Submission Guidelines
Black Ink Horror





A Special Note to Authors:

BIH is now closed to fiction submissions.

BIH is closed to poetry submissions until further notice.

Great art takes time.
If you’ve picked up a copy of Black Ink Horror, you know that each issue is bursting with painstakingly-detailed pen and ink illustrations. Issue #3 alone contains almost three-dozen pieces of art. Because it takes our artists anywhere from a few weeks to several months to complete their assignments, I tend to fill issues up to a year ahead of their publication dates. If you’re an impatient author who can’t wait to see his or her work in print, we’re probably not the market for you. If you don’t mind taking the “scenic route” down the road of publication, then please, send your fiction our way.

Tim Manning
Editor-in-chief BLACK INK HORROR

CURRENTLY SELECTING FICTION FOR:

Issue #4 ’08 (FULL)
Issue #5 ‘08 (5 slots remaining)
BIH XXX (2 slots remaining)
Issue #6 ’09 (14 slots remaining)

FICTION GUIDELINES:

BIH is looking for quality horror fiction—sub-genre, movement, or subject matter doesn’t concern us an iota. We want compelling, chilling stories that exude a strong voice and solid writing. If your story seizes the editor’s attention from the first page, and never lets go, then you’re likely to get a sale. Vampires, zombies, werewolves, and other creatures of the night are an integral part of the genre, and they will certainly make appearances in our pages. I must caution, however, that if you do send a story featuring one of these oft-used icons, it should present a unique twist on it the old idea. Gore and sex are not a problem; in fact, we have artists that are just itching to get nasty with the inks. With that said, we prefer our extreme horror well written and purposeful. Intense, brutally described scenes of depravity are always so much better when presented with eloquent prose. Stories that manage to unnerve and frighten the editor will be snatched up immediately.

Submitted tales should be between 1000 and 3000 words. UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE: WE WILL NOT BE READING STORIES OVER 3,000 WORDS. STORIES OVER THIS LIMIT WILL BE REJECTED.

We believe that there are enough good, unpublished tales available to fill the magazine, so we’re not incredibly interested in printing previously published work. We will, however, consider running one reprint per issue, but that story will have to be extra special. If you have a reprint you would like us to consider, please query first.

All submitted fiction should be in manuscript format.



UPDATE: Now, if you choose to ignore these guidelines, you do so at your own risk (And doing so will certainly not earn you any brownie points with this editor.) We receive several submissions a week, and I’m always looking for ways to improve our response times. Stories that do not follow these guidelines will be promptly rejected.

All submitted fiction should be proofread and reasonably free of mistakes. Typos are an unfortunate part of writing, and a couple minor errors are certainly excusable. We do, not, however, want unpolished or sloppy submissions. Stories with copious errors, or poor use of grammar/spelling will be promptly rejected.

The subject line of your email should read: FICTION SUBMISSION / (Name of story)

UPDATE: After reading through several hundred submissions this past year, I have made a discovery; I find it annoying to receive a piece of fiction attached to a blank email. Now, I really don’t need a list of publishing credits as, for the most part, I don’t care where you were previously published. However, a brief greeting with your name and the name of your story would be very much appreciated. You can address letters to Tim and Amanda. Also, and this is new for ’08, all emails should contain your story’s word count. Too many times this year I’ve opened stories that were well over our 3,000 word limit. If you fail to put the word count in your introduction email, you run the chance of having your story rejected.

Stories should be attached as .rtf or Word files. DO NOT send your story in the body of an email. DO NOT send your story as a Microsoft Works document.

Submission should be sent to blackinkhorror@yahoo.com

UPDATE: Please, no multiple submissions. Send us only one piece of work at time. If an author sends in more than one story at a time, we will only consider the first story for publication; all subsequent submissions will be rejected unread. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but if your story is snatched up by another market, we do expect you to do the courteous thing by letting us know.

Payment for selected fiction is $10, paid via Pay-Pal.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions. For the fastest results—and to insure that your email isn’t lost in the slush pile—please put QUERY in the subject line of your email.

