Call for Submissions
Utter Speculation Novella Series OPEN NOW - December 16
The Kickstarter has launched for the first Novella of Utter Speculation, PAY THE PIPER by Sarah Connell. Check it out here!
PLEASE NOTE: We have revised our submission standards. IF SUBMISSIONS DO NOT FOLLOW ALL THE GUIDELINES THEY WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY REJECTED WITH NO RESPONSE. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS TO WORD COUNT, NAMES ON THE SUBMISSION FILE AND DOCUMENT AND FORMAT. We believe that your story is great, but if you can’t follow guidelines, we are not interested.
We are looking for stand alone speculative fiction novellas explaining or exposing the root of a real life supernatural mystery, urban legend or folklore, to include in a series we are building.
Please note, we don’t want a whole series by one author. At least not yet
Payment is a signing bonus and a royalty split to be discussed upon acceptance.
Novellas should be 20,000 - 35,000 words - there is a 1000 words of buffer space on this. That is all.
Send a query with a story summary and a bio in the body of the email to: specpubsubmissions@gmail.com
Please Tell us in the query what topic your novella covers. We don’t want to guess.
Do not send to editors@speculationpub.com for this call
Send full manuscript as a separate .doc or .docx attachment, Formatted in Shunn format style. Make sure your name is on the document and the file name.
Title your file named : Author Name - Story Title EX: Bowie - Golden Years
We will no longer respond to submissions that do not follow the guidelines.
The Collection of Utter Speculation series speculates about what is behind real mysteries and legends. The stories can be based on facts or complete fiction. They can be rooted in real world explanations or supernatural causes, but they need to answer the question, what causes this?
Our past anthologies have been broad. The Lost Colony of Roanoke, The Jersey Devil, The Lady in White, The Dancing Plague and Cry Baby Bridge. Historical mysteries, cryptids, prevalent folklore and urban legends which people still claim to experience today.
There are a lot of subjects we would love to see explored in a longer, more in depth format, and many subjects we haven’t even considered yet.
Our Wish List includes:
The Bridgewater Triangle
Bermuda Triangle
The Mary Celeste
The Phoenix lights
The Lost Isle of Atlantis
Cryptids
Urban Legends/Folklore
We want real documented stories with mysterious explanations
We do not want specific stories with living people or people with living relatives.
Examples of this would be the death of Elisa Lam, Amelia Earhart, or the actual people who abandoned Lincoln Way in Pittsburgh.
However, you can take a real case and fictionalize characters to tell the story, or if the players have long left this world, such as with Roanoke and The Dancing Plague.
We are not looking for ghost stories or famous hauntings, unless they are specific and there is mysterious aspect to them that can be speculated on. For example The Black Monk of Ponifrac vs The Ghosts of Waverly Asylum. An utter speculation isn’t a ghost story but it can have ghosts in it.
Most of all it must be a topic that is “real” in one or several ways. A prevalent urban legend with numerous reports of real encounters. A historical mystery that really did happen but without a solid explanation. A phenomenon, cryptid or event that is tied directly to a specific place with numerous eyewitness encounters.
For this project, we prefer specifically indigenous mythology and folklore be written about by people from those cultures. We welcome marginalized authors of all genders, cultures, and disabilities.
Stories of Utter Speculation must start with the known facts. Then they can go where ever you want them to, genre, style, and explanation.
Speculate for us. We want to know.
COMING UP NEXT:
VAMPIRE HUNTERS: An Incomplete Record of Personal Accounts
Submissions Open January on Query Manager
1000 - 5000 word Diary/Journal Entry type stories from vampire hunters throughout history. These can be based off real people and characters or entirely made up but the history should be more or less sound.
Payment is .02 cents a word.
Also looking for original art. Sketches, paintings, photos that would appear in a vampire hunter’s journal, such as charts, weapons, maps, anatomy.
$20 per piece.
NO AI ART OR STORIES WILL BE ACCEPTED.