Category Submission Calls

Nov 30 2019

November News: Submissions are closed! Thank you!

NEWS

Submission Calls

Submissions for ‘Japanese Fantasy Drabbles’ are officially closed. I want to say a big thank you to all the contributing authors for submitting such a fantastic selection of drabbles. Otsukaresama desu!

I’ll probably write a post in December about the submission call, for those who are curious about the data and behind-the-scenes work involved in this project.

AS for new anthology calls, I’ll try to make a decision about that before the end of December too. I can say that the next anthology will be for short stories and offer a token payment as we have done in the past. Then perhaps we’ll do another drabble anthology after that…

For the poets, we’re always open for Asian Speculative poems. I’m really hoping to see some submissions from Asian writers for next year–please add us to your submissions list for 2020!

Details on our Instincts poetry series are here

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Site Updates

This past week, I made some changes to this site and some of our social media accounts. There’s a new profile logo, and I’ve changed the site name to Insignia Stories where possible. This is because the new drabble anthology will be the first in its own series, Insignia Drabbles Vol.1, Vol.2, etc. So the main site name will be Insignia Stories, and The Insignia Series will continue to be the series name for the anthologies we’ve done. Hopefully that’s clear!

Here on the site, I re-organized the menus and made a few drop-down listings which should make things easier to find. I’ll be putting up a new ABOUT page and one for the drabble anthology very soon, so that will have all the contributors name on it as well.

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Story Recommendation

I read a quite disturbing (in an awesome way) horror story recently, featuring a Japanese woman as the main character. It was written by Insignia: Southeast Asian Fantasy contributor, Eliza Chan and is published online at Three Crows Magazine.

I highly recommend it!

Link: ‘Knowing Your Type’ by Eliza Chan

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Have a great weekend everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving to our North American writers and readers 🙂

~Kelly Matsuura~

 

 

Oct 31 2019

October News & Updates

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN everyone!

I work as an English teacher (part-time) here in Japan, so have been busy these past two weeks with Halloween lessons on weekdays, and parties on the weekend. In fact, I still have another party to attend THIS Saturday….that’s more than enough Halloween for me!

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UPDATE: ‘Japanese Fantasy Drabbles’ Submissions

As of this evening, we have accepted 41 drabbles for this anthology. I’m quite happy with the variety of themes too: yokai is of course the most popular, but there are also some good dragon and ninja stories, and a growing number of scifi pieces as well. (More, please!)

We’ve had a few Japanese authors submit stories, which is awesome! And Toshiya Kamei has been very busy translating for a few new, international contributors also.

The call is open until November 30, each author is allowed 3 accepted drabbles, so why not have a go? Even if you are doing NaNoWriMo this November, a quick drabble or 2 could be a good break or even a prompt for a bigger story!

As I said, we have 41 accepted stories, and I would like to close on the deadline with 80-100 drabbles. Any help to spread the word about this call would be much appreciated.

Our submission guidelines and further details on the theme etc can be found on the Submissions Page. Please check the guidelines carefully before submitting. I haven’t rejected anyone for missing a step, but it helps me a lot when I receive everything I need in the first email.

Good luck with your drabbles (and NaNoWriMo if you are participating)!

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‘INSTINCTS’ Poetry Series

We are also still open for our online poetry series, Instincts. So far, 1 poem has been published this month (see here), and I have a 2nd to be published in mid-November. Submissions have unfortunately been slow, with several being rejected because they don’t have any fantasy/speculative elements. Poems MUST have both Asian and speculative elements for this call.

Full details can be found here

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Want to check out previous Insignia Series anthologies? We have 7 volumes, ebook only, available from most retailers, and all for US$.99c!!!

See all our books here

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Photo credit: David Menidrey on Unsplash

Aug 28 2019

OPEN for Poetry Submissions :)

We would like to invite poets to contribute to a new online publication series!

