PATTERNS:
We’re looking for dark stories on the theme of patterns.
DEADLINE:
March 31st
WORDCOUNT:
2 -- 4k
PAYMENT:
Payment: $0.01 per word (after edits) and an e-book of the final anthology.
WHAT THEY'RE LOOKING FOR:
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.
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.
If you want an idea of what we publish (and my, oh my, what an eclectic range it is), why not check out some of our other publications? Links can be found by clicking here: Books.
PLEASE DON'T SEND
We are not the market for violent, bloody, racist, homophobic, or masochistic fiction. And no poetry please, just short fiction.
Absolutely no AI-generated or AI-assisted fiction.
REPRINTS?
No
MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS?
Normally, we only allow one submission per author, but we're going to try something new this time. If you send us a story and we reject it within the submission window (and we hope to be able to read your stories fairly fast), feel free to send us something else. You can submit new stories as many times as you wish within the submission window, as long as we only have one story from you at time.
SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS?
You may submit your work elsewhere while it is on submission to us - in fact, we actively encourage you to get your work out there to as many suitable places as you can - but please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere as soon as possible so we can withdraw it from our selection process.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
After we’ve recuperated our outgoing costs for this anthology, any profits seen in 2025 will go to NAPS (https://www.pms.org.uk) - a UK-based charity for PMDD. PMDD is a distressing cyclical condition (hence our ‘patterns’ theme) which affects approximately 1.6% of people who menstruate.
FORMATTING GUIDELINES:
Size 12 font
Times New Roman or similar easy-to-read font.
Please do not double space after a full stop (period).
No paragraph indents. Leave a line between paragraphs.
Please use " for speech marks, not '.
No colour or images please.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Please tell us your name, title of your story, and which call you are submitting to in the subject line of your email, for example: 'SUBMISSION: STORY TITLE - YOUR NAME - CALL NAME'.
Please submit your manuscript (as a .doc or .docx attachment) to: bagofbonespress@gmail.com
Please keep your cover letter SHORT.
Biography: Please include a 25-75 word short biography (written in the third person) in the body of your email.
Simultaneous submissions: You may submit your work elsewhere while it is on submission to us - in fact, we actively encourage you to get your work out there to as many suitable places as you can - but please let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere as soon as possible so we can withdraw it from our selection process.
Contact details: There is no need to give us your postal address on your manuscript - we respect your privacy. Please do provide at least one social media point of contact in your submission if you have one (Twitter or Blue-sky is best for us). This is useful in case we have difficulty with spam filters etc. and can't get through to you by email to discuss your submission.
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