Short Stories, Anthologies

Anthologies open for Short Story submissions:

What is Erotica?

Erotica [ih-rot-i-kuh] is literature or art intended to arouse sexual desire. It is not pornography, which is understood to have sexual arousal as its main purpose. Erotica includes a sexual aspect but it is only one part of the larger aesthetic. In other words, writing erotica is not about graphic descriptions of people having sex, it’s about making your reader want to have sex. It’s a tease, a flirt, a seduction …

Who is Cthulhu?

H.P. Lovecraft wrote smart, surreal, supernatural horror stories in the early 20th century. Cthulhu is one of several fictional creatures created by Lovecraft in the early 20th century. Lovecraft’s stories, and some of the works of his followers, outline what we now call the “Cthulhu Mythos”. Mythos characters include both the monsters and the men who discovered them.

Cthulhurotica is the place where sex and madness meet.

What are we hoping to get from Volume 2?

We want to expand on the first book, without discarding any of it. The stories from Cthulhurotica are bold, sexy, creepy, empowering and frightening. What we’re looking for now is more … We want stories which use more of Lovecraft’s settings and characters. We’ve got Innsmouth and Arkham, but what about the mountains, the Artic, aboard the Emma? We met Nyarlathotep, the Mi Go, and the King in Yellow, but what about Ithaqua, or the Hounds of Tindalos? Tell us about Charles Dexter Ward’s neighbor, or the secretary in Professor Peaslee’s office.

What if Richard Upton Pickman painted pinup girls too?

There is so much, both in Lovecraft’s work and in the associated Mythos stories by other authors, which hasn’t yet been explored. If you do want to revisit a location or monster from the first book, make sure you do so in a completely new way.

More importantly, we want to see more variations on the human theme. Female main characters, people of color, queer folk, polyamorous families, people with disabilities – if they exist in the real world, they should exist in Lovecraft’s world as well. (Yes, you can still send us a story with a straight, white, upper-middle class male as your main character if you want to.)

Some references which might help:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/whoswho.asp – A Who’s Who of Lovecraft’s characters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos – The Cthulhu Mythos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovecraftian_horror – The Style of Lovecraft

What do we want to avoid:

Non-consensual sex, underage characters, slash fiction which features actual people (you can’t use August Derleth as a character in your story if he’s participating in any sex acts), poetry.

Seriously. NO POETRY.

What we’re buying:

Stories of up to 4,500 words. Must be original; no reprints, no simultaneous submissions. Worldwide print and ebook rights (exclusive for 6 months, non-exclusive for an additional 30 months).

What we’re paying:

2 cents per word, paid within 90 days after publication. Contributor copy of print and ebook (can choose between .epub or .mobi/Kindle versions).

Submissions open May 1, 2012, and will close at 11:59 EST on July 31, 2012. Please submit your story as a .doc or .odt file. Use 12 pt font, do not insert two spaces at the end of each sentence (one is sufficient), and your story must include your name, address, telephone number, email address, and approximate word count on the first page.

A link to the submissions page will appear here May 1, 2012.