Open Call - STRANGE NEW MOONS

French Press Publishing is delighted to announce an open call for submissions to the STRANGE NEW MOONS anthology.  If your short story is accepted, it will appear alongside the work of our invited authors, including such heavyweight timber alphas as Simon Clark, Mary SanGiovanni, Tim Lebbon, and Rebecca Rowland.  We hope to hear from every writer ever born, so please share this announcement widely!  Awoo!

 

"No zombies, no vampires, and no werewolves."

 

If you haven’t seen a call for short stories ending with that sentence lately, then you probably haven't been looking very hard.  Trust us, it’s ubiquitous.

 

Well, we here at French Press Publishing, ever the contrarians, say: fuck that.

 

We want your werewolf stories.  Desperately.  Werewolves all day and all night.  Werewolves forever and ever, a million years, nothing but werewolves, super fuzzy bang bang.

 

With one small caveat:

 

Make ‘em different.

 

Yeah.  It’s not that werewolfism is inherently a bad theme, it’s that it’s been done to death.  That’s the little torn cuticle driving most editors to decline anything having to do with our favorite loathsome lycanthropes.  So, give us something wild, strange, and new!

 

The Strange New Rules:

 

- Dates.  Please submit your manuscript between 12:01 am EST on September 1, 2024 and 11:59 pm EST on September 30, 2024.

 

- Length.  Stories should be between roughly 2,000 and 5,000 words.  This rule will not be strictly enforced, but expect to be rejected if you ignore common sense.

 

- Payment.  Accepted authors will receive $0.03 tasty, tasty dollar bills per word.

- Originality.  We will not consider reprints for this submission call.  Additionally, we will never consider work which has been generated by Artificial Intelligence, under the generally accepted modern definition, utilizing programs such as ChatGPT.  Standard writing tools which may technically be called AI, such as spell check or grammar check, are fine.

- Formatting.  Please submit your manuscript as a .DOCX, .DOC, or .RTF file.  Please format all manuscripts in 12 pt Times New Roman font, double spaced, with standard industry headers, etc. When in doubt, follow William Shunn’s Modern Manuscript Format.

 

- Diversity.  We actively encourage members of groups which have been traditionally marginalized in publishing to submit to this open call.  However, membership in such a group does not guarantee anyone a slot.  Stories will be evaluated based on quality.

 

- Kickstarter.  Similarly, our decision about your story will not be affected if you contributed to the Kickstarter for STRANGE NEW MOONS.  We appreciate your support, but it would be unethical to weigh submissions from backers differently from non-backers.

 

- Editors.  This anthology’s editors are Kayleigh Dobbs and Stephen Kozeniewski.  Please address your query e-mail to whichever editor you think would most enjoy your story, after laboriously combing through every comment either of them have ever made online regarding their personal tastes.

 

- Query Letter.  Please format your query e-mail in roughly this manner:

 

To: frenchpresspub (at) hotmail (dot) com

 

Subj: STRANGE NEW MOONS – (Author's Pen Name) – (“Short Story Title With First Letters Capitalized and in Quotation Marks”)

 

Dear Kayleigh (or) Dear Stephen,

 

Please see attached my story (“Story Title,”) complete at (number) words, for consideration for inclusion in STRANGE NEW MOONS.

 

(If I am a member of a group traditionally underrepresented in publishing, here is a little information about that.)

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

Very Respectfully,

 

(Author's Real Name) writing as (Author's Pen Name) (include the pen name part only if appropriate)

(Mailing Address)

(Phone Number)

 

- Genre.  Stories must be reasonably classified as horror.  Elements of other genres (i.e. dark fantasy, thriller, erotica, etc.) are fine, but explicit pornography and proselytizing religious tracts will not be accepted.

 

- Theme.  All stories must feature a creature or creatures that could reasonably be recognized by a casual reader as a werewolf.  Additionally, every story must take a novel approach to standard werewolf lore, customs, or story beats.  We’re not academics and we don’t have an encyclopedic list of every werewolf trope in horror literature and where it occurred.  However, believe us when we say that at least one of our editors is a certified werewolf lunatic (ha!) and will recognize your warmed-over attempt to repackage Silver Bullet as the vainglorious cash grab it is.

 

- FAQ.

 

1.  What if my story is about other kinds of lycanthropes, like were-rats or were-gibbons?  What about a werewolf-adjacent creature like a wendigo?

 

Eh.  Maybe.  As with any story, it depends on the execution.  We’d make the ballpark guess that only one story like that is going to make it into this anthology.  So, you’re probably significantly reducing your odds of acceptance if you go down this route.

 

2.  What if my story is about some kind of science-fictiony werewolf, like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde pastiche or that one episode of Batman: The Animated Series?  Or a robo-wolf?

 

Robo-wolf?  Address your query to Stephen.  Well, what are you waiting for?  Go!  Do it now!

 

3.  What if I’ve written a steamy shifter erotica with no horrific elements?

 

We’re already anticipating way too many of those from people who didn’t read the guidelines.  You’re not the kind of scumbag who would ignore submission guidelines, are you?  No, of course not.  You’re a professional, and we wish you buona fortuna with your romance career.  You're going to make a lot more money with that than horror, anyway.

 

            4.  Will my rejection be a form letter?

 

Yes.

 

            5.  Will you give me personalized feedback if I'm rejected?

 

No.  We like to encourage new writers, which is why we have open calls like this, but it would cost us hundreds of man-hours and thousands of dollars to provide a service like that.

 

6.  If I'm rejected, can I respond to plead my case, offer to revise and resubmit, tell you off, or even send you a kindly thank you note?

 

Please do not respond to a rejection.  By which we mean: please don’t respond to any rejection, ever, in this industry, whether it comes from an editor, a reviewer, or an agent.  Frankly, it's not a great idea to do it in your private life, either, but that's outside the scope of this FAQ.  “Thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to read something I wrote,” is implied by the fact that you queried.  If hundreds of aspiring authors literally sent that, it would just clog up our inbox.  And if you were planning to express an unkinder sentiment, then we recommend you re-examine your life choices.

 

- Coda.  Remember the most important part of writing: have fun!  And thank you for considering submitting to us.