Flame Tree seeking short stories

[Ishmael]

The themes/titles of the collections this year will be as follows:

– Lost Worlds
– Supernatural Horror
– Heroic Fantasy
– Time Travel

http://blog.flametreepublishing.com/fantasy-gothic/2017-short-story-submissions

Deadline February 28th

[preston]

Thanks, Ishmael. I saw this and thought of you. I've entered for supernatural horror. Now, let's see if I have any Lost Worlds, Heroic Fantasy or Time Travel!

[disgruntledpeony]

This looks interesting.

I have no stories written that qualify for any of these categories.

...

That gives me one month to write four 2,000 word short stories.

...

What the hell, I'm in! It'll be a good experiment, at any rate.

[Ishmael]

Go for it. This outfit turn out lovely hardbacks that are very nice to own. Let's have them packed with forumites!

[disgruntledpeony]

I've already almost got my first draft for the Heroic Fantasy story done. O_o (It does help that I'd already had an idea I was poking at yesterday that happened to fit the bill perfectly.)

I'm going to write the Time Travel story next, because I more or less know exactly what I want to do there. (I should note that this amuses me greatly, because this is the story I expected to be the hardest to figure out. That just means I thought at it really hard until I realized what I wanted to do, though.)

Lost Worlds is a little more difficult, but I do have a setting that I can use. I just need to solidify who the main character is and work out fine details of the plot.

I expected Supernatural Horror to be the easiest story to work on, since I enjoy the genre very much, but I find myself stumped because I have no idea as to a specific story yet. Just a driving notion that I VERY MUCH WANT TO WRITE A STORY IN THIS GENRE. ...Stupid brain.

I'd forgotten how good I was at writing from prompts in college. Yesterday, I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to do this. Today, I think it honestly won't be that hard and I can have all four first drafts done within a week if I apply myself, which gives me three weeks to rest and/or edit. The real answer to how difficult this will be probably lies somewhere in the middle.

[Ishmael]

One down. 3,600 in three days. Considering the previous 7,500 took three months, I'm inclined to agree with you.

There's nothing like writing to a prompt.

Three to go.

Hang in there!

[Ishmael]

Two down. 4,000 words in the last four days.

I've now accounted for 'supernatural horror' and 'lost worlds'. Plus I've cut down a 6,000 word time travel story to a little more than 4,000 but the 6,000 version is already on submission and it's possible it won't be available in time. If it's not back I'll have to decide whether to adopt the dubious tactic of simultaneous submission.

Now I very seldom write 'heroic fantasy' so this next might be a bit of a challenge. On the other hand I never wrote a 'lost worlds' before either. So although I currently have a fantasy spoof out on submission that might come back in time or might not, I think I'll try this next.

Wow! Deadlines and prompts - they work like verbal laxative! (ahem)

[disgruntledpeony]

Keep at it, Ishmael! You're making great progress.

Work tried to eat my soul over the weekend, so I didn't get any more writing done. Well. Not anything that stuck, anyway. (I made an aborted attempt toward Supernatural Horror. Damn thing didn't flow right at all.) On the upside, I've got today and tomorrow off, so I'm hoping to push through that. I want to clean up the rough drafts I've already finished and start rough for the remaining two stories.

I got a visual of a story opening for a fresh piece that might qualify as Supernatural Horror last night, so I started pecking away at that. Alternatively, I have another story I could butcher--err, edit to the point where I feel comfortable offering it up.

Still stuck on Lost Worlds. Ahh well. I'll get there.

[LDWriter2]

The themes/titles of the collections this year will be as follows:

– Lost Worlds
– Supernatural Horror
– Heroic Fantasy
– Time Travel

http://blog.flametreepublishing.com/fantasy-gothic/2017-short-story-submissions

Deadline February 28th

For me two sound good maybe three.

[Ishmael]

Three down. No, I'm not that fast. Though I did write 1000 words today, my spoof heroic fantasy came back so I pruned it under 4000 and turned it around.

Now I have a good start for a heroic fantasy that I'll just have to finish. Hey ho!

[Ishmael]

Well this is astonishing. I'm not sure I've ever written faster. If I were not already three down I should now be three down.

24 hours ago I had no idea how to complete my new heroic fantasy. Today it's complete at 2750 and off to Clarkesworld because the other one's already submitted to Flame Tree. Yes, I think that highly of it. No, I've never had so much as a sniff of a personal from Clarkesworld before and it might have gone to Fantastic but that Fantastic is not taking submissions from the likes of me until the 15th.

