poem is horrific or paranormal in nature. Doorways is open to any length poem, but would prefer under 30 lines. Please paste poem in the body of the email and also include as a .doc or .rtf attachment. Send as many submissions as you like but please send each one as a separate email. I will respond within a week to let you know that your submission has arrived. I will strive to let everyone know if their poem is accepted or not and which issue it will be appearing in if accepted by May 1st 2008. Payment: Payment is $0.50 a line and 1 contributor's copy. Send to: DoorwaysPoetry@yahoo.com Subject line should read: "DW SUB: Poem Title/Last Name" Notes: Submission period will be Feb. 1st - March 15th. Please do not send submissions outside of these dates.We will only be accepting 2 or 3 poems per issue and this is a quarterly, so send only your best work. Quarterly Poetry Contest: Guidelines: Follow poetry guidelines above. Submission period for the contest will be April 1st - May 15th. Payment/Prize: Contest winner will be published in the October 2008 issue (issue #8), will receive $0.50 a line, 1 contributor's copy, and prizes yet to be determined. Send to: DoorwaysPoetry@yahoo.com Subject line for contest should read: "DW CONTEST 2008: Poem Title" Send queries to: DoorwaysPoetry@yahoo.com With "DW: Query" in the subject line. Address to Stephen M. Wilson. http://doorwayspublications.com/guidelines.htm Escape Pod [Weekly podcast (audio), SF 500-1000 wds pays $20. 2k-6k wds. pays $100. Prefer reprints. E-subs only. No mult subs. RT 4 mo.] Submission Guidelines Escape Pod is always looking for quality fiction to feed our listeners. If you're a writer with a speculative short story that you'd like to hear narrated by one of our very nearly talented performers, we'd like to see it. Probably. What We Want EP is a science fiction magazine. We're very broad-minded in our vision of the genre's scope; we follow Damon Knight's definition, "Science fiction means what we point to when we say it." We're not going to pin ourselves down and say we're only looking for space opera, or cyberpunk, or stories with rigorous scientific background. We want all of those, of course; but in a more general sense we want that which evokes a sense of wonder, or fun, or simply makes us think about our own world in a new way. Escape Pod is not looking for horror or fantasy. Please send horror stories to our sister podcast, Pseudopod, edited by Ben Philips; and send fantasy stories to our other sister podcast, PodCastle, edited by Rachel Swirsky. We don't share our slushpiles, so if you send to one market and we feel it's appropriate for another, we'll simply ask you to resubmit over there. No hard feelings if that happens. We're primarily interested in two lengths of fiction, which we've dubbed (somewhat arbitrarily) "short fiction" and "flash fiction." Short Fiction: This is our meat and potatoes, the heart of our weekly podcast. We want short stories between about 2,000 and 6,000 words. Shorter stories would get overwhelmed by our intro and outro segments, and longer stories are difficult to fit into our upper time limit, which is roughly an hour. No, we won't be counting exact words, so don't lose sleep over which prepositions to cut. We'll know if the story's the right length by looking at it, and "the right length" is a bell curve. The sweet spot's somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 words, if you insist on a target. If you do have a story that's longer than 6,000 words, use your own discretion; we've run longer stories than that, but be aware that it's a much harder sell. The longer the story is, the more brilliant it needs to be to sustain audience interest. We pay $100 for short fiction at this length. Flash Fiction: We often podcast short five-to-ten minute "bonus" pieces between our weekly main episodes. For this we're looking at fiction up to 1,000 words, with a sweet spot at 500 words. Yes, that's really really short. That's the point. Our flash pieces are frequently quirkier, more experimental than our weekly features. We pay $20 for flash fiction. What happens if you have a story between 1,000 and 2,000 words? We'll make a judgment call, based on whether we think the story would work better as a featured story or a bonus. We've occasionally bought one 1,500 word story at the full-length rate and another one at the flash rate. Doesn't sound fair, but it made sense for those stories. In general, your odds are considerably better if your story's either shorter or longer than this. We do not discriminate between previously published and unpublished works. We're an audio market, and we buy nonexclusive rights, so it doesn't hurt us if a story has previously appeared in another market. In fact, we encourage new authors to send their work to other markets first, and then send it to us for audio rights after the story has appeared. You're welcome to give us first dibs on anything you like, but consider: if your story's good enough for us to buy it, it's probably good enough to sell to another market first. Why not try that, and get two audiences and two checks? Content: We are an audio magazine. Our audience can't skim past the boring parts, and stories with beautiful language at the expense of plot don't translate well. We're looking for fiction with strong pacing, well-defined characters, engaging dialogue, and clear action. It can be beautiful too, if you've got all those other bases covered, but above all we're