The horror and grimdark genres are like the two cousins who sneak away from parties to set fire to things. These genres often go hand in hand, such as in books like The Aching God by Mike Shel or The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle. These books have fantasy and horror elements that mash together to create grim stories that cant be classified in either genre. 

With that in mind, GdM is doing a horror / grimdark SFF crossover for our July 2021 issue. Already we have a commitment from horror master Paul Tremblay for an interview and will be adding in some great names in the next couple of months. 

WHAT WE ARE BUYING FOR ISSUE #27

For this submittal, we are looking for dark stories that span SFF and the horror genre with elements from each. Thus, this issue will be entirely horror grimdark content-focused. Anything not meeting expectations here will get an auto-rejection–please don’t send stories outside our ballpark.

Our definition of “grimdark” is simply a grim story told in a dark world by a morally grey protagonist. Anti-heroes, antagonists turned protagonists, doing wrong for the right reasons or right for the wrong reasons, showing that evil is a matter of perspective—this is what I’ll be after to sell to our readers. As an SFF publication, we also prefer either medieval fantasy settings or near-to-far future SF settings. Urban fantasy is generally a hard sell. For the horror aspects of the stories, any horror genre will be looked at save for splatterpunk horror. 

I encourage submissions from authors from the underrepresented parts of human society. Yours, after all, are some of the most unique stories out there.

Feedback will not be provided on the reasons for stories not being selected. This is to help GdM get through the submissions more efficiently than in previous years.

THE OPEN WINDOW

I hope to purchase between 1 – 2 original stories and 4 reprints. Stories that are purchased will likely be published specifically in the 1st July 2021 issue.

For more in-depth detail on rights and submission, please refer to our submissions page.

The submissions window will open at 00:01 AEST on the 25th January 2021 and close at 24:00 on 27th February 2021. All emails received before and after this time will be deleted without response or consideration.  

I can’t wait to see what you lot come up with. Let the grimdark horror begin!

Beth Tabler,

Guest Editor Issue #27