May, 2025 Dark Fiction Short Story Markets

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

Skull X Bones (Zombies Need Brains, LLC)
https://zombiesneedbrains.moksha.io/publication/skull-x-bones/guidelines
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 7,500 words
Deadline: June 30, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: by July 31
Description: Original stories of science fiction or fantasy pirates, whether they be on the sailing ships of the deep wide ocean or the spaceships of the black void.

The Daily Tomorrow
https://www.thedailytomorrow.com/submissions
Payment: 10 cents a word
Story Length: 2,100–3,500 words
Deadline: ongoing
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown (reports within a month)
Description: High concept science fiction stories. (A preference for stories that bring a new idea to the genre and explore it efficiently in a story with compelling characters.)


Dracula Beyond Stoker: Issue 7: Mina Harker
https://www.dbspress.com/submissions
Payment: 5 cents a word
Story Length: 1,500–5,000 words
Open From: Open between May 1–June 30, 2025
Reprints?: Yes (if older than 10 years) (and paid flat rate of $55)
Response: Unknown, but reported as generally between 30 and 60 days.
Description: The best new fiction based on Stoker’s characters, locations, and themes. This issue: Mina is teacher, a wife, and the heart and the hero of the novel. Her spirit and intelligence keep her resilient even when darkness closes in. But who is Mina beneath the surface? Did her experiences leave her haunted? How did her connection to Dracula affect her view of the world or her family? Whether it’s before, during, or after the events of the novel, let’s explore her strength, her struggles, and her secrets.


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 10,000 words
Deadline: September 29, 2024
Reprints?: Yes (paid at 1 cent/ word up to $75)
Response: 90 days
Description: Good stories that elicit emotion. Any genre. NOTE: Submissions require (free) subscription to monthly e-mag publication.


Utopia SF Magazine (Flash Fiction issue)
https://www.utopiasciencefiction.com/submit
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 1,000 words for flash fiction issue (normally up to 4,000 words)
Deadline: June 1, 2024
Reprints?: No
Response: Up to four months
Description: See site for quarterly themes. Current issue is non-themed. Mag is also interested in art and non-fiction, all science-fiction related.


The DARK (monthly online e-magazine)
http://thedarkmagazine.com/submission-guidelines
Payment: 5 cents a word (1 cent a word for reprints)
Story Length: 2,000–6,000 words
Deadline: Currently open, but intermittent
Reprints?: Yes
Response: between 1 day to 1 week
Description: Unique Horror and Dark Fantasy (No graphic/ violent content); fiction that may fall out of “regular” categories (Tons of great authors publish here).



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

Goblins & Galaxies Magazine
https://goblinsandgalaxies.com/submissions/
Payment: 3 cents a word
Story Length: up to 6,000 words
Deadline: Open between May 7–May 14, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Sword & sorcery, dark fantasy, and science fiction stories. A sense of adventure in the story is important. Action should take center stage.


The Necronomicon of Sherlock Holmes
https://belangerbooks-sherlockholmes.blogspot.com/2025/02/call-for-submissions-for-new-sherock.html
Payment: $125 flat
Story Length: 5,000–10,000 words
Deadline: June 15, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Stories must feel like traditional Holmes and Lovecraft stories. The stories should have the traditional Holmes and Watson working with the traditional characters, creatures, and/or gods of H.P. Lovecraft. Remember, there was a logic to the writing of Lovecraft, a rationale behind the otherworldly beings even if humans couldn’t conceive it, that should blend well with the deductive skills of Sherlock Holmes.


Self (S)care: Best of 2026 Self Published Horror (Edited by Candace Nola and Paul Carro)
https://www.uncomfortablydark.com/uncomfortablydarkdozen
Payment: 2 cents a word 
Story Length: 1,000–8,500 words
Deadline: Opens mid-May for work previously self-published Jan–April 2025
Reprints?: Exclusively
Response: By end of 2025
Description: Seeking unique voices in horror and unique stories that were originally self-published.

2025 Festival of Books

I had a great time over the weekend at the 30th annual L.A. Times Festival of Books!

Worked as an Author Escort volunteer on Saturday (April 26) and signed books at Mystery Writers of America booth on Sunday (April 27), and saw panels, friends, and authors I admire all throughout. Poured rain early on, and was cold, and crowded (a good thing, that), but always a fun time, and something I’m continually happy to be part of (having volunteered there each year since 2011!).