looking for fun. Humor is highly encouraged. Upbeat, optimistic stories are encouraged. Moody, depressing stories are not rejected out of hand, but we do buy fewer of them. People will listen to these on their way to work, and we'd prefer not to ruin anyone's day. We are highly unlikely to purchase stories focusing on rape, incest, child molestation, body mutilation, hate crimes, unsubtle religious or anti-religious propaganda, or current politics. We don't need the headaches, and frankly, it's very unlikely that your story is fun in the sense we mean. We will not balk at sexual content or strong language, but if your story is primarily erotic or scatological in nature, it may not be for us. Come back to us when we've launched an erotic stories podcast. Again, above all: fun stories. You can get away with breaking almost any of these rules if the story is fun enough. What's fun? We know it when we see it. How We Want It We accept stories in e-mail, in plain text format, at the address submit@escapepod.org. We don't want Word files, PDF files, scanned images of a book, or sound files of you reading the story. Messages with any such attachments will get bounced. We will accept messages that are HTML formatted, but if you know how to turn it off, we prefer plain text. Send it from the e-mail address at which you want us to correspond with you; if you give us three e-mail addresses and say "Use this one on Tuesdays, and this one when Neptune is ascendant," we'll probably forget. On the Subject: line of the message, be sure to include the title of the story. Most of our workflow involves bouncing your e-mail message from one folder to another, and we use the e-mail subject to identify the story. A subject like "story submission" doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. In the body of the message, what we want is as follows: 1. Your name. (Your real name. The story can have a different byline, and we'll credit that byline in public, but we need to know who's legally offering us this story and to whom the check should be written.) 2. Your mailing address. (We need this for contract purposes; it will be kept confidential.) 3. A cover statement briefly giving us your publication credits, and in particular telling us whether this story has been published before or adapted into audio. If there's anything we need to know about available rights, tell us that too. This section is optional, but it's helpful for us to have this information if we buy your story and want to know more about you for biopurposes. (Note: When we say "briefly," we mean your top five or six publications. We have literally had people send us resumes that were longer than the story submitted. This only makes us sigh.) 4. The word count of the story, rounded to the nearest hundred words. Don't go nuts over which word count method to use, or whether to round up or down. We pay flat rate; we really don't care. We just want a ballpark so we know how long it'll take to read. 5. The title of the story. 6. The story's byline. (Optional if it's the same as your legal name.) 7. The text of the story. Use single spacing, with blank lines between paragraphs and _underscores_ for emphasis. Obligatory Example: Edgar Poe 203 N. Amity St. Baltimore, MD 21223 poeman@gmail.com Skype: Da_R4ven Dear Sir/Madam: I would like to submit my horror story "The Pit and the Pendulum" for your podcast. My work has appeared in numerous online and print venues including _The Norton Anthology of Literature_, the Project Gutenberg Web site (http://www.gutenberg.org) and _The Simpsons Halloween Special._ This particular work is in the public domain, and all rights are available. It has previously been adapted into a shockingly strange movie by Roger Corman. Thank you for your time and consideration. 6200 Words THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM by Edgar Allen Poe I was sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of _revolution_-- perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. [. . .] You get the idea. This story would probably be rejected by us for a number of reasons, but the e-mail tells us exactly what we need to know. Once again, that address is submit@escapepod.org. Any stories sent to any other e-mail address will be trashed, most likely without a response. Update: Please, we beseech you in the name of all appropriate deities, one story at a time! Unless you're specifically told otherwise, this is the rule at every fiction market. Once we've responded to your story, you can send us another, but dropping all forty-seven stories you've ever written on us at once is not going to put us in a receptive mood. What You're Telling Us This is the annoying (but necessary) legalese. By sending us your story you understand and agree that: * You are the original creator of the work submitted to us; * You are the copyright holder of the work; * You are not prohibited by any prior agreement from the transfer of non-exclusive electronic and audio rights to the work; * All information in the contact and cover sections of your e-mail is accurate and truthful; * You accept sole responsibility for any false statements or encumbrances upon rights not disclosed to us. If we buy your story we'll send you a contract, and you'll be bound to all of the above. So if you aren't willing to agree to it now, you're just wasting our time, and we have little enough of that already. Oh, and in case you're wondering whether you have audio rights to your