April, 2025 Dark Fiction Short Story Markets

HWA L.A.: For April, 2025
New or Reopening Market Listings/ Notes
At Minimum Pro-Paying (5 cents+ per word)

The Deadlands
https://thedeadlands.com/guidelines/
Payment: 10 cents a word (1 cent for reprints)
Story Length: up to 5,000 words (preferably 3,000–4,000 words)
Deadline: Open between April 1–April 30, 2025
Reprints?: Yes
Response: Two weeks
Description: Speculative fiction stories about death, or what death may involve. EX: A ghost in a shadowed wood. An afterlife discovered through a rusted door. An abandoned house in the middle of a haunted field. A skeletal figure moving with intent toward something unseen. Death personified; stories from a worldwide perspective, different cultures, different approaches to death.

Solarpunk Magazine
https://solarpunkmagazine.com/submissions/
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: 500–7,500 words
Deadline: Open between April 1–April 14, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Short stories and poetry that strive for a utopian ideal, that are set in futures where communities are optimistically struggling to solve or adapt to climate change, to create or maintain a world in which humanity, technology, and nature coexist in harmony rather than in conflict, etc. Also open to poetry and non-fiction.

Story Unlikely
https://www.storyunlikely.com/#submit
Payment: 8 cents a word (up to $200 cap; no longer minimum “pro” pay after 4,000 words)
Story Length: up to 3,500 words
Deadline: September 29, 2025
Reprints?: Yes (paid at 2 cents)
Response: 90 days
Description: Good stories that elicit emotion. Any genre. NOTE: Submissions require (free) subscription to monthly e-mag publication.

Scary Stories Whispered in the Rain
https://www.elizabethguizzetti.com/
Submission guidelines not found on site, but on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/openspeculativemarkets/permalink/9609181155811782
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 40,000 words
Deadline: Ongoing
Reprints?: Yes ($50 flat)
Response: unknown
Description: Original horror stories to be used for all-ages podcast (i.e. keep it PG13). See submission link for monthly themes.


Wet Screams: A Monsterfucker Anthology (Little Ghosts Books)
https://www.littleghostsbooks.com/wetscreams
Payment: 7 cents a word
Story Length: up to 6,000 words
Deadline: April 14, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: By May 1, 2025
Description: Anthology of Monsterfucking Stories: Monstrous romance with high spice. Horror and erotica (intended to be risqué and fun).


Planet Scumm
https://www.planetscumm.space/submit
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 5,000 words
Deadline: May 7, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Previously unpublished short fiction that doesn’t lean heavily on genre tropes. Hard sci-fi, soft sci-fi, sci-fi that melts in your mouth-brain not your hand-brain. Speculative fiction, weird fiction, slipstream, glitterlit, analogpunk.



***Non-PRO-Paying Market, but Eric J. Guignard’s “Pick of the Month”

Translunar Travelers Lounge
https://translunartravelerslounge.com/submissions/
Payment: 3 cents a word
Story Length: up to 5,000 words
Deadline: April 15, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: by May 31, 2025
Description: Stories that are fun and have a speculative element to them. Swashbuckling adventure, deadly intrigue, and gleeful romance are some of the most obvious examples of what we’re looking for, but we won’t say no to more subtle or complicated topics.


Samhain Screams (edited by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost)
https://blackbeaconbooks.blogspot.com/2025/01/anthology-announcement-samhain-screams.html
Payment: Flat pay of $50 AUD (converts to about $32 USD)
Story Length: up to 5,000 words
Deadline: May 30, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Memorable, character-driven stories set on, or near, the last night of October. Give us ghosts, serial killers, rituals and monsters, heroes and villains, but most of all give us the true dark side of Halloween – and make it terrifying.


Trollbreath Magazine
https://magazine.trollbreath.com/submissions/
Payment: 4 cents a word (1/2 cent a word for reprints); $25 flat rate for poetry
Story Length: 1,500–7,500 words (prefer 4,000–5,000)
Deadline: Open between April 1–April 30, 2025
Reprints?: Yes (paid at 1/2 cent/ word)
Response: Within 60 days
Description: Non-themed speculative fiction, poetry, and non-fiction; from dark fantasy to hope punk to surrealism, and everything in between.

