It’s been just over a year since my short story “Undaunted” appeared in this juried anthology. This call for submissions could have you bragging about your own inclusion in a juried anthology.

This one isn’t for short stories, though, unless you can tell an entire story in up to 125 words. I know some of you are very good at that.

What author Jaleta Clegg is looking for, mostly, is an abundance of silliness and weirdness. She wants happy and silly and hopeful, not dark or scary or disturbing.

Well, she says, maybe a little disturbing.

The idea is that it’ll fit on a page of funky fonts and cool formatting. And be silly and weird and happy and silly and hopeful and a little bit disturbing.

Got it?

Here’s another selling point: she’s paying a whopping $5 for each piece she selects. It’s not much, but it’s enough that you can say, “Hey, not only was it a juried anthology, it was a PAID juried anthology.”

Bragging points, indeed.

BUT that’s still not all. Nope. She’s also letting you tack one more thing onto that line you get to brag: Proceeds will go to Heifer International, so this is a charity initiative.

Got all that? Juried. Paid. Charity.

125 words. Silly, weird, hopeful, happy, and slightly disturbing, probably in its absurdity.

Need that link again, so you can check it out yourself? Here it is. Nice and long, so it’s easy to see and easier to click.

Good luck! You have until the end of May, thereabouts, because weird and silly and slightly disturbing… there are no real deadlines for THAT kind of fun.

As always, if you make the cut, come back and brag about yourself and use this space to help promote yourself and your anthology!

I thought this cover would compliment the post, even though it has nothing to do with… well, anything other than the theme. In my mind. Let me know if I nailed it.

Local-to-me Parsec, Inc has put out a call for submissions for their literary magazine, Triangulation.

The theme is Dark Skies.

What does that mean?

From their site:

Triangulation: Dark Skies will be a celebration of the dark. This year, we are joining forces with the International Dark-Sky Association to raise awareness of the dangers of light pollution—to human health, to animals and plants in the nighttime ecosystem, and to the future of astronomical research on our planet. We’d like to see proactive characters experiencing firsthand the dangers and consequences of a world without darkness, but even more than that, we want stories celebrating our place in the universe, and our ability, as sentient beings, to see into the depths of space. Give us past, present, and future accounts. Cautionary tales. Secondary worlds and altered timelines. The effects of light pollution are many and varied—feel free to explore any aspects, from neurobiological studies, to life in an alien star system, to legends out of time.

Do you love it? I love it. I can feel some creative juices flowing already.

Submissions open December 1 and close on the last day of February, and should be made through my favorite submissions site, Submittable.

And they are a paying market! So be sure to check out the guidelines (aka rules) and follow them. Don’t set yourself up for failure. You are better than that.

As always, if you want my fine editor’s eye to look over your piece before you send it in, drop me an e-mail. I give discounts on editing when you say your intended market is one you first saw here. (HINT)

Good luck, and also as always, if your story makes the cut, come back and let us know. Do a Featured New Book Spotlight! Brag about it! Send us buy links so we can read it and brag about you, too.

Some SFF for you to consider, although this is already published and not a novella, so it doesn’t fit the current call for submissions.

We’re in that time again. It’s happening.

No, not Mercury Retrograde, although that’s happening, too.

Tor is open for unagented novella submissions. They’re looking for between 20,000 and 40,000 words, and encourage you to take a close look at their current list to see the sorts of things they publish. (This means they’ll consider works that are different from what they currently publish, but not so far from their mainstream that they can’t comprehend. They are, after all, a for-profit publisher and are trying to maximize profits first and break new literary ground second. So be wise with your expectations.)

Now, to jump on the bandwagon, they are “actively” requesting submissions from writers “from underrepresented populations.”

I’ll leave that there and let you read the PC decisions behind that. It’s sad that a SFF publisher even has to say this when so many of the SFF greats of history have fallen into that “underrepresented populations” category.

Sigh.

But anyway, move FAST because this window is only open for a very short time — until August 13, to be exact.

If you’re not ready now, don’t fret. They last held an open call like this in May — and haven’t finished sorting through the submissions — and so are likely to do it again. Focus on making the best book possible.

And, as always, read the guidelines. Make sure you conform to them because no, they’re not going to make an exception for YOU. That’s narcissistic thinking and it’s wrong and it’s stupid and don’t go there, okay? Follow the damn guidelines. Here they are again, so you have zero excuse.

On the off chance that you start writing and your finished product doesn’t fit the stated guidelines? Check Submittable! There’s always good opportunities over there. (Just beware of the tool charging $85 for a manuscript evaluation. What the fuck?)

This is the spot in the post where I offer a last-minute go-over before you submit, at a steep discount. But… it’s summer and you can tell by my lack of regular posting that I’m swamped. Unusually so, even for summer. If you need me, drop me a note and we’ll talk and see what we can work out. You know I’m always glad to have your back and help make your words sparkle.

Anthologies are great ways to get published and meet fellow authors who’ll help get your name out.

Whoa, this could be some heavy stuff, for you who are into it. Or it could be uplifting; it’s all in how you interpret the prompt, right?

Less Than Three Press is looking for submissions for their anthology titled Life After All. Here’s what they say:

Life After All — an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic/pastoral apocalyptic LGBTQIA+ anthology — The end of the world is a dark, bleak place. Life is full of grit, misery, and barely scraping by. But if humans excel at anything, it’s making the best of a bad situation, and the end of the world would be no different.

Less Than Three Press invites you to submit stories about life after the end of the world being far from bleak and hopeless. We want to see stories of hardened apocalypse survivors building new lives and homes with their found families; gentle robots terraforming the ruined remains of the Earth; your post-Earth space settlers slice-of-life.