stories: unless you're doing work-for-hire for a game company, all reputable SF/F magazines of which we're aware acquire serial print rights, often with non-exclusive electronic or anthology options. We know of no regular short fiction market that contracts for exclusive audio rights. That doesn't mean it can't happen; always check your contracts. We're just saying we've never heard of it. What We Do With It Once you've sent us your story, we will review it and respond to you via e-mail. [[Right now our maximum response time is in the vicinity of a month to six weeks. We have a team of volunteers reading on a monthly cycle, so your actual response time depends somewhat on the calendar and luck. If it takes longer than six weeks to respond to you, it probably means your story was promoted a second review round, which is a hopeful sign. If it takes longer than two months, please query.]] (UPDATE: As of August 2007, I've had to shamefully admit that we've fallen way, way behind in our response times. This is the fault of the editor. Currently we're about four months behind and catching up. Feel free to query anyway if you think we're taking too long, and hopefully we'll be able to remove this note from the guidelines soon. Just wanted you to know.) If we decide we'd like it for our podcast, we'll send you a contract as a PDF file in e-mail. You will sign it and send it back to us via e-mail (after scanning it), fax, or postal mail. Then we'll pay you via check or PayPal and start producing. Escape Pod pays $100 for short fiction and $20 for flash fiction. If we're receiving sufficient donations or sponsorships to pay more, we'll pay more. We know how quickly word gets around about SF markets, and we'll do our best to treat people right. During the production process we may contact you with questions about the story, its background, or pronunciations. We'll also ask you for a brief bio, if your cover letter and Web site doesn't give us enough to say about you. We hope and expect that you'll be available to help us, as a good performance makes all of us look good. Unfortunately, as everything we do is on a somewhat fluid schedule, we usually can't give you an accurate timetable of when your story will appear in the podcast. We'll notify you when it's up, but not necessarily before. What the World Does With It The audio files Escape Pod produces are released under a Creative Commons license. Specifically, we use the Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Briefly, this means that the entire world has permission to distribute the podcast for free, provided they give credit for it, don't try to make money off of it, and don't change it in any way. Transcribing it, extracting portions from it beyond fair use, and mashing it up are all prohibited. This license applies only to our audio performance of your work, for which we've contracted and paid you. It does not apply to your story itself; you retain your copyright and all rights to any other use of the story. We've had some questions about this from the writing community, so we'd like to make our reasoning clear. We know that Creative Commons licensing is scary to many writers, and it's certainly a radical break from traditional rights that expire after a period of time. Our take is this: when we create a podcast, we are putting an MP3 file on the Web. That MP3 file is going to get downloaded and copied onto thousands of hard drives, CDs, iPods, and other portable devices across the world. That's the point. We want people to listen to it. But once you've done that, you can't take that file back. There is no way to delete the file everywhere it exists. There are some highly fallible ways to lock things down, but DRM sucks, and even if we believed in it it's too complicated for us to implement. So from a purely practical perspective, we can't make our content expire. And we can't stop people from copying our files, nor should we. Given that reality, why not give our listeners to the full legal right to do what's totally natural for an audio file (copy it, share it with people, and listen to it whenever they want), but make equally clear to them what they can't do (share the story outside the podcast, or alter it in any way at all)? That's our reason for the Creative Commons license. We're not trying to plant a philosophical flag in the ground here; we're just trying to reflect reality. We hope you'll agree with our reasons and choose to share your story with us. If you don't, then we're deeply sorry, but we feel it's better that you know this now, before you make the decision to submit. Any questions? Whew! If you've read this far, pat yourself on the back. Or get a friend to pat you. You're amazing. We know it's a lot to digest, but we've had very good luck so far with people submitting exactly within our guidelines. This only shows what brilliant, brilliant people science fiction writers are. (Or perhaps we're just successful because we flatter.) If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or criticism (but not stories) send them to our staff at editor@escapepod.org. We'll do our best to get back to you within a few days. Thanks very much for your time, and we look forward to reading and hopefully speaking--what you've got! http://escapepod.org/guidelines/ (Prime Books presents) Fantasy Magazine [Weekly webzine, F 1k-6k wds. Pays 3 cents/wd. RT 1 mo. No sim or mult subs. E-subs only.] Fantasy Magazine is an online weekly magazine of all forms of