 

Announcement for SCARING AND DARING anthology!!!

Absolutely thrilled to announce the finalization, preorder, and list of contributors for the latest anthology that I developed!!

Horror Writers Association’s Scaring and Daring is an assemblage of original Middle Grade-appropriate short stories adding a “scaring and daring” element to a classic of literature.

Coming August 2025 from HarperCollins, Scaring and Daring will include the following stories:

• “Hook and the Hand of Fate” by Teel James Glenn and Maxwell I. Gold (from Peter Pan)

• “What We Found Beneath Mount Etna” by Lisa Morton (from Journey to the Center of the Earth)

• “Prince Badi az-Zaman and the Ogress Fattan” by Tanvir Ahmed (from One Thousand and One Nights)

• “The Hound of the Basking Villas” by Kelley Armstrong (from The Hound of the Baskervilles)

• “The Lost Musketeer” by Maurice Broaddus (from The Three Musketeers)

• “The Secret (Thing in the) Garden” by Delilah S. Dawson (from The Secret Garden)

• “The Shadows in the Rock” by Joe R. Lansdale (from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

• “A Lucky Find” by Kristi Petersen Schoonover (from Moby-Dick)

• “The Boy of La Mancha Rides a Ghost Horse” by Carlos Hernandez (from Don Quixote (or, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha))

• “The Glass Slipper” by Sherrilyn Kenyon (from Cinderella)

• “Wolf in the Mirror” by Sarwat Chadda (from The Jungle Book)

• “Vessel Eaters” by Ai Jiang (from “The Ballad of Mulan”)

• “Freckle and Hide” by Jonathan Maberry (from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)

• “Out on a Limb” by Nancy Holder (from Pollyanna)

• “The Gruelmaster” by Nathan Carson (from Oliver Twist)

Edited by Eric J. Guignard. Preorders available now at HarperCollins or Amazon. This book is scheduled for release August, 2025.

And look at this breath-taking artwork!!!

***

#ericjguignard #ericguignard #Booksofericjguignard #horror #bookstagram #fantasy #darkfantasy #darkfiction #anthology #shortstories #promotebooks #childrensbooks #funreading #middlegrade #HarperCollins #ScaringAndDaring #horrorwritersassociation #promotebooks

March, 2025 Dark Fiction Short Story Markets

HWA L.A.: For March, 2025
New or Reopening Market Listings/ Notes
At Minimum Pro-Paying (5 cents+ per word)

Orion’s Belt (online magazine)
https://www.orions-belt.net/submissions
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 1,200 words
Opens: March 1–September 1, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: generally within one week
Description: Bold, experimental literary science fiction and fantasy stories that blur the line between “genre” fiction and literary fiction.


Drabblecast (online speculative fiction magazine and podcast)
https://www.drabblecast.org/submissions
Payment: 6 cents a word (3 cents a word for reprints)
Story Length: 500–4,000 words
Deadline: ongoing
Reprints?: Yes
Response: Up to 3 months
Description: “Strange Stories for Strange Listeners,” often also classified as “Weird Fiction” … or any and all genres, but largely centers around those of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.


Planet Scumm
https://www.planetscumm.space/submit
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 5,000 words
Deadline: May 7, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Previously unpublished short fiction that doesn’t lean heavily on genre tropes. Hard sci-fi, soft sci-fi, sci-fi that melts in your mouth-brain not your hand-brain. Speculative fiction, weird fiction, slipstream, glitterlit, analogpunk.


It Was Paradise (Reckoning)
https://reckoning.press/special-submission-call-it-was-paradise/
Payment: 15 cents a word
Story Length: up to 20,000 words
Deadline: June 22, 2025
Reprints?: Yes
Response: 1 to 6 months
Description: Short stories that delve 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. *Prioritizing work by people with lived experience of war and conflict.


Other: the 2025 Speculative Fiction Anthology
https://bannisterpress.com/submissions/
Payment: 8 cents (Canadian) a word (abt. 5-1/2 cents/ word U.S.)
Story Length: 2,500–3,500 words
Deadline: August 31, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: After submissions close
Description: Stories of wonder: short stories that are visually evocative (or character/narrative focused) and that leave the reader thinking about the story long after closing the book. We don’t want a lesson, we want an experience that makes us come alive.


