Chrysopoeia, the first Alkimia Fables anthology, is now open for submissions! The submission period goes from August 17th to October 17th, closing at 11:59 EST. Edit: Submission deadline has been changed to Dec 1st!

Chrysopoeia is Ground Zero, Proof-of-Concept; it’s a place for you to write about characters or plots influenced by and taking place in the Alkimia Fables universe, and to explore how said characters might have gotten their powers (the nature of their trauma), what they do with those powers, and how they exist. We are looking for urban fantasy, magical realism, fabulism, mythic retellings, paranormal romances, horror tales, or even literary fiction that just happens to have speculative elements!

The only hard and fast rules are as follows:

It has to abide by the confines of the Alkimia Fables universe; that is, it takes place somewhere in our current universe, with the magic system as outlined by our lore page.

The main character has to be human. We will be playing around with gods, monsters, changelings, and fae in later anthologies, and they can certainly be present – but expect to work closely with the loremasters if you include them.

We are not accepting the following genres: traditional scifi (Stranger Things is fine, Star Wars not so much), erotica, westerns or fanfiction. Influences and elements showing up is to be expected, but consider how your story would ultimately be classified.

(Stranger Things is fine, Star Wars not so much), Influences and elements showing up is to be expected, but consider how your story would ultimately be classified. No racism, sexism, ableism, transantagonism, homoantagonism, anti-Rroma sentiment, antisemitism, fatphobia, classism, abuse apologism, etc. If it shows up in your story as an antagonist or as a background force, that’s understandable; but anything apologizing for, excusing or justifying it won’t be accepted, and neither will work that uses it as ‘flavour’ for no obvious reason.

While obviously we can’t police this, we ask that you only submit if you have personal experience with trauma of some sort. This is deeply subjective, and you do not need to disclose details, but if you’d like to self-identify, you may do so in your bio or cover letter.

Please do not send us a completed story or piece of artwork, etc! Pitch us instead, following the instructions HERE. You may also send casual, “so what if I X” emails prior to the Official Pitch, if you have questions you’d like answered off-the-record before completing your pitch.

Send your pitches to elliott.dunstan@gmail.com, with the subject line ‘SUBMISSION: Chrysopoeia, <(Flash Fiction, Art, Fiction, Multimedia, or Poetry)>: <Your Name>’ We will try to acknowledge all received submissions, but obviously things will slip through the cracks; if you haven’t heard from us after 30 days, or after the end of the submission period, please feel free to follow up.

Plan your idea for the following size restrictions:

Flash Fiction: 200-1000 words.

Fiction: 1500-5000 words

Artwork: One full-page piece; our current estimates is that our pages will be 6″x9″ but its unlikely you’ll need that for a pitch.

Poetry: 1-3 pieces, not surpassing 5 pages of content.

Multimedia: This is incredibly hard to gage, so we’ll tell you if your idea needs refining down and we’ll figure it out from there. Generally, though, we don’t want your multimedia to take up more than 3 pages, and it needs to be printable. (IE: as much as we love audio projects, video games, etc. we can’t print them!)

All contributors will receive $10 USD upon acceptance and a percentage of royalties from sales, with hopeful potential increase depending on the success of the Kickstarter campaign.