fantasy fiction. High fantasy, contemporary and urban tales, surrealism, magical realism, science fantasy, and folktales can all be found in our pages. We are looking for stories that delight, entertain, and enrapture readers, stories ranging from delicious treats that melt on the tongue, leaving only a trace of sweetness, to the dark and poignant tale whose memory lingers with you for days, perhaps years. Fantasy Magazine is entertainment for the intelligent genre reader -- send us stories of the fantastic that make us think, and tell us what it is to be human while amazing us with your mastery of language and story elements. From the very first issue, Fantasy has featured authors of significant literary reputation, such as Jeffrey Ford, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Stewart O'Nan, and Holly Phillips. Send us your best. While we run the gamut from light to dark, we don't have as much of the former as we'd like, and are always looking for more. We are not looking for cookie-cutter fantasies or retellings of D&D campaigns. We do not want any "fan fiction" or story that depends on the use of media characters. While any sort of fantasy content is allowed, the execution must be superb. Some sexual content is acceptable, but the title Fantasy does not refer to sex fantasies. We are not an appropriate market for erotica. The specifics: * Stories should be between 1000 and 6000 words long (short story to short novelette). * Payment is 3 cents/word. * Exclusive NAFSR for 90 days from publication. * Response time: 30 days. We do not accept simultaneous or multiple submissions. Electronic submissions should be pasted into the body of the e-mail, or attached as RTF or MSWord DOC to fantasysubmissions@gmail.com. Non-Fiction We do not accept unsolicited reviews at this time. If you wish to submit articles or interviews, please query first to fantastictempest@gmail.com. Monday, October 8, 2007 http://www.darkfantasy.org/fantasy/?page_id=2 Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show [SF/F. Pays 6 cents/wd. to 7500 wds and 5 cents/wd. thereafter. Reprints only if obscure. E-subs only. No mult or sim subs. RT 3 mo.] To Writers and Artists We Want to See Your Work Writers: We are looking for stories of any length in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. "Science fiction" includes hard sf, sf adventure, alternate history, near-future, far-future, psi, alien, and any other kind of sf you can think of. "Fantasy" includes heroic fantasy (based on any culture's mythology), fairy tales, contemporary fantasy, and "horror" in the sense of supernatural suspense (not gory bloodfests, thanks). Within these genres, we like to see well-developed milieus and believable, engaging characters. We also look for clear, unaffected writing. Asimov, Niven, Tolkien, Yolen, and Hobb are more likely to be our literary exemplars than James Joyce. We pay 6 cents a word up to 7500 words and 5 cents a word thereafter. With this payment we buy exclusive rights in any language or any medium throughout the world for one year from date of first publication in the magazine, and nonexclusive electronic and/or online rights in any language in perpetuity. We also buy nonexclusive print and audio rights throughout the world and in all languages for inclusion in multi-author anthologies based on the magazine, for which you will receive a pro rata share of the authors' share of advances and royalties, to be reported and paid when reports and payments are received by us from the publisher (or, if we are the publisher, every six months after one year after publication, if there are any earnings to report). In plain language, that means that for one year you can't sell the story anywhere else or allow it to be published or duplicated. After that, we can leave the magazine online forever, and you can go ahead and sell the story to anthologies and collections in print and online. We can sell or publish anthologies of stories that appear in IGMS for print or audio publication in any language on a nonexclusive basis, but you receive your share of royalties. If you wish to offer us a story that has appeared in print, but so obscurely that you think we might still be interested, tell us the circumstances of prior publication along with your submission. If your story appears in IGMS it will count toward the publication requirement for membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America. Submissions are all via the internet, using our submission form. Due to the large volume of submissions please wait at least three months from the time of submission before expecting a response. We do not accept multiple submissions. Please submit one story at a time, then wait to hear back from us before submitting again. http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/ mag.cgi?do=content&article=submissions PodCastle [Weekly podcast (audio). F 2k-6k wds pays $100; 500-1000 wds pays $20. Prefers reprints. Sim subs okay, no mult subs. E-subs only. RT 2 mo.] The fantasy fiction podcast Submission Guidelines PodCastle is always looking for quality fiction. If you're a writer with a speculative short story that you'd like to hear narrated by one of our performers, we'd like to see it. What We Want PodCastle is looking for fantasy stories. We're open to all the sub-genres of fantasy, from magical realism to urban fantasy to slipstream to high fantasy, and everything in between. Fantastical or non-real content should be meaningful