On campus at USC

with friend Kate Maruyama (Photo courtesy Kate Maruyama)

With Kate Maruyama and Toni Ann Johnson (Photo courtesy Kate Maruyama)

So lovely to have met NYT Bestselling  Liz Moore, whose novel THE GOD OF THE WOODS
I'd just recently read and absolutely adored!

Panel: "Page to Screen: How BookTok Builds Global Screen Sensations"

with: Author Mercedes Ron; Morgann Book; Vanessa Craft; Meg James;
Fernando Lindez; and Eva Ruiz

Discussion with actor Wilmer Valderrama

Signing at MWA (Mystery Writers of America) booth with
authors Adam Sikes and S. J. Rozan (Photo by Mystery Ink Bookstore)

With NYT bestselling, Afrofuturist and sci-fi author Nnedi Okorafor

Release Day for: A GRAVESIDE GALLERY: TALES OF GHOSTS AND DARK MATTERS

 New release today: My second fiction collection!!

A GRAVESIDE GALLERY: TALES OF GHOSTS AND DARK MATTERS

A Graveside Gallery: Tales of Ghosts and Dark Matters includes nineteen strange and masterful short fiction stories in this second collection by award-winning author Eric J. Guignard. From hauntings and oblivion to monsters, murder, and anthropomorphism, A Graveside Gallery explores the literary odd and macabre that reside in the vast shadows of our existence.

Discover why Eric J. Guignard’s beautifully-voiced and disquieting work has been praised by sites such as Library Journal (“Guignard captures the depth of emotion underlying fictional terrors”) and Publishers Weekly (“high-concept and brilliant”) as well as the NY Times, CNBC News, Booklist, and more, for stories such as these:

• In “A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds,” a gay Hispanic teen in 1950s Los Angeles, mourning the loss of a friend, has a chance to make amends during Day of the Dead.
• In “Incident at the Red Hawk Road Stop,” the owner of a roadside trading post has a deadly secret, but so too does the customer he kills.
• In “Penny’s Diner,” a long haul trucker, coming home after an accident, stops at a curious diner.
• In “The Ascending Lights of Yu Lan,” an embittered sailor in 1917’s San Francisco Wharf encounters an immigrant from China who offers peace from ghosts.
• In “Bummin’ to the Beat of the Road,” a Beat-era youth leaves home to travel the land, only to find madness, murder, and the teeth of a new generation.
• In “Perchance to Dream in Voices of a Fiend: A Fanciful Epilogue to Frankenstein,” an intimate epilogue is suggested to the famous novel Frankenstein, offering a more hopeful closure to characters’ lives.

Those and thirteen other tales explore the fearful and nebulous boundaries of reality. Visit A Graveside Gallery by Eric J. Guignard and behold that which is captivating, startling, and darkly enriching.

More here: https://ericjguignard.com/a_graveside_gallery.html

###

Table of Contents:

• Penny’s Diner
• A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds
• If I Drive Before I Wake
• Bummin’ to the Beat of the Road
• The Telephone Game
• The Tale of Samuel Whiskers Continued; or, A London Digression
• Drink, Drink From the Fountain of Death
• Ritual Sacrifice to the Great God of Skates
• The Moon Over Andersonville
• A Stroke of Death
• The Shimmer of Trees
• Ommetaphobia
• The Ascending Lights of Yu Lan
• Two Hearts Make a Half; or, Ghosts of a Rodeo Clown
• Perchance to Dream in Voices of a Fiend: A Fanciful Epilogue to Frankenstein
• Incident at the Red Hawk Road Stop
• O Shades, My Woe
• Carmine Lips and a Fade into Oblivion
• The First Order of Whaleyville’s Divine Basilisk Handlers

###

Title: A Graveside Gallery: Tales of Ghosts and Dark Matters
Author: Eric J. Guignard
Price: $34.95 hardback; $19.99 trade paperback; $4.99 ebook
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications (Forest Hill, MD)
Format: Available in Hardback, Trade Paperback and Electronic Media
Number of pages: 264 pgs at 6” x 9” trim (80,500 words)
13-digit ISBN (hardback with dust jacket): 978-1-949491-61-6
13-digit ISBN (paperback): 978-1-964780-16-0
13-digit ISBN (e-book): 978-1-964780-17-7
ASIN (ebook): B0DVJ2XDXH
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024952840
Date of publication: April 22, 2025
Available for sale here: https://www.amazon.com/Graveside-Gallery-Tales-Ghosts-Matters/dp/1949491617/

***

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

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.