We're delighted to announce a new call for submissions which is now open! The theme is Asian Ghost Short Stories – a chance for writers of Asian heritage around the world to explore their culture of ghostly folklore and offer fresh stories. Please read through the details for submissions carefully before submitting your stories and make sure to include the project name in the subject of your email. 

Gothic Fantasy Short Stories

Asian Ghost Short Stories

Following our hugely successful Black Sci-Fi Short Stories we're now looking for tales from writers of East, South or Southeast Asian heritage to join our powerful collection of Asian Ghost Short Stories, which will contain new and classic tales reaching across borders, from India to China, Japan to Thailand, Korea to the Philippines, and down through the centuries. The new stories will complement classics by the likes of Yei Theodora Ozaki and Rabindranath Tagore, and could give us fresh takes on such ghouls as Japan's Kappa, Vietnam's Daughter of Hui Bi Hua, Indonesia's Kuntilanak and Thailand's Preta.

With a foreword by novelist, screenwriter and bestselling author of India's Most Haunted, K Hari Kumar, an introduction by ghostly expert and enthusiast Dr LUO Hui, and editorial support from award-winning author-editor and third-generation Chinese New Zealander Lee Murray, this latest offering in the Flame Tree Gothic fantasy series focuses on the richly varied and characterful veins of supernatural lore and storytelling that run deep and wide through the whole region and history of Asia and which deserve to be revived, reclaimed and retold by contemporary Asian voices.

Submissions will be accepted between Friday 9th July and Sunday 1st August – please submit to 2021@flametreepublishing.com, ensuring ’Asian Ghost Short Stories’ is in the subject line.

Word length is most likely to be successful at 2000–4000 words, but we will still read stories slightly outside this range. Please submit in .doc, .docx or .rtf formats, double spaced, with your name and email address in the footer or header of each page.

Submit stories by email to 2021@flametreepublishing.com

Fees, Copyright and Other Terms

• Submission does not imply the right to publication. Each story will be read and assessed by the selection panel.
• We do not require exclusivity. You hold copyright, licensing us just for this publication.
• We pay Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) rates of 8 cents/6 pence per word for new stories and 6 cents/4 pence per word for reprints. 
• We would prefer to pay via PAYPAL because bank charges to the US and Canada in particular can be crippling for all concerned.
• Payment for the chosen stories will be made within 30 days of the final advertised publication date (see our website flametreepublishing.com for details), although some may be paid earlier than that.
• The anthologies will be published worldwide, available online and to bookstores worldwide, in print and ebook formats.
• You can submit more than one story.
• If your story is a reprint, please include its original publication details in your submission email.
• Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but you must have the right to license your story in an anthology. Notify us by email at 2021@flametreepublishing.com if you need to withdraw your submission.

We will aim to read each story and confirm its status within 4 months of the submission deadline.

Key partners in this publication include:

K Hari Kumar (Foreword), a.k.a. ‘Horror Kumar’, is an Indian screenwriter and bestselling author of horror novels. Hari is the first Indian writer to be listed on Amazon.com's top 50 bestsellers in the horror category. He has also written 50 horror short stories that were published in his 2019 book India’s Most Haunted (HarperCollins India), which The Times of India deemed a must-read horror book and which was listed among HarperCollins India’s 100 best books written by Indian writers. His 2018 psychological thriller, The Other Side of Her, spawned the acclaimed Hindi language web series Bhram (2019). Currently, he is producing a series of Hindi-language short horror films based on Indian myths and folktales.

Dr Luo Hui (Introduction) is a senior lecturer in the School of Languages & Cultures at Victoria University of Wellington. His PhD thesis from the University of Toronto delved into the strange and slippery realm of Pu Songling’s ghost stories, and it has been a topic of personal and academic fascination ever since. He recorded an episode on Chinese ghost tales for the BBC Radio 4 series, A History of Ghosts, in 2020. His creative nonfiction, ‘Ghost Records’, appeared in A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand in 2021.

Lee Murray (Associate Editor) is a multi-award-winning author-editor from Aotearoa-New Zealand (Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows awards), and double Bram Stoker Award®-winner. Author of the Taine McKenna Adventures, The Path of Ra trilogy (with Dan Rabarts) and Grotesque: Monster Stories, she has edited seventeen volumes of speculative fiction, including Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women. She is co-founder of Young NZ Writers and of the Wright-Murray Residency for Speculative Fiction Writers, HWA Mentor of the Year for 2019, NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, and the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow for 2021. Read more at leemurray.info