to the story. If you have a science fiction story, please send it to our sister podcast Escape Pod. Horror fiction should be directed to Pseudopod. The dividing line between horror and fantasy can be tricky. We at PodCastle are open to dark fantasy. We don't object to your trying us either before or after Pseudopod, if the story seems to suit both aesthetics. Length We're primarily interested in two lengths of fiction, which we've dubbed (somewhat arbitrarily) "short fiction" and "flash fiction." Short Fiction: Most of our weekly stories will fall between about 2,000 and 6,000 words. Shorter stories would be overwhelmed by the commentary before and after the stories. Longer stories are difficult to fit into our upper time limit (defined rigorously as "The length of a morning commute"). We may run longer stories, but it will be a harder sell. We pay $100 for short fiction at this length. Flash Fiction: We will sometimes podcast short five-to-ten minute "bonus" pieces between our weekly main episodes. These stories can be up to 1,000 words. Flash pieces are frequently quirkier and more experimental than our weekly features. We pay $20 for flash fiction. For stories between 1,000 and 2,000 words, we'll make a judgment call, based on whether we think the story would work better as a featured story or a bonus. Reprints We prefer reprints, or works with a prior publication credit. We define "publication" as any venue that paid you money for your work, online or on paper. Unpublished work will be considered as well, but if your story's good enough for us to buy it, it's probably good enough to sell to another market first. Why not try to get two audiences and two checks? If you're looking for a market to send to for first publication, we recommend perusing the listings at Duotrope and Ralan. Multiple and Simultaneous Submissions We accept simultaneous submissions (sending a story to us and to one or more other markets at the same time), but appreciate being advised that the story is under consideration elsewhere. Please do not send multiple submissions (sending more than one story at a time to us) unless you have been told that it is acceptable for you to do so. Content We are an audio magazine. Our audience can't skim past the boring parts. While we appreciate beautiful stories, those that feature beautiful language at the expense of plot may not translate well. Ideally, fiction should have strong pacing, well-defined characters, engaging dialogue, clear action, and still be beautiful. Above all, we're looking for stories that are fun to listen to. Humor is encouraged. PodCastle hopes to publish fiction reflecting the full range of settings and tropes found in fantasy fiction. We'd particularly like to see more stories set outside America, and stories that feature characters who represent a range of backgrounds and ethnicities. We will not balk at sexual content or strong language, but if your story is primarily erotic or scatological in nature, it may not be for us. Consider Open Source Sex for the former or satellite radio for the latter. Preparing Stories for Submission We accept stories in e-mail, in plain text format, at the address submit@podcastle.org. We don't want Word files, PDF files, scanned images of a book, or sound files of you reading the story. Messages with such attachments will get bounced. We will accept messages that are HTML formatted, but if you know how to turn it off, we prefer plain text. Send your story from the e-mail address at which you want us to correspond with you. Otherwise, it's likely our correspondence will go astray. The Subject line of your email should read: "Submission: [Title of Your Story]." (Replace the text within the brackets with the title of your story.) E-mails with different subject lines may be misfiled and go astray. In the body of the message, include the following information: 1. Your real name. (You can use a pseudonym for the byline, but we need to know who's legally offering us this story and to whom the check should be written.) 2. Your mailing address. (If you don't give it to us, we'll need to pay you by PayPal.) 3. A cover letter, listing salient workshops and degrees, and your three to five most recent publications (if you have them). Also, provide information about the publishing history of the piece. Has it been published before? If so, where? Is there anything we need to know about the availability of audio rights? 4. The word count of the story, rounded to the nearest hundred words. 5. The story's byline. (Omit if it's your legal name.) 6. The text of the story. Use single spacing with blank lines between paragraphs and _underscores_ for emphasis. Example: [[See the example for Escape Pod]] Once again, the submissions address is submit@podcastle.org. Stories sent to other addresses may not be considered. Our Process of Consideration Once you've sent us your story, we will review it and respond to you via e-mail. Feel free to query if you have not received a response within two months. Occasional slush updates will be posted at the PodCastle blog. Periodically, the editors will post there to advise submitters of progress and delays. If we accept your story, we'll send you a contract as a PDF file in e-mail. You will sign it and send it back to us via e-mail (after scanning it), fax, or postal mail. Payment will come via check or Pay Pal, at a rate of $100 for short fiction and $20 for flash fiction. Legalese By sending us your story you understand and