A lot of the other authors and I were chatting about submission calls in the private erotica board, and Maryn asked if we could maybe make a thread where folks can update when they learn about new calls.
So, here it is. However, to keep the thread clean, please only post submission calls or updates, that way folks don't have to scroll through pages of comments on who subbed where.
Thanks for understanding. To start things off, I've listed Riptide's open calls below.
Riptide - Remaking the World 1939 to 1945 (Due February 1st)
We're seeking well-researched historicals set during the Second World War, a time of unprecedented upheaval and change. Maps all over the world were re-drawn, usually by force, and enemies worldwide fought to the death under the waves, on the oceans, on land, and in the air.
But not all conflicts were open or even hot. From the race to crack enemy codes to misleading by trickery and camouflage, the conflicts encompassed the battlefield and well beyond.
This call is focused on the time, the mood, the culture of WWII, but takes no preference for location. We encourage you to explore the less-obvious places and themes, as long as you stay close to the history and spirit of the times. From the Finnish-Russian Winter War to Slim’s campaigns against the Japanese, from German U-Boats to colonial soldiers serving in Africa or any other nation’s home front, tell us stories set between 1939 and 1945.
Length: 35,000 to 100,000+ words
Genres: Historical romance, erotica, or literature. Some paranormal elements or magical realism will be considered, but be prepared to wow us.
Heat Levels: Any
Ending: Any
Orientation: Gay, bi, or trans*
Submissions Due: Friday, February 1, 2013
Riptide - Training Time (Due February 15th)
BDSM is about need, desire, and identity—about doing what feels right and hot and fulfilling. But it’s also about training. For this collection, we’re seeking stories that use a training period in a BDSM relationship as the springboard for a compelling erotic romance.
Show us your experienced Dom training a new-to-the-lifestyle sub, or a Dom training a longtime sub to their own requirements and protocols. Or bring us that rare unicorn of kink fiction: an experienced sub training a new Dom. Or maybe you've written an experienced Dom training an inexperienced one? Is one of your characters fascinated with a potentially dangerous activity (bondage or blood play, for example) and looking to be trained? Or is one of your characters looking for more specific protocol training as a service sub or a pony or a puppy?
No matter the training circumstances, give your characters a happy ending and send their stories our way.
Length: 15,000 to 100,000+ words
Genres: Erotic romance in the following sub-genres: contemporary or historical
Heat Levels: Hot. Kink is by its nature sexual. These stories should be true erotic romance, where the story's tension is worked out through the sexual interactions between the characters.
Ending: HEA or strong HFN
Orientation: Gay, lesbian, bi, trans*, or poly with a strong GLBT element
Submissions Due: Friday, February 15, 2013
Riptide - License to Thrill (Due March 1st)
The glitter of the jet-set. High-speed car, helicopter, and rickshaw chases. Explosions, dirty secrets, and high-stakes casino games. Lone wolves like James Bond and Jason Bourne save the world from international conspiracies and dastardly villains. And let’s not forget the ladies, like Mallory Kane or Evelyn Salt, framed and fighting back.
Show us the ultra-competent operative, spy, soldier, hacker, or double-agent fighting against huge odds for the greater good, for a paycheck—or to clear their names. Show us tough men or women who know their poker, guns, high-performance cars—and are as adept at love as they are at killing. Whether they're seducing an enemy operative or faced with an intriguing outsider who may be clueless about their true nature, allow your agent to fall in lust, or even love—which is the game with the highest stakes of all.
Note: We also welcome thrillers set in historical, fantasy, or sci-fi settings.
Length: 15,000 to 100,000+
Genres: Romantic thrillers in the following sub-genres: contemporary, historical, SF, fantasy, cyber/steam/dieselpunk. Other genres may be considered; please query first.
Heat Levels: Steamy to smokin' hot
Ending: HEA or HFN
Orientation: Any LGBTQ
Submissions Due: Friday, March 1, 2013
Riptide - Regency Romance (Due April 1st)
The Regency period in England abounds in rakes, rogues, cads, and dukes. Their aristocratic privileges put them above the law. Their pursuit of pleasures led them—and those they seduced—astray. There were also unusual families: women raising their husband’s mistress’s children, female companions who were companions in more ways than one.
