We here at Human Resources Press have an exciting announcement! We are soliciting an open call for the CRYPTS OF CORPORATE MEMPHIS anthology to be released next summer.
Human Resources Press is committed to advancing small press weird fiction into the 21st Century. Horror for its own sake is increasingly stale and backwards looking, and we wish to do something no other Weird Fiction small press has ever attempted by releasing a thematic collection looking forward. The future seeks to move beyond editorial tampering and old tropes. Horror for its own sake is played out, what we need is something new- something contemporary to really chill us to our bones. Make us quiver, make us question our sanity in the cosmic void.
What We Want
-Fully original stories you will not find anywhere else. Cosmic Horror, deep boundary-pushing fiction that breaks all the rules.
-Seeking the home for that piece that has never been accepted? Its Here! Be adventurous, be terrifying, challenge our perceptions.
-Authors of diverse backgrounds.
-Show us something that has never seen before in print!
Your Original Submission Will
-Be Between 50-5,000 words, preferably between 450-600 words. Ideally, exactly 500. The further from this golden mean the word count is, the less likely your submission is to be accepted.
-Communicate a novella’s worth of concepts and events with the brevity of flash fiction.
-Be stunning, avant-garde, and boundary pushing without making any of our editors psychologically uncomfortable.
-Have 1.75 inch margins, custom pi-divisible spacing, double spaced except for dialogue which is single spaced, and use Arial font except for the first and last sentences of each section, which will be delineated by the use of Times New Roman.
-A cover letter of no more than 50 words which includes your name, resume, life goals, prior submissions, social security number, and signed third party proof that your employers both past and present have never once declared you problematic.
-If you are writing in a subgenre that was popular before the 21st Century, you must include a second cover letter (minimum 1,000 words) explaining why you are breaking with all the most societally damaging tropes of those times.
-Content warnings. The last thing anyone wants to feel while reading horror is the ick.
What we do NOT want:
-Anything that will disturb our editors. The cosmic void is one thing, causing psychological distress to a divorced English Major is another.
-Subtext without first clearing bullet-pointing the themes. Ideally in the voices of the characters (but naturally), we don’t want readers to get lost!
-Violence against vulnerable groups. This includes children, animals, women, the disabled, the obese, long COVID sufferers, and editors.
-Present tense, future, tense, dialogue written in an accent, indented paragraphs, words that require a thesaurus, compound sentences, slang, and conjugations.
-Characters of diverse backgrounds. Only write what you personally know from childhood and nothing else. All characters from outside of the submitters’ ethnic or religious background will be seen as cultural appropriation and your manuscript will be rejected.
Sound good?
Send your manuscript to @Mcskaileighlough.HRP. All accepted authors will be paid $5 per story and given a free copy (PDF only) of the collection to be mailed to your address (at your expense).
Let your imagination soar!