agree that: 1. You are the original creator of the work submitted to us; 2. You are the copyright holder of the work; 3. You are not prohibited by any prior agreement from the transfer of non-exclusive electronic and audio rights to the work; 4. All information in the contact and cover sections of your e-mail is accurate and truthful; 5. You accept sole responsibility for any false statements or encumbrances upon rights not disclosed to us. If we buy your story we'll send you a contract, and you'll be bound to all of the above. Rights PodCastle's audio files are released under a Creative Commons license. Specifically, we use the Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Briefly, this means that the entire world has permission to distribute the podcast for free, provided they give credit for it, don't try to make money off of it, and don't change it in any way. Transcribing it, extracting portions from it beyond fair use, and mashing it up are all prohibited. This license applies only to our audio performance of your work, for which we've contracted and paid you. It does not apply to your story itself; you retain your copyright and all rights to any other use of the story. For further discussion of Creative Commons licensing, see the Escape Pod guidelines. If you are concerned about the licensing, we prefer that you research and make your decision before submitting. In case you're wondering whether you currently have audio rights to your stories: unless you're doing work-for-hire for a game company, all reputable SF/F magazines of which we're aware acquire serial print rights, often with non-exclusive electronic or anthology options. We know of no regular short fiction market that contracts for exclusive audio rights. That doesn't mean it can't happen; always check your contracts. Still got questions? If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or criticism (but not stories) send them to our staff at editor@podcastle.org. We'll do our best to get back to you within a few days. Thanks very much for your time, and we look forward to reading -- and hopefully speaking -- what you've got! Sincerely, Submissions Editor, Rachel Swirsky; Associate Editor, Ann Leckie; and editorial staff http://podcastle.org/guidelines Pseudopod, the sound of horror [Weekly podcast (audio). H 2k-6k wds pays $50; 500-1500 wds pays $20 on accept. Prefers reprints. Sim subs okay, no mult subs. E- subs only. RT 2 mo.] Pseudopod is always looking for quality fiction to feed our listeners. If you're a writer with a horror short story that you'd like to hear narrated by one of our talented performers, we'd like to see it. Probably. What We Want Pseudopod is a genre magazine in audio form. We're looking for horror: dark, weird fiction. We run the spectrum from grim realism or crime drama, to magic-realism, to blatantly supernatural dark fantasy. We publish highly literary stories reminiscent of Poe or Lovecraft as well as vulgar shock-value pulp fiction. We don't split hairs about genre definitions, and we don't have any hard and fast taboos about what kind of content can appear in our stories. Originality demands that you're better off avoiding vampires, zombies, and other recognizable horror tropes unless you have put a very original spin on them. (Ghosts are currently somewhat more smiled upon, mainly because they haven't settled into such predictably canonical treatment; you don't know what a ghost can do until the author establishes it, so fear of the unknown is intact--which is the real lesson here.) What matters most is just that the stories are dark and entertaining. If your story isn't that dark, and qualifies as science fiction, please consider our sister site, Escape Pod. If your story isn't that dark, and qualifies more as fantasy, please consider our other sister site, PodCastle. If it isn't entertaining--keep writing. Since we're an audio magazine, our audience can't skim past the boring parts, so stories with beautiful language at the expense of plot don't translate well. We're looking for fiction with strong pacing, well-defined characters, engaging dialogue, and clear action. It can be beautiful too, if you've got all those other bases covered. (Note that with flash fiction, you can experiment a lot more.) Dark humor is just fine, and we run it on occasion; but we are more interested in tragedy than comedy, and comedy is better received the more sick and morbid it is. Above all, we want stories that make us think, that stick with us, that make us catch ourselves checking the locks a second time before bed. Length We're primarily interested in two lengths of fiction, which we've somewhat arbitrarily dubbed "short fiction" and "flash fiction." Short Fiction: This is the heart of our weekly podcast. We want short stories between about 2,000 and 6,000 words; we are quite hesitant to produce stories any longer than that. The longer the story is, the more brilliant it needs to be to sustain audience interest. We pay $50 for short fiction at this length. Flash Fiction: We sometimes podcast short five-to-ten minute "bonus" pieces between our weekly main episodes. For this we're looking at fiction under 1,500 words, with a sweet spot between 500 and 1000 words. Yes, that's really really short. That's the point. Our flash pieces are frequently quirkier and more experimental than our weekly features. We pay $20 for flash fiction. If you have a story between 1,500 and 2,000 words, we'll make a judgment call, based on