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Call for Submissions: Trenchcoats, Towers, and Trolls

11/18/2020

Trenchcoats, Towers, and Trolls: Cyberpunk Fairy Tales
Anthologist: Rhonda Parrish
Open for Submissions: February 1 - 28, 2021
Expected Publication: 2022
Story Length: up to 7,500 words
Payment: $0.01 per word + contributor copy
Simultaneous submissions = okay. Multiple submissions = no.

For this, the third installment of Punked Up Fairy Tales, we are excited to mash the world of cyberpunk together with fairy tales and see what sort of magic results. Embracing the high-tech/low-life aspect of cyberpunk will give these stories both the sleek coolness of futuristic technology and the grittiness of traditional fairy tales.

Give me a story of Rapunzel trapped in a tower of circuits rather than stones, of trolls who live under bridges as well as those who do their work behind a keyboard — or whatever passes for a keyboard in the future. What if Snow White was a computer and the apple a virus? What if Hansel and Gretel were hackers following digital breadcrumbs? Or Cinderella was a program who must stop running by midnight or else?

Don't rely exclusively on imaginative technology to make your story stand out in a crowd — make sure you nail all the other important parts of a story as well. Plot. Character. Setting. You know the list.

Original fairy tales are welcome, as are retellings. If you choose to retell a familiar favourite, make sure your story offers something new and interesting. I’d rather see stories that reflect the long history of fairy tales as social commentary than those which simply tell the same story with a different setting.

I am excited to read stories set all over this or other worlds, and would love to see ‘Own Voices’ stories and, as always, welcome submissions from writers of all backgrounds (including, but not limited to, race, color, religion, gender/gender expression, age, disability, and national origin). Further, I love to see a diverse collection when it comes to which fairy tales are represented, but also the races, genders and sexualities of the characters within them.

How to Submit: check back closer to submission window for details

About the Anthologist

Rhonda Parrish is the editor of more than a dozen anthologies including, Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinns and Tesseracts: Nevertheless. In addition, Rhonda’s written work has been in publications such as Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing (2012 & 2015). Her YA Thriller, Hollow, was published in 2020 and her website, updated regularly, is at http://www.rhondaparrish.com

More Anthologies From Rhonda Parrish

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Our Nominations for the Pushcart Prize XLVI

11/12/2020

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Each year, the Pushcart Prize invites literary magazines and small presses to nominate their best short fiction to be considered for both a prestigious prize and a "best of" anthology. We published two short fiction anthologies this year, and chose six stories between them to nominate.

Scroll down to find out our Pushcart Prize nominees for stories published in 2020, and enjoy a brief excerpt from each story. Congratulations to these authors, and good luck!

“A Shawl for Janice” by Sandra Ulbrich Almazan

I hurried past Val, kicking at snowdrifts as if they were hiding exotic specimens. When I was younger, I’d found Grandma’s stories of the old world fascinating but remote from my daily life. I didn’t draw parallels between Great-Aunt Janice and myself until I was ten or eleven. By then, of course, I’d already chosen my current name. Nobody here besides me even remembered what it had once been. No one knew anything about Great-Aunt Janice’s early years either, though I planned to change that today.

Birds flew past me, but I was so distracted I couldn’t tell if they were swans or sparrows. I overlooked more birds, even when Val pointed them out.

“The Fugue of Winter” by Steve Toase

“Open it,” Bryony said, the smile still there. Still mocking.

Sally shook her head.

“The dead should stay covered. It’s disrespectful to gaze upon them.”

“There’s no one dead in here,” she said. “The only thing to mourn inside that box is something beautiful nearly lost from the world.”

Bryony flicked the clasps. Flakes of rust fell onto the table. Sally’s hand went out to stop her, then paused.

“Trust me,” Bryony said.

“Black Ice City” by Andrew Dana Hudson

In Svalbard I find new comrades. To join the winter party, one must bring ice, and to wrangle ice of any consequence one needs more than a single boat. So I hobnob in Barentsburg hostels, buying drinks and trading planktonspice until I win the favor of seven rough men out of Yuzhny. They’re Irish and Icelandic, Spanish, Dutch and Saharan, all drawn north to seek their fortunes in one unlikely way or another. They pilot bedecked new cutters, fresh from Hokkaido factories, hulls too clean to have run the Northwest Passage.

“What’s the story there?” I ask, more than once, but they laugh and dismiss me.

The Spaniard, Mateo, grins. “Sometimes boats fall off the back of other boats.”

