Roe v. Wade — the landmark Supreme Court case establishing access to abortion as a constitutional right — has been settled law for over 40 years, yet remains under constant attack. With President Donald Trump in office, we face potentially the greatest threat to reproductive rights in more than a generation. The Center for Reproductive Rights updated our 2007 report, What If Roe Fell?, in order to answer the question on everyone’s mind on the 45th anniversary of Roe: what will happen if Roe were toppled in your state, the day after?
trisketched: Feel that your drawings are stagnating? Maybe there’s something missing? For those struggling with their styles and finding inspiration, this might be the thing for you! _________ The “How to Make Your Art Look Nice” Series Lighting | Flow and … Continue reading →
So there was a list going around tumblr for a while that made it to my dash of literary journals that accept open submissions (and will pay!), but upon inspection about half of them were closed indefinitely, and I found quite a few other places that looked interesting through further research, so I wanted to post my own list.
I tried to focus on things that paid professional grade (at least 6 cents per word), were friendly to speculative fiction, and specifically encouraged diversity and writing about marginalized groups.
(Please note that as of right now I have never submitted or been published with any of these, so if anyone has experience with them, good or bad, please feel free to message or reblog this with your experiences.)
Speculative Fiction
Strange Horizons— Speculative fiction (broadly defined) with an emphasis on diversity, unusual styles, and stories that address politics in nuanced ways. 8c per word. Up to 10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. Responds within 40 days. LGBT+ positive.
Asimov’s Science Fiction— Primarily sci-fi but accepts fantasy and surreal fiction, but no high fantasy/sword and sorcery. Prefers writing that is character driven. 8-10c per word. 1,000-20,000 words. Responds in about five weeks.
Evil Girlfriend Media — Horror and urban fantasy centered on female empowerment and defying gender stereotypes. $100 flat payment. 4,000-7,000 words. No response times given. LGBT+ friendly.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies — Fantasy with a focus on secondary worlds and characters. 6c per word. Up to 10,000 words. Average response time 2-4 weeks.
Fantastic Stories— Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity and literary style. 15c per word. Up to 3,000 words. Responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.
Fiction Vortex— Serialized fantasy and speculative fiction. $300 for featured stories, $50 otherwise. 3,500 words or less. No response times given.
Shimmer— Speculative fiction with an emphasis on diversity, strong plots, vivid characters, and beautiful writing. 5c per word. 7,500 words or less (will consider longer words with query letter). Usually responds within two weeks. LGBT+ positive.
Clarkesworld Magazine— Sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction. 10c per word up to 5,000 words, 8c per word after. 1,000-16,000 words. Responds within days usually, gives a tracking number.
Apex Magazine— Speculative fiction of all kinds. 6c per word, +1c per word for podcast stories. Up to 7,500 words, all submissions over will be auto-rejected. Responds within 30 days.
Heliotrope Magazine— Speculative fiction of all kinds. 10c per word. Up to 5,000 words. Responds within 30 days.
Lightspeed Magazine— Speculative fiction of all kinds, with creativity and originality in terms of style and format encouraged. 8c per word. 1,500-10,000 words, under 5,000 preferred. LGBT+ positive. Submissions temporarily closed for their main magazine but is accepting for their People of Color Destroy Science Fiction special.
General Fiction
The Sun Magazine— General fiction, likes personal writing or writing of a cultural/political significance. $300-$1500 flat payment and a one year subscription to the magazine for fiction (also accepts essays and poetry). No minimum or maximum lengths but over 7,000 words discouraged. Responds in 3-6 months. Physical submissions only.
One Story— Any and all varieties of fiction, “unique and interesting” stories encouraged. $500 payment plus 25 contributor copies. 3,000-8,000 words. Usually responds in 2-3 months.
Camera Obscura— General fiction. $1000 for featured story, $50 for “Bridge the Gap” award, no payment for other contributors. 250-8,000 words. Response time vary, running just over two months as of now.
Flash Fiction
Daily Science Fiction— Speculative flash fiction (including sci-fi, fantasy, slipstream, etc.). 8c per word. Up to 1,500 words, but shorter stories given priority. Response times not listed.
Vestral Review — General flash fiction. 3-10c per word depending on length to a max of $25. Up to 500 words. Response within four months.
Flash Fiction Online— General flash fiction. $60 flat payment. 500-1,000 words. Response times not listed.
Novels/Novella
Riptide Publishing — Any LGBTQ manuscripts between 15,000 and 150,000 words. Currently especially interested in lesbian romances, trans stories, asexual/aromantic stories, romances with a happy ending, and genre fiction such as urban fantasy. Also has a YA branch. LGBT+ positive.
Crimson Romance — Romance stories of all kinds, currently seeking LGBT+ stories with a focus on emotional connections and relationships, especially m/m romance. Novel (55,000-90,000 words) or novella (20,000-50,000 words) length. LGBT+ positive.
Kindle Direct Publishing
Kindle Direct Publishing— Allows you to set your own prices, create your own cover art, and make royalties off of each sell. Any and all genres are welcome and if you’re prolific and smart about how you’re publishing you can make pretty good money.
As a mental break from everything, I reread The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce, which starts with Alanna: The First Adventure (Young Adult 274 pages).
“‘From now on I’m Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I’ll be a knight.’ And so young Alanna of Trebond begins the journey to knighthood. Though a girl, Alanna has always craved the adventure and daring allowed only for boys; her twin brother, Thom, yearns to learn the art of magic. So one day they decide to switch places: Disguised as a girl, Thom heads for the convent to learn magic; Alanna, pretending to be a boy, is on her way to the castle of King Roald to begin her training as a page. But the road to knighthood is not an easy one. As Alanna masters the skills necessary for battle, she must also learn to control her heart and to discern her enemies from her allies. Filled with swords and sorcery, adventure and intrigue, good and evil, Alanna’s first adventure begins – one that will lead to the fulfillment of her dreams and the magical destiny that will make her a legend in her land.”