whether we think the story would work better as a featured story or a bonus. But most of the time we'll buy it as flash fiction. Reprints are fine. We are both an original and a reprint market, meaning we'll consider both published and unpublished work. We define "publication" as any venue that paid you money for your work, online or on paper. We'll consider your story fairly whether it's been published before or not; but if your story's good enough for us to buy it, it may be good enough to sell to another market first. Why not try that, and get two audiences and two checks? How We Want It [[See Example under Escape Pod]] We accept stories in plain text pasted into the body of an email, sent to the address submit@pseudopod.org. We don't want Word files, PDF files, scanned images of a book, or sound files of you reading the story. Messages with any such attachments will probably get bounced. We will accept messages that are HTML formatted, but if you know how to turn it off, we greatly prefer plain text. Send it from the email address at which you want us to correspond with you! Please be sure to include the title of the story on the Subject: line of the message. Most of our workflow involves bouncing your email message from one folder to another, and we use the email subject to identify the story. A subject like "story submission" doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. In the body of the message, we want: * Your name. (Your real name. The story can have a different byline, and we'll credit that byline in public, but we need to know who's legally offering us this story and to whom the check should be written.) * Your mailing address. (Optional, but if you don't give it to us you'll have to be paid by PayPal.) * A cover statement briefly giving us your publication credits, and in particular telling us whether this story has been published before or adapted into audio. If there's anything we need to know about available rights, tell us that too. (Note: When we say "briefly," we mean only your top five or six publications at most.) * A URL for us to link from your name in the web posting (OPTIONAL). If you don't provide one, we won't link your name or necessarily know what web address you want us to underscore for you in the spoken author introduction. *The word count of the story, rounded to the nearest hundred words. Don't go nuts over which word count method to use, or whether to round up or down. We pay flat rate; we really don't care. We just want a ballpark. * The title of the story. * The story's byline. * The text of the story. Use single spacing, with blank lines between paragraphs and _underscores_ or *asterisks* (or whatever) for emphasis. Once again, that address is submit@pseudopod.org. Any stories sent to any other address will be trashed, most likely without a response. No Multiple Submissions: Please, one story at a time! Unless you're specifically told otherwise, this is the rule at every fiction market. (The rest of these guidelines are basically just legalese.) By sending us your story you understand and agree that: * You are the original creator of the work submitted to us; * You are the copyright holder of the work; * You are not prohibited by any prior agreement from the transfer of non-exclusive electronic and audio rights to the work; * All information in the contact and cover sections of your email is accurate and truthful; * You accept sole responsibility for any false statements or encumbrances upon rights not disclosed to us. If we buy your story we'll send you a contract, and you'll be bound to all of the above. Oh, and in case you're wondering whether you have audio rights to your stories: unless you're doing work-for-hire for a game company, all reputable speculative fiction magazines of which we're aware acquire serial print rights, often with non-exclusive electronic or anthology options. Some online markets may insist on electronic exclusivity for a certain period of time, and if so, you can't publish it with us until after that period ends. However, we know of no regular short fiction market that contracts for exclusive audio rights. That doesn't mean it can't happen; always check your contracts. What We Do With It Once you've sent us your story, we will review it and respond to you via email in about two months. If it takes longer than that, please query. If we decide we'd like it for our podcast, we'll send you a contract as a PDF file in email. You will sign it and send it back to us via email (after scanning it), fax, or postal mail. Then we'll pay you via check or PayPal and start producing. During the production process we may contact you with questions about the story, its background, or pronunciations. We hope and expect that you'll be available to help us, as a good performance makes all of us look good. Unfortunately, as everything we do is on a somewhat fluid schedule, we usually can't give you an accurate timetable of when your story will appear in the podcast. What the World Does With It The audio files Pseudopod produces are released under a Creative Commons license. Specifically, we use the Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 license. Briefly, this means that the entire world has permission to distribute the podcast for free, provided they give credit for it, don't try to make money off of it, and don't change it in any way. Transcribing it, extracting portions from it beyond fair use, and mashing it up are all prohibited. This