Sunday 16 September 2012

Fields of Opportunity

NewCon Press has announced a new flash-fic competition, in association with the Institute of Agricultural Engineers. No, really, this does make sense. They're looking for stories that explore the possible futures for agricultural engineering, farming and food production over the next century. Successful stories are in line for a prize of up to £75, as well as publication in both the IAE's journal and a themed anthology from NewCon Press itself.

Details can be found here; the word limits are strictly between 800-900; and all submissions must be received by January 12th 2013.

In other news, don't forget that tomorrow night is the groop's second meet of the month - as ever, we're at the Old Queen's Head from 7.30ish. Look forward to seeing y'all there...

Sunday 9 September 2012

Who keeps leaving all these doors open?

Hard on the heels of Angry Robot's Open Door period (well, six months down the line, perhaps) comes another opportunity from one of the big names in publishing. This time it's Harper Voyager, who publish stuff by the likes of George R. R. Martin, Kim Harrison, Raymond E. Feist, Robin Hobb, Richard Kadrey, Sara Douglass, Peter V. Brett and Kylie Chan - amongst many others.

Harper Voyager will be opening their doors to unagented, novel-length works of all subgenres (what they actually say is: "all kinds of adult and young adult speculative fiction for digital publication, but particularly epic fantasy, science fiction, urban fantasy, horror, dystopia and supernatural") for two weeks only from 1st to 14th October. Interestingly, given the seismic shifts in publishing over the last few years, they aim to publish the selected fruits of this window primarily through digital platforms, as "digital originals", though they are at pains to stress that all projects thus selected will receive exactly the same attention and treatment (editing, marketing etc) as standard print book projects.

They also state that they will consider novels that have already been self-published.

For more details, see the link below.

http://harpervoyagerbooks.com/harper-voyager-guidelines-for-digital-submission/

Sharpen those red pens, folks....