I did not actually read this series when I was younger and instead read them first around my undergrad days, I think. I know that one of my roommates gave me The Woman Who Rides Like a Man as a present sometime in my senior year. I also remember looking at the book and thinking about how it was the third book in the series and I’d never read any of the other books. Eventually, I did buy the books and read them all. In fact, I might have purchased them recently in the last five years or less and read them for the first time in the last five years or less. I honestly don’t remember.
This story has a lot of really good aspects to it and a lot of really good internal messages for readers. When Alanna and Thom decide to switch places, it’s done so that both of them can follow their own hearts’ desires. Alanna wants to be a warrior and a knight for the kingdom while Tom wants to be a sorcerer. Neither is suited to where they are each intended to go and so they work together to achieve a mutually beneficial solution.
Alanna, going by Alan and pretending to be a young boy in order to learn how to be a page in the King’s court, winds up bullied by another noble named Ralon. She takes the beating and never tells on him or his activities. To combat this issue, she gets up earlier than the rest of the pages and goes to sleep much later, having Coram, her man-at-arms, teach her boxing and wrestling. When she isn’t making the kind of progress she wanted with her hand-to-hand fighting styles, she even enlisted the aid of George, the King of Thieves. She took every opportunity she could find and sacrificed her own time to learn how to do better and then continued to practice everything she could learn. Alanna did the same thing when it came to learning sword work, starting out with Coram’s sword, a sword larger and heavier than any of her practice blades.
When Prince Jonathan finds out Alanna’s secret, he doesn’t betray her trust, and neither does George. Those who know her secret respect her wishes and many of them show every inclination of being true friends. This book has a lot of really good parts about what it means to be a friend and also what obligation and duty mean. This book really does have a lot of positive aspects.
Overall, I’d say this book is a high three on my rating scale. I’m happy that I own it and I have reread it multiple times and am highly likely to continue rereading it in the future. Alanna is a heroine who works hard for everything she wants and that’s admirable and the other characters in the book are loyal and honest.
i deserve unrestricted access to old churches and castles i want to know all the secrets
i work in a castle and have unrestricted access and let me tell you sometimes knowing all the secrets……is worse
please share with us the secrets
what you guys want then, huh? You want royal family gossip? You wanna hear about the Duchess of York sneaking her lover into her room through a secret door? Or do you want the gross shit, like the skull stuck on the pike on top of the keep which nobody really knows how it got there but maintenance says it’s too high up to get down? Or the fact we tell kids the skeleton in the store room is ‘just a dummy’ but in reality nobody can break the grate without collapsing the wall?
Ya’ll wanna hear about the G H O S T D O G?????
I in fact want to hear all of those like way too much for it to be healthy
I can’t wait to build a home with the person I love— tend to a garden, grow our own herbs and vegetables and cook meals together while we listen to our favourite records
So the topic of “queer as a slur” came up in a fb conversation and my answer pretty much distilled out a lot of things that Tumblr has been saying for a while on the subject, as well as my personal experience.
See, here’s the thing. I marched in the streets using the word Queer as a word of power. “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” We worked hard to reclaim that word and it’s been publicly reclaimed longer than the word “gay” has, tbh. Gay was being used as an insult within the last decade. We had to do a coordinated public service campaign to get people to stop using it to mean “bad”.
Queer studies have been a thing for decades. Academics study “Queer theory”. It IS the one word we have that is inclusive, and the only reason people keep editing themselves out of it is because of a concentrated campaign from trans exclusionists, which got picked up by biphobes and aphobes and everyone who is not comfortable with the umbrella being inclusive.
This is an act of infiltration and subversion from conservative elements. It’s a common tactic for conservatives and right wingers to send people into groups and twist the message to divide the group. Radical feminists got in bed with the religious right on the subject of sex work, and used the inherent isolationist tendencies of the gay and lesbian community to make it sound like there are “limited resources” which “shouldn’t be divided among too many people”… which is completely the opposite of the truth, which is that the larger the umbrella, the more people working together, the more collective power people have to change things to be better for everyone.
It hurts NOTHING to be loving and open and accepting of everyone who says, “I’m not straight, and I’m on your side.”
We don’t get to second-guess people’s identities. We don’t. That’s sacred. And people who reject “queer” are doing just that.
I identify as queer. Every time someone says “q-slur” or shies away from saying the name of my identity, they’re giving MY WORD back to the assholes.
So I flat out don’t trust people who say “q-slur” or act like my identity is a bad word. People who do that are stating loud and clear that they don’t value me, don’t see me as a person, and that my identity, the word that means the most about who I am, is “bad” to them.
It makes me think that people who use that word are listening too much to bigots and not enough to the most marginalized people in this ridiculous attempt at community.
I marched in the street for my word. People DIED for my word. Fuck yeah, it was a slur. But it’s not when I use it. It’s not when people use it as a positive identifier. Because we fucking reclaimed it.
You know what else was a slur? Gay. Lesbian. Trans. Even bisexual has been used to mock people. We don’t have many words that weren’t slurs, because what makes a word a slur is not the word itself, but how it is used.
People use “woman” as a slur, when they speak the word like a sledgehammer. But there is nothing inherently derogatory about the word.
When I say “Queer” I’m saying “You’re welcome here. The storm is scary out here, but my umbrella is big and we accept you. We welcome you. We CHERISH you.”
When someone refuses my word? They say the umbrella is not for me, and I do not accept that.
C.A. Jacobs
C.A. Jacobs 