Beneath Ceaseless Skies

How to submit

• Processs

  Email

• Cover letter

  We do prefer a SHORT cover letter with every submission. Type it into the body of your email. Mention the title of your story in case the attachment gets lost. If you have prior fiction sales, you can list the best one or two; if you’ve been to any writing workshops, you can mention them. TELL US if this is a simultaneous submission. DO NOT give a synopsis or summary of your story; we’ll learn what it’s about when we read it.

• Eligibility

  No specific eligibility requirements

• Formatting

  Format your manuscript in Standard Manuscript Format or as close to it as you can get (12 pt, a proportional font like Courier or Times New Roman, double-spaced, no blank line between paragraphs). We request this format because it’s the smoothest to read in our word-processing software and we’re reading dozens of submissions per day. If you deviate from this format in more than a few ways, it will look to us like you don’t respect us enough to honor our preferences.

• Author's rights

  We buy First Serial rights–the right to be the first place to ever publish that story. If the story has already appeared in print or online, or been given to readers in exchange for a donation or patronage, the story has already been published and BCS can’t be the first place to ever publish it.

• Additional info

  We are looking for “literary adventure fantasy”: stories with a secondary-world setting and some fantasy feel, but written with a literary approach. We are NOT interested in urban fantasy or other types of stories set in our modern, contemporary “real world,” even if they contain fantasy elements, or in stories that move between the real world and a fantasy world. We do NOT accept Multiple Submissions. Please wait until you have received a reply to your submission before sending another. For standard acceptances, BCS pays 8 cents US per word.