I find searching for markets for my work to be one of the more stressful parts of wanna-be-pro writing. Note that I said searching, not querying. It’s almost like being a matchmaker—trying to find the perfect fit, scrutinizing guidelines, reading archives, doing the mental equivalent of plucking daisies (“they’ll like my story” “they’ll like my story not”).
My anxiety all boils down to, of course, a fear of failure. Rejection is almost assured in any case, but I go to great lengths to minimize that. Some of those lengths are reasonable–don’t send a 10K story to a market with a maximum wordcount of 5K–and some are just selling myself short–oh, any of the pro markets will never take my work so I won’t even bother subbing.
Surely there is a happy medium between a random scattershot approach and waiting and waiting for Mr. Perfect Magazine to come around?
In any case, I turned up some interesting markets in my search last night and this post is about them, not my quirks. Click on the links provided for more detailed guidelines.
The Way of the Wizard: Anthology about magic users, edited by John Joseph Adams. 5K words, reading period ends March 31, 2010.
Dragon Moon Press: Open to fantasy, science fiction and “gentle horror” novel submissions (80-100K, completed) in December. See guidelines for what to include in the submission package.
Reflection’s Edge: E-zine, accepts “science fiction, fantasy, horror, erotica, adventure stories, westerns, magical realism, myths, fables, and faery tales” ranging from 500 to 10K words.
Any other newly-discovered anthologies or ‘zines you’re excited about?
My discoveries have come mostly through reading your blog (Mindflights) and Marie Brennan’s journal (Hero something or other, favorited on my OTHER computer. :sighs:). I’m finding some flash fiction markets (what I mostly write in the shorts cat), but not too many for SFF.