Asimov’s Science Fiction (magazine)
http://www.asimovs.com/contact-us/writers-guidelines
Payment: 8+ cents a word
Story Length: 1,000–20,000 words (generally less than 7,500 words)
Deadline: Continually open
Reprints?: No
Response: Five weeks
Description: Character-oriented Science Fiction stories that is serious, thoughtful, yet accessible (occasional humor), including borderline fantasy, slipstream, and surreal fiction (and some poetry).



***Non-PRO-Paying Market, but Eric J. Guignard’s “Pick of the Month”

Flash Point Science Fiction
https://flashpointsf.com/submissions/
Payment: 2 cents a word
Story Length: ?,000–?,000 words
Deadline: March 31, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: 30 days (up to 60 if under “further consideration”)
Description: Original flash fiction stories: Fantasy, science fiction, speculative, slipstream, etc. (light horror is okay, but not “primarily horror driven.”).


Radon Journal
https://radonjournal.submittable.com/submit
Payment: 2 cents a word
Story Length: up to 5,000 words
Deadline: April 15, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: within four weeks
Description: Short stories and poetry containing elements of science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, or dystopia.


SNAFU: Contagion
https://www.cohesionpress.com/submissions
Payment: Australian 5 cents a word (abt. 3-1/2 cents a word US)
Story Length: 2,500–7,500 words
Deadline: March 31, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: estimate 3–4 months
Description: Action-filled tales of viral, fungal and bacterial horror. Whether it be giant brutish mutations, fungal infections gone wrong, or experimental nightmarish creatures made with super soldier experiments, it always ends with people fighting to survive the horrible, seeping creations that result from contagion and infection.

 

Book Chain 15: Double Jack (The Crime Files of Katy Green #1) by Gene O'Neill

Book Chain Campaign: BookChain15: Tracking Log for:

Double Jack (The Crime Files of Katy Green #1) by Gene O'Neill:

i. Bought from Dark Moon Books, September, 2024

ii. Given from Eric J. Guignard to Marielle Horst, January 21, 2025

iii. Where to next...? Only chance and the last reader involved may determine! #BookChainChallenge

###

NOTES:

Book back copy: Book #1 in the series, THE CRIME FILES OF KATY GREEN

The novella that started it all!

It’s night, Sacramento, and single female drivers who break down on the side of Interstate-5 are relieved to see the highway safety CalTrans truck arrive to give assistance… until they realize that’s not what the 400-pound ex-boxer who gets out has in mind…

Such is the M.O. of serial killer, Jack Malenko, who preys on women in distress in full sight of passing traffic. Assigned to the notorious case are homicide detectives Katy Green and Johnny Cato, dubbed by the press as Sacramento’s “Green Hornet and Cato.” However, from the beginning of this case, the two detectives seem to continually be one step behind their huge killer… and each day that passes brings worse news and fresh victims.

How fast can they track down the predatory monster to save further lives, and if they do find him, can they save their own lives in the violent encounter?

With Introduction by John Palisano

and Interior Illustrations by Greg Chapman

Discover why readers have been applauding this stark, fast-paced noir series by multiple-award-winning author Gene O’Neill! Read each volume and then continue with the other shocking case files of Sacramento’s “Green Hornet and Cato”!

·         THE CRIME FILES OF KATY GREEN #1: DOUBLE JACK (a novella)

·         THE CRIME FILES OF KATY GREEN #2: SHADOW OF THE DARK ANGEL
·         THE CRIME FILES OF KATY GREEN #3: DEATHFLASH

·         THE CRIME FILES OF KATY GREEN #4: A STICK OF DOUBLEMINT.

(pub. Dark Moon Books, October 1, 2017)

Available here: http://www.darkmoonbooks.com/double_jack.html

And reviewed on:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Double-Jack-Crime-Files-Green/dp/194949120X

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/double-jack-gene-oneill/1127136395?ean=9781949491203

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36387441-double-jack

###

AND READ WHAT #BOOKCHAIN IS ABOUT HERE!  

https://ericjguignard.blogspot.com/2024/06/book-chain.html

Release Day for: EXPLORING DARK SHORT FICTION #7: A PRIMER TO GEMMA FILES

New release today by Dark Moon Books!!

