Please make sure your email subject includes “Submission” when contacting us.
We are looking for stories from 2000-7500 words [though we’re willing to fudge a bit on either side of that].
We pay ~1.25 cents per word on acceptance.
We strongly recommend people considering submitting having read at least one issue of Cirsova to get a feel for the kinds of fiction we publish, though writers versed in the authors we list on the submissions page will stand a pretty good chance.
Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars V: The Artomique Paradigm is available in print now, and will be available in eBook on August 17th! Get 15% off the Hardcover with promo code DREAM15 through July 29th!
75,000 years ago, an immortal being from another universe known only as the Ancient Warrior led mankind on an exodus to the stars in the face of a massive alien invasion. While the branch of humanity remaining behind survived the Marzanti attempt to terraform earth into a paradise for aquatic alien nightmares, their cousins settled in the distant reaches of space known as the Wild Stars.
The Artomique Paradigm takes place at the first formal reunion of Earth and their Wild Stars cousins. Erlik, the son of the Ancient Warrior, and former President Bully Bravo hope that a summit between the myriad factions now populating space will bridge gaps and build trust throughout the galaxy. However, the Artomique Corporation aims to become one of the dominant players in Earth and interstellar politics using the stolen Wild Star technology they acquired in the late 20th Century. For them, this meeting is an opportunity to solidify Artomique Earth’s dominance over the stars and implement the Artomique Paradigm.
A secret alliance between the Artomique Corporation and space pirates led by the notorious Red Queen threatens to turn the balance of power in the galaxy upside down!
Here’s a question we get sometimes: When should I expect to hear back from you after I’ve submitted my story?
It’s kinda hard to say, since I’m the one reading all of the stories. If we get a lot of stories, it takes longer to hear back from us.
First of all, we will always send a confirmation of receipt email once we’ve received and downloaded your manuscript. If it has been a few days and you have not gotten a short, polite “Thank you for your submission, blah blah blah,” it means we probably didn’t receive your manuscript, in which case, try to follow up no later than the 10th of August. We’ll allow for some grace depending on the circumstances, but it depends on more factors than I can really outline here.
Now, regarding rejections and offers:
If you submitted to us on the first day of submissions and it’s taking awhile to hear from us, it likely means we’re still considering your story but haven’t reached a final decision based on our budget and space constraints.
If you submitted to us on the last day of submissions and it’s taking awhile to hear from us, it likely means we haven’t gotten to your story yet. We really do try to give everyone who submits a fair shake, but there does come a point where I’m pretty happy with a stack of stories that I’ve read, and every story I read after that stands a chance of getting in means bumping off something I’d already been strongly considering, possibly even set my heart on!
So, it’s not a bad idea to submit early if you can! [and by early, I mean on the first day that we are open, not before we open–please don’t do that].
I’ll try to have everything settled by the end of September: that’s the target. Earlier would be nice. If we’re still holding onto your story by sometime in September but we haven’t contacted you with an offer yet, we may contact you to let you know that you haven’t been forgotten about and are still under consideration.
Again, the biggest factor is how many stories we get. Could be a hundred. Easy peasy. We get nearly 200 or more like we have some years? That makes it tougher. Like I said, we try to give all the stories a fair shake, but we’re really limited in how much we can afford to buy and place. And yes, I will play favorites with past contributors and IPs I’m personally a fan of, but there’s never a guarantee.
What better way to remember the strange places you visited on your trip than by grabbing a business card?
All physical backers will receive facsimile business cards from some of the odd and out of the way places in An Atlas of Bad Roads!
*Note: As we’re fulfilling international orders directly, these may be mailed out separately to those individuals.
$8,000 – Cheap Souvenir
Maybe you want to pick up something a little more from the gas station…. something that will remind you of the good times you had every time you use it!
All US physical backers get An Atlas of Bad Roads bottle opener keychain free! [International backers who want these will need to pay separate S&H. Sorry, but mailing things is expensive! ToT]
100 Audiobook Sales – Throw Something on the Stereo
Need something to listen to on your next road trip? If we sell 100 audiobooks of Endless Summer, not only will we commission an audiobook edition of An Atlas of Bad Roads, we’ll throw in the first story to backers of this Kickstarter for free!
There are many strange places off the beaten paths in this great land of ours. From the abandoned shopping malls where squatters revel in violent nihilism to the new subdivisions built atop ruins where tragedies lay buried, Misha Burnett is your guide to the weird and out of the way places that are haunted by the past and the future.
