Fiction – Literary
Open Submissions Call for CHTHONIC: Weird Tales of Inner Earth
07 years ago
“The nethermost caverns … are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific … out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.”
— H. P. Lovecraft, The Festival
We’re excited to open submissions to our sixth anthology…
CHTHONIC
The full title of this book will be
CHTHONIC: Weird Tales of Inner Earth
Pelucidar. The Hollow Earth. DEROS, and the Shaver Mysteries. Blue-litten K’n-yan, red Yoth, and black, lightless N’kai. The Amigara Fault. Derinkuyu. Agartha. The world (and worlds) below. Inner earth, a near infinite space of vast, echoing potential … our (possible?) birthplace, and the place where we all return, either as corpses, or something other? … the churning, chaotic underworld, and true home of all that is weird, unconscious, and forbidden. Descend with us in this anthology of weird fiction; descend to the realms CHTHONIC.
We are looking for weird fiction that explores the mystique and terror of caverns, abyssal spaces, and subterranean worlds. As with previous MMP anthologies, we will be including a seed story from H. P. Lovecraft’s oeuvre (in this case, The Rats in the Walls, though many of his stories went underground). We want to see bizarre civilizations, mind-boggling physical and biological phenomena, horrific rituals, mad science and madder sorcery. We want to feel the tunnel floors beneath our feet shake with the passage of beasts, machines, and gods that have never seen the light of the sun; sentient oils, intelligent muck, living rock, molemen, formless spawn and Efts of the Prime, worms, Dholes, and ghastlier things. But CHTHONIC won’t be just a serving of pop culture “surface” material, if you’ll pardon the pun. We like to see stories with depth (oh god, another one, sorry!); emotional and psychological explorations of the internal spaces of the human mind and soul, as well as the ground below. Write us stories that induce crushing claustrophobia or open us wide to new dimensions of thought and being. If your story can do both, so much the better.
Final story count for the anthology will be determined based on quality and number of submissions. CHTHONIC: Weird Tales of Inner Earth will be released as a softcover paperback and as an electronic book in multiple formats.
Submission period closes JULY 31, 2017. The anthology will be released in early December of 2017.
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 CHTHONIC: Weird Tales of Inner Earth send an e-mail (with the story file attached, not in the body of the email) to: submissions@martianmigrainepress.com, with subject line: CHTHONIC, title of your story, and your name.
Length
For short fiction, we’d like to see anything from 1,500 to 7,000 words.
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 two contributor copies (paperback) of the anthology, and copies in all electronic formats (mobi, EPUB, and PDF). Authors are also entitled to electronic copies of three additional Martian Migraine Press titles of their choosing.
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 July 31, 2017 and we should be responding to all submissions, yes or no, throughout the submission period and no later than August 2017. We do our best to ensure that all submissions are contacted and kept up-to-date, but sometimes items fall through cracks, so, if you haven’t heard from us by September 15 2017, please query.
For full details, please consult the submissions page
‘A Breath from the Sky’ ToC Announcement
07 years ago
Migraineers. Hello. It has been a while since our last post. Indeed, said post was the announcement of the open submissions call for A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession, lessee, oh … six months ago. Ah. That long? Yes. Terribly sorry, but we’ve been actually busy with … A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession! Ta da!
It’s true, the last few months have been hectic. We received here at MMP HQ well over 500 submissions for review and without going too deep into the process, the experience has been a tad harrowing. We’re ready now, though. Ready to reveal the 20 stories and authors which will appear in our fifth anthology (21 if you count Howard Lovecraft’s seed story The Colour Out of Space … and we do! We do) BUT before we do that, a brief word of thanks to the many writers worldwide who a) got excited about the theme and b) acted upon that excitement enough to write something they thought we’d like before c) actually sending it in! We know how hard that final step can be, and we’re humbled and grateful that you took it, all. Thank you. Good, great, and amazing stories were read, but in the end only a few passed the bar we’d set for this book. And here they are (in random order; the final order of the ToC has yet to be determined)…
Intraocular
by Erica Ruppert
Falseface
by Garrett Cook
Shadowmate
by Sam Grieve
Diablitos
by Cody Goodfellow
But Thou, Proserpina, Sleep
by Megan Arkenberg
Open Fight Night at the Dirtbag Casino
by Gordon White
Mandible
by Anton Rose
The Evaluator
by Premee Mohamed
Sonata
by Jonathan Raab
The Monsters Are Due in Mayberry
by Edward Morris
The Colour Out of Space
by H. P. Lovecraft
Skin Suits
by Autumn Christian
Master of the House
by Matthew M. Bartlett
The Stuff
by Andrew Kozma
Promontory
by Morgan Crooks
Viscera
by Sam Schreiber
Echo Hiding
by Rodney Turner
A Thousand Mothers
by Aaron Vlek
Bog Dog
by Seras Nikita
Everything Wants to Live
by Luke R. J. Maynard
We Don’t Talk About the Invasion Anymore
by L Chan
A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession will be edited and introduced by Scott R Jones. Cover art by George Cotronis (you can see a portion of the art above, full cover reveal coming soon!). The anthology will be available in both trade paperback and electronic formats. Exact release date TBD but we are looking at late June, early July.
