guidelines

We are currently looking for writers and artists to submit their work. We are a non-paying market, but all successful submissions will receive a complimentary copy of the magazine. For some Special Issues this is in the form of a pdf ebook.

Please be aware we are looking for 1st British serial rights. If your work has been previously published please state this clearly. Your work may also be partially published online for teaser purposes.

Artists please contact us regarding our current needs. We are always looking for regular illustrators.

By submitting your work you are agreeing to these terms.

NEW URBAN HORROR SPECIAL ISSUE GUIDELINES!

Urban Horror Submission Guidelines:

Under the city lights, unforeseen danger can erupt at any moment. As we learn from the news each day, monsters do exist, ones with human faces, and they walk among us. On a crowded street corner or waiting quietly in a bustling subway, could we ever recognize them? Some whisper of curious urban legends and supernatural horrors hidden beneath the city's visible surface, but is there truth to them?

City nights. Urban nightmares. What terrors stalk the city streets and alleys of your imagination?

You may use any city, real or fictional, but the setting must be urban, and the horrific element must be present.

Submissions should be 500-3,000 words in length, and one submission at a time. Attach submissions as a Word or RTF file, and include "Urban Horror" in the title of the email.

Contributor copies will be pdf ebooks. This special issue will be sold via ebook and print-on-demand services.

Please send submissions as word documents. All material should be in standard manuscript format:

12 point Times Roman, left justified, 1" margins all around, double spaced, paragraph indents, no space between paragraphs, with a header on each page giving your name, the title or a short form of it, and the page number.

Please send all submissions to:

morpheustales@blueyonder.co.uk.

Two submissions maximum at a time, please.

We DO NOT accept simultaneous submissions.

To give you some idea of what an editor has to go through, we've read through over a hundred stories in the past, almost six weeks, and about seven stories will appear in the first issue.

It's not that the other stories weren't any good, obviously some of them weren't, but some of them very good, they just weren't right for us.

Unfortunately it's difficult to say. We're not looking for one particular thing, otherwise it would be a lot easier. But there are a few simple rules that can help.

READ the writers guidelines. Sending in a submission that's well over the maximum word limit will not endear you to an editor. Sending in a type of story that the magazine doesn't publish is not much good either. Do your homework and, if you can, buy a copy of the magazine before submitting your work.

The easiest way to get rejected is to make mistakes. If an editor has to work hard to read your story then it's much more likely to be rejected. Make sure you check your submission for spelling errors and grammar, typos happen, but good proof-reading should remove most of them. If you need the services of a professional proof-reader we can recommend The Writer’s Services http://www.myspace.com/writersservices

Try to stick closely to the Standard Manuscript Format when submitting work, for more details:

Make your story stand out. You've got limited words, so make every one count. Make sure your story has something that makes it different, the plot, characters, style, anything that raises it above the level of the other stories the editor is likely to read that week. We sometimes read five or six stories a day, so you need to make your work memorable.

The best type of story is one that makes the reader feel something, whether it's amazement, fear, horror, joy…. Think about the stories you remember and why you remember them, then set out to create something like that.