Wicked Westerns
If you are not a PAID member of the New England Horror Writers, please do NOT submit. If you are not from New England / living in New England / associated with New England, please do not submit.
Wicked Westerns will be the 11th Anthology from the New England Horror Writers!
In case the title doesn’t give it away, this anthology’s theme is Western. The classic western genre is the story of expansion and discovery set west of the Mississippi during 1850-1910, but the modern western expands far beyond that. Western is also an aesthetic; a tone; and a series of familiar tropes, plotlines, and characters. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Princess of Mars is a western on Mars. The movie Outland is a western set on a space station. Cowboys and Aliens, Firefly, Fallout, and The Dark Tower all bring the feel of the westerns outside the “classic” parameters.
Authors need to write something the editors feel fits “western,” so do your research, consume other “western” stories (comics, video games, movies, television, and books like the Straight Outta… series from Baen), and then give us your wicked take on these beloved tropes. (Yes, we are the New England Horror Writers, so we expect these stories to be western and dark! Bonus if you can add New England flavor, like pioneers from New England.)
Need more specific prompts? How about:
- Cowboys sucked into a space/time vortex with a high noon fight on a star cruiser
- What’s that growling just outside your cabin at midnight that sounds exactly like the monster that your grandpappy warned you about as a young’un around the campfire
- Favorite historical or folk figure reimagined? But please do your research…and see what’s been written/published already. (Billy the Kid, for example, is gonna be a hard sell, as are most of the characters in Tombstone or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.)
- Secondary world or another planet with six-shooters, monsters, aliens, saloons, and stagecoaches
- Lovecraftian horrors invading Dodge City or another important town? So long as the historical information is treated respectfully and as accurately as possible
- Explore the mysteries of silver mines—what lurked there or what they kept contained? Expand on the real-life horrors of robber barons, westward expansion, manifest destiny, and the Gold Rush. Delve into the Native American legends and the fears of clashing cultures (with respect to their cultures). What ghosts and demons were brought to the West when the various immigrant groups arrived to find work and better their lives?
Make it interesting, make it original, and don’t forget the horror and western elements.
What don’t we want? Like with all the NEHW anthologies, we DO NOT want anything inappropriate with animals or children; excessive or extreme violence, gore, or sex; overdone tropes and cliches; inappropriate, inaccurate, or disrespectful representation of ethnicity, gender, race, sex, religion, vocation, or spirituality. Our general “rating” for anthologies would be equivalent to an R-rated movie—but with higher expectations than Hollywood for research and accuracy.
ABSOLUTELY NO AI-GENERATED STORIES! If we find out a story has been written with generative AI, it will be rejected—even if we learn this after contracts are signed—and the author will be banned from future submissions.
All submissions should be original work. NO reprints. Also, no multiple submissions. Wait until you hear from us before pressing that submit button with another story. Do not send us chapbooks, novellas, flash fiction, or parts of novels. We’re not against simultaneous submissions, but let us know.
If you have a question about your subject matter, query us (nehwsubs@gmail.com). SUBMISSIONS WILL BE BLIND, so DO NOT send us emails querying your specific story or questions that identify you as the author of whatever story you submit.
And who are the editors you need to impress with your wicked Western story?
Trisha J. Wooldridge and David Boop!
Trisha J. Wooldridge is an award-winning pan-media, pan-genre chaos word witch who has been in every NEHW anthology (that she hasn’t edited!) She edited Wicked Women, helped with poetry submissions and critiques for NEHW, and edited seven other anthologies for various publishers. She’s been a freelance editor and writer for over twenty years, helping bring over 400 books—several award-winners and best-sellers—into the world. Her short fiction and poetry can be found in multiple anthologies, magazines, and literary journals, as well as her first collection Where Monsters Pray. She’s published several novels, with her current project being the dark fantasy series, The 27 Kingdoms. You can find her working book tables or on panels—or reading Tarot somewhere—all over New England and beyond.
David Boop is an author, editor, screenwriter and award-winning essayist. His novels include She Murdered Me with Science (sci-fi/noir), The Drowned Horse Chronicle Vol 1 (weird western), and Rippers: The Soul Changers (dark fantasy RPG tie-in). David edited the bestselling and award nominated weird western anthology trilogy beginning with Straight Outta Tombstone, and the space western anthology trilogy, starting with Gunfight at Europa Station. He's edited anthologies for Green Hornet & Kato, Jack L Chalker’s Well World, and Larry Niven’s Gil the Arm Hamilton. In short fiction, Dave’s worked with such characters as Predator (nominated for a Scribe Award), The Green Hornet, Kolchak, the Black Bat, and Veronica Mars. He’s recently authored or co-authored several Lovecraftian stories. He teaches and tutors, collects Funko Pops, watches hours of anime, and studies music genres.
Reading Period will be 12:01 AM on January 5 until 11:59 on March 1. Submittable link for blind submissions will be posted on all our media once the window opens!
Please make sure your story is submitted in standard manuscript format. Not familiar with standard manuscript format? Here’s a link: https://www.shunn.net/format/story/1/. And since we’re using Submittable again for blind submissions (to keep it fair), make sure you strip all of your personal info. Clean out that title page and make sure the headers and footers are gone. Even though Shunn formatting has authors’ info in it, take all yours out. Submittable will record who sent what and when it was sent. It will record your name and email and log it in the info for the editor(s).
Now you know. No excuses.
But wait! There’s more!
For Wicked Westerns, NEHW will be running a Kickstarter to help with funding and allow us to pay our authors, editors, and artists better rates! Stretch goal funding will also open more opportunities, such as slots for interior art and bonus swag!
Word count should be 3000 to 8000 words. (Yes! That is longer than our prior calls!) Query for longer or shorter works. The NEHW base payment is a flat rate $75 for short stories, $50 for long form poems, $25 for short form poems, plus one physical copy of the anthology and an e-book, but we believe the Kickstarter will allow us to increase that, so stay tuned for updates! We’ll be looking for about fifteen stories and likely 3-5 poems. Payment to be made within ninety days of publication.
We’re looking for FNASR, first E-book/audio rights, and non-exclusive electronic reprint rights. Yes, we’ll notify you if we intend on reprinting your story in the future, and it will ONLY be for promotional purposes.
Please do not query about your story until fourteen days (2 weeks) after the submission window closes. However, we may send out revise and resubmits to stories that are close. And this year we are again offering members the opportunity to purchase 1-2 page critiques for stories that were not accepted at the price of $15 each. We’re not going to edit and redline the story, but we can send you some info on why we passed on it. (And if we do pass on your story and you didn’t pay for a critique, please do not corner us at conventions or social gatherings to find out why.)
Any queries should be sent to NEHWSUBS@gmail.com. Send emails for QUESTIONS ONLY. DO NOT IM/DM/PM the editors or NEHW board members. Query first, one of us will get back to you ASAP.