license applies only to our audio performance of your work, for which we've contracted and paid you. It does not apply to your story itself; you retain your copyright and all rights to any other use of the story. We've had some questions about this from the writing community, so we'd like to make our reasoning clear. We know that Creative Commons licensing is scary to many writers, and it's certainly a radical break from traditional rights that expire after a period of time. Our take is this: when we create a podcast, we are putting an MP3 file on the Web. That MP3 file is going to get downloaded and copied onto thousands of hard drives, CDs, iPods, and other portable devices across the world. That's the point. We want people to listen to it. But once you've done that, you can't take that file back. There is no way to delete the file everywhere it exists. There are some highly fallible ways to lock things down, but DRM sucks, and even if we believed in it it's too complicated for us to implement. So from a purely practical perspective, we can't make our content expire. And we can't stop people from copying our files, nor should we. Given that reality, why not give our listeners to the full legal right to do what's totally natural for an audio file (copy it, share it with people, and listen to it whenever they want), but make equally clear to them what they can't do (share the story outside the podcast, or alter it in any way at all)? That's our reason for the Creative Commons license. We're not trying to plant a philosophical flag in the ground here; we're just trying to reflect reality. We hope you'll agree with our reasons and choose to share your story with us. If you don't, then we're deeply sorry, but we feel it's better that you know this now, before you make the decision to submit. Any questions? If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or criticism (but not stories) send them to our staff at editor@pseudopod.org. We'll do our best to get back to you within a few days. Thanks very much for your time, and we look forward to reading-- and hopefully speaking--what you've got! http://pseudopod.org/guidelines/ MARKET INFORMATION BLACK GATE Howard Andrew Jones, of Black Gate magazine, says, concerning when the magazine will be open to submissions again, "it's likely to be at least a couple of months yet. John [O'Neill, editor] still has a few final stories to decide on and those have been put on hold until issue 12 is out the door. There's certainly no point in opening to submissions right now while 12 is being finished up, or the slush would stack up with neither of us able to look at it. "I'll certainly make an announcement on the Black Gate blog when we do re-open. One change is that we will almost certainly have reading periods from this point forward. We haven't yet decided when those reading periods will be, or for how many weeks/months each one will last." [sff.publishing.black-gate-magazine, 21 Feb 2008] JIM BAEN'S UNIVERSE Eric Flint, editor at Jim Baen's Universe, when asked how the magazine was doing, replied, "Basically, it's breaking even. Not quite, because the staff is partially subsidizing the magazine either by (in the case of the editors) being willing to forego their commissions for a while or (in the case of the staff) being willing to get their monthly retainers paid when the magazine can afford it. On average, we're four to six months behind in paying the staff. On the other hand, the gap isn't widening, so we aren't losing ground. In other words, it's more a problem with cash flow than a problem with overall income and expenses. We know we can get through the third year of the magazine, as long as the Universe Club holds up reasonably well. So far, it has. Not everybody renews their memberships, of course, but we didn't expect they would. But enough people have been renewing that, combining with some new members, so far we're getting by. The subscription base grows, but it grows very slowly. There's also been a lot of improvement on our part in holding down costs. Not surprisingly, we made some mistakes in the beginning, most of which we've corrected. In short, the magazine will be continuing for at least another year. After that, we'll just have to see how it looks. [sff.publishing.jimbaensuniverse, 13 Dec 2007] When asked when the magazine was going to reopen, Paula Goodlett said, "Actually, I just spoke to Eric [Flint] about this to confirm the schedule change. "The magazine just doesn't need any stories (except Intro) until October, so we're going to reopen submissions on 1 May. Submissions for Intro stories here don't ever close, of course. We just haven't been picking many of them because the bar is so high these days. But we are reading them and will be asking for rtfs." [Baen's Bar, Baen's Universe eMagazine group, 1 Mar 08] ORSON SCOTT CARD'S INTERGALACTIC MEDICINE SHOW Edmund Schubert, editor of IGMS, says: "I'm heavily bought on fantasy of all kinds and long stories in both the SF and F areas. My greatest need is for SF under 7k words. If you have something long or F that you think is absolutely perfect for IGMS, go ahead and send it in; but know that your best chance of selling me something right now is with shorter SF." [http://www.speculations.com/maven/maven_200501.html] TALEBONES MAGAZINE and FAIRWOOD PRESS New Address! 21528 104th St Ct E Bonney Lake, WA 98391 http://www.talebones.com http://www.fairwoodpress.com End of the CALLIHOO Newsletter for 27 March 2008