12 Magical May Open Calls
This is just round one! All pay, no fee. More to come later this month.
Zombies Need Brains
Skull X Bones - Science Fiction/Fantasy - open now, deadline June 30 -8 cents a word - average length 6000 words, 7500 max - no sim subs - multiple subs, yes up to 3 - Edited by David B. Coe & Joshua Palmatier- Avast, ye scurvy dogs! It’s time to plunder! Pirates have enchanted and haunted readers for generations, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island to the ill-fated Firefly. Whether it’s Blackbeard, Mal, or Han Solo, we love our swashbucklers, our One-Eyed Willies, and our scruffy-looking nerfherders. In SKULL X BONES, we want writers to give us their best science fiction or fantasy pirates, whether they be on the sailing ships of the deep wide ocean or the spaceships of the black void!
My Insights: I’ve subbed to few of these anthologies and never gotten in. Yet. I did meet up with Joshua’s brother, Jason Palmatier, at World Fantasy Con and he is a WofF winner and successful author. I’ll share a couple of his gems:
Don’t suck at the business side of writing. Send out the queries, keep track of them, and send out more as the rejections roll in. Keep the business side moving, just as much as the writing side. Also, be open to changing your writing style. One of the WotF contest judges, Dean Wesley Smith, offered a free writing course to the winners which I took and he gave some great, gruff, blunt advice about my writing. It hurt badly when I first read it but improved my writing immensely when I took it to heart and integrated it into my style. Be open to change. The more open you are, the quicker you’ll find success.
Listen to the advice of other, respected writers, especially in regards to improving your writing. If best-selling novelists take the time to set a scene, to describe things and characters in big chunks, you should do it too!
Cast of Wonders
Banned Books Week 2025 - open May 14-May 31 - 8c a word - 6000 words max -- This year, they are looking for stories of irrepressible joy. Show them sparks that cannot be extinguished, the many facets of humanity in all its splendour. Stories that show the hopefulness and power of diverse voices, stories of music in the dark times, and stories that are unapologetic and inspiring.
We’re dedicated to publishing fiction that reflects the entire spectrum of the human experience. We acknowledge the realities of unconscious bias and make our best effort to account for it during our review process. Read our full statement in support of lowering publishing’s barriers to entry for authors from historically underrepresented backgrounds below.
All submissions must be anonymous. Non-anonymous manuscripts will be rejected unread, and no permission granted to resubmit. MY INSIGHTS - 9 Rejections. I once got feedback, “Unfortunately, this story isn't quite right for us. it's a cute piece, but our readers felt it didn't have a strong enough link to Halloween.”
Monstrous Angels (Conquest Publishing)
Religious Horror - open till May 23rd - pay $20 - 250-8000 words - reprints YES
Monstrous Angels is an anthology that will explore one of the most enduring questions of religious horror–why are angels so compelling as anti-heroes and/or villains? We’ve seen it time and time again: Angelfall, Constantine, Legion, Angelology, the list goes on. We love our dark angels.
We want stories of the morally gray. Of angels and humans trying their best and failing. We want to explore all corners of this topic so feel free to be broad. Angel-like beings from other cultures are welcomed and encouraged. Our definition of angel is loose. We want winged divine creatures trying to navigate moral quandaries, being consumed by righteous anger, and experiencing the consequences of being too close to humans.
Give us your nasty angels. Your conflicted angels. We want dark, complicated stories.
My Insights - I don’t know this press, love the cover art of the magazine.
Eggplant Emojii
HEY! If you are a publisher, this is what James Martin said when I posted his open call:
“When Angelique posted about my publication, I noticed a sharp increase in submissions."
Lit Humour - deadline May 5 - $25 - 1000- 8000 words - anon subs - with a comedic tempo of at least one witty line or funny moment per page, but ideally more than one. The intended audience will be 17+ and we encourage adult or sexual themes.
Eggplant Emoji, the world’s premier comedy literary magazine, is focused on delivering the funniest short fiction every year. Comedy, as a genre of fiction, has been completely overlooked by the literary world, creating a void that is being filled by this one-man operation, independent publication. Featuring a growing list of hilarious emerging authors, Eggplant Emoji is the underdog literary magazine to look out for. My Insights: I sold a story to the editor/publisher James Martin in 2023, and he was lovely to work with. Really got involved in editing and suggestions.
