INNSMOUTHBREATHERS: Cautionary Fables of Mythos Fandom

There are folks for whom the question of whether Cthulhu has two eyes or six is a vitally important one. Individuals that believe, somehow, that a dinner of tinned spaghetti and ice cream with a reanimated H. P. Lovecraft would be the height of both culinary and intellectual pleasure. Scholars who feel that The Horror at Red Hook is a timely warning about, well, you know… those other people. Esteemed biographers of weird fiction luminaries who reveal their foaming insecurity at the changing of the guard, or the form of a literary award. Entities who dissolve with glee at the slapping of some tentacles on a meme, thus rendering it “Lovecraftian”.

Yes, they’re out there, in their seeming thousands, trolling social media, fawning over the dead, podcasting their paranoia. Yes, they are slouching roughly towards Arkham and Providence and fabled Y’ha-nthlei, to dwell in fossilized canon and geeky glory, forever.

 

INNSMOUTHBREATHERS.

 

Martian Migraine Press announces an open call for submissions to our latest anthology project, INNSMOUTHBREATHERS: Cautionary Fables of Mythos Fandom! We are looking for humourous stories of a certain kind of Cthulhu Mythos fan: the rabid Lovecraft worshipper, the defender of the outmoded and outclassed, the pulp reader for whom Weird Fiction peaked somewhere in the middle of the last century. (The 20th, for those keeping track of such things!) We’re looking for tales that pit Innsmouthbreathers against all manner of real and imagined horrors: shoggoths with Social Justice agendas, politically active Deep Ones, enlightened Mi-Go, and Nick Mamatas*. Make them lovable, make them loathsome, make us feel their triumphs and defeats! Put us in their basements, their garrets, their comic shops and conventions and pop-culture covens, and put us in their Cthulhu parody t-shirts while you’re at it. Mmm, is that a cotton/poly blend? Only in black, you say? SOLD.

INNSMOUTHBREATHERS will be a mostly funny book. We’re going for light-hearted ribbing here, a send-up, a roast. Stories that are outright mean and nasty won’t play well within these pages. Remember, let they who have not geeked out over Lovecraft, even a little, even once, throw the first Shining Trapezohedron into the bay! And sure, we’re asking for yuks, but please don’t feel you need to dial back the weird horror. Mix it up, thrill us, chill us, make us laugh at ourselves.

Submission period closes 31 JULY 2018. The anthology will be released in early October 2018.

Submitting

Please use Standard Manuscript format when submitting. That’s double spaced, left justified, Times New Roman or Courier or something at least readable, a header on the first page (at least) with your author info and word count and… well, you know the drill. RTF or DOC files preferred, but DOCx and text files also accepted. Obviously, you could send us something that’s not in Standard Manuscript format, but it will lower your chances of it being looked at seriously.

We will look at both original work and REPRINTS.

To submit a story to INNSMOUTHBREATHERS send an e-mail (with the story file attached, not in the body of the email) to: submissions@martianmigrainepress.com, with subject line: INNSMOUTH, title of your story, and your name.

Length 

For short fiction, we’d like to see anything from 1,500 to 5,000 words. If your story goes over 5k, please inquire first. Honestly, we’d prefer to see shorter, punchier stories.

FLASH FICTION: got something under 1500 words? Send it in. However, the following still applies…

NO POETRY.

Payment

All accepted submissions will be paid .03CAD per word, via Paypal, as well as a contributor copy (paperback) of the anthology, and copies in all electronic formats (mobi, EPUB, and PDF). Authors are also entitled to complete access to all titles in the MMP ebook catalogue

Replies and Queries

We will try to acknowledge receipt of your submission within a week of its arrival in our inbox. The submission period itself will close on 31 JULY 2018 and we should be responding to all submissions, yay or nay, by early August 2018. If you haven’t heard from us by 15 September 2018, please query.

 

* We use Mr Mamatas here as a stand-in for any writer who dares to push weird and horror fiction into new, interesting places. Sorry, Nick, but you made your bed, sir.

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