NOTE: Submissions for this anthology are now closed. If you submitted a story, you should hear back from me within the next month. If you haven’t heard anything by the beginning of 2014, please feel free to get in touch.
Solarwyrm Press is calling for submissions for an anthology of stories involving precocious children. These are not supposed to be children’s stories. What we’re looking for here are child protagonists in adult stories. The more twisty and creepy and strange, the better.
There is a long history of precocious children in literature who don’t quite fit in. Mary from The Secret Garden is my personal favourite, but there are hundreds. Annie, Anne of Green Gables, Hermione. Zero in Holes. I could go on.
What we’d like to see here are smart child characters, but not in children’s stories. I like to keep these things open to let people play, but I always like to be surprised, so go for twisty. Humour is welcome, but black humour will probably be a better fit.
Sexual themes and violence are okay if they’re required by the story, but gratuity will disadvantage you.
This will be a crowd-funded paying gig. We will Indiegogo it, much like we did with the last one. Should this succeed, stories will be bought at a flat rate of $50 a story. The maximum number of stories that will be accepted will be 20. This is a totally crowdfunded and crowd-sourced project, so please spread the word as wide as you can!
Suggested word count is between 1000-7000 words, but that’s not a hard and fast rule, so much as a guideline. If you’re going to break it, make sure you do it exceptionally well.
Please submit stories as a .doc or .docx file to solarwyrm@gmail.com. Ideally 12 point with a clean font (Times, Calibri, Ariel, or something similar) and 1.5 spacing.
The author will retain copyright of the work. Solarwyrm Press requests first print and digital publication rights, exclusive for 3 months from publication. After that, the author is free to accept publication elsewhere, post the story to their blog, or anything else.
Stories may be edited for minor spelling, grammar, or formatting issues. Stories with major spelling and grammar issues will be rejected.
Submissions close 30 November 2013.
Solarwyrm Press 
How many submissions are we allowed? :3
Hi. You’re welcome to submit as many as you like, but be aware that I am unlikely to pick more than one story per author.
Ok, thanks!
What if your main character is an adult, but much of the story is polarized on his childhood? Also, there is a flashback of him as a child, and another central character is a child. Please let me know if this voids the theme too much. Thank you so much.
Hm. It really would depend on how much of the story takes place when they’re children. I’m quite happy for you to submit it and I’ll try give it a read quickly and let you know whether I think it fits the theme. I may not be able to give you a solid yes/no as to whether it will be included if it does, but I can tell you if I think it’s thematically viable.
I have a story that meets the requirements of your anthology and also Solarwyrm’s Amok anthology. Would you be okay with me submitting it to both?
Yes, go ahead. We’ll work it out between us. 🙂
Hi, great project! Two questions:
1) Are you still open for submissions until the end of November?
2) Would a story featuring Cupid be ok with your criteria? He’s a precocious child in a way….
Many thanks!
Martin
Hi! Thanks for your interest. Yes, submissions are open until Nov 30th, and yes, that sounds interesting! The editor *cough* has a bit of a thing for mythology, so I’d certainly be keen and willing to read it and see if it’s a fit for the anthology.
Hi Jan, thanks for the quick reply. I look forward to submitting for the end of Nov.
Best wishes
Martin
What’s the status of this Precocious Children book? Is it still moving forward, and have you determined your selections?
Hi Matt. submissions only closed less than a week ago, so it will take some time to go through them all and make my selections. I hope to have the selections done by the end of December though.
10-4. Just wanted to make sure the whole idea didn’t fizzle out.