"The Scale of Defiance" by Nina Niskanen

In the city of Väinölä, as a result of an almost-forgotten spell gone wrong, the citizens become smaller and larger according to their mood. Leena sat on the subway, barely 15 hands high, trying to keep the teenagers kissing each other next to her from completely invading her space. She would not go any smaller, partly because she did not want to force that on herself, but also because she had once before tried to be doll-sized on the subway, and that had been enough for her to last the remainder of her life. Instead, she pressed herself into the wall. The teens brought to mind the first, tentative time she held the hand of the woman she would later marry. These teenagers seemed to expand to fill all available space, which matched her own memories. She did not want to take away from their happiness by making them stop.

"The Body Politic" by Octavia Cade

Fascism appears first in the body. It’s writ over flesh, as if politics have the power to turn meat into monster. I’d never thought of myself as monstrous before, but mirrors don’t lie. Nor does mutation.

It starts with the inability to keep food down, the refusal of foreign substance. I used to think of my body as a reef, as an ecosystem. All those tiny organisms come together, a set of species I’ve never bothered to count. A colony creature, but this is not now a world fit for colonies. Everywhere, the reefs are dying, the corals turning pale and fragile, the waters warming them to incapacity and death. It’s too much to choke down.

"In Her Eye's Mind" by Selene dePackh

Lynch brushed sleet off his well-tailored shoulders and carefully pushed Rusalka into the dark vestibule ahead of him. “Not inside yet, Cross, and don’t get comfortable. This AI developed an instability that forced a shutdown. The Department tried a few times to bring the building back online, ended up just leaving it in standby mode. Nobody sees fit to believe me, but the thing isn’t just randomly scrambled. You’ll see for yourself, unless it decides to behave just to spite me.” He pulled out his badge and used the street lights from the open door to search for the authorization slot. After a click and a soft grinding sound, the security panel illumination came on.

A heavily synthetic voice spoke. “Good evening, Sergeant Lynch. What is your business here?”

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An Anchor in a Storm of Distortion

11/2/2020

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Guest Blog by Jennifer Shelby

The main character in my Recognize Fascism story, "A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortion," is a retired time-traveling smuggler named Revekah. After making a career of illegal time travel, she now suffers from a degenerative temporal disorder which twitches her back and forth through time. It’s during these twitches that she sees the future fascist regime that will take over her home system.

I look up to Revekah. She is dying, she’s struggling, and she’s tired. It would be easier to give up than to fight, but the faces of the future she’s seen in her twitches haunt her. Many of us feel that way right now: so tired. Weary. History acts as our twitches to the future; we’ve already seen what happens when fascism wins and it’s the faces of the past that haunt us. They whisper warnings from old photographs, stories, and Holocaust memorials.

Revekah acts when she recognizes the rise of fascism, and that recognition is crucial to kickstart resistance. Resistance comes in many forms, the most obvious being protesting and voting, but sometimes it’s an elderly lady using her time traveling skills to save what lives she can. Other times, it’s joining a community of writers, editors, and publishers to make a book. And sometimes? It’s reading that book.

I know you’re tired, I am too, but we can’t give up. We’ve got to keep using what skills we have to fight. Revekah uses an anchor to bring her home when the temporal distortion overwhelms her. When you feel overwhelmed, alone, and that the odds are stacking wildly against us, I hope this book can serve as your anchor and our stories help you find what you need to keep going.

We’re in this together.

Jennifer Shelby hunts for stories in the beetled undergrowth of fairy-infested forests. She fishes for them in the dark space between the stars. This story, and many others, are a part of her ongoing catch-and-release program. If you'd to learn more, you can visit her website at jennifershelby.blog or on Twitter @jenniferdshelby

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Get a Krampus Ornament with Paperback Order

11/1/2020

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Until December 5, 2020, purchase a paperback copy of our bestselling Krampusnacht anthology, plus any of our other winter-themed books, and you'll receive a free handmade Krampus ornament! Wooden ornament has a 3.5 inch diameter, and features decoupaged artwork by Connor Anderson.

What the heck is a Krampus? Anthologist Kate Wolford explains Santa's darker counterpart here: The Advent of Krampusnacht.

Offer only good for purchases made through the World Weaver Press online store. Ornament will be automatically included in any paperback order that includes both Krampusnacht and any of the qualifying books listed below. Offer not valid on ebook purchases, or purchases made after December 5, 2020. Sorry, only U.S. shipping available.

Want just the ornament? Buy the Krampus Wooden ornament for $6 by clicking here. Supply is limited!