The Tides of Impossibility Anthology is now accepting submissions. It is being produced by the Houston Writers Guild in cooperation with Skipjack Publishing. It will be available both as an ebook and a print book, and is expected to be shipped in late 2014. It will be an independent publication, and its mission statement is to provide independent and unpublished writers an encouraging and meaningful step forward in an industry (and a genre in particular) reputed for being difficult to break in to.
This anthology has already been funded via a Kickstarter campaign.
Submission Guidelines
The deadline is August 1, 2014.
We are looking for fantasy submissions of no more than 8,000 words. We are not interested in science fiction, though we will entertain sci-fantasy. The fantasy element may be slight, but must be rpesent and intergral to the plot. Our definiton of ‘Fantasy’ is pretty open; if you can ask yourself “Is this a work of fantasy?” then I would probably answer that, yes, it is.
I am very interest in printing 2-3 stories by the same author, so please do send more than one submission. Do not send fifty stories and expect us to publish twenty of them, but do send three or four and hope that we choose to publish two or three. This is especially true for flash fiction (works of less than one thousand words) and poetry. I have a special interest in publishing flash fic and poems, but am unlikely to choose a solitary piece of flash fic by an author with no other contributions to the anthology. I would much rather publish flash fics and poems in threes.
Again, please send multiple stories. If you are sending flash fiction and poetry, please send at least three of them. We are hoping for original stories, but we will accept reprints exclusively from members of the HWG, SFWA, or HWA, and from writers who I specifically told otherwise either face-to-face or in an email.
Payment fort short stories and flash fiction is half a cent per word. Payment for poems is three dollars per poem. All contributors will receive three free copies of the anthology. What we are getting in exchange for this are the rights to publish your story in print and online, in English, for the purposes of our anthology. If your story is original and unpublished, what we are purchasing is called First English Anthology Rights. If it has been published in any way whatsoever (even on your own blog or a message board somewhere), then we are taking non-exclusive World Anthology Rights. The only exclusivity we request is in the case of original stories, that the remain unpublished at least until the day that the anthology is released. As soon as the anthology goes on sale and people are buying and reading it, publication rights revert to you and you are free to do as you want with it.
You can view our boilerplate contract at this link.
Please submit your manuscript in the proper format, as an attachment, to editor Kyle Russell at kjrussell.write@gmail.com.Include a simple cover letter in which you state your name, pen name if applicable, title and word count of your story or stories, assure us that it is original and tell us whether or not it has ever been published in the past. Try to avoid submitting stories that are found on Strange Horizon’s list of stories they see too often. When you send you submissions we will acknowledge that it has been received within a few days. Acceptances and rejections will be sent by the end of September. Please query only if we do not confirm that we’ve received it, or if it’s mid-October and we have not accepted/rejected your story yet.
Happy writing!
Here are some tips to maximize your chances of being published!
- My preference is obviously for excellent prose, but furthermore, I’m looking for something that adds to the genre. If you send me a story that’s been written before, your version of that story is going to need to be legendary in order to have a shot at publication. Being genre-savvy helps.
- If you are a member of a writers guild, there is a place on your manuscript to note that. It’s not cheating to let me know that you’re in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers or Houston Writers Guild or SFWA. Good writers are usually in writing guilds, and this is why guilds exist.
- If you’re a serious writer and you’re not in a local guild, join you local guild and start using it. This doesn’t specifically apply to this anthology, but it is the best thing you can do for your career.
- I cannot emphasize formatting enough. Here, let me link the formatting guide again. Learn this format and follow it as closely as possible. It’s there for a reason, and many publishers won’t even read your submission if you don’t send it in the correct format.
- If you send a reprint and do not say that it is a reprint, the publisher will not be deceived, and your story will be rejected.
- Read the full submission guidelines before you send in your story. Self-edit. Take your story to a critique group. Pay attention to details and send your best work.
- Get my name right. Get the name of the publication right. At least two authors of my last anthology messed this up and got published anyway, but come on.