“Ghastliest Ports– The Otherworldly Places Situated Between This World and the Afterlife”
A Sci-Fi/Steampunk/Horror/Grimdark Anthology
Deadline: until full (probably within the end of this Summer…)
Payment:Exposure and Royalties
Short stories up to 7,000 words; Longer stories will also be considered.
Reprints: just in some restricted, limited cases, as long as you hold the rights.
“Ports are known to be maritime structures comprising one or more loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. They may be situated on a sea coast, along riverways, on lakes and, at times, can also be found far inland: think of Manchester, U.K.; Duluth, U.S.A., the world's farthest inland port accessible to oceangoing ships and the largest and busiest port on the Great Lakes; Harbours in Vienna, Austria, on Danube River; the Port of Toronto’s International Marine Passenger Terminal, one of Canada's largest major inland ports, on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario; other than Kolkata Inland Port, India; Kyiv River Port, Ukraine and even Lake Biwa Canal, the historic waterway in Japan connecting Lake Biwa to the nearby City of Kyoto that had, for long, enabled rice, charcoal, wood, stone, passengers, etc. to be transported by ship between Otsu, Fushimi, and Osaka.
Of course, many ancient civilizations engaged in maritime trade tended to develop sea ports. In ancient Greece, Athens' port was the base for the Athenian fleet which played a crucial role against the Persians in 480 BCE. In ancient India from 3700 BCE, Lothal was a prominent city of the Indus valley civilization, and Ostia Antica was the port of ancient Rome. In Japan, in the past centuries, the island of Dejima was the only port open for trade with Europe and received only a single Dutch ship per year… Famous African trade ports such as Mombasa, Kenya, and Kilwa, Tanzania, were known to Chinese sailors such as Zheng He!
We know that some of these ancient sites no longer exist or function as modern ports. Just to make an example, in more recent times, Rye, East Sussex, was an important English port in the Middle Ages, but the coastline changed and it is now 2 miles from the sea, while the ports of Ravenspurn and Dunwich, Suffolk have been lost to coastal erosion. Because of their roles as ports of entry for immigrants as well as soldiers in wartime, some of those cities have experienced multi-ethnic and multicultural changes throughout their histories.
Yes, ports, of course…But this Anthology may even be about space ports/space stations unexplainably left behind, other than being strangely empty...and those unbelievable sites of passage that might let you travel from this reality of Earth to another one, be it far worse or much better than ours…
What about that Steampunk port that looks caught between the saltiness of the sea before its coast and the droplets that kept falling on its structures coming from the almost always overcast sky that continuously rules over the area? What about those ill-reputed corners full of hearsays of the small port you live in where you stay always away from because of your fear of the dark at night? Did you hear of those iron sailors of the endless sea, and the unbelievable creatures in the offing they fight against, at times? Are you worried – as many do…- about that old military vessel that has been left at the Navy Yards for several decades, just to be scrapped in the future, though its day seems never to come, and almost no one wants to eventually board it, strangely… ? What did you hear in the last few days of the really unholy shipments that are said to arrive at the old port built along the most feared coast of that most feared continent in the world?"
Submission guidelines: Please include your name, address, e-mail address, the title of your story and its word count in your covering e-mail. Please submit your manuscript as a *.rtf or *.doc file (all other formats will automatically be rejected. Contact us prior to submitting if this presents an issue for you.).
Font and formatting: Please submit in Times New Roman, 12 point font; single line spacing. Please indent the first line of each paragraph half an inch. The page margin should be set to one inch on all sides.
No headers, footers or page numbers.
Please check spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
Upon acceptance into the Anthology, we ask that Horrified Press holds exclusive publishing rights for one year from the date of publication; after that date has passed, all intellectual property rights revert to the author with the proviso that Horrified Press retains distribution rights in the format of the contracted Anthology.
This title will be available as an e-book and trade quality paperback.
Sergio “ente per ente” Palumbo and Michele DUTCHER will be presiding over this Anthology as Editors.
The title will be published by Rogue Planet Press, an Imprint of Horrified Press, under the supervision of Gavin Chappell.
Email your submission as an attachment to: associazione (AT) lacenturia.it
The email subject line must read “SUBMISSION — Ghastliest Ports – ‘your story title’” or your submission will not be considered for this Anthology.
Successful applicants will be notified before the deadline has expired, or as soon as possible. Each submission must be a discrete stand-alone story. Each author can send up to 4 entries overall for evaluation (this doesn’t mean that all of them will be accepted, of course).
Cover ( and Back-cover) Art: by Italian artist Sara Dellacasa.
There may well be some beautiful Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Horror themed black and white illustrations lurking on the inside as well, art by comics artists Davide “Atog” Marescotti, Sara Dellacasa and Rossana Berretta.
Here’s, as follows, one of the images that will be included in the Anthology, by Sara DELLACASA.
Waiting for Your best-ever-entries, of course!!!
