Tim Major's Blog

Here’s this month’s list of the most interesting open submissions calls for writers I’ve found!
Sign up for my email newsletter if you want advance notice of open calls like these.

Bad Romance
This 23rd Triangulation anthology from Parsec Ink will feature stories themed around failed romances (or as they’re described on the website: ‘trashfire, toxic relationships’) that have a speculative element.
Word count: Up to 5000 words
Payment: 3 cents per word
Deadline: 31 January 2026
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My Victorian murder mystery Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives was released in paperback in September, and its sequel, Jekyll & Hyde: Winter Retreat came out in hardback in October, both published by Titan Books. While the first book is a cat-and-mouse chase featuring Muriel Carew and body-sharing detectives Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, the second novel is a full-on country house murder mystery with a locked-room murder and a large cast of suspects. There’s even a floorplan on the endpape...

This year I got around to reading a number of books I’d always meant to read, and which, frankly, made me feel embarrassed about not having got around to reading. By far the best of these was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847), which had the capacity to surprise even though I knew the plot fairly well, and which I found totally absorbing throughout.

A more surprising favourite was The Beast Within (La Bête Humaine) by Emile Zola (1890). I’d already read and loved Zola’s Thérès...

The films I most loved this year, I loved unconditionally. Though I saw it all the way back in January, Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024) has stuck with me. The dreamy, fantastical imagery works perfectly against the background of Arnold’s usual gritty realism, it’s become my favourite of the director’s films (above the stellar Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey) – and it’s fair to say I now think of it as one of my favourite films of this century.

As is The Mastermind (Kelly Reicha...

2025 has been an outstanding year for new music. More than in any of the last five years, I’m confident that my favourite albums this year will still be on regular rotation in years to come.

I had high hopes after their first record, but caroline 2 by caroline is a staggering follow-up. It’s my favourite sort of indie music: experimental, reluctant to fall into anything resembling predictability, yet filled with hooks that seem almost to embarrass the band in their catchine...

Here’s this month’s list of the most interesting open submissions calls for writers I’ve found!
Sign up for my email newsletter if you want advance notice of open calls like these.

Rotting Leaf
I think this will appeal to lots of you out there: this new magazine from Brief Ecology will feature ‘literary and experimental explorations of the eco-gothic, the eco-horrific, the eco-surrealist, and the eco-weird.’
Word count: Up to 1500 words
Payment: 6 cents per word
Deadline: 1–7 December 2025
Find...

Here’s this month’s list of the most interesting open submissions calls for writers I’ve found!
Sign up for my email newsletter if you want advance notice of open calls like these.

Strange Pilgrims
The submissions page of this new magazine includes an enticing list of writers as influences (Gabriel García Márquez, Susanna Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ted Chiang), and it will publish ‘surreal, speculative, and fabulist stories’.
Word count: Up to 5000 words
Payment: $200
Deadline: 30 November 202...

Here’s this month’s list of the most interesting open submissions calls for writers I’ve found!
Sign up for my email newsletter if you want advance notice of open calls like these.

Quest
In the words of its editors, ‘Quest is a new online magazine publishing literary, visual, and critical work that uses sci-fi and fantasy to reflect the world around us’ and emphasises experimentation. The first issue is themed around ‘Thresholds’.
Word count: Minimum 2000 words
Payment: $25–$100 depending on ...

Here’s this month’s list of the most interesting open submissions calls for writers I’ve found!
Sign up for my email newsletter if you want advance notice of open calls like these.

Bog Matter
This new SF magazine will be published in print and digital twice a year. As well as SF it welcomes all sorts: ‘horror, fantasy, magical realism, slipstream, New Weird, utopian, dystopian, satirical, cross-genre, experimental, or exuding a general air of oddness.’
Word count: Up to 3500 words
Payment: 2 ...

Here’s this month’s list of the most interesting open submissions calls for writers I’ve found!
Sign up for my email newsletter if you want advance notice of open calls like these.

Mmeory
I love this sound of this new anthology from air and nothingness press, with its theme of memory manipulation, which allows for my favourite trope: unreliable narrators.
Word count: Up to 2000 words
Payment: 8 cents per word
Deadline: Open 7 July – 15 August 2025
Find out more

Romantic Fantasy
Flame Tree Pub...