In the Shadow of the Sun:
Speculative Fiction from the Sunshine State

'In the Shadow of the Sun' is a new anthology project dreamt up by Tom Dullemond and Michael McRae. The anthology is intended to be a collection of dark speculative fiction short stories (fantasy, science fiction, horror, etc) written by Queensland authors. Although there is no specific requirement to write a Queensland-centred story, given two equally good stories we will pick the one with a greater Queensland 'bent' for inclusion. This does not mean, however, that you can rewrite an old story of yours and just make it happen 'in Brisbane' or 'in Cairns'. If your Brisbane looks and feels like downtown New York, but your story is great, we're more likely to ask you to change the scene to downtown New York before accepting it.

The specific guidelines are listed below:

Primary Requirement: You were either born in Queensland and lived there for a significant portion of your childhood (read: enough so you know something about living in Queensland) or you are a current resident of Queensland.

Genre: Dark Speculative Fiction. If your story is weird, it probably fits. If your story doesn't fit, you'd better include a good excuse in your cover letter. Then we might consider it anyway.

If your story is about the trials and tribulations of a young boy on a cattle station in the 50's, and how he struggles with his love for his abusive father and his own repressed homosexuality while trying to reconcile his desire for freedom and the urge to make it big in the big city, this anthology is probably not for you. However, if the abusive father is possessed by the spirit of an aboriginal elder bent on wiping the alien invaders off his land... Well, at least we'd read the story.

We're interested in dark stories - gritty urban warrens; sandstone churches etched with copper hieroglyphs to ward off Lovecraftian monstrosities; bleached outback plains haunted by nuclear ghosts - but this does not preclude humour. If you want to send us a funny speculative fiction tale, that's fine, as long as it's black humour. There's no room here for gaudy pirates stumbling out of time warps onto a beach near Cairns. Gaunt, walking-dead pirates terrorising the living in funny ways, however, would be more appropriate.

Send in your poems, by all means, but bear in mind we have very little space for poetry - perhaps one or two poems at the most. We don't want to restrict your writing, though. If the poem is good and it suits our needs, we will accept it..

Word Count: 2000 -10000 words for short stories. The majority of stories are expected to be around 4-5K words in length. This is a fairly loose range, so don't pad your short-shorts out to the minimum word count at the expense of your prose. Similarly, don't hack your novellas up too much. By all means hack them up. Just not too much. :) As for poems, as long as your poem doesn't go for pages we'll consider it.

Payment: Short Stories pay a minimum of AU$50 for up to 3500 words, and an additional 1c/word thereafter + a free copy of 'Write Again!' (for Windows users). Poems will receive a flat rate of AU$25. Payment will be made on publication, or earlier if funds become available before that time. Payments will be with cheques, although other arrangements may be possible depending on your circumstances.

Deadline: 31st of December, 2002. If we need more time, this deadline may be extended, however anyone sending in stories will have received some word of success or failure within a month after this date.

Turnaround Times: We can give you a definite no or a definite maybe within two weeks of receiving your submission. However, we cannot give you a definite yes until about a month after the final submission date, so that we are able to select from the whole set of submissions.

Publication Schedule: Note well that we do not yet have a contract to publish this anthology. Once all stories have been accepted and finalised we will attempt to find a publisher. This means that the publication date could stretch out significantly. We will keep all successful contributors up-to-date, however. If we cannot find a publisher, we may publish ourselves, depending on our financial situation.

Send Submissions to:

• Snail Mail:
  In the Shadow of the Sun
  c/o Asmoday Enterprises
  PO Box 572, Albert Street
  Brisbane 4002

• e-mail:
  As a Word or .rtf attachment to itSotS asmoday.com.

Format your submissions to standard manuscript guidelines (double-spaced, address & details on the front page top left, word count on the front page top right, page number, name and title at the top of every page) and include a cover letter with every submission.

Final Checklist: Check your SPELLING and your GRAMMAR. Overuse of 'there' and 'their' instead of 'they're' or mixing up your 'it's' and 'its' and your 'your' and 'you're' gives a bad impression. I am particularly picky about apostrophes. First rule of apostrophes - when in doubt, DON'T USE THEM. And be consistent, even if you're getting it wrong.