Submissions Archives -

November 20, 2018

Winter is Coming

Even the Skulk are not immune. In Kettutalo we must lay in provisions and asses our assets to survive the long winter.

What this means is we will not be reopening submissions for fiction during 2019 and in all probability 2020. We have lots of great books coming, next year in particular is a busy one so please don’t worry, there are many many books to come, including several planned titles for a new non fiction line.

We are closing submissions so we can get caught up, take stock and plan properly moving into the future. A stronger, better, though perhaps less prolific Fox Spirit is coming.

We are sorry we will not be able to take on any more wonderful books for a while, it is always hard to turn down projects that we want to do, but right now we need to take a moment, refocus and ensure the long term future of Fox Spirit Books and the Skulk.

Vulpes and FoxGloves are not affected and we are not cancelling any existing plans, including the launch of thee Darwin’s Fox non fiction line.

As for what to read in the meantime, we have over 70 titles out, many of them available as ebooks on kindle, and in January we will be making ebooks available right here on the website. We may even do some bundles.

There will be foxy merch by agreement with certain artists and we will continue to promote the many wonderful artists and authors we work with. There will be sequels and series and a few new titles we have already said yes to. There will be blog series and newsletters and plenty of alternative fox.

We are going to have a very busy couple of years, we just won’t be opening to submissions during them.

Thank you to everyone who has worked with us and supported us, we hope you will continue this journey with us.

Always your Aunty Fox.

November 4, 2018

Blog posts needed for December

You know what makes a great gift? A book!! Books are amazing, you can pick them up all over the place, they fit into stockings and under pillows, and they provide endless adventures. So all this December we are inviting you to share a review of a favourite book or give us five of your favourite books with just a few lines for each.

We are not looking for reviews of Fox Spirit Books for this, (although if you pop those on Amazon or Goodreads we will love you forever, obvs).

Just send your submission to submissions@foxspirit.co.uk and title it ‘Christmas Books’. We are offering a £5 token payment for these posts so also include a paypal email.

We are looking for titles from any time, old or new and we are keen to see books proposed by under represented groups, such as POC and LGBT+ writers.

January 31, 2018January 30, 2018

The Jackal Who Came in From the Cold : Submission Call

During March we will be accepting short story submissions for an anthology.

‘The Jackal who came in from the cold’

The anthology has a spy story theme, and we will consider stories written in most genres as long as they contain a spy story. They do not need to include a Jackal.

The stories in this anthology should be Furry. This means we are looking for anthropomorphised animal characters, people with extremely animalistic characteristics and the range in between. We have had plenty of stories that would classify as Furry in our anthologies in the past, but this is the first time we will be only accepting such tales, or tails. Anything from the secret life of animals, to a fox at Starbucks.

We will be using a sensitivity reader as part of our final decision process.

We would encourage furry writers to submit.

We are delighted to have @tylociraptor working on the cover for us and he ok’d me sharing this preview.

Payment will be £15 plus a print copy of the final book. All our usual submission information applies.

As always we are only seeking English language, print and ebook rights and exclusivity is 12 months from the submission deadline.

The details of this call will be put on our Submissions page during February along with details of how to submit, so you won’t have to keep looking for this post, it’s just early warning.

September 29, 2017

Submission Call

It is Fantasycon Friday so I hope everyone at the event today is having an amazing time! We can’t attend but there should be just a little paw print on the Mother’s Milk Books table on Saturday.

We are opening our doors today too, but for submissions. We have a couple of slots for 2018 and we are looking for fiction to fill them. We will update the submissions page with this call in time for the 1st Oct when we officially open.

What we want: You know our genres by now, sci fi, fantasy, horror, crime, blasphemous mixes of various genres, anything speculative. It can be dark or fun as long as it is packed with great characters and fantastic plot.

Length wise, well, we hate to say it but we were doing novellas before it was cool, so really anything that is long enough to need it’s own book works for us. It needs to be completed though. Adult or YA is fine. If it leans toward middle grade, there will be another call for Fennec in due course, please wait for that.

What we don’t want: We don’t do shock, extreme or body horror, it makes Aunty Fox squicky and if she can’t read it she can’t publish it. We don’t publish romance, erotica, literary or anything we haven’t actually asked for. We will reject without reading.

Our submission guidelines are on the Subs page and we do suggest reading them.

Please make sure you use ‘submissions@foxspirit.co.uk‘

Doors open on 1st October and remain open until 31st October, please submit within that window.

How we work.