This all new collection from Misha Burnett includes 16 strange tales of the macabre as well as 16 original poems, exploring the mysterious nature of the seemingly mundane world, where the run-down warehouses, shady night clubs, and even 24-hour gas stations may be home to magical fae creatures or skulking maniacs.
You’ve been offered a map to these beautiful vistas and disturbing local attractions. Just try not to get lost.
[In case you missed it, Misha Burnett was on Critical Blast with R.J. Carter last week. It was a fantastic interview! After you’ve backed An Atlas of Bad Roads, be sure to check it out!]
There are a lot of big things going on in our scene beyond just what we’re doing ourselves, and I think it’s worthwhile to highlight a few of those that are fairly close to us.
First off, J.D. Cowan has a new collection of pulp essays out. JD Cowan has over the years shown himself to be one of the most prominent, and perhaps most important, essayists of the new movement in pulp revival beginning in the mid 2010s. His is must read work.
Secondly, Rawle Nyanzi has a print version of The Perils of Sasha Reed available on Amazon now! I actually had a little bit to do with this, since I helped with formatting and layout. While I probably ought to use this as an opportunity to shill for my freelance services, I’m not going to have time, with everything we have going on! Anyway, check this out! Rawle’s stuff is always a lot of fun!
Finally, our buddy Yakov Merkin is about to drop his next set of Light Unto Another World light novels. He’s doing them up big this time and even has a fully animated promo! TBH, I’m more excited about this than any stuff dropping from Japan right now.
Wild Stars V is going to begin fulfillment as soon as the books show up! I know “on time” for us feels like “late” fulfillment, but I’m glad we held off, because Dark Filly was able to get two additional interior illustrations to us before the final cutoff.
As you know, Wild Stars VI is currently being serialized in the 2022 Cirsovas, starting with the Spring issue. Part two just dropped last month.
While he’s prioritizing finishing his Robert E Howard art history project, Michael IS working on Wild Stars VII and we are planning on serializing it next year.
Mongoose and Meerkat
Mongoose and Meerkat is moving into proofs phase. We’ve got some additional artwork in from Raven Monroe [who did the cover for our fall 2021 issue] that we’ll be putting into layout with the stuff from Dark Filly.
Once that’s added, we’ll get the trim sizes all laid out and uploaded to our printers and get proofs ordered.
An Atlas of Bad Roads
We’re working double time to make sure that Misha Burnett’s new anthology, An Atlas of Bad Roads, will get into the hands of Cirsova readers before Halloween!
This collection is a tour de force from the modern day master of weird and macabre that you won’t want to miss! It anthologizes several original and previously published stories [some too shocking for the pages of Cirsova Magazine!] along with original poetry from Misha Burnett.
We’d honestly been on the fence as to whether we’d take open submissions this year, but in light of certain events, I feel obliged to do so, to give the widest range of new talent a shot at the hallowed pages of Cirsova magazine.
Things have been tight here, mostly because of some unexpected plumbing bills that came up in June, but hey! I can always turn away stories I can’t afford [he says, having a reputation for over-buying to support authors of excellent fiction].
Anyway, what you should all know about me before you submit is that I’m a bigoted right-wing shithead, and if that’s a huge problem for you, probably best for us not to waste each other’s time, amirite?
My brother in Christ, you need only not submit to us if you are mad that we said BLM is a terrorist group [they are] or that we called a rainbow flag concern troll a nono word on twitter dot com to shut them up [“So just to be clear, what you want is pulp stories that definitely do contain bigotry?” is not someone ‘criticizing’ us, it’s being a stupid dick, and we’ll deal with them on twitter dot com as such; sorry that I never got around to sending you those interview questions, if that’s what this is really all about–spring 2021 was a rough time and I was really busy].
We have established a long track record of publishing a diverse range of high-quality fiction from authors from all around the world. You don’t have to be a part of that if you don’t want to. Our output speaks for itself.
We strongly recommend keeping submissions within the 2.5k – 8k word range so that we can buy as many stories and work with as many authors as possible given our space and budget constraints. We DO have a few longer pieces lined up already by arrangement and probably will not be able to accept more.
Also, be sure to check out this new anthology out from regular Cirsova contributor S. H. Mansouri! If you’ve read his stories in Cirsova, you know he’s a master of weird and strange fantasy horror and science fiction. You won’t want to miss this new collection on sale now! eBook is 99 cents, and I’m told a paperback is forthcoming!
Cirsova 