Cosmic Crime Stories Guidelines

 

Cosmic Crime Stories is a print science fiction mystery magazine edited by Karen L. Newman. It’s published biannually by Sam’s Dot Publishing on 1 January and 1 July. It contains fiction, illustrations, articles, and interviews. 

Stories: People have left earth and explored the cosmos. However, they didn’t leave their humanity behind. There’s crime – caused by them on their ships or perhaps by aliens or humans on alien worlds. We are interested in purchasing those stories – mysteries set in space. These can be detective tales, police procedurals, private eye stories, or courtroom dramas. You can make up laws on the alien planets. They don’t have to match any laws on earth. The stories should not be shorter than 3000 words or longer than 10,000 words and be fiction. However, we may consider works longer than 10,000 words. Reprints are acceptable.  

Please limit blood, gore, organs, and fluids.  Crime does not mean a slashfest; crime doesn’t even mean it has to be murder.  We want thought-provoking material, not vivisection.

Illustrations: We seek cover and interior artwork. We’ll consider both reprint and original work.

Nonfiction: We also seek articles about the sf/mystery genre and interviews with writers of that genre. Nonfiction should be between 800 and 2000 words.   

Payment:

1.      Stories: $20 flat rate for original work. $10 for reprints.  Flash fiction [under 1000 words] pays $5 for original work, $2 for reprints.

2.      Illustrations: $5 for original artwork. $3 for reprints. $20 for cover art

3.      Articles: $12 for original articles. $5 for reprints

4.      Interviews: $7

5.      Each contributor will receive one copy of the issue in which that person’s work appears.

Submissions:

Please submit all work to cosmiccrime at yahoo dot com.

All submissions must include your snail mail address in order for you to receive payment.

For original work we purchase FNASR; for reprints, one-time rights.

Submit stories and nonfiction as .doc or .rtf attachments, illustrations as .jpg attachments less than 500KB. Please send only one work at a time for consideration.

Response times is 60 days. Please query if you haven’t heard back within 75 days.

Good luck. We look forward to reading your work.