If you are a reviewer and are interested in an electronic Advance Review Copy of A Breath from the Sky, please email MMP at info@martianmigrainepress.com with the subject line “BREATH eARC” and we will put you on the list to receive one when they’re ready. Make sure to indicate your preferred ebook format (mobi, epub, or PDF). Physical ARCs will become available closer to the release date.
MMP Third Birthday Discount Madness!
09 years ago
We don’t like to make a big deal of these things, but yes. Yes, we’re three years old. If we could pinpoint the actual birthday of something as nebulous as a micro-press, than by Daoloth we would. But we can’t. We just know (addled as we are by weird smut and gonzo horror and, oh, cosmic rays, probably) that we had our start around this time of the year. Hence, our annual anthology release (this year it’s RESONATOR: New Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond — say, whaddaya waiting for? Click the link! Go get it!) and of course, a quaking raft of ridiculous discounts on ebooks through the Great Satan, Amazon! So, without further delay, here’s what you, the intrepid Migraineer, can get from us in our insane state of being, and when!
First up… Justine Geoffrey’s collected Blackstone Erotica series: PRIESTESS
Reduced from it’s regular 5.99 to 1.99 from Thursday the 12th to Friday the 13th
This is pure Cthulhu Mythos-inspired smut with shout-outs to Robert E Howard and other great Weird Fictioneers! This collection received glowing praise this year from Bobby Derie in his seminal examination of All Things Lusty and Lovecraftian, Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos. If for some bizarre reason you haven’t checked out Blackstone, here’s your best chance for a while. Click the cover or title to go straight to Amazon for purchase!
SOFT FROM ALL THE BLOOD
0.99 from Saturday the 14th to Sunday the 15th
The debut collection from Scott R Jones, editor of RESONATOR and author of When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality. Seven tales of surreal terror “… to engage you, upset you, unsettle you. Cage-rattling horror … crawls under your skin, and lays eggs.” Who doesn’t like eggs laid under the skin by a good book!? No, seriously. Who doesn’t enjoy that. Click the cover or title to go straight to Amazon for purchase!
FREE POETRY SPECIALS!
skawt chonzz’s R’LYEH SUTRA and the thoroughly trippy ANTHROPOCALYPSE NOW! by West Coast weirdo wunderkinder, 2 Dope Boys in a Cadillac
FREE from Monday the 16th to Tuesday the 17th. So much could be said here, but these ebooks are FREE so we’ll let them speak for themselves! Click on the covers or titles to go straight to Amazon for purchase!
Justine Geoffrey’s gonzo sci-fi sextravaganza
ORGY IN THE VALLEY OF THE LUST LARVAE
Reduced from it’s regular 3.99 to 0.99
from Wednesday the 18th to Thursday the 19th
“Low-brow, squelching fun. You don’t grab a book like this on literary merit, you dive headfirst into unapologetic escapism. It is unrepentant camp without resorting to self-satire (which shows admirable restraint). There’s a lot informing this – Lovecraftian subtext and J-Pop tentacle hentai, even French New Wave surrealism a la Moebius and the Métal Hurlant crowd, Laloux’s La Planète sauvage – Like Ray Bradbury Theater rerun gone horribly, horribly wrong. It is a fever-dream of adolescent-imprinting and sexual development during the era of underground VHS cult. Deviant, imaginative, grotesque and what-the-hell-else-were-you-expecting-exactly-with-this-title. The name promises, the text delivers.” Click the cover or title to go straight to Amazon for purchase!
WHEN THE STARS ARE RIGHT: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality
1.99 from Friday the 20th to Saturday the 21st.
What can be said about our most controversial title of 2014? Leeman Kessler of Ask Lovecraft called it a crime scene. Laird Barron stated that author Scott R Jones gives Thomas Ligotti a run for his money in the Cosmic Horror Philosophy arms race. And S. T. Joshi hisself was seen to squirm uncomfortably when the book was mentioned during a convention panel he was sitting on. Yes, it’s that good. Are you #KeepingItRlyeh? A #Cthulhusattva without even knowing it?! Only one way to find out! Click the cover or title to go straight to Amazon for purchase!
And we’ll bring our discount bacchanal to a fitting close with last years popular anthology… CONQUEROR WOMB: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath!
1.99 from Sunday the 22nd to Sunday the 23rd.
This is the Adults Only Lovecraftian Erotica Anthology you deserve! 18 pulpy tales of fertility and fear, hot sex and chilling sacrifice! Stories that squelch, tales that both titillate and terrify, from some of the best writers working in Lovecraftian horror and mind-bending erotica today: Wilum H. Pugmire, Molly Tanzer, Don Webb, Christine Morgan, Kenton Hall, Brian M. Sammons, Jacqueline Sweet, Copper Sloane Levy, Annabeth Leong, and Christopher Slatsky, along with fresh new voices. It’s SPRING, goddamnit! Time for all you Dark Young to get it on in the Grove with Shubby! Click the cover or title to go straight to Amazon for purchase!
Martian Migraine Press: the Best Kind of Headache … for Three Years Running!
Here’s to Three More Years. And Three after that. 333… that’s the Number of Choronzon, right? Sure, why not. That’s reasonable…
