Bloodlust-UK.com

What We’re Paying
Exclusivity Condition
Publication Dates
What we Want
What we DON’T want
How to Submit
Other Points to Note

Vampire Fiction: What we are Paying

We are generally closed for paid submissions up to December 2012. If you’d still like to see your work up in lights, please feel free to submit. Our standards and guidelines do not change for unpaid work and as such ALL the stories on this site have the same brilliance.

Vampire Fiction: Exclusivity

We would ask please that your story is NOT published anywhere else if it appears on Bloodlust-UK.

Vampire Fiction: Publication Dates

Our publication dates have changed somewhat in view of the nature of the site nowadays. We aim to publish fiction here every few days rather than a bunch of stories once a quarter – so if your story is accepted we will let you know the approximate publication date.

Please note, stories that have already been published on this site will be “rotated” – this means that links to the story will be published to facebook and other social applications on a regular basis, as and when we see fit.

Stories already published will also have the opportunity to be made “sticky” – to appear at the top of the vampire fiction published here, this is done at the discretion of the editing team.

Vampire Fiction: Guidelines

**** ‘Vampire – Something that takes from another to provide for itself.’****

That’s a very open definition. Don’t disappoint me when you submit. Ok, I’m unlikely to be impressed by a story about someone who steals a load of bread from Marks And Sparks [*1] because they’re hungry so don’t push it too far. On the other hand, I believe stalking has some definite vampiric aspects.

What I’m trying to say is it doesn’t have to have a cape, turn into a bat and drink blood. That’s been done, it’s been done a lot. In fact, to be honest with you, it can be quite boring.

I am interested in the idea of the Vampire, the predator on the edge of your conscious, the darkness within that wants…something, the idea of loss, of theft, of disappointment, of romance, of hatred and emotion. I want macabre, sinister and enthralling, I want explorations of worldwide myths. I want STORIES in which the protaganist happens to be a vampire and that’s part of it but not all. I want to be surprised, I want to fall off may chair laughing, I want to chuckle quietly at the black humour.

In short, originality is the key, I want something different.

DON’T SEND ME STORIES BASED ON …

a) Vamp bites man. End. Not a story, more a bit of a snack really. Would you want to read man stalks packet of crisps in sinister way, eats them, end? No, neither do I.

b) Murderer is out there killing people, but this time he’s picked on a Vampire! This was the first type of Vampire story I ever wrote, in fact, probably the first type of vampire story most people write.

c) Man goes out, falls in love/lust gets bitten becomes Vampire, moans about it / goes on about how powerful he is. Yawn.

d) Anne Rice.[*2] I appreciate a lot of people like Anne Rice. She’s very popular, there are loads of sites out there where you can read vampire fiction that’s “a bit like Anne Rice”. Not here, no lamenting lost humanity, no Armands, none of it. It’s BEEN DONE! Same for Buffy, Blade, Judas the vampire, Jesus the vampire, aids and the vampire. Get blood out your head! We want what’s not been done, not thinly disguised fanfic or Dracula clones.

f) Writing in a “Gothic Style”, by that I mean “how mine heart burns with emotion in this vampyric body,” or “the black velvet of night shrouded me in it’s gloom as the moon bla, bla, bla.” This may impress your friends and your roleplay group, it just makes me laugh. ANYONE who submits things on “Ye olde Englishe” [*3] is really just asking for a nasty reply in our opinion.

g) If it ends “but now the adventure was just beginning…” then finish your novel please, stop wasting bandwidth mailing half a story to us. Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. If your character appears in other stories that’s fine, if you’re story leaves me thinking, “so now what happens?” that isn’t.

For a clue to my tastes my favourite “vampire” short stories ever are- Kornbluth’s “The Mindworm”, and “the Alchemy of the Throat”, and “The Dripping of Sundered Wineskins” by Brian Hodge. I’m also a big fan of William Hope-Hodgeson’s “Carnacki the Ghost Finder” stories, HP Lovecraft and Poe get my vote as do Kim Newman, Laurel K Hamilton, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Nancy A Collins and Les Daniels. Or read the fiction on this site – my favourite being “Sharp White Teeth” – quirky, amusing and with a quite splendidly realised central character.

1 – Unless you can make it really sinister, something I don’t believe to be impossible and kudos to anyone who tries. Marks and sparks is like a posh, English version of Wal-mart if your from the other side of the pond… [*back*]

2 – There are a lot of people interested in traditional blood-drinking vampire tales, so I will still take the odd one if it’s something really special. As we’ve always said, you can go against all our rules and still make it in if you have something we just can’t resist.[*back*]

3 – Excluding Historians and Shakespearean scholars of course.[*back*]

Vampire Fiction: How to Submit

1. Write your piece using _ to denote italics and spaces between paragraphs not indented.

2. Save it as a .txt or .rtf file with your name, address, email, title, word-count and date at the top and copyright information included at the bottom.

3. (For re-writes: It would help us immensely if you could rename your file to have v1, v2, v3 on the end please. e.g. thevampirev2.txt)

4. Check and triple check your spelling.

5. No fancy graphics. If your piece is illustrated say so, and send the graphics in a separate email and I’ll consider whether I can put them in.

6. Prepare an email to .

7. Subject Line must read: “SUBMISSION: Story Title” – if it doesn’t, it will be discarded.

8. Give me a short covering letter, I’m not interested in where you’ve been published before but I do like to know a little about each writer, as I’m a bit nosy like that.

9. Please let me know whether your piece appears on any other site, and whether it is likely to.

10. Attached your story to the email – do NOT paste it into the message body of your mail.

11. We don’t do form letters so every writer will get back a personal letter explaining why we did/didn’t accept and we hope this will be helpful to them if they choose to submit again in the future. Rtn about 6-8 weeks

Vampire Fiction: Other Points to Note

1. Do not send unfinished work for our opinion.
2. Do not send poetry.
3. Do not send erotica, we used to try but it’s a bit naff – and I no longer want any more surprises at breakfast, thankyou.
4. If you’re wondering why we haven’t replied to you and it’s been over eight weeks – your submission was probably deleted because you haven’t done as we have asked.
5. **** WE ONLY PAY WRITERS BY PAYPAL ! – Click Here to Open a Paypal Account ****

6. Finally, a promise: If you send us a submission that you haven’t checked (a) against these guidelines and (b) for typos and punctuation, hold on to your coffin lid. Because we WILL tell you so. Nothing reeks more of “can’t be bothered” than a lazy submission. We’re not demanding a polished top-market gem – but we’ve read enough to know whether you’ve tried. We read EVERYTHING that’s sent to us and take time to provide useful and honest feedback. If you can’t be arsed, then neither can we.

Tags: Bloodlust-UK, Submission Guidelines, Writers Guidelines

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