Onward! Time Travel awaits. Didn't Ray Bradbury say you should write a story every week because no-one can write fifty bad stories? (Martin told me that).

[Tamlyn]

My Q1 story would be perfect for Supernatural. Pity it's the long quarter.

Tried to think of something else and... blank.

[Ishmael]

Four down. Actually I cheated and cut an old 7000 down to 4000 (very beneficially I think.) Just as well because Clarkesworld bounced my new heroic fantasy in one day. Well what did I expect?

That's all four bases covered but when I told Gillian I was signing off for the season she replied they had no problem with multiple submissions, so I could go ahead and send more if I wrote them.

There you go folks, you heard it here first.

Second lap. And - Here we go!

[reigheena]

Thanks for letting us know about this. I've submitted to Time Travel and Heroic Fantasy. If another story gets back in time, it shall go to Lost Worlds.

[disgruntledpeony]

It's looking like I'm only going to get two stories in--maybe three, if I send out a pre-existing piece. The problem is, I strongly suspect said piece needs work... however, I think I just figured out a way to make it better, so we'll see how that goes.

[disgruntledpeony]

I've gotten one submission in, a rewrite of an older story. Because of a combination of procrastination and unfortunately timed shifts at work, I still have a massive revision to do before I can consider my Fantasy story finished. I'm going to be doing a *lot* of editing tomorrow. I've given up on trying to get my Time Travel entry ready in time. It's nowhere near the point of being good. (Apparently, I'm not very good at revising multiple stories at once. My focus gravitates toward the one I'm most interested in.)

On the upside, if I don't manage to finish the fantasy story in time to submit it to Flame Tree, I'll be more than happy to use it as my WotF entry for the quarter. It's a good story. It just needs more polish, is all.

[amoskalik]

I've given up on trying to get my Time Travel entry ready in time.

There's some irony for you

[disgruntledpeony]

I've given up on trying to get my Time Travel entry ready in time.

There's some irony for you

I know, right? The problem is it's a different style of story than any I've tried to write before, so it's going to take a lot of time and energy to get it right. I'm going to get it to the point where it does what I want it to eventually.

[disgruntledpeony]

Got the Heroic Fantasy piece in with an hour to spare. I may not have completed as many stories as I wanted to, but I still managed to finish one new story in a month, edit another into better shape, and start the draft for another. It'll do.

...Now to figure out what to do about my Q2 entry.

[KristyEmber]

I have a Time Travel story in. Unfortunately I think it breaks a cardinal time travel rule, but oh well, its my first time travel story.

Did you guys see the single rejection on the grinder a few days ago? For a moment, I was very excited, absolutely certain that a wave of rejections was about to begin in earnest, but no. It was just that lonesome rejection.

[Ishmael]

Three of the four had a small wave of responses just before Easter. None since that I've seen.

[historythatneverwas]

I'm still waiting to hear back on the Supernatural Horror one.

[disgruntledpeony]

I'm waiting to hear back on Supernatural Horror and Heroic Fantasy. Honestly, knowing so many others are waiting is a relief, because it means I'm not alone. (Also means I'm less likely to be accepted, but this is fine.)

[Rebecca Birch]

I've got two in the hopper at Heroic Fantasy and one at Time Travel.

I am all the impatience.

[Beth Powers]

I was trying to track down a status update on my submissions here today, and I came across a recent comment on the guidelines, which asked the same question (scroll to the bottom of this page for the last question and response: http://blog.flametreepublishing.com/fan ... ts-listing). Flame Tree responded, "Due to the great response to the call for submissions and the fact that we're dealing with 4 anthologies at once this time, we're likely to still be reading over the next few weeks. You will hear back from us, whether your story is selected or not, so just bear with us a little longer. Thanks!"

So, it looks like they're still working on it But it's always nice to confirm that they didn't forget us or the internet didn't eat their replies

[Ishmael]

I confess to being twitchy about having five in for this (2 time travel). The problem is, the more you put in, the more they could throw out. Moreover they have in the past sent me an 0 for 2 reply in one email. That's bad enough. I really dread to think of the impact an 0 for 5 email might have.

On the other hand a 5 for 5 email might cause a minor earthquake around here!

[Ishmael]

0 for 5!

[historythatneverwas]

I got an R on my Supernatural Horror story.

[jficke13]

Well I'm not rejected from the two I submitted yet. I wonder how many are left alive.

[Rebecca Birch]

0/3