Eight markets for your short fiction, poetry, and reviews, mostly paying

Note: Don't ever miss a post on Quick Brown Fox. Fill in the "Follow Brian by Email" box to the right under my bio and get each post delivered to your Inbox. 

Also, you can hang out and chat with Quick Brown Foxes (and vixens) on Facebook. Just send a friend request to Brian Henry (and say you familiar with me from Quick Brown Fox. (Facebook page here.) 

Finally, if you’re not yet on my newsletter, send me an email, including your locale, to brianhenry@sympatico.ca ~Brian

PseudoPod is a genre magazine in audio form. “If you’re a writer with a short horror story that you’d like to hear narrated by one of our talented performers, we’d like to see it. We’re looking for 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 do not observe any 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 unique spin on them. What matters most is that the stories are dark and compelling.”

Pays 6 cents per word for original fiction; $100 flat rate for short story reprints; $20 flat rate for flash fiction reprints. 

During the month of September, PseudoPod is looking for submissions to celebrate ARTEMIS RISING, a special month-long event across all four Escape Artists podcasts featuring stories by any author who identifies as a woman, to any degree. Send in your best horror fiction between 500 – 6,000 words.

Deadline for Artemis Rising: September 30, 2018. Guidelines here.

Deadline for general submissions: November 12, 2018. Next open reading period:  Guidelines here. Submissions schedule here.

Atlantean Publishing seeks stories and poems for new anthologies:

Great War – poetry and fiction inspired by World War I (particularly the events of 1918). Prose should be under 4000 words and ideally under 2000 words. Poems any length. Deadline Sept 30.

Horror Poems for Hallowe’n – These can be dark, scary or comic horror. (They don’t have to reference Hallowe’en.) Any length. Deadline Sept 30.

Lunar Module – Poetry inspired by the 1969 moon landings, the space race and moonlandings in general. Any length. Deadline Sept 30. 

Christmas Chillers – Festive horror fiction. Ideally between 1000 and 3000 words with an upper limit of 5000 words. Deadline Sept 30.

And, while it’s open on a rolling basis, I would love to receive some more Dark Tower poems (any length) so that I can release another volume. Deadline Sept 30.

In addition, submissions for entries in The Bards, Xothic Sathlattae and Yellow Leaves solo-poet broadside series are sought. Deadline Sept 30.

Full details on these and of other open themes can be found here.

British Folklore: “The stories may be short or long, even as long as a novelette. The stories or poems can be of horror, humour or psychological. But, I don’t want any twee stories.” Deadline: October 31, 2018. Reprints accepted. Guidelines here.

Children of Clark Ashton Smith: “Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) is my favourite fantasy author. I’ve had the pleasure of publishing several stories in the vein of CAS’s works. I’m very  interested in publishing an anthology of stories, poems and prose poems in CAS’s vein. Whether the stories are based in Averoigne, Hyperboria, Poseidonis, Zothique or anywhere else, as long as it fits CAS’s mode of storytelling, I’ll be more than interested.”  Deadline: October 31, 2018. Reprints accepted. Guidelines here.

 Pays One penny Sterling per word, with a minimum payment of £10 Sterling for poems and very, very short stories. For illustrations, £30 for ‘header’ illustrations to a story, £100 for full page illustrations and £200 for the cover illustration. 

Deadline: October 31, 2018. Reprints accepted. Guidelines here.

Chicken Soup for the Soul seeks short true stories for two anthologies: Life Lessons from my Dog and Life Lessons from my Cat. Stories can be serious or humorous ... or both. Pays $200. Deadline: October 31, 2018.

Chicken Soup also wants:

Grandparent stories – deadline Sept 30, 2018

Mom Knows Best stories – deadline Sept 30, 2018

Running for Good stories – deadline Dec 15, 2018

The Golden Years or Second Wind stories  – deadline Dec 30, 2018

Angel stories – deadline Dec 31, 2018

Miracles stories – deadline Dec 31, 2018

Guidelines for all anthologies here

HorrorAddicts.net seeks horror stories with technology front and centre for an anthology title Kill Switch. Length: 2,000–7,000 words. Pays $10 + digital contributor copy. 

Deadline: October 31, 2018. Guidelines here. 

Robbed of Sleep publishes twice each year, in summer and the early winter months of the year. Seeks stories “of the strangely dark, the darkly humorous, the starkly beautiful, and the hauntingly deranged.” Wants flash fiction 100–1,000 words; larger pieces 2,000–4,000 words, and will consider 1,000–2,000 words “especially if it’s great.” Pays $10 short story, $5 flash fiction. 

Deadline: October 31, 2018. Guidelines here

Wolfpack Press Seeks short stories. "We crave the wild, weird, wonderful, and witty." Length: Fiction, up to 6000 words, nonfiction up to 5,000 words, also accepts poetry (up to 3 poems per submission). Pays $15. 

Deadline: October 31, 2018, for December 2018 debut edition. Next reading period: Jan 5 – May 18, 2019. Guidelines here.

Write Naked seeks blog posts about writing; 450–650 words. Pays $75. 

Reading period: October 1–31, 2018. Guidelines here.

Quick Brown Fox always welcomes your book reviews – or any kind of review. If you want to review your favourite coffee shops or libraries, babysitters or lovers (no real names please), go for it. You can read an essay about how to write a book review here and see guidelines about submitting reviews of any kind to Quick Brown Fox here. 

QBF also welcomes essays about a favourite book or about your experience of reading or writing. Read a few essays on the blog to get a taste of what other writers have done (see here and scroll down), write your own, and submit it to me at brianhenry@sympatico.ca ~Brian

See Brian’s schedule here, including Saturday writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, New Tecumseth, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.