Fox Spirit is a small press, we work on profit split, our terms will be 65% to the author 35% to us, but we will be taking all out costs for cover art, editing etc out of our %, so you get you % of every sale. We sell via Amazon using print on demand.

As a small press we are working on a limited budget and limited range so if you have expectations of retiring from your dayjob on book income you need to talk to someone like Penguin. If we are interested in your title we will be happy to discuss expectations in more detail.

What happens now?

During October we will gather submissions and send acknowledgements. If you do not receive an acknowledgement in 24 hours please let us know in case your sub hasn’t reached us.

When submitting please send a short synopsis and the first three chapters. We may come back to you to request a full manuscript during the process.

Depending on submissions we will read over November and December and finalise in January.

Commissioning Editor Aunty Fox and Editor Daz will be reading submissions.

September 1, 2015August 30, 2015

Call for Stories: Respectable Horror

Oh, another bloody slasher. Oh, more extreme horror. Oh, it must be Tuesday. BORED!

Whilst sipping a martini clarity arrives: one hungers for a change of pace, dash it all:

So we would like tales of civilised, gentle(wo)manly horror, cold, calculating and bloodless; spinechillers rather than slashers, enervating instead of eviscerating. Though a wee bit of the red stuff will not make us blanch, focus more on unshakeable dread. Make us afraid to investigate that noise downstairs. Cause us to shudder when we glimpse something move out of the corner of our eyes. Think Ann Radcliffe and the Gothics, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, M.R. James and even those modern folks like Shirley Jackson and Fritz Leiber.

It’s all about the style. Mashups are the Fox Spirit specialty, so mix and match to your little heart’s content (Lovecraftian Wodehouse has been done). Just be sure to keep the theme uppermost.

Humorous attempts at horror are acceptable, but be warned that your editor’s sense of humour like her taste in martinis is most peculiar and exacting. You would be strongly advised to inform yourself of her tastes.

THE PARTICULARS for Respectable Horror

Follow our house style and submit via Word document attachment to katelaity at gmail dot com by December 31st, 2015. Selection of stories will happen in the spring; the publication itself will appear later in 2016. You will be expected to join in the publicity efforts as much as you are capable (social media mostly).

Word count: ~4-8K

Payment: £10 upon publication + digital and print copy of the volume

What ho! Ask any questions you have in advance of the closing date.

June 24, 2015June 23, 2015

Submissions Update

Well that’s it then, our submission deadlines for Winter Tales and You Left Your Biscuit Behind are behind us, and for Fantastic Treats well behind us.

Our various editors now have the lengthy and tough task of reading through all those submissions and making our decisions. Please be patient. The aim is to complete the process for all three titles by October and we will let you know if there is any change to that.

We will be posting updated lists of Fantastic Treats and Biscuit submissions this weekend on the submissions page, if you believe you have been missed off please contact submissions at foxspirit dot co dot uk

If you did not receive an acknowledgement for your submission to Winter Tales, please check your spam box and if it’s not there please contact Margret on narjegerredaktor at gmail dot com.

We will not be responding to individual requests for updates during June, July and August as we prefer to spend the time getting the submissions read so you can all have an official response as soon as possible.

For those of you waiting on novel submissions we will be getting back to you in July.

On Eve’s War, I will be in touch with everyone involved very soon, our apologies for the quiet.

We thank you for your understanding and patience.

March 19, 2015March 18, 2015

Final Call for Fantastic Treats

It’s been ongoing for some time since our original Instigator Andrew Reid put the idea of a charity cookbook forward. Still, the time has come. We are closing submissions on the 1^st May.

The book will be under the creative control of our adored Mutherfudger, Nadine Holmes whose remarkable baked goods have supported book events nationally. Mutherfudger will also be creating some of the recipes and providing photos for the book.

This one is for Cancer Research so there is no payment beyond a print copy for all participants. All income will go to the charity as Fox Spirit are not taking anything from this for costs. We are seeking submissions of a short or flash length story with a related dessert or treat recipe. The treats can be sweet or savoury, but savoury items should be snacks or tapas style, not main meals.

The stories can be sci fi, fantasy, horror or crime. The stories can be heavily involved with the recipe or merely mention it. We will also accept poetry or drawings as submissions to accompany the recipe, if they are in keeping with genre fiction spirit of the book.

We are accepting submissions from writing/cooking teams. Recipes should be original or personal versions, please do not submit recipes as found in existing books for copyright reasons.

We are hoping to release the book November 2015 although given the added complexity of including photos and trialling recipes we are allowing some flexibility in that.

Please send all submissions to submissions@foxspirit.co.uk

For more information on our editor/hostess