Stories should be the type generally referred to as "sword and sorcery" and must have a strong female protagonist whom the reader will care about. See Sword & Sorceress 22 (or 1-20) for examples. We do not want stories with explicit sex, gratuitous violence, or profanity. We are NOT a market for poetry. We are willing to consider stories set in modern times, but we won't buy more than one or two of those for the anthology.

No simultaneous submissions. With regard to multiple submissions, do not submit more than one story at a time. If we've rejected your first one, you may send another as long as it's before the deadline.

If you have not sold to MZB, please read "What is a Short Story?" and "Why Did my Story Get Rejected?" before submitting to us.

Reading period: Saturday, April 19 to Friday, May 16, 2008. Stories received before or after this period will be deleted unread.
Response time is expected to follow MZB's traditional standards: you should hear within a week if we're holding your story for the final line-up or rejecting it.

Deadline: May 16, 2008.

Length: up to 9,000 words, with preference given to shorter stories. The longer a story is, the better it has to be.

Formatting and Submission: 

Format with one-inch margins on all four sides of page.
Please do not use a header or footer.

Your name, full mailing address, and email address must be in the upper left corner, single spaced.
Skip two lines, center the text, then put the title, with your name (or byline) on the next line. We're not going to be as rigid as MZB was about pen names, but we expect them to be reasonable, rather than cute.

The rest of the manuscript should be single-spaced, with the first line of each paragraph indented 1/2 inch.
If you need to indicate a break, put "#" on a line by itself, centered.
Do not underline; use italics instead. Do not use bold face.

Word count will be determined by our word processor; that way it will be the same for everyone.

Save your document as an .rtf file (rich text format or interchange format, depending on what your computer calls it). E-mail as it as an attachment to VIEW IMAGE. The subject line should be "SS23–your last name–story title" (e.g.: SS23-Bradley-Dark Intruder) -- we don't want submissions caught in our spam filter.

Rights purchased: first rights.

Payment: 5 cents per word as an advance against a pro rata share of royalties and foreign or other sales.