Read my interview with him here.
RECKONING
CLI-FI - It was Paradise - deadline June 22 - 15 c a word - In a world devastated by catastrophes, we need stories that confront these horrors. This is all out war on the planet, on life itself. War and conflict are the themes for this volume of Reckoning. Probe into the heart of extinction, genocide, and climate crisis. Expose the exploitation of the earth. Show us how the world could be on the other side. Send us your stories of environmental justice, of violence, imperialism, fascism, and resistance, of destruction, survival, and of triumph. - MY INSIGHTS - I attended an “ask the editor” session with the publisher of this magazine and he is very passionate about his cause. All my rejections from this pub have come with short, terse feedback. Sometimes encouraging… sometimes not.
Memento Mori Ink Magazine
Horror - 2026 Anthology exploring the power of artifacts or relics working with Crystal Lake Publishing- deadline June 1 - 2c a word - 3000-5000 words - no sub-sims - In this collection, we explore the power of Memento Mori artifacts or relics. We want ancient objects or seemingly mundane items that have the power to whisper to those who possess them. We are looking for character-driven stories with a focus on the history and source of power behind their chosen object which must be tied to the afterlife, the passage of time, or the thin veil separating the living from the dead. As these objects reveal their secrets, characters must confront their deepest fears and the inevitable reality of their own mortality. - MY INSIGHTS: I’ve worked with Lisa Vasquez and found her a great editor.
Speculation Publications
Winter Lore Book 3: Aurora: Tales of Winter Dreams - Fantasy, Folklore, and Magic - $20 original. $5 reprints- 2000-6000 words - This is a collection of fantasy, folklore, and magic. It can be dark or light, but try to keep it within the bounds of fantasy. Stories of how winter relates to rest and rejuvenation and refinement of dreams. Stories will be about astral projection and lucid dreaming, dream spells, dream rituals, the magic of dreams, and subconscious desires and manifestations.
What dreams come in the longest nights? What is imagined in the long cold months?-Stories of all faiths and spiritualities -Folklore, myth and Magic around dreaming and Winter -Stories of Winter Holidays and Traditions that tap into the subconscious and fantasies. -We will consider stories around Christmas and Christian based holidays BUT they need to have something unique. This is not a Hallmark story collection.-For rites, rituals, traditions and spells please provide all the information on the background and faith it stems from. My insights - None, but they seem very intense that you follow their submission guidelines.
Bag of Bones Press
Horror - theme Patterns - deadline May 31 - pay 1c - 2000 - 4000 words - no reprints. “Please interpret this theme however you like. Write us a quiet mood piece or an action-packed powerful, character-driven story. Make it humorous or as dark as the night. Send us your best speculative, horror, dark fantasy or dark sci-fi stories, as long as it's full of the feels. We are not, however, the market for violent, bloody, racist, homophobic, or masochistic fiction. And no poetry please, just short fiction.
Some ideas: the pattern could be in the narrative technique (fragmentation, mirror writing, foreshadowing, meta-fictional repetition), the thematic composition (think cycles of death and birth, family curses, sin and retribution) for example. Or how about incorporating chants, supernatural rituals, or echoes in your prose? A story with temporal patterns in it might float our boat (although be careful, we don’t want our inbox flooded with time loops and cyclical stories, unless done exceptionally well or with a novel twist). Seasonal patterns, recurring times, patterns in nature, patterns in objects which feature in your tale, geographical patterns, repetitive architecture, patterns in weather, behavioural ticks, recurring nightmares, obsessions…any tenuous link will do, just make it your best work and give it a good edit prior to sending it our way. You get the idea. Surprise us.” INSIGHTS - I know nothing about this press.
BONA BOOKS
SPEC - Theme: Wrath Month - open till May 31st - 6000 word max (target 4000 - 5000) - pay 8c a word - ANON subs- They are seeking fantasy, sci-fi, and horror stories that embrace punk and queer rage.
There’s a glass ceiling in SFF representation, and we want you to throw a brick through it. Bring us the coven that burned Salem and your roaring bear-serkers. We want gangs of acid-wash werewolves, furious bipyromancers, flesh-eating femmes, and vengeant celestial bois—a cast of the downtrodden who make ruins of their oppressors.
Wrath lies at the heart of queer liberation—it can be a spur to action and the only righteous response to a world that would prefer we didn’t exist. So crash mainframes, collapse empires, and break normativity.
