Sentinel Creatives Submissions is Currently Open for Medieval Horror Entries (Payment: Publication + $125-$200)

Are you a horror writer interested in writing weird tales set in the medieval period? Then Sentinel Creatives Submissions is open just for you. 

Sentinel Creatives is an indie press and production house located in Cape Town, South Africa, specialising in superb works of fiction and near-fiction. Established in 2018, the company was founded by a small but dedicated team of like-minded individuals with a view to producing and distributing original stories, comics, games, and other forms of media. The scope of their output has since narrowed to focus primarily on long and short-form fiction which they do through sentinel creatives submissions anthologies.

In the relatively brief time since their inception, they have had the pleasure of working with formidable writers from all over the world, some well-established and some previously unknown, and have published several standalone novels, novellas, and short-story anthologies.

This year, they are calling for submissions for an anthology titled The Devil Take You: An Anthology of Medieval Horror. They particularly want creative stories set in medieval times which, in their opinion, provides one of the most interesting places (large as it is) to write weird fiction. There is upheaval—the undoing of the order of the world, which gave birth to the Middle Ages with the Fall of Rome; the rise of new religious sensibilities, new faiths gaining strength and momentum and yet not quite able to unseat the folk beliefs and superstitions of the past—often resulting in a conjoining of beliefs, a merger or absorption of the one by the other (for e.g. the jinn in Islam).

Sentinel Creatives Submissions Preferences

They are looking for original weird tales set in the medieval period that explore the human (and inhuman) experience through the lens of horror.

Some clarifications:

Weird:

The term “weird” should be understood to mean a certain sense of breathless and unexplainable dread, of outer, unknown forces present, a suggestion of the defeat or suspension of the laws of nature which have hitherto served to protect our minds and bodies (and souls) from the assault of chaos. By its very nature, weird fiction should invoke in the reader a sense of profound uneasiness and dread, it should hint at the inability of the human mind to comprehend the true nature of existence, and it should cause us to question the stability of our faith in the established laws of nature.

Medieval:

 The term “medieval” denotes the period in Europe lasting from around 500AD to 1500AD and is typically divided into the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. There is a temptation here that often proves too powerful to ignore, to view Europe through a monist lens: to see all of Europe as Christian, white, and “Western”. But this is a strange way to view a continent and a period that saw so much strife and upheaval precisely because of the differences of those living within its borders. These are the differences—the tensions—that create the opportunity for compelling storytelling.

• They want you to tell stories set in the Iberian Peninsula, where the Muslim Moors and Spanish Ibero sit uneasily beside one another, all while resting over the rotting bones of the old Roman Empire.
• Or show the places where cultures mix and often collide: the heirs of Rome in Constantinople or the warring Crusader States of the Levant.
• What might the Mongols discover as they plunge into the old temples of Europe?
• What awaits the crucesignati as they ride to bring the word of Christ to the Wends in their dark forests?
• And, of course, the Vikings. They love a good Viking Horror.

Horror:

It now feels trite to say, but good horror is about trespass and transgression more so than it is about transcendence. It confronts themes, images, and ideas that people would rather avoid than confront but elicits in the reader a sense that they cannot look away.  Give them your body horror, cosmic horror, religious and paranormal horror, folk horror and slashers, monsters and more!

 

Submission Guidelines for Sentinel Creatives Submissions

• Send your submissions to: sentinelcreatives@gmail.com with the subject “MEDIEVAL HORROR SUBMISSION”.
• Writers should ensure to send manuscripts as a word document.
• Their preference is for Times New Roman or another clearly legible text.
• Submissions should be between 3,000 and 6,000 words. Although it is not mandatory, Sentinel Creatives would give preferences to entires of those word count.
• Please include a short summary of the story in the body of the email. Also, include a short bio and a list of any previously published works.
• Sentinel Creatives want, original, previously published works from writers.
• They accept simultaneous submissions!

 

Payment

Sentinel Creatives will pay writers upfront between $125-$200. In exchange, they ask for exclusive rights to publish the story. Said rights will maintain for the duration of one year. After that, they retain the non-exclusive rights to the story, but you’re welcome to submit and publish elsewhere after that!

Deadline

The deadline for submission to the anthology is April 15th, 2023.

To know more about Sentinel Creatives writing style, visit their website. Goodluck.