Submissions Challenge!
Do you want to improve your chance of acceptance? If your work is accepted, do you want it (and you along with it) to receive special promotion and be part of an exclusive, themed Exhibit? Do you want to show off your awesome, versatile talent?
Respond to a Horrific Scribes Submissions Challenge!
We’re always open to general submissions of the sorts described in the main submission guidelines, but we’re also usually on the hunt for something in particular.
The new challenge is to submit work for us to consider including in Horrific Scribes, Special Exhibit Six: They Already Have You.
For this Challenge (open as of September 1, 2026), we want provocative, scary, and strange stories about conspiracies and conspiracy theories. The conspiracies and theories can be grounded and believable or supernatural, surreal, cosmic, or otherwise implausible. Secret scientific experiments involving clueless human subjects, religious cults infiltrating everyday society to complete rituals or fulfill prophecies, and political cabals exploiting people in ghastly ways to amass power for even ghastlier goals are all fine foundations, but you should use them to build unfamiliar tales. While we encourage stories related to lesser-known conspiracy theories that circulate in the “real” world, we’re unlikely to take stories based in well-explored territory such as:
- Area 51, Roswell, crop circles, cattle mutilations, and other alien visitation clichés
- The Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, Hellfire Clubs, and similar well-known “secret” societies
- The “Deep State”
- Anything suggesting an actual religious, ethnic, racial, or sexual minority is secretly plotting against a white, cis-het, male-dominated Christian majority (we might consider a transgressive story that depicts such a conspiracy as a good thing)
Submissions for the Challenge should follow all the regular submission guidelines. Since we now take flash fiction, there are two ways to submit.
For stories 1500 – 5000 words (and poetry), submit here: https://forms.gle/nrqoWsY1iY3dZphq8
For stories 1000 words or shorter, review these guidelines, then submit here: https://forms.gle/u1oqyM4KYNm2vbGQA
The deadline for submissions is midnight October 15, 2026, US Pacific Time. We review and accept or refuse submissions during the open period as we’re able; as a result, later submissions tend to face tougher critiques because we have fewer spots left to fill. Don’t wait until the last minute!