UPDATE: The staff at BLACK INK HORROR will endeavor to respond to submissions as fast as humanly possible. Upon receipt of your story, we will send out a confirmation email. If you don’t receive one within two days of mailing your sub, assume that we didn’t get it. Currently, we expect our response times to be 120 days. If 120 days have passed, and you haven’t heard from us, please don’t hesitate to inquire as to the status of your submission. At BIH, Amanda and I read and provide feedback to each and every submission we receive. Because some of our rejection letters are quite thorough, it has taken us extra time to get through the slush pile.

UPDATE: OVERUSED STORY IDEAS
Okay, at this point I've read over 700 stories, and I have been noticing some basic story lines that keep popping up. After talking to Amanda, my assistant editor, about it, we decided to keep track of these story lines as we encountered them. So, to give our submitting authors a better chance at acceptance, she and I have come up with a list of story ideas that, quite frankly, we've seen enough of. If you have a story that you're thinking of submitting and it fits neatly under one of these headings, please rethink sending it in. If you do use one of these concepts, and you're looking for an acceptance, there had better be an excellent twist on the idea.

Stories told in the 1st person by a killer/ psychopath.
I've had at least three-dozen of these, and rarely do they offer anything new. Usually it's some psycho who is describing how he is killing his victims. Although the M.O. often differs, these stories all read the same. I know that we have all read and like Poe, and that many of his stories fit this mold, but let’s move on from this oft-used plot.

Protagonist wakes up trapped in a room/basement/pit, and is tied down, naked, and about to be tortured.
I actually read three of these in one day (I'm guessing 10 over all). Damn the films SAW and HOSTEL for making this idea popular.... Seriously, the idea has been used too many times to have any real impact.

Stories in which the sole "plot" involves someone being tortured
I like plot with my story, so this doesn't work for me (especially if it involves revenge as the motive). And, you can only read about someone getting a razor across the eye/penis/labia/breast so many times before it's boring.

Asylum Tales
Now, stories in abandoned/ haunted asylums can be good, but I want something creepy and atmospheric. I've received several stories that involve a patient in an asylum being interviewed, and these are getting old.

Vengeful lovers
WAY too many of these. Most involve vengeful woman, although I've had a few guys. Several have involved the mutilation of the penis.

I'm killing zombies--NO, WAIT! I'm crazy, and I'm killing people (Also: I'm killing (fill in monster name here)-- NO, WAIT! I'm nuts and I just killed a person.)
Although this sounds like a great idea, I've received close to a dozen stories like this. It sounds clever (and a couple of the ones I read were well done), but once you've seen it, the idea doesn't work.

Seemingly crazy person raving about monsters/zombies/ghosts isn't really crazy.
These can still be good, but like the one above, I've seen a lot of them.

Main character is dead and doesn't realize it.
This idea was pretty much done with THE SIXTH SENSE, so let's leave it alone.

The dinner is either made out of dead folks, or the veggies were fertilized by dead folks.
Again, this idea has been used quite a bit. If you use it, it had better not be the main twist in your story.

Daddy molested me and now I'm going to damage his sexual organs.
Again, this falls under the "revenge tale" bit. And please, for the love of God, leave the penises alone. Why must they always sever the member?

Totally hot slut is a vampire/falls victim to a vampire.
Yeah, I'm speaking for myself here, but I really don't want to see another one of these. I like sexy woman and vampires that suck blood from penises as much as the next guy, but enough already.

Classic/Romantic/European/ Sexy Vampire Stories
I'll be completely honest...I HATE these. I absolutely hate them. I'll read them, I'll be nice in the rejection letters, but I secretly loathe this type of story. (note: Amanda doesn't mind them, but I'm the boss ). Long story short, if your story involves a sexy, svelte, Lestat-like vampire, DON'T send it to me.

Zombie Stories
Now, let me clarify: I LOVE zombie fiction and zombie movies. I've enjoyed every zombie story that I've read so far. But please, if you're going to send one in, add something original to it.

