At the current moment we are not paying for vampire fiction. We are still accepting submissions for publication however; feel free to continue to send us material.
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'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.
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. 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.
E) 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.
F) 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
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.
Vampire
Fiction: How to Submit
Submit using the submission form or in an email
to
as a .doc or.txt attachment using _ to denote italics and spaces between paragraphs
not indented. 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.
Vampire
Fiction: Submitting 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
Vampire
Fiction: Blood Offerings Writers Development Forum
If you would like suggestions on whether your material is good enough to submit,
go to BLOOD
OFFERINGS and submit it to my resident authors. Read the foreword
first, for an idea of what you're likely to receive and act accordingly - if you
want them to rip it to shreds, say so. If you want suggestions for improvements,
say so. If you are going to submit it, and purely want a yes or no as to whether
it is suitable, say so. If you don't, then your work will probably get turned
inside out and stomped on. Actually just kidding, they're a great crowd at blood
offerings...
BLOODLUST-UK
EROTIC VAMPIRE FICTION
Accepting submissions, but no longer paying. Write your piece and 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. Click
here and copy. Check and triple check your spelling!
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.
Prepare an email. Mark your submission "SUBMISSION: EROTICA", or
Please let me know whether your piece appears on any other site, and whether it
is likely to. ATTACH your txt file (DO NOT paste it into the body of your email!).
Send it. You will immediately receive an auto-response to confirm receipt of the
submission and outline timelines etc.
POETRY
You can self-publish your poetry on my community
forum. In case you're in any doubt as to its exposure there, my old forum
has eight hundred and seven poems, and the new forum is the second largest forum
on the community - with almost two hundred posted already. I am proud to say it's
most likely one of the largest collections of Dark Poetry in the UK. Please do
not send your poetry to me by email. Chances are you may get a terse response
from me or my sub editors.
