Update on Corvidae and Scarecrow Submissions

From Rhonda Parrish.

Image from interior of "The Marvelous Land of Oz" (1904) via Internet Archive Book Images and Flickr.

Wow. There’s only just over a month left to submit to Corvidae and Scarecrow. Where does the time go? Seriously. It doesn’t even feel possible that we could be coming up on the deadline so soon, but the calendar doesn’t lie.

So far Corvidae is getting a lot more love than Scarecrow is. I’ve read about the same number stories for each anthologies but at the time I’m writing this blog post, there are fifteen unread Corvidae stories in my inbox and only one Scarecrow story. My shortlists are of equal length, however: short.

I’m seeing a lot of great stories, but not a whole lot of variety, and to get onto the shortlist a story really has to stand out from the rest. Also? I’m totally missing a whole lot *cough* most *cough* of the things from my wishlists. Let’s look at them again, just in case you’re thinking of submitting but still struggling with what to write and please consider these springboards for your ideas, not rules:

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For both titles:

• A steampunk story and/or dieselpunk story.
• War story. Bonus points if it’s the Great War.
• A magic realism story.
• Something set in Asia.*
• Something creepy.
• Something that makes me laugh.
• Something that makes me cry.

For Corvidae:

• A story featuring a nest made from some sort of unusual material the/a bird has scavenged.
• A story where the bird fashions and/or uses an unusual tool.
• In our reality corvids inhabit every continent except Antarctica, so I’d love to see an Arctic/Antarctic story for Corvidae. Because.

For Scarecrow:

• At least one story where the scarecrow isn’t man-shaped.
• A story where the scarecrow is not stuffed with straw (or blood, or a corpse). Surprise me.
• Scarecrows in space! C’mon, you know you wanna…

I’ve got a few stories shortlisted that hit, or come close to a couple of these wishes, but I haven’t gotten to check very many of them off at all and I’d really, really like to. Won’t you please help me out with that?

Pretty please?

And if you’re looking at the story you’ve written and thinking, “Well, it doesn’t check any of those boxes, so I guess I won’t bother submitting it” just stop that right now. I want to read it. Send it to me. Seriously. Finish it, polish it and send it my way. I really want to read whatever you’ve got, my wishlist is not exhaustive and a great story is a great story (though at this point for Corvidae, a four star story featuring a blue jay or a jackdaw is going to make me happier than a four and a half star story with a crow or raven. Variety ftw!).

There’s just over a month left to go so please send me your stories. We can’t make these anthologies without them!

Submission Details

Note on response times: We've been using social media to post periodic statements of "replies sent for all submissions that arrived before date X." Follow @RhondaParrish or @WorldWeaver_wwp on Twitter or World Weaver Press on Facebook for these.

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Rhonda Parrish is a master procrastinator and nap connoisseur but despite that she somehow manages a full professional life. She has been the publisher and editor-in-chief of Niteblade Magazine for over five years now (which is like 25 years in internet time) and is the editor of the benefit anthology Metastasis, as well as the World Weaver Press anthologies Fae, Scarecrow, and Corvidae. In addition, Rhonda is a writer whose work has been included or is forthcoming in dozens of publications including Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. Her website, updated weekly, is at rhondaparrish.com.