Contact & Guidelines

Submission Guidelines

Dark Fire is a webzine for horror readers and writers, with a new issue published every other month.

Have you written a little something that you think might have a happy home here? Please read these guidelines, then send send SEND!

I'm interested in HORROR and DARK FANTASY fiction only. You know what sort of thing these headings cover -- of course you do. Make it scary, creepy, deadly. If you want dragons and elves, fine, but make sure they do terrifying things, or are terrified of something else. Humour is fine, monsters, serial killers - Hell, we'll give any of these good old stereotypes a chance if you think they're worth sending in. But remember: atmosphere is important, plot is more important.

Our page of submission stats shows what sort of stories we're receiving, and what we are using - have a look if you think it might be useful.

Now the bad news. As this zine is just starting out, there is no money as yet to pay for contributions. Hopefully this will change - we hope to be able to offer money for articles and for feature stories very soon. But until then, you just get the glory of seeing your work on screen and sending the link to all your family and friends. Oh, and mentioning it to bigger badder editors so they can come and see what a star you are.

What Dark Fire wants:

Fiction of less than 5000 words please!

Artwork for the front page of each issue would also be welcome: GIF or JPEG images of less than 500Kb, no erotica, thanks. Send to the address above...

Articles or Reviews are also welcome! Do you think you have something to say that our readers would be interested in? Let us know! Are you an author with a stunningly wonderful book you want to publicise? Let us know! Please follow the guidelines below for format and submission.

Not welcome: erotica or violence without a supporting plot, fan fiction (use your own characters!), plagiarism.

Don't forget: to tell us your name, story title, word count in the email as well as on the manuscript. If it's a reprint, let us know, because we'd like to mention where it was originally published just to give everyone their dues. If you want to add a short bio (a couple of sentences) please do, and if you want us to link to your other work on the net, we'll be happy to. Simultaneous submissions are fine, just let us know if you've placed the story elsewhere.

Format: We prefer attached submissions in Word or RTFformat, however, if you prefer, you can send the story as text within the body of an email. Please put "submission" in the subject line of the email. Please double space paragraph breaks, and do not indent new paragraphs. That's all really. Either US or UK spellings are accepted. We're quite relaxed about format. Although a readable font would also be good. PLEASE proofread your work before sending it to us - while we don't mind doing a bit of error-fixing, we do generally have more important things to do!

We will: acknowledge your submission, then reply to you hopefully within a month at most, and if we don't think your story's suitable, we'll tell you why. If you haven't heard from us after a month, email and demand to know what's going on (nicely)! If it's the story's first outing on the net, we'll get non-exclusive First Electronic (World Wide Web) Publishing Rights, and your story will be considered a reprint as far as internet publishing is concerned. Otherwise we get non-exclusive One-time Electronic (World Wide Web) Publishing Rights, which revert back to you as soon as it has been published. Copyright remains yours at all times. If you want us to remove a story from our archive, let us know at the address above!

Submit via email to our editor at the address above...