Wintry Monsters Press

SUBMISSION CALL FOR SHORT FICTION OR POETRY TO APPEAR IN WMP DARK FICTION MAGAZINE #1 (JULY 2023) “PROMPTED HELL”

THE OVERVIEW

Call Window: Open now until May 15, 2023

Theme: Using one of the prompts located in the section called Prompts, write a short story or poem.

Poetry Word Count: 4-30 lines, up to 300 words (if you go beyond 300 words or 30 lines, it will still be considered but the pay rate would stop at $30 as if you did 30 lines at the pay rate noted below)

Short Story Word Count: 1-4k words (if you do higher, it will still be considered but your payment would stop at 4k words if accepted)

Payment: 

*Poetry rate is $0.08 per word or $1 per line, whichever is highest. Minimum payment will be $10.

*Short fiction rate is $.01 per word.

*Contributor copy (ebook and paperback – refer to Additional Information if you live somewhere outside the U.S.A.)

Simultaneous Submissions: Yes

Multiple Submissions: 1 short story and/or 1 poem per writer

Reprints: No

WE DO NOT WANT: Fan fiction, AI produced writing, explicit sex scenes, extreme violence involving children (implied injury is fine but skimp on the details), racist/sexist/homophobic elements unless pertinent to the story or its message, heavy religious or political themes

Return Authors: No. If you appeared in a regular or special issue at all during this year, please do not submit. We want to promote a variety of writers instead of returning to the same few over and over.

Number of Acceptances: This depends on what great content comes through and what extra money we may find before June. That being said, we will probably only accept 2-3 authors, so bring your A game to compete! (Assuming the magazine continues, we are looking at releasing an issue at least 4x a year, so there should be more opportunities in a couple months)

How to submit: Send your story and bio as attachments (in doc or docx) to promptedhell@wintrymonsterspress.com with the subject line of PROMPT # – AUTHOR NAME – STORY/POEM TITLE – WORD COUNT. Include your content warnings in the body of your email, alongside your bio, preferred pronouns, and whether or not you’re a writer of diversity. Though your pronouns and diversity eligibility are not required, the diversity element will help us make final decisions when considering who will be accepted from our list of favorite submissions.

Do not paste your submission into the email itself. Refer to the section called Formatting for specifics on how your document should be presented.

PROMPTS

#1 A drifting space capsule, ship, or station is running out of supplies; someone or something inside poses an additional danger…

#2 Someone has something growing on or inside them that is alive with an intelligent mind of its own; looking for psychological horror and/or heavy body horror vibes…

#3 Mother nature is fighting back and winning…

#4 A neighborhood somehow becomes separated from the rest of the world; chaos ensues; possibly cosmic connotations…

#5 In a frozen landscape, a hunt begins…

#6 A psychological horror in which a small, isolated group of people face a possible endgame; think underground bunkers at the end of the world, people going stir crazy and snapping from the close quarters lifestyle…

#7 Reanimated corpses/limbs/organs with an element of either revival or survival (or both!)

FORMATTING

Font Size 12

Set in Times New Roman

Double-Spaced (blank lines don’t go towards a poem’s line count)

NO indents

Left alignment for short fiction. For poetry, alignment is flexible – you can change by the line if that is the design of your poem, but please NO indents. Use left, right, or center alignments only.

SAVE YOUR DOCUMENT AS “TITLE – PROMPT #” – do not include your name in the file title. Stories will be blindly read to the best of our ability.

Include the title of your story and word count at the top of the first page of your story or poem. 

Include your name, contact information, and trigger warnings on a separate page AFTER your story or poem. We are blindly reading these submissions. 

When creating your document, simply select BLANK DOCUMENT and do not adjust the paper size or margins.

*When it comes to formatting, make sure to use your Tools as opposed to the keyboard. This means don’t hit ENTER for double line spacing or use the TAB key for indenting. When using Microsoft Office, to use Tools for formatting, highlight your text, right-click, select “Paragraph,” and use the dropdown menu for “Line Spacing” to select “Double.” As noted before, we do not want you to set up indents at all for your submission.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Contracts will be for worldwide first publishing rights, exclusive from date of signature until 4 months after the publication of WMP Dark Fiction Magazine #1 Prompted Hell. 

Contracts will also grant rights to publish the accepted story or poem in future anthologies specializing in WMP Dark Fiction Magazine appearances without renewed exclusivity being requested (meaning the story or poem is allowed to appear elsewhere, as long as 4 months have passed since its initial publication in Prompted Hell). There will be a $5 payment for the appearance prior to publication if such an anthology does publish. We will reach out to you in this case. (The idea here is that every 4 issues, which represents a year for the magazine, we may collect all the previously published stories/poems together to appear in a book representing that year of the magazine. This may or may not ever happen.)

Payment for accepted stories and poems will “exchange hands” within a week of the publishing contract being signed and the edits being completed. Payment can be done via PayPal, Cash app, or Venmo. 

**Payment is based in USD; if your currency is a different rate, your payment will still be based on what the USD rate is for us. For example, if your story is the word count equivalent of $30 USD, that is what your currency exchange rate will remain equivalent to.

Ebook contributor copies will be available by the time of publication or sooner.

Paperback contributor copies will be mailed out within 3 months of the magazine’s publication date. 

**If you live somewhere we cannot reasonably mail a paperback copy, you’ll be provided the USD equivalent of our cost for purchasing the copy yourself. For example, our copies might cost $3.50 to print plus $4.50 to mail here in the states. So, you would receive $8 USD if we can’t reasonably send a copy to your location ourselves.

Payment is based on word count AFTER edits have been made.

If you have any additional questions, send them to contact@wintrymonsterspress.com.