Closed to Submissions

What We Want

Old Moon publishes character-focused, weird sword-and-sorcery: stories dark and tragic, set in a secondary or historical-paranormal (“our” reality, but with a twist, if you will) world, with a focus on rounded characters undergoing some sort of conflict, resolved (though not always successfully!) by the might of their main or mind.

We love stories that combine that sense of action and adventure with well-rounded characters who make us question our own realities and perceptions. We love to see the gothic, the baroque, the eldritch, and we love to see it hit with an axe.

Weird fiction and sword-and-sorcery can both be slippery terms. That is part of the fun! But, for our purposes we know it may help prospective writers if we list a series of authors and their stories we feel encompass (at least in part) what we love about the borderland of sword/sorcery and weird fiction:

Joe Abercrombie ("Three's a Crowd," "Yesterday, Near a Village Called Barden...")

Laird Barron ("Oblivion Mode," "Ode to Jode the Toad")

Leigh Brackett ("The Sea-Kings of Mars")

E.R. Eddison (The Worm Ouroboros)

John R. Fultz ("Chivaine")

Robert E. Howard ("The Shadow Kingdom," "Worms of the Earth")

John Langan ("The Savage Angela in: The Beast in the Tunnels")

Tanith Lee (Birthgrave, "Southern Lights")

C.L. Moore ("The Black God's Kiss")

Silvia Moreno-Garcia (The Return of the Sorcereress)

Michael Shea (Nifft the Lean)

Clark Ashton Smith ("The Charnel God," "Necromancy in Naat")

E. Catherine Tobler ("The Living, Vengeant Stars, "And After the Fire, A Still Small Voice")

Gene Wolfe ("Bloodsport")

The list could go on and on, of course, but we feel those provide a representative sample of the work we enjoy. We do not ask for pastiches of their work, but simply as examples of the diverse tones and forms weird fiction and sword/sorcery may take when at their best.

Characters: We want defined, rounded characters who encounter and interact with conflict of some kind (preferably weird!) over the course of your story.

Narrative style: We’ve a broad taste in styles, from the poetic to the plain. We have developed a particular taste for the poetic and baroque, but we also love the terse stylings common to noir and older adventure fiction. We don't often enjoy very quippy humor or tones.

Romance: This has its own section because we receive a lot of submissions that fall under the romance genre. We do not typically publish romance stories. We've nothing against the genre (in fact at least one of our editors quite likes it!), but Old Moon just isn't the market for it.

Contemporary Horror: This also has its own section because we receive a lot of submissions that fall under the contemporary horror genre. We love horror, but we don't publish contemporary (i.e. set in our own modern world, or something close to it) horror.

Point-of-View: We prefer limited POVs: first-person and third-person limited, for example, but will accept any if done well.

Grammar: We tend to prefer works that stick to established rules of written English, though we understand the need to deviate for artistic purposes.

Originality: We want original works that speak with your authorial voice and flair. Though we love Lovecraftian works, for example, we are not necessarily all that enthused by straight pastiche.

Setting: We prefer medieval and antique-adjacent settings, though we're not strict on that point. But in general, we prefer something either pre-gunpowder or early-gunpowder. It can either be a version of our own real world, or a constructed secondary world (or a combination thereof).

Artificial Intelligence/LLMs: Do not submit anything to us that was written, in part or whole or assisted by, any sort of generative AI, LLM, or what have you. We're not interested, and we won't publish it. If you do submit something AI-generated/AI-assisted to us, we will reject all your future submissions as well.

Extreme Content: We do not mind violence or sexual content, but we prefer it not be the sole or defining feature of a work. Gore for gore’s sake, extended torture scenes, depictions of extreme violence/conduct done to children, drawn-out erotic scenes and so forth are not right for our venue.

Arthuriana: For those hoping to submit specifically to our Arthurian issue, note the following: all of the above still applies. We like weird, tragic, melancholy Arthuriana, as well as bloodstained stuff. Romantic feelings and relationships are important to the milieu, so we have a higher tolerance for romance in Arthurian-themed submissions, but we still ask that the stories not be romance in the modern genre sense. If you'd like a sense of Arthurian stories we enjoy, check out this list:

"Balin and Balan" by Alfred Tennyson

Perlesvaus, an anonymous romance of the 12th century (the translation by Nigel Bryant is nice)

The Prose-Lancelot, an anonymous romance of the 13th century (particularly Lancelot's boyhood, and Claudas's struggles after usurping the crown of Benoic. Very evocative stuff!)

"Iwein" by Hartman von Aue (the Cyril Edwards translation is nice)

"The Fall of Arthur" and "Gawain and the Green Knight," by, and translated by, J.R.R. Tolkien.

"The Faerie Queene" by Edmund Spenser (it counts!)

The Wizard-Knight by Gene Wolfe (also counts!)

The Crystal Cave and its sequels, by Mary Stewart

The Winter-King and its sequels, by Bernard Cornwell

A Guile of Dragons by James Enge (technically, all Morlock stories are Arthuriana, since he is the son of Merlin)

"Running to Camelot" by Darrell Schweitzer

"Soothes the Fire" by Josh Reynolds

"Uncounted Leaves of Ends of Camelot" by R.K. Duncan

Fiction Submissions Guidelines

Length: 1,000-10,000 words. This is a hard limit, unfortunately.

Simultaneous Submissions: We do not accept them. We try to respond to almost all submissions within one week.

Multiple Submissions: We do not accept them. Send only one story at a time, please, and only one story per submission window. If you have both poems and a story, you may submit both.

Reprints: We do not accept them at this time, unfortunately.

Language: English.

Rights: We purchase first world electronic rights and first-world print rights. This means you cannot publish a story we buy as a first-run or “new” story anywhere else in the world; this means it can only be published elsewhere as a reprint, typically at a much lower rate.

Payment: We pay 8c (0.08 USD) per word per short story. Payment occurs within 30 days of online publication, via PayPal.

Poetry Submissions Guidelines

Subject Matter: We prefer our poems deal with the same subjects as our fiction: tales of eldritch war, images of strange melancholy, and moments of bloody reflection, among other things.

Exemplar poems: Our tastes run towards the antique. Some of our current favorites include John Milton's Paradise Lost, Algernon Swinburne's Tristram of Lyonesse, Robert Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," and Charles Young's "Night-Thoughts." That being said, we are willing to be convinced by just about anything in verse, so long as it conforms to the aesthetic of our magazine.

Length: You may submit up to five poems, each of fifty lines or less. This is a hard limit, unfortunately.

Simultaneous Submissions: We do not accept them.

Reprints: We do not accept them at this time, unfortunately.

Language: English.

Rights: We purchase first world electronic rights and first-world print rights. This means you cannot publish a poem we buy as a first-run or “new” poem anywhere else in the world; this means it can only be published elsewhere as a reprint, typically at a much lower rate.

Payment: We pay $50 per poem. Payment occurs within 30 days of online publication, via PayPal.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Please send submissions as a .doc or .docx file to Old Moon's email: oldmoonpub@gmail.com

Title your email "Submission: [title]."

Provide a short, 1-2 line cover letter with the story's name and word count. Please do not provide an intro or synopsis of the story (we like to be surprised).

We'd appreciate if your manuscript was in something approaching "Standard Manuscript Format," as well.