The Fabulist Flash Calls For Submissions/ How To Submit (Pay: $100)

Oct 16, 2023Nov 1, 2023 Kelechi Okoro

The Fabulist Flash is a new flash-fiction project from The Fabulist Words & Art. They will begin to welcome submissions from November 6 to 12 for fantastical and speculative writings of up to 1,000 words.

The Fabulist Flash will debut in 2024, and run in parallel to their current short-fiction programming. If you are interested, please go through the details below.

Submission Guidelines For The Fabulist Flash

They accept writings up to 1,000 words. Going above the word count is okay if you need a little headroom to take the story home. However, it is in your interest to keep it tight, as the flat fee is firm.
They are strictly not open to AI/LLM-generated text.
Your writing should have no misogyny, sexism, racism, bigotry, hate, etc.
They want only previously unpublished works— no reprints.
You would have to visit their website from Nov. 6-12, or on their main Submittable portal, for a live submissions button that will take you to their Submittable intake form.
For your writing, Shunn format or at least double-spaced is great.
Please anonymize your submission! There must be no identifying details on your manuscript. Fear not — your contact info will be collected as part of the intake process, and your cover letter will not be visible to their slush readers.

What They are Looking For

Fantastical and speculative fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, myth, fairy-story, magic realism, literary fabulism, and genre/subgenre remixes.
Evocative and intriguing scenes, settings, places.
Clear, efficacious writing that does not shy away from the poetry within prose.
Wide-ranging human (or sentient) experiences that people care about, or at least feel.
They want odysseys, revelation, transformation, dilemma/struggle, fluid dualities.
If you are not sure where your story lands in these various target zones, just send them your best.

What They Do Not Want

Zombies, zombie apocalypse, teen vampire/werewolf romance, cute Cthulhu/nice baby Elder God, etc.
They do not want drimdark, military, cops, vengeance, power trips, exploded/deconstructed cliches of any of the foregoing
Splatter/gore/brutality.
Virtual-reality visitations with the beloved deceased.
Mundane fantasies of revenge, sex, financial and business success, etc.
“Another Friday Night at the Elftown Police Station” — or really anything that takes fantastical archetypes or plot devices and makes them vernacular or silly: drinking hard liquor and shit-talking with a primal entity (Death, Cupid, Santa, Time), for example, or an all-powerful god with an ordinary mortal name and ordinary mortal foibles (“Bob, creator of the Universe, woke up one Sunday with a headache”).
“And then she/he/they woke up” (which includes not just it-was-all-a-dream but also we’re-all-living-in-a-giant-simulation)
Suicide and self-harm (we realize this stuff is real and we write to deal with it, just saying that successfully deploying it as a trope in the fantastical fiction we run is very, very difficult to pull off.)
But, if you feel you have written a truly original, compelling take on any of these genre cliches, they are glad to check it out.

How Much Will The Fabulist Flash Pay Contributors?

They are offering a flat fee of $100 for stories of up to 1,000 words (the equivalent of an SFWA-qualifying rate of $0.10/word), payable upon contracted acceptance.