EXPLORING DARK SHORT FICTION #7: A PRIMER TO GEMMA FILES

Named “One of the genre's most original and innovative voices” (L.A. Review of Books) and “An expert at terrifying prose” (LitReactor), Canadian author Gemma Files has been penning gritty and macabre fiction since 1993, earning industry awards and critical acclaim from sources such as National Public Radio, Publishers Weekly, and The National Post. Files imbues her cross-genre work with layers like dark stratum: heartbreak upon horror, built over the vignettes of life we may find ourselves in, but for one slight turn of reality.

Dark Moon Books and editor Eric J. Guignard bring you this introduction to her work, the seventh in a series of primers exploring modern masters of literary dark short fiction. Herein is a chance to discover—or learn more of—the evocative voice of Gemma Files, as beautifully illustrated by artist Michelle Prebich.

Included within these pages are:

• Six short stories, one written exclusively for this book

• Author interview

• Biography and bibliography

• Academic commentary by Michael Arnzen, PhD (former humanities chair and professor of the year, Seton Hill University)

•  … and more!

Enter this doorway to the vast and fantastic: Get to know Gemma Files.

###

Title: Exploring Dark Short Fiction #7: A Primer to Gemma Files

By: Edited by Eric J. Guignard (including Short Fiction authored by Gemma Files), with academic commentary by Michael Arnzen, PhD, and illustrations by Michelle Prebich

Price: $24.95 for hardback; $14.95 for print and $4.99 for electronic

Publisher: Dark Moon Books (Los Angeles, CA)

Format: Available in HARDBACK, TRADE PAPERBACK and ELECTRONIC media

13-digit ISBN: 978-1-949491-47-0 (hardback); 978-1-949491-45-6 (trade paperback) 978-1-949491-46-3 (e-book)

Number of pages: 220

Date of publication: February 4, 2025 

Praise for the Exploring Dark Short Books series:

“A fascinating study for fans seeking new reads and for librarians developing wide-ranging collections.” —Library Journal

“Refreshing and much-needed... Addresses significant themes and figures within the horror field.” —Locus Magazine

"An insightful look at the working methods and underlying concerns of some of the foremost exponents of the short story form, appealing to both intellect and the emotions.” —Black Static Magazine

###

Publisher’s Page: http://www.darkmoonbooks.com/Primer_7.html

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-Dark-Short-Fiction-Primer/dp/1949491471/

Also available on all other online distribution sites, including B&N, Bookshop.org, Kobo, etc. 

***

#ericjguignard #ericguignard #Booksofericjguignard #bookstagram #horror #horrorstories #horrorshortstories #darkfiction #darkfantasy #shortstories #primers #exploringdarkshortfiction #darkmoonbooks #collection #michaelarnzen #mikearnzen #michelleprebich #batinyourbelfry #Gemma Files

Cover Reveal for my second collection: A GRAVESIDE GALLERY: TALES OF GHOSTS AND DARK MATTERS

Behold: #coverreveal for my second collection coming out through Cemetery Dance !!

A GRAVESIDE GALLERY: TALES OF GHOSTS AND DARK MATTERS

(art by Alexander Nazolkin)

So absolutely in love with this, and cannot wait for April 22 release date!

Kindle preorders here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DVJ2XDXH

Paperback preorders here: https://www.cemeterydance.com/AGravesideGallery.html

More about the book here: http://ericjguignard.com/a_graveside_gallery.html

***

#ericjguignard #GravesideGallery #ericguignard #Booksofericjguignard #horror #bookstagram #cemeterydance #cemeterydancepublications #horrorstories #horrorshortstories #shortstories #collection #darkfiction #booklover #fantasy #darkfantasy #bookworm #horrorlife #horrorcommunity #horrorfanatics #horrorlovers #horrorgeeks #promotebooks #horrorfans #readmorebooks #amreading #amreadinghorror