Anthologies Open to Submissions: GRIMDARK GRIMOIRE and BLURRING THE LINE

Two anthologies recently caught my attention. If you are looking for something to break up the grueling task of editing a novel, or if you prefer the punch of delivering a story in less than five thousand words, you might be interested in these two anthologies who’ve recently opened up for submissions:

*Editor’s note, Grimdark Grimoire has been cancelled due to lack of ideal submissions, but plans are in the works for a broader scoped anthology.*

We are happy to announce that Angelic Knight Press is opening submissions for Tim Marquitz and Tyson Mauermann’s newest anthology, GRIMDARK GRIMOIRE. The Project will contain 12 -15 original stories of horror, fantasy, science fiction, and suspense. The book is schedule to publish in {Q4} November 2014. (Submission window: Now – 1 September 15, 2014)

Also published by Angelic Knight Press and edited by Tim Marquitz

GRIMDARK GRIMOIRE

The antihero: love them or hate them, they tend to get the job done. Sorcerers, gunslingers, assassins, outlaws, et al, come together in twisted tales of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and suspense. When the end of the world is upon us, who will stand in your corner?

The Grimdark Grimoire idea is to focus on the antihero. Sometimes they lend a helping hand and at other times they take advantage of the situation.

What we are looking for is original fiction that takes place in unique and expansive landscapes and cultures that feature the antihero. We want adventure stories that don’t hold back and capture the imagination and run the gambit of speculative fiction.

Further details on their website.

And the second:

Collection also edited by Marty Young

Blurring the Line

Edited by Bram Stoker® -nominated and Australian Shadows Award-winning editor, Marty Young.

• Payment: AUD8c/word
• Maximum word length: 5,000 words
• Submission window: August 1 – October 31, 2014 (anything submitted outside of this window will be deleted without being read)
• Publication Date: Early 2015
• Publisher: Cohesion Press

Do you really know what’s real and what isn’t?
A man called Arnold Paole was accused of being a vampire in 1732 in Yugoslavia, after his body was dug up five years after his death and found with long pointed teeth and nails, with blood in his mouth.
The Mothman of West Virginia was a winged man-sized creature with glowing red eyes and huge moth-like wings sprouting from its back, seen repeatedly during 1967 and 1968.
In 1977, a dead creature that looked a lot like a plesiosaur was caught in the nets of a Japanese fishing vessel, the Zuiyo-maru, offshore east of Christchurch, New Zealand.
The sage Apollonius of Tyana, born in Turkey at the start of the first century AD, hunted demons, and once saved one of his students from a vampire who was going to drink his blood and eat his soul.
These are all supposedly true stories. And there are more, more tales of monsters that shouldn’t exist, of demons and devil possession, of serial killers wearing human skin, ghosts terrorizing families…
But these tales also sound like fiction, don’t they?

What we’re looking for:
Blurring the Line (working title) is seeking to blur the line between what is fiction and what is non-fiction. We want horror stories, tales that are serious and frightening, hard-hitting and imaginative. We want monsters; vampires and zombies and werewolves and the mummy and creatures from the Black Lagoon and giant killer plants and mutated ants and demons and devils and Mothmen and everything else you can think of or that hasn’t been thought of yet. But we also want your serial killers and demented and depraved humanity. We want it all. Push your imagination and take us into the far reaches of your darkness, without letting go of reality. Make us believe.
BUT, we want to be scared, made to feel uneasy and uncomfortable. We do not want to be shocked for no reason; if you’re going to eviscerate someone, there needs to be a good reason for doing so. We want style over shock value. We do not want supernatural romance, or weird fiction. We’re not looking for tales about a monster hunter or a covert monster hunting team (we love these stories but they’re not what we’re looking for here).
Details on the non-fiction component of Blurring the Line will be announced later in 2014, so keep an eye out for this.
Interior artwork will be by the super brilliant Alex McVey, and his pieces will combine to tell a horrifying story of their own.

Further details on their website.

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I’ve been mulling over the Grimdark Grimoire anthology and just started a story for Blurring the Line. The later is more down my wheelhouse with the magical realism/horror slant. I just don’t know that I understand how to craft a grimdark character arc. The good news is there are a few months before these close to submissions. Anyone think they’d like to give one or both of these anthologies a try?

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Timothy C. Ward
Executive Producer

Timothy C. Ward has been podcasting since 2010, first as AudioTim, and now with AISFP. His first publication, Cornhusker: Demon Gene (A Short Story), is available on Kindle for $.99. His novel in progress, Order After Dark, is a Post-apocalyptic Fantasy set in the rift between Iowa and the Abyss. Sign up to his author newsletter for updates on new releases.

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