July: Monthly Theme Updates
・Happy Birthday, America!∙
Wow. 250 years. I know that’s not a lot, globally — Egypt and China are thinking, “Get off our lawns, you young whipper-snappers”…
But it’s worthy of a patriotic themed graphic, I think:
And here are some prompt updates for when you get back from the neighborhood barbecue:
Black Hare Press - Dark Moments
Word Count: 100 exactly
Genre: Horror
Theme: Unreliable Body Parts
Open: 7/1-31
Rate: $.04/wd
No Sim Subs / No Reprints
*ANONYMOUS SUBS*
What they want:
Stories where flesh, circuitry, or hybrids betray their owners—implants that rewrite loyalty, prosthetics that crave autonomy, cloned organs that remember previous hosts, or bio-mods that evolve beyond control.
Explore futures where the human form is upgraded, rented, or replaced… and where those upgrades malfunction with sinister intent.
Show us the terror of a body that won’t obey, limbs that act on hidden programming, senses that lie, and repairs that introduce new horrors. Submit your bleakest visions of malfunctioning humanity.
My take: BHP are absolutely fantastic to work with. I will almost always try to come up with something dark and weird for their monthly calls.
In a Flash
Word Count: 500 words max
Genre: CNF (creative nonfiction)
Theme: Courage
Open: 7/1-15
Rate: $25
Sim Subs Allowed / No Reprints
What they want:
We’re a writing group devoted to flash CNF (creative nonfiction), and we’ve spent the last two years editing each other’s pieces while racking up publishing creds. We love working in flash— the electric way a single sentence, a single short paragraph, a single phrase can change the way you view yourself and the world in the span of a moment. We want to create more opportunities for short flash nonfiction in the literary world, and are excited to do so here.
My take: None yet. But everybody’s got a story about finding courage when needed, right?
Manawaker Studios 100-Word Project:
Word Count: 100 exactly
Genre: any, but the editor leans towards “the speculative, the fantastic, the futuristic, and the weird”
Theme: Left
Open: 7/1-30
Rate: $.01/wd
No Sim Subs / No Reprints
What they want:
The 100 Word Project is an ongoing project focused on 100 word stories which will be published as a monthly, themed online journal and in a yearly print anthology. Each month (except for June and December) will bring a new prompt, and in the first half of the next month nine of the submitted drabbles for that prompt will be posted in the public-facing section of the Manawaker Patreon alongside one drabble from Manawaker EiC, CB Droege (An audio edition will be available to Patreon patrons as a subscriber perk). At the end of the year, the ten stories from each of the ten prompts will be assembled into the next volume of the 100 x 100 series to be published as a print, digital, and audio book. The project is curated and edited by CB Droege. 100 x 100 is published by Manawaker Studio as part of their regular line of anthologies.
My take: None yet. “Left” can go in so many different directions, too…
Anomaly Drabble Contest
Word Count: 100 exactly
Genre: sci fi
Theme: Depths
Open: 7/1-31
Rate: $.08/wd
Remember that you do need to subscribe to their substack to submit, but the contest is available to both free and paid subscribers.
They also have voting every month for the following month’s theme, so if you have a drabble lying around that fits one, why not cast a vote for it?
My take: none yet
What you can look forward to from Micro Markets: themed and unthemed calls, monthly micro contests, micro-lit mags that are always open, micro-focused anthologies... maybe even some craft essays about writing microfiction and a place to feature YOUR published micros.
So dust off some of your tiny treasures, and let’s send them out into the world!
Niiiice! :)