Pride month is over. It’s time for— Wrath Month
Wrath is a complex emotion. It can burn hot like fire or cold like ice. It can encompass righteous anger or bloody vengeance. It can also go too far. The editors are open to the full spectrum of fury.
BLACK CAT WEEKLY -
Mysteries and Sci-Fi/Fantasy - 1500-15,000 words - no sim subs - $15 - $50 - different moksha portals - I’ve spoken to the editor, John Betancourt, a few times and he is a really nice fellow. He’s given me some good feedback (honest, but helpful) for a couple of my stories.
Thank you for submitting "Seagull Surveillance" to Black Cat Weekly (Science Fiction). Alas, not quite -- writing is good on a sentence-by-sentence basis, but competition is fierce and this one doesn't come as vividly to life as I want.
Suggestion: show, don't tell. Go through a paper copy of this story and circle all the bits of telling, then try to replace them with bits of showing instead. (One example of many: "She tilted her head, assessing, then decided the bird was fine." Words like "assessing" and "deciding" should be written around to make the scene of an interior monolog for the reader. I would have done something like "Was something wrong the the bird? It tucked its wings close to its body and settled down. No, it was fine.") Turning sentences into questions is a good way to put the reader into a character's head -- which is what you want.
One of the Star Trek book editors, when editing my first Trek novel, told me that Trek readers were looking for an experience with the books that they couldn't get with the TV shows -- specifically, being in the characters' heads and sharing their thoughts and viewpoints. I took it to heart, and it really improved my own writing with everything going forward.
I’ve tried to incorporate his advice, but no luck selling here yet. Ps. Henry Herz, an author I admire and follow recently sold a story to John. “Monty Python / Argonautica comedy/fantasy short story, Orpheus & the Golden Fleece, appears in Black Cat Weekly issue 188.”
DARK YONDER
Neo-Noir - 5000 word max - $50 pay - sim subs okay, no reprints - First and foremost, we’re looking for great stories and unique voices in the neo noir genre. That means a plot. It means a beginning and an end. It means that unusual writing styles are welcome. Bonus points for surprising the reader. It might mean going out on a limb with what you see as your truth. Most of all, though, we are looking for stories about the real world around us. If your story is classified as science fiction, horror, fantasy, or any other subgenre set in another world, it will not be accepted. Yes, you can have some elements of other genres in your story, but the basic story itself must be grounded in our world, past or present, and deal with issues we grapple with today. We believe the most powerful stories examine the darkness we live with each and every day. In short, we are looking for stories that illuminate reality, not stories that try to escape it. My Insights - I sent them one story for their holiday issue and I haven’t heard back yet. That was back in November. I’m assuming dead letter. I sent a new one in, called Witches Get Stitches - a little note here thanking
for editing it for me.
Readers of this Substack are having luck selling their stories!!
Christopher Henckel just sold a story to Sally Port Magazine! Congrats Chris. (Ps. We are members of the same writing group, and we trade stories regularly. This author can weave dark tales with extraordinary settings. His characters are relatable, even when they embody evil!)
I'm so glad this story found a home. ... and I subbed it because I saw the mag on your call for submission listings.
Brad is my most recent paid subscriber. (Thank you, Brad!)
I support your work because you are supporting the writing community. You're like a literary matchmaker in that publications and writers need each other. You help them find each other. I've sold one story to an Australian anthology thanks to you, and it was fun to add an outlet south of the equator to my bibliography. Keep it up!
Catlyn Ladd sent me this message in March.
I have published over a dozen short stories and I found where to place them almost entirely using your blog. So let me take the opportunity to say thank you so much!
Michael Allen Rose in October.
Long-time reader of your blog here, and I thought I'd reach out and say thank you for providing such a wonderfully useful tool for your fellow writers. I have often used your blog to find calls for stories - mostly rejections of course, as we all expect, but the occasional successful sale, which is huge.
If you would like to read a story that I published by Christopher Henckel, (very scary piece starring a scarecrow) shoot me an email at angeliquefawns@icloud.com, or DM me here in Substack, and…
I will send you a free ebook copy of this anthology!
Remember…
SUBMIT, SUBMIT, SUBMIT
Of course! 😁 Xx
Thanks for the shoutout, Angelique!