LAST UPDATE: 5 JUNE 2024
SUBMISSIONS ARE TEMPORARILY CLOSED WHILE WE RESTRUCTURE THIS WEBPAGE AND MAKE ALL THE REQUIRED CHANGES TO FROZEN WAVELETS. WE WILL ANNOUNCE A NEW SUBMISSION WINDOW LATER IN THE YEAR.
Frozen Wavelets is an e-zine of speculative flash fiction and poetry, offspring of The Earthian Hivemind. This means that some of the accepted pieces will appear on the dedicated section of this blog, before being included in one of the e-zine issues (published quarterly).
Where: we use Moksha to handle the submissions. All submissions sent to our email address will be deleted unread.
What: Original flash fiction of 750 words or less. No minimum. If you can write a (convincing) story in six words (and Hemingway showed it’s possible), go for it. Twitterfiction, Drabbles, 50 words, all welcome. We love haiku, tanka, senryu, and short poetry in general, but no more than 10 lines anyway. [We welcome speculative art too, even though we’ll commission most of the initial stuff. Please contact us with proposals.]
Rights asked: First worldwide exclusive rights for 6 months from the first appearance, be it on the blog or in the ezine; non-exclusive electronic/print rights afterwards (archival and for possible inclusion in thematic / Best of anthologies). All other rights remain with you.
Payment: we pay pro-rate for fiction (US $ 0.08/ word) and US $ 1/ line per poetry. We pay on acceptance.
IMPORTANT: we pay by Paypal and IBAN bank transfer (mark the word IBAN. It means it is a bank transfer that is only available in European countries), with Amazon gift cards as a possible alternative. Please make sure one of these methods works for you, or we might be unable to pay you. If in doubt, please query first.
Reprints: we do accept reprints for fiction pieces between 500-1500 words, paid at semi-pro rate (US $ 0.01/ word), provided you own the rights and let us know the publication history. Reprints for microfiction and poetry by invitation only.
Simultaneous and multiple submissions: no simultaneous, please. We’ll get back to you with a hold or a pass within 30 days at the latest (but generally sooner than that). No multiple in the same category. One original and one reprint are allowed at the same time for fiction. Up to 5 poems/haiku can be submitted in the same document.
Topics, Language & Hard Sells: nothing is forbidden here, provided is original (i.e., NO fanfiction) and remains in the SSF&H domain. We encourage writers to push boundaries, in format and topics. Tell us something we haven’t thought of (yet), and tell it well.
Hard Sells from the Editor’s desk:
- Torture porn (or porn tout court; I find it boring, sorry)
- Vampires
- Gore and splatter for the sake of it (I had too much of that in my teen years as any true horror fan). Incidentally, I am a HWA Active Member, so I read every year submissions for the Stoker Awards. You need to do pretty well to sell me this stuff.
- Romance (the genre, of course; see above for porn)
- Racist / misogynist / white-supremacist discourse. No comments here, but you get my drift. If I want to hear any of it, I’d tune on my BBC channel: plenty of assholes who offer it for free. Needless to say, this e-zine is a QUILTBAG safe place. If you don’t like it or it offends your sensibilities, it’s your own business. Don’t read, don’t submit.
- Vampires (I know I’ve already written it. It’s to impress on you how much I *don’t* like them). Unless you’re Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
On the other hand, I love dry humour, and foul language doesn’t put me off. I prefer rigorous science in my SF, but I read everything and like even other types. I appreciate (good) horror in all forms and declinations, while I’m definitively pickier for fantasy, and I tend to favour dark fantasy above all. Genre-bending and slipstream welcome, and so they are mystery and thriller in a speculative context. Oh, and I love speculative fiction in translation. You’re welcome to send your translated pieces, but in this case, also include the original.
Format: the usual stuff. 12-p Times New Roman or Arial, double-spaced, indentation, 1-inch margins, no header or footer. To avoid issues, submit .DOC or .RTF files.
Please DO NOT put your name on the manuscript. Add anything you deem necessary for us to know in the cover letter, but we encourage you to keep it short and to the point (no idea how to write one? Have a look at this post by Alex Shvartsman). We’re buying (or rejecting) your story, not you; there’s not a lot we need to know anyway. If you make a sale, we’ll ask for a proper bio and social media links.
Rejection letters: we use forms, so don’t read anything in them apart from the fact that we have time constraints. Remember: we buy what we think it’s right for this particular zine, not a piece of literature, as good as it can be. Like many things in life, it’s a matter of (personal) taste, nothing more, nothing different.
If you need to query, please write at frozenwavelets AT Gmail DOT com and put QUERY in the subject line, otherwise it will land straight into the trash folder.
We look forward to reading your work!