GENERAL SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
PAY RATES:
A) RAW BLOOD AND NERVE — $0.01 per word or $50, whichever is greater, with a $100 bonus for exceptional work.
B) GRIMLY DINGE — $20 flat fee.
WORD COUNTS:
A) RAW BLOOD AND NERVE — 0-10,000
B) GRIMLY DINGE — 4,500
SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE: Rolling
PUBLICATION SCHEDULE:
A) RAW BLOOD AND NERVE — Bi-Monthly/Quarterly
B) GRIMLY DINGE — Weekly
MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS: Up to 3
SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS: Sure, just let us know if you get accepted somewhere else
REPRINTS: No
AI POLICY: We invite submissions from human writers. Why don’t you and Skynet just get a room?
WHAT KIND OF STORIES DO WE PUBLISH?
The first anthology we published had stories about: a man who kills himself so his family gets his life insurance payout; a woman hallucinating (or maybe actually seeing) the rat manifestations of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; an over-industrialized town in which people cannot die until a new priest is appointed to the village church; a several-thousands-year-old horse transporting a boy back in time to see the horse’s many bloody murders; all the petroleum products in the world disintegrating all at once, bringing about civilizational collapse; a young bible salesman discovering a woman presumed to have been killed during the Puritan era, still alive and more enthusiastic about selling bibles than him; and, a girl who binds her corsets so tight that all her children are deformed (which is fine by her, because she rents them out to a traveling circus).
If your story falls anywhere in there—basically, if it’s weird AF—this is the place. Break taboos, offend people, make your characters unlikeable, treasonous little shits, or Cronenbergian nightmares—as long as your story’s well-written, your phantasmagoria, body horror, and general freakery are all welcome here.
One last thing. If you’re submitting a werewolf, vampire, or zombie story, it’d better be so bizarre and original that it bears no resemblance to those dusty old tropes. Like, a coyote slowly turning into an old human man and going insane once he realizes he can’t go back to the wild. Or a vampire that tries to kill herself by drinking gasoline, only to discover she has evolved the same physiological need for petrol she once had for blood. WEIRD.
FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR WORK:
1) Your stories should be in Shunn manuscript format (click here for reference).
2) Include your email address at the top of your work. If you’ve used Shunn formatting, then you know your email address goes at the top. If you don’t include your email at the top of your submission, we have to go searching through Google Forms to find it. Making yourself more easily available to get in touch with can only help you. Include your email in your submission.
3) Do not submit anything with AI in it. We will not only reject the work in question, we will reject all of your future submissions as well.
4) Please read DPG Writing Tips.
5) Please check and re-check your manuscript for errors.
Below are a number of articles on best practices for writers. They are recommended to improve your writing (and therefore the odds of your submission being accepted for publication):
Show, Don't Tell: Tips and Examples of The Golden Rule
The 3 Must-Know Rules for Using Metaphors and Similes
A Writer’s First 3 Sentences, Paragraphs, Pages, and Chapters
The 10 Best Pieces of Writing Advice I’ve Ever Heard
Too Much Information: Exposition and the Reading Brain
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