Despite the need for the utmost discretion, LGBTQ people found each other and lived and loved during this pivotal time in history. Send us their stories.
Length: 25,000 to 120,000 words
Genres: Regency historical romance (1790 to 1820)
Heat Levels: Any
Ending: HEA or strong HFN
Orientation: Gay, lesbian, bi, trans*, full triad ménage
Submissions Due: Monday, April 1, 2013
Riptide - Laying Down (with) the Law (Due May 1st)
To protect and to serve: the oath of law enforcement officers everywhere. For little recognition and less money, they dedicate themselves to our defense. Send us your stories with law enforcement officers of any type as the main characters—police officers, sheriffs and their deputies, FBI and DEA agents, park rangers, RCMP—and show us what they’ve got.
Of course, those LEOs are solving crimes and stopping the bad guys before they can wreak (too much) havoc. So while these intrepid officers fall in love—with each other, with suspects, with victims . . . with the bad guy?—they should also be doing what they do so well: serving, protecting, and solving mysteries.
Length: 25,000 to 120,000 words
Genres: Contemporary romance with an equally strong element of suspense/thriller/mystery. The romance and the suspense/thriller/mystery elements should grow together throughout the progress of the story.
Heat Levels: Any
Ending: HEA or strong HFN
Orientation: Gay, lesbian, bi, trans*, full triad ménage
Submissions Due: Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Riptide - College Discovery (Due June 1st)
College is a time not just to learn a specialty, but for people to learn who they are. Away from home for the first time, in a new and potentially more accepting environment, surrounded by opportunities and temptations never before encountered, those four—five . . . six?—years are a time to meet new people and establish new relationships, a chance to explore gender identity and sexuality.
Send us your stories about college students doing exactly that. Are they coming out about being gay, bi, asexual or pansexual? Are they figuring out that their gender is fluid? Are they finally able to be themselves and love whoever they want? Tell us their stories.
Length: 25,000 to 120,000 words
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult romance in a college/university setting, with a focus on exploring sexuality and/or gender identity.
Heat Levels: Sweet to moderate: no sex, fade to black, euphemistic, or mildly explicit.
Ending: Strong HFN. An HEA is fine, but not required with younger protagonists.
Orientation: Any
Submissions Due: Saturday, June 1, 2013
So, here it is. However, to keep the thread clean, please only post submission calls or updates, that way folks don't have to scroll through pages of comments on who subbed where.
Thanks for understanding. To start things off, I've listed Riptide's open calls below.
Riptide - Remaking the World 1939 to 1945 (Due February 1st)
We're seeking well-researched historicals set during the Second World War, a time of unprecedented upheaval and change. Maps all over the world were re-drawn, usually by force, and enemies worldwide fought to the death under the waves, on the oceans, on land, and in the air.
But not all conflicts were open or even hot. From the race to crack enemy codes to misleading by trickery and camouflage, the conflicts encompassed the battlefield and well beyond.
This call is focused on the time, the mood, the culture of WWII, but takes no preference for location. We encourage you to explore the less-obvious places and themes, as long as you stay close to the history and spirit of the times. From the Finnish-Russian Winter War to Slim’s campaigns against the Japanese, from German U-Boats to colonial soldiers serving in Africa or any other nation’s home front, tell us stories set between 1939 and 1945.
Length: 35,000 to 100,000+ words
Genres: Historical romance, erotica, or literature. Some paranormal elements or magical realism will be considered, but be prepared to wow us.
Heat Levels: Any
Ending: Any
Orientation: Gay, bi, or trans*
Submissions Due: Friday, February 1, 2013
Riptide - Training Time (Due February 15th)
BDSM is about need, desire, and identity—about doing what feels right and hot and fulfilling. But it’s also about training. For this collection, we’re seeking stories that use a training period in a BDSM relationship as the springboard for a compelling erotic romance.
Show us your experienced Dom training a new-to-the-lifestyle sub, or a Dom training a longtime sub to their own requirements and protocols. Or bring us that rare unicorn of kink fiction: an experienced sub training a new Dom. Or maybe you've written an experienced Dom training an inexperienced one? Is one of your characters fascinated with a potentially dangerous activity (bondage or blood play, for example) and looking to be trained? Or is one of your characters looking for more specific protocol training as a service sub or a pony or a puppy?
No matter the training circumstances, give your characters a happy ending and send their stories our way.
