Adventitious Gold Star Program Gold Star

“Surprise” doesn’t only mean twists. We want stories that offer a sense of wonder through their language, characters, plots, or all of the above. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and all speculative/surreal will always be welcomed, but we’re also happy with stories that shock and delight right here on this plane of existence.

As with any publication, reading Adventitious is the best way to know what we want.

If you were published in an issue of Adventitious, please wait 6 months before submitting again.

Flash Fiction (including Micro): Up to 1,000 words

Fiction: 1,000 – 6,000 words

Novelette: 6,000 – 17,000 words

Pay rate: $0.08 USD per word, paid by PayPal or Venmo

We publish around 8-14 stories per issue, every other month, with occasional flash and experimental work online in between.

If accepted, we will send a Contributor Agreement that requests:

1. First Digital Publication Rights: to publish your story worldwide in our online and digital issues (PDF and EPUB)
2. Archival Rights: to keep your story online indefinitely
3. Subscriber and Patreon Rights: to include your work in Patreon-exclusive or subscriber-only editions with proper credit. (Calls for these types of issues will be clearly labeled.)
4. Anthology Rights: if we invite your story into a future Best of collection, we will negotiate new terms and additional payment

All other rights remain with the author. We do not ask for exclusivity beyond first publication. You can see a sample contract here. Note: you are not granting us publication rights by submitting. Only the contract can do that.

We glad accept submissions for reprints. If accepted, Adventitious pays $.01 per word for these reprinted pieces with attribution to the original publisher.

Yup! Please notify us right away (with our biggest, confetti-filled congratulations) if your story gets accepted elsewhere.

Unfortunately, not at this time. Please only submit one story per submission period.

Shunn Standard please, but…

…it’s not like we’ll refuse to read anything readable and double-spaced in a standard font (Times New Roman, Garamond, Georgia).

No bio is necessary (we’ll ask for one if your piece is accepted), but you may include a brief cover letter if you like.

No AI or LLM tools may be used wholly or in part in the creation of your work.

We aim to respond within 8 weeks. If you haven’t heard back by then, please feel free to query. We want to treat your time respectfully but also don’t want to rush the process. Unfortunately, most stories will not be given feedback.

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