Wicked Women - Guidelines

Wicked Women

Wicked Women will be the 7th anthology from the New England Horror Writers. The current plan is for this book to be released October 2020 during our appearance in Salem MA in the outside fair in Derby Square. If the book is ready a little earlier, then we’ll release it at the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival or when we’re in Salem.

The purpose of this anthology is to focus the talented women writers in the NEHW. We only want stories written by women or those who identify as female.  If you’re a guy writing under a feminine pen name who doesn’t identify as a female the story will be rejected unread.

We will have female editor.

We will have a female cover artist.

We will have female writers and poets.

The only theme of this anthology is the “female author” aspect . We want the best horror stories and dark fiction, and maybe a few dark fantasies from our New England women writers. Please don't fill us up with Dryad, Witch (we've already done that) or succibi stories. We'll likely take 1 or 2 but not the whole book.

If the protagonist or antagonist isn’t female, that’s fine, so long as the author is.

Word count should be 3K to 6K query for longer or shorter works. Payment rate is a flat rate $50 for short stories, and $25 for poetry (depending on length that could change).

We will be doing an OPEN CALL for the cover artist. We’re still undecided on interior artwork.

And though we shouldn’t have to say it, do not send stories of sex with animals or with children. No extreme violence or gore, please. If you have to include violence in the story to continue the plot, that’s fine - not too graphic and move the plot along. Keep it R rated. Same with sex: R rating.

Standard MS formatting, 12 point Times New Roman. One space after the sentence ends. Attach the story as a file DOC, DOCX, RTF, and no PDFs please. Do not copy and paste the story into the body 

of the email.

Submissions can be sent to NEHWSUBS@Gmail(dot)com.

Reading period will be 12/1/19 to 3/31/20 or until filled.

Payment will be made 90 days after publications.