Insignia: Instincts

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We hope to publish 1-4 poems on The Insignia Series blog per month, depending on the volume of submissions.

Reading Period: Open now and ongoing.

Format: Poetry only

Length: No limit, however no epic poems please.

Theme: Must have both Asian and speculative elements (fantasy, scifi, etc). Due to the short format, you do not need to specify which country your poem is about within the poem itself, but the Asian setting/people/culture should all give good hints. The Asian elements are more important that the speculative ones, for this call. (It’s a challenge, but we believe in you!). We also have a broad view of ‘Asia’ and would love to see poems stretching far west across the Silk Road and to Persia, etc.

Payment: Sorry no payment at this time. We will do our best to build up this new series and be able to pay for poems in the near future.

Contract: We offer a basic contract, asking solely for permission to publish your work this one time on our site. If we wish to include your poem/s in an anthology at a later date, a new agreement will be made.

Submissions: Reprints are very welcome! Please include the first publication details in your cover letter. Simultaneous submissions are also fine. Please submit no more than TWO poems at one time. You may submit again once a decision has been issued. If you have a poem series that you’d like us to publish, please query first.

Send submissions to: insignia.submissions(at)gmail.com. Your submission should include a brief cover letter about your work, a short author bio (2 links only), and your poem/s attached as a Word doc. Please include [ Submission – Instincts – YOUR NAME ] in the email subject line.

For queries, use the same address, with [ Query – Instincts ] in the subject line. For quick questions, post a comment below or on the Submissions (Poetry) Page,

Good luck with your poems! We look forward to reading your submissions. 🙂

We also have an upcoming anthology call for Japanese Fantasy Drabbles here.

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Aug 27 2019

Author Spotlight: MARY SOON LEE

 

Today we bring you a second author interview, with new contributor, Mary Soon Lee.

We are all passionate, cross-genre writers who love Asian cultures and stories. Get to know us a little better through our Answers to 20/25 Questions challenge!

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Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but now lives in Pittsburgh. She writes both fiction and poetry, and has won the Rhysling Award and the Elgin Award. Her work has appeared in Analog, Daily Science Fiction, F&SF, Science, and Strange Horizons. She has an antiquated website at http://www.marysoonlee.com and tweets at @MarySoonLee

TWENTY QUESTIONS:

  1. Author Name/s: Mary Soon Lee
  2. Years active as a writer: 28
  3. What genre/s you write: fantasy, science fiction, science, mainstream
  4. Favorite length of story to write: poems or stories under 2000 words
  5. Your nationality: American
  6. Country you live in: USA, but I grew up in England.
  7. Number of Asian countries visited: 1
  8. Favorite place in Asia (visited): Singapore
  9. Place (city or country) you most want to visit in Asia: China
  10. Favorite Asian cuisine: Indian
  11. Favorite Asian dish: aloo gobi
  12. Favorite Asian book (any genre): The Journey to the West
  13. Best thing about being a writer: writing the first draft of a story or poem
  14. Worst thing about being a writer: uncertain, often low, income
  15. Drink and snack of choice (while writing): tea to drink, no snacks
  16. Number of short stories/poems submitted each month (av): 15 submissions, with poetry often being sent in batches of 3 to 6 poems in a single submission
  17. Most active on (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram): Twitter
  18. Self-published, traditionally published, or both: traditionally published
  19. Currently working on: a sequence of astronomy poems with the working title “How to Navigate Our Universe.”
  20. Coming soon: Elemental Haiku, a book containing a haiku for each element of the periodic table, will be published on October 1st 2019, by Ten Speed Press, and may be pre-ordered from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.

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Poems included in The Insignia Series Anthologies:

‘Training: Stances’, ‘The Horse Lord’, ‘Tsung’s Battle’, ‘The Matter of the Horses’, and ‘Respect’ (Insignia: Asian Flash Fiction & Poetry, 2019)

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COMING SOON!

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Pre-order from:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound

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Thanks for joining us!

