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Library of Science Fiction & Fantasy Press is pleased to announce open submissions for “Distant Realms”, an anthology of novella length Fantasy.

Fantasy sometimes needs big brush strokes to paint a world, or room to spread and grow to show the entire picture, and that can make the novella the perfect length.  It’s a length often neglected in modern genre fiction, but it has the potential to deliver incredible stories.  We believe very strongly in that potential and invite you to help us find it.

The details:

There are a lot of different opinions on how many words it takes to make a novella.  For Distant Realms, we’re looking for stories that run between 20,000 and 30,000 words.  Those two numbers make fairly solid barriers and it makes us sad to reject things solely based on length.

We prefer your submission be in standard manuscript format and attached to your e-mail as an rtf file.  For a good reference on what standard manuscript format entails, please see William Shunn’s web page on the subject.

Payment for inclusion in this anthology will be $100, two contributor’s copies of the book, and the everlasting knowledge of being involved in something special.  In return, you’ll be giving Library of Science Fiction & Fantasy Press two year exclusive print and electronic rights from the date of publication; not to the world you’ve created, just to the story.  Note that because of this, it’s very difficult for us to look at reprints unless, one, the was published in a small or obscure market and, two, it is not currently available in any way.

Submissions are open and will close at midnight on 31 Mar 2010.  This is a fairly large window, but we recognize the size and scope of a novella can require a great deal more time than a short story.  If you don’t have one ready to go, we’d like to give you a chance to write and polish one from scratch.

Submissions and Queries should be sent to distanteditor@gmail.com with ‘Submission – Distant Realms’ or ‘Query – Distant Realms’ in the subject line, as applicable.

Caveats:

Strange Horizons provides a wonderfully detailed (yet certainly incomplete) list of overused themes and plots.  We’re not saying don’t do it, because it’s always possible to bring something new to a cliché, but if you’ve picked something from this list as your main focus, try to stand it on its head.

Because there is only room for 4 or 5 stories in Distant Realms, submissions will be taken in two stages, building a shortlist of possible inclusions.  Rejections will happen, but final decisions on acceptances won’t be made until ALL submissions have been read.

The speculative elements you choose, whatever they are, must be integral to the story.  If you can write the same story without them, then it’s not a genre story.  That said, our definition of Fantasy is very broad.  If you can say Fantasy when you look at your story, please send it because we want to read it.