Length: 15,000 to 100,000+ words
Genres: Erotic romance in the following sub-genres: contemporary or historical
Heat Levels: Hot. Kink is by its nature sexual. These stories should be true erotic romance, where the story's tension is worked out through the sexual interactions between the characters.
Ending: HEA or strong HFN
Orientation: Gay, lesbian, bi, trans*, or poly with a strong GLBT element
Submissions Due: Friday, February 15, 2013
Riptide - License to Thrill (Due March 1st)
The glitter of the jet-set. High-speed car, helicopter, and rickshaw chases. Explosions, dirty secrets, and high-stakes casino games. Lone wolves like James Bond and Jason Bourne save the world from international conspiracies and dastardly villains. And let’s not forget the ladies, like Mallory Kane or Evelyn Salt, framed and fighting back.
Show us the ultra-competent operative, spy, soldier, hacker, or double-agent fighting against huge odds for the greater good, for a paycheck—or to clear their names. Show us tough men or women who know their poker, guns, high-performance cars—and are as adept at love as they are at killing. Whether they're seducing an enemy operative or faced with an intriguing outsider who may be clueless about their true nature, allow your agent to fall in lust, or even love—which is the game with the highest stakes of all.
Note: We also welcome thrillers set in historical, fantasy, or sci-fi settings.
Length: 15,000 to 100,000+
Genres: Romantic thrillers in the following sub-genres: contemporary, historical, SF, fantasy, cyber/steam/dieselpunk. Other genres may be considered; please query first.
Heat Levels: Steamy to smokin' hot
Ending: HEA or HFN
Orientation: Any LGBTQ
Submissions Due: Friday, March 1, 2013
Riptide - Regency Romance (Due April 1st)
The Regency period in England abounds in rakes, rogues, cads, and dukes. Their aristocratic privileges put them above the law. Their pursuit of pleasures led them—and those they seduced—astray. There were also unusual families: women raising their husband’s mistress’s children, female companions who were companions in more ways than one.
Despite the need for the utmost discretion, LGBTQ people found each other and lived and loved during this pivotal time in history. Send us their stories.
Length: 25,000 to 120,000 words
Genres: Regency historical romance (1790 to 1820)
Heat Levels: Any
Ending: HEA or strong HFN
Orientation: Gay, lesbian, bi, trans*, full triad ménage
Submissions Due: Monday, April 1, 2013
Riptide - Laying Down (with) the Law (Due May 1st)
To protect and to serve: the oath of law enforcement officers everywhere. For little recognition and less money, they dedicate themselves to our defense. Send us your stories with law enforcement officers of any type as the main characters—police officers, sheriffs and their deputies, FBI and DEA agents, park rangers, RCMP—and show us what they’ve got.
Of course, those LEOs are solving crimes and stopping the bad guys before they can wreak (too much) havoc. So while these intrepid officers fall in love—with each other, with suspects, with victims . . . with the bad guy?—they should also be doing what they do so well: serving, protecting, and solving mysteries.
Length: 25,000 to 120,000 words
Genres: Contemporary romance with an equally strong element of suspense/thriller/mystery. The romance and the suspense/thriller/mystery elements should grow together throughout the progress of the story.
Heat Levels: Any
Ending: HEA or strong HFN
Orientation: Gay, lesbian, bi, trans*, full triad ménage
Submissions Due: Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Riptide - College Discovery (Due June 1st)
College is a time not just to learn a specialty, but for people to learn who they are. Away from home for the first time, in a new and potentially more accepting environment, surrounded by opportunities and temptations never before encountered, those four—five . . . six?—years are a time to meet new people and establish new relationships, a chance to explore gender identity and sexuality.
Send us your stories about college students doing exactly that. Are they coming out about being gay, bi, asexual or pansexual? Are they figuring out that their gender is fluid? Are they finally able to be themselves and love whoever they want? Tell us their stories.
Length: 25,000 to 120,000 words
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult romance in a college/university setting, with a focus on exploring sexuality and/or gender identity.
Heat Levels: Sweet to moderate: no sex, fade to black, euphemistic, or mildly explicit.
Ending: Strong HFN. An HEA is fine, but not required with younger protagonists.
Orientation: Any
Submissions Due: Saturday, June 1, 2013