It’s Call-Call-Calling To Me!

Currently I am actually off camping (and hopefully not being eaten by bears or wendigos) so thank goodness for WordPress’s post scheduling option! Also, good job Past Me (technically, as I write this, Present Me) for being proactive and getting this done on Thursday!

One thing a lot of people ask me about is where I find the calls for the anthologies that I get published in or how I know where to go. To be honest, this is something I have wondered about other writers as well.When I first started looking into getting published, I was only a teenager so most calls were through literary magazines, there were very few online.

The majority of them also required that you pay a fee for them to even read your work and everything had to be submitted in hard copy, through the post. My parents didn’t allow me to get a job until I was out of high school so I had no disposable income lying around to even try to get published. I seem to remember some fees being as high as $20 or $30 CAD. Add in shipping and it gets pretty expensive to apply to one or more anthology/magazine calls.

Obviously, the internet has changed all that. Now most places need only an electronic copy and no fee (with a few exceptions of course.) The internet also provides exposure for smaller presses and companies, allowing them to reach a wider audience with little expense.I am not sure how other people find anthology calls, but my number one site (located through Google ages ago!) is DarkMarkets. I find it updates regularly and is easy to use.

The site lays out the title of the anthology, the basic information on theme, payment, and submission end date, as well as a link to the home site.I would say, almost all of my published stories have been through a call I’ve found on DarkMarkets. The only downside to this site is the search function never works for me (maybe because I’m using Chrome?) So, if ever I want to find an old submission, it requires a lot of scrolling past other ones until I happen to find it.

Two other sites I occasionally check are Horror Tree and Arkham Ad Co. I find that they post some of the same calls as DarkMarkets (though DarkMarkets usually has a more robust offering of calls) but will also have a gem here or there that DarkMarkets missed.All three sites are mainly for horror, though they do post calls for sci-fi, fantasy, black humour, and even westerns. I have no idea where one would go for romance calls or anything like that.

So, other writers out there, how do you find submission calls? Comment below (especially if they have to do with horror!) so I can check them out!

2/16/19 edit: I've written an extended list of fiction markets, check it out!

Thanks everyone and I’ll see you next Sunday!

x P.L. McMillan