Monday, August 23, 2010

Oh, The Horror

Dropped by the darkmarkets.com site and found a pair of print horror magazines that are looking to launch this fall plus one of the publishers has a list of anthology calls. Non-paying, of course, sigh.

Dark Moon Digest is looking for horror shorts of 1500 to 5000 words. Reprints will be accepted, but be sure to check out the submission details for those. They are giving a copy of the magazine for the accepted stories. To the left on the home page there's a contest link where you'll find several contests in progress. One is free, with publication as the prize, the others charge a fee with cash prizes. You can find all the details at http://darkmoondigest.com/Welcome.htm

Last Rites Publishing is launching Last Rights Magazine in October. They're looking for flash of 200 to 500 words, shorts to 5000 and if you write reviews or have an idea for a column, drop them a line. On the front page I found four anthology calls listed with three more coming soon. The ones listed are:

An Experiment in Homicide
Disciples of Poe
Terror, Horror, Gore
Section 8: Tales from the Psychiatric Ward

You can find all the details at http://www.lastritespublishing.com/home.html

6 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Is it just me or does switching to horror seem like a good idea?

sandra seamans said...

I think if you're writing noir, your stories would fit just as well in the horror market as the crime market. I've found a great many horror zines that are tired of the blood and gut and monster stories - they're looking for the darkness that crime writers do so well. I've submitted to a few of them this year.

And of course many of the horror writers are many the switch to crime the last few years so they're pretty interchangable.

sandra seamans said...

And that would be many of the horror writers are (making) the switch to crime. I really need to proof-read better!

Chris Rhatigan said...

Interesting point on the interchangeability of noir-horror. It makes sense--both deal in fear and darkness. I guess horror tends to have supernatural elements, but for the two markets you posted, that doesn't appear to always be the case.

I've been reading some Richard Matheson lately. He's considered horror but that's cause they don't know where to place him--some of his stories are crime, others are more along the lines of spec fic (like Button, Button).

sandra seamans said...

I don't think horror always has to be supernatural. Psychological horror can be just a scary as any monster you can dream up. King's "Dolores Claiborne" is a straight up crime story except for the stupid dust bunnies, which aren't even needed in the story.

Back a few years ago I wrote a noir flash that wouldn't fit in the crime market because there was no crime but it fit perfectly in a horror flash market. You can read it here if you'd like to see what I mean about horror and noir being interchangeable.

http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/author/sandra-seamans/shattered-peace/

Chris Rhatigan said...

That is a chilling story you linked to. A good example of psychological horror.