The Fabulist Flash Calls For Submissions/ How To Submit (Pay: $100)

The Fabulist Flash is a new flash-fiction project from The Fabulist Words & Art. They will begin to welcome submissions from November 6 to 12 for fantastical and speculative writings of up to 1,000 words.

The Fabulist Flash will debut in 2024, and run in parallel to their current short-fiction programming. If you are interested, please go through the details below.

 

Submission Guidelines For The Fabulist Flash

• They accept writings up to 1,000 words. Going above the word count is okay if you need a little headroom to take the story home. However, it is in your interest to keep it tight, as the flat fee is firm.
• They are strictly not open to AI/LLM-generated text.
• Your writing should have no misogyny, sexism, racism, bigotry, hate, etc.
• They want only previously unpublished works— no reprints.
• You would have to visit their website from Nov. 6-12, or on their main Submittable portal, for a live submissions button that will take you to their Submittable intake form.
• For your writing, Shunn format or at least double-spaced is great.
• Please anonymize your submission! There must be no identifying details on your manuscript. Fear not — your contact info will be collected as part of the intake process, and your cover letter will not be visible to their slush readers.
  
  

What They are Looking For

• Fantastical and speculative fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, myth, fairy-story, magic realism, literary fabulism, and genre/subgenre remixes.
• Evocative and intriguing scenes, settings, places.
• Clear, efficacious writing that does not shy away from the poetry within prose.
• Wide-ranging human (or sentient) experiences that people care about, or at least feel.
• They want odysseys, revelation, transformation, dilemma/struggle, fluid dualities.
• If you are not sure where your story lands in these various target zones, just send them your best.

 

What They Do Not Want

• Zombies, zombie apocalypse, teen vampire/werewolf romance, cute Cthulhu/nice baby Elder God, etc.
• They do not want drimdark, military, cops, vengeance, power trips, exploded/deconstructed cliches of any of the foregoing
• Splatter/gore/brutality.
• Virtual-reality visitations with the beloved deceased.
•  Mundane fantasies of revenge, sex, financial and business success, etc.
• “Another Friday Night at the Elftown Police Station” — or really anything that takes fantastical archetypes or plot devices and makes them vernacular or silly: drinking hard liquor and shit-talking with a primal entity (Death, Cupid, Santa, Time), for example, or an all-powerful god with an ordinary mortal name and ordinary mortal foibles (“Bob, creator of the Universe, woke up one Sunday with a headache”).
• “And then she/he/they woke up” (which includes not just it-was-all-a-dream but also we’re-all-living-in-a-giant-simulation)
• Suicide and self-harm (we realize this stuff is real and we write to deal with it, just saying that successfully deploying it as a trope in the fantastical fiction we run is very, very difficult to pull off.)
• But, if you feel you have written a truly original, compelling take on any of these genre cliches, they are glad to check it out.

How Much Will The Fabulist Flash Pay Contributors?

They are offering a flat fee of $100 for stories of up to 1,000 words (the equivalent of an SFWA-qualifying rate of $0.10/word), payable upon contracted acceptance.

Deadline

The submission window will be open from 6th November to 12th November, 2023. Goodluck.