Mysterious Stairs in the Woods – Call for Submissions

We’re putting together an anthology about mysterious stairs in the woods. The submission requirements are as follows:

• There are stairs in the woods – as if you cut and pasted stairs from a house.
• The stairs are usually in good shape – strong and sturdy and not rotted. Sometimes they are in immaculate condition, as if somebody is maintaining them.
• They’re locations don’t follow any understood pattern.
• You might or might not be able to find the same stairs twice (up to the individual author).
• Approaching and/or climbing the stairs gives a sense of foreboding and weirdness.
• Sometimes really bad things happen if you approach or climb the stairs.
• The authorities (notably the park service) is keeping quiet about the stairs. Officially, they don’t exist. The authorities do not talk about them – even among themselves.
• You can explain the stairs or leave them unexplained – up to you.
• Science fiction, fantasy, and horror are most likely – but your story can be in any genre. One author I contacted told me I wasn’t likely to get many Romantic Comedies – but if you’ve got a good one, submit it!
• You can submit as many stories as you like, but we’ll only publish one story per author in this anthology.
• Submissions should be in the 3000-20,000 word range.
• Submissions should be never before published. We’re asking for exclusive rights on this one.
• Submissions should be in Microsoft Word format (doc or docx) and should be readable. Otherwise, I’m not your high school English teacher and I don’t care about margins, spacing, font, etc.
• EMail Submissions to submissions@silverempire.org and must include contact information (name, e-mail, etc).
• Submissions are due by August 31, 2017.
• Payment will be the Silver Empire anthology standard: 50% of royalties go to the story contributors, prorated to each author by word count.

One author has already sent me half of a rough draft, while several others have made verbal commitments. Let your imagination go crazy – the more wildly different the stories are, the better!

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