Stories involving the severing, mutilation, or ANY trauma to the penis.
Again, I’m not saying that I won’t look at stories in which a man has nasty things done to his little soldier, but after reading no less than two dozen stories that involve penis trauma, I’ve almost reached my threshold. Besides, there is nothing worse than being a guy and reading a story in which some woman slowly cuts the head off a dude’s penis. Just picture this: I’m sitting at the computer, wincing in imagined agony, reflexively clutching my privates with both hands as I trudge through the latest penis mutilation story. Twice, my wife has popped in to catch me staring at the computer with my hands in my lap and has mistakenly assumed that I was pleasuring myself to some computer porn (okay, once—the other time I really was). This inevitably caused a big blow out which resulted in my sleeping on the couch for two nights and the loss of “coupling privileges” for over a month. I won’t even bother to describe what sexual frustration does to an editor’s concentration level. Let’s just say that many stories went unread. So, as you can see, by sending me a story in which a man’s penis is bitten, burned, frozen, squashed, filleted, minced, or grossly injured in any other way one can imagine, you run the chance of slowing down the response times. So please, for the love of God, think of your fellow writers the next time you decide to send such a story.

ART GUIDELINES

As mentioned earlier, BLACK INK HORROR will feature only pure pen and ink artwork. Although we currently have a staff of 15 incredibly talented artists, we will be happy to look at samples from an interested illustrator.

If you are interested in illustrating for BIH, please send us an email with the subject: ART QUERY/ (and your last name).

In the body of the email, please tell us a little about yourself. If you have a suitably themed online gallery or portfolio, include a link.

Submitted work should be pen and ink only and should have no digital or photographic components.

Because we are a horror magazine, we would like to see macabre art. If your gallery contains a variety of mediums and subjects besides horror-themed line work, please select three or four images that would best represent how one of your horror illustrations would look. These can be attached as jpegs to an email.

We currently pay $10 ($5 each) for two, 8” x 5” illustrations. All payments will be made via Pay-Pal.

POETRY GUIDELINES

BIH is closed to poetry submissions until further notice.

Poetry has been added only recently to BIH... it will be a permanent feature hereafter in this premiere horror magazine.

What would we like to see? We would like to see poems that take traditional subjects and throttle them to death. Please murder and rape and eviscerate from a new perspective. The old zombie/vampire/werewolf stuff won't get too much of a hearing from me, I'm afraid, so don't do old and mouldy. That's not to say that this subject matter is automatically discarded... oh, no! Just make sure that it is quirky or off-the-wall. We aren't intending to be just another horror magazine with the same old same old same old...

I have a love (well, an obsession really) with the horror of the human condition... human beings are sooo horrible! What I'm saying is that we are looking for stuff that is not yawn-provoking, stereo-typical horror, and explores human horror as well.

Remember also--and this is important--that all poems and stories chosen for publication are illustrated, so the poem needs to have visual appeal.

Is this your bag? Can you do this? If so, then fire in your submissions to John Irvine at: blackinkhorrorpoetry@gmail.com. Poems should be sent as attachments and should use #12 Times New Roman, Ariel, or Courier New Fonts. Payment for accepted poems is $5, made via Paypal. If you live overseas, and you don’t have a Paypal account, please don’t bother submitting as other payment options have been proven too expensive.

THE BLACK INK HORROR ART TEAM

We currently have a staff of 10 incredible ink artists eager to exercise their craft. Their quality impressive illustrations and distinct styles will showcase the diversity of this classic media.

Meghan Hakes: http://fragilewing7.deviantart.com/gallery/

Geff Bartrand: http://dr-twistid.deviantart.com/gallery/

Evangeline Doctolero: http://squidink.deviantart.com/gallery/

Glenn Edberg: http://fagertveit.deviantart.com

Jacob Parmentier: http://beardomcweirdo.deviantart.com/

Peter Brown: http://dragyourblood.deviantart.com

Tom Moran: www.grimamericana.com

Stella Danelius: http://devilry.deviantart.com

Jen Galasso: http://www.butterfly-graphics.net/artwork.html

Joseph Uccello: http://labornthyn.deviantart.com

Paul Groendes: http://www.nightmarefactoryart.com

Paul T. Sninchak: http://paulzuzust.deviantart.com

Tony Karnes: http://karnes.deviantart.com

Bret Jordan: http://bret-jordan.livejournal.com