#lookingforwriters

Another anthology looking for stories!

Guidelines for “The Anatomy of Hate:  A Science Fiction & Fantasy Anthology”

As everyone—writers and readers—is aware, hatred on contemporary Earth is practically a pandemic.  Virtually every group and every ideology seems to have found some reason to hate some other group or ideology.  There’s no need for a litany here; all one has to do is read the headlines.

Science Fiction and Fantasy are quite capable of presenting stories that deal with hatred.  What we are looking for are original SF/F stories of:

hatred of humans by aliens, or

hatred of aliens by humans, or

hatred of humans by other humans, in terms of an emotional and/or psychological and/or ideological [includes religion] rationale, carried to some extreme in the future

It will be necessary for the writer to SHOW how this hatred functions in daily life.  Do NOT tell me someone hates someone; tell me WHY.  I cannot emphasize this point enough.  Hatred must be a part of your character’s psychoemotional constitution—and you may well have to refer back to his or her childhood and parents in order to make it credible.   Which means character development is going to be crucial to your story.

It will be necessary to SHOW the effects of this hatred, as it pertains to the events and circumstances in your story.  Avoid TELLING. Actions have consequences—SHOW those.

We will also consider THEMATIC SF/F poetry—related in some way to the theme of hate.  Thematic poetry should—even must—develop in the reader a powerful emotional response [gagging does not count].

This anthology is open to submissions as of 1 February 2018.  It will close when filled—could be a month, could be a year.

Now for the vital statistics:

STORIES:

Word count for prospective stories should be between 4K [tight-ish] and 10K [loose-ish].  Remember, there MUST be a science fiction or fantasy or futuristic aspect to the story.

Do not put headers or footers of any kind on your submission.  

The first page of your manuscript must contain your mailing address; the word count of the story; and if you live outside the United States, your Paypal addy or instructions on how to pay you if your story is accepted.

Indents are to be 0.25”.  Double-space your manuscript.  DO NOT use bold-face or underscores.  If you want italics, use italics.  Use a hard return at the end of each paragraph [this includes single lines of dialogue].

Submit your story as an RTF or Word attachment [do NOT submit IBOE] to alpanthologies at yahoo dot com.  Be sure to put HATE ANTHOLOGY and the title of your story in the subject line.  NB:  As we use this address for most of our anthologies now, we need to know which anthology you are submitting to.  If we don’t know, we will probably just delete your submission out of hand, without response.

POETRY:

There is no line or word count for poetry.  However, in poetry, less is usually more [the same is true-ish for almost any kind of writing].

Do not put headers or footers of any kind on your submission.  

The first page of your manuscript must contain your mailing address; the word count of the story; and if you live outside the United States, your Paypal addy or instructions on how to pay you if your story is accepted.

Submit your poem as an RTF or Word attachment [do NOT submit IBOE] to alpanthologies at yahoo dot com.  Please submit only one poem at a time.  Be sure to put HATE ANTHOLOGY and the word POETRY in the subject line.  NB:  As we use this address for most of our anthologies now, we need to know which anthology you are submitting to.  If we don’t know, we will probably just delete your submission out of hand, without response.

Okay, now the good stuff: 1.  We are looking for 6 stories and 3 poems for this anthology. 2.  We will try to acknowledge receipt of submissions within two days.   Actual response time is probably going to be between six weeks to three months. 3.  Story payment is $30; poem payment is $8.  If your story or poem is accepted, you will also receive a contributor’s copy.

Lead editor for this anthology is Karen Otto.