I hope you have more than I do, ’cause I got nothing. I just can’t force my tender little brain to go there.

There are a few things you’ll need to know before you start to write:
1. Stories need to be between 8k and 15k. Yes, that’s a minimum of eight thousand words. And yes, fifteen thousand is verging on novella territory, but just think of what an awesomely meaty story you can create! Some of you see that word count as a luxury. Others are freaking out, I’m sure. Stop that. You can do it.

A few of you are going to wind up with a novel, too. Go for that, as well.

2. Stories need a Happily Ever After, or a Happily For Now (my preferred ending). No compromise on this one! BUT at the same time, you’re not locked into writing a romance, if that’s what got triggered in your brain when you saw the HEA or HFN just now.

3. They pay a LOT. Like, wowsies.

4. Deadline is July 31.

5. Be sure to check out the Less Than Three Press website for full details, including instructions on how to submit.

As always, if you’ve written something for a prompt I’ve posted about and you’d like my experienced eye on it, holler. I’m glad to work on this for you, and at a discounted rate, too. (I’ll even waive the rush fee, if it’s on, like it currently is.)

So get writing, and good luck! If you get accepted, be sure to stop back and let all of us know so we can celebrate you and pick up a copy of an anthology with one of us in it.

Yes, it’s a novel and this is a call for stories — flash at that — but hey, it’s the same genre. So deal with it and get writing.

I found out about this one from my friends at Littsburgh, who were spotlighting the Alchemist because they (The Alchemist) are a Pittsburgh-based literary magazine and because Littsburgh is about all things literary. #LiteraryYinzers for the win, my friends.

And because they are located here, near-ish to me, in the hometown that refused to let me reject it (yeah, not nearly as dramatic as “adopted hometown” but certainly a lot more contentious a relationship — and certainly, the deeper my love for it all), I wanted to bring it to your attention, so you know what’s going on and can help support it both by reading it and by submitting to it.

Submissions are fairly easy… yet they’re not. That’s because the first requirement is that they want SFF pieces (including subgenres like horror) ONLY if they are under a thousand words. And the world your story is set in can’t be borrowed from someone else, or shared with other published writers.

Did I mention they pay? They do! And it’s a sweet $50 per story, too.

They also need your support and are accepting subscriptions over at their Patreon page. So if you love SFF (as much as or more than I do), jump on board and help out. Every little bit helps.

You can read the rest on their submissions page.

Have at it, and if you sell them a story, be sure to let us know so we can cheer you on and become donors in your honor.

As always, if you see a call for submissions here at West of Mars and decide to go for it but you’d like me to help you get it into the best shape possible, holler and I’ll cut you a deal on my fees and work you in on my schedule.

The Lucky Charms anthology was filled by a call for submissions from the members of the Pittsburgh Chapter of Sisters in Crime.

Honestly, I don’t go looking for places that are seeking submissions. They are easy enough to find via Submittable, and that’s a site well worth having an account with. I find all sorts of cool stuff listed there.

But I rarely tell you about them. Rather, I bring to you the calls for submission that I hear my friends and colleagues actively talking about. There’s buzz in my community, and I’m glad to make something buzz a little bit harder and help bring parts of my community together.

Today’s call for submissions, to Delmarva Review, crossed my radar in such a way. And since cool people I know in some form or another (in this case, I believe it was a local writer’s group) are talking about this, it was worth bringing to a wider pool of potential submissions. Because you all LOVE increased competition!

So. Delmarva — that’s a geographical area and while your fiction or poetry doesn’t have to reflect the area, it’s still good to know something about your potential audience. I’ll let you research that and just tell you that they’re looking for fiction of length up to 5k words or flash up to 1k. You may submit two flash pieces, each under that word count.

They don’t pay cash, if that’s your aim. It’s a literary magazine that pays the standard two copies, so this one’s great for exposure and an ever-lengthening list of publications. Don’t discount the value of that list! If you work in short fiction at all, you know how valuable it is.

The deadline is March 31, with publication in October. They hope to get back to everyone by May.

I’ll let you read more about it, like what sort of fiction they’re looking for — and what they’re not.

If you’ve got a piece (or two, if you write flash), go for it! If not, what’s stopping you from creating something? The best part of fiction is that if it doesn’t fit here, it may fit somewhere else.

As always, if you want eyes on it before you submit, drop me a line and I’m glad to help you bring it up to snuff. And as always, if you do submit, let us know. And if you are selected, definitely let us know — not only do we want to cheer you on, we’d love to host you for a Featured New Book Spotlight!

I’m biased. I’ll admit it. But… how can you NOT like the Running Wild Press? They’re new, they’re hungry, and I know a couple of the people behind them, which gives me confidence they’re being run right.

Back at the end of August, I put out a call for submissions to the Running Wild Press short story anthology they were putting together. Did any of you submit? If so, were you chosen?

We’ll be hearing more about this anthology. Much, much more.

And with anthology selections made and the book in progress, it’s time for them to turn their attention to novellas.

Yes, novellas.

You read that right! One of the hardest and least appreciated forms of fiction (and least celebrated, too) is getting its day over at Running Wild. And, because they are Running Wild Press and because fiction right now is all about pushing boundaries and crossing genres and opening up to ideas that should have been celebrated for a lot longer than is currently trendy. I’m grateful we’ve got folks like Running Wild who are willing to turn a trend into a new way of life.

Which means if you’ve got a novella, ship it on over to them! (What’s a novella? The submission guideline says at least 15,000 words)

Got a novella you think you’d like to send over but aren’t sure about? I’ll cut you a deal on an evaluation, and/or a deal on editing it… IF you are going to submit to Running Wild. Drop me a line and we’ll talk so you can make the best submission possible.