We’ll have more author interviews coming

approximately every two weeks 🙂

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Interested in publishing with us? We are now open for poetry submissions to a new online series, Insignia: Instincts. See full details on the Submissions (Poetry) Page.

We’ll also be opening a new anthology call October 1st. If you love to drabble, or want to give a try, get ready for Japanese Fantasy Drabbles here.

Sep 1 2018

Submissions are Now Open!

 

It’s September 1st, and that means we have a new submission call open!

It’s for a new anthology: volume 7 in The Insignia Series.

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See our Submissions Page for instructions on how to submit.

If you’re not familiar with our series, please browse our previously published anthologies – there are six volumes, which you will find links to in the top menu. You could also browse ‘Excerpts’ as a post category (from the side menu) to see samples from some of the stories included in our anthologies.

And if you do submit work, please follow this blog: I’ll be posting updates every few weeks during the reading period to let writers now how submissions are going. Closer to the deadline, I may have special requests for certain types of stories, or we might be short on poems, etc.

Thank you for your interest in The Insignia Series. We hope to read your work soon!

Cheers,

Kelly Matsuura

(Chief Editor)

Aug 9 2018

August News

Hello everyone, and a warm welcome to our new blog followers!

Well, it’s been sweltering here in Japan for the past few weeks. We’ve had several days over forty degrees and still with high humidity! I’m ver glad I bought a new air-conditioner for my office this year. How’s the weather where you guys are?

I’ve been using my summer break to work on a few Insignia projects, so thought I’d post a summary here of what’s happening for anyone interested…Cheers! ~~Kelly~~

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1) Insignia: Asian Science Fiction was published in July, and is currently in Round 2 of a cover art contest over at All Author. If you like our cover design and would like to support us, please pop over and vote! No need to be a member or register on the site to do so.

VOTE HERE!

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2) Insignia: Asian Birds & Beasts will be released on August 20! I did an announcement post about it a few weeks ago, but if you missed it, you can check out the book details HERE.

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3) Next Insignia Series anthology?

A few people have asked about the next project: I’d like to open a new submission call in September or October, so would be curious to hear from you writers out there what themes would interest you…Or readers, what would you like read about next?

One of my ideas at the moment is to do ‘Flash Fiction & Poetry’, accepting work up to 1000 words in length, and open to poetry for the first time. I’ve been writing 100-word stories recently, and love how much story you can tell in just a few paragraphs.

All stories would still be required to be set in Asian countries (or a fantasy version of) and have leading Asian characters.

My second idea is to do a ‘Best of Asian Fantasy 2018‘. Submissions will then be open until year-end, and I would select maybe the Top 5 stories from those nominated. Stories would have to have been published this year by a journal or small press anthology etc, NOT self-published pieces.

Lastly, my best idea for a story-themed anthology is to do ‘Asian Ghost Stories’. I think we have ghost stories in every Insignia anthology to date, so I feel it would be easy to fill with great submissions.

Of course, I’d love to hear your ideas! Leave your suggestions in the comments below, or chat with me on Twitter sometime! Our Twitter link is: @InsigniaStories and my personal account is @KellyMatsuura

That’s enough typing for me tonight (I’ve been proofreading and formatting all day). Enjoy the rest of the month, and Happy Travels to those of you on summer vacation 🙂

Aug 14 2017

Update to Submission Call

Hi everyone! If you’re on summer vacation at the moment like me, hope you’re relaxing. (Or, getting lots of /editing done!).

In an effort to attract more submissions and be able to fill the first open anthology call sooner, I have opened the theme to ALL Asian science fiction. Your story must still satisfy the general submission requirements, so please check the Submissions Page for further details. Our ‘Birds & Beasts’ anthology call is still open too – so get writing!

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And I’d just like to say a quick thank you to all the authors who have already submitted and/or have helped share the submission call. Every new contact helps this tiny imprint grow!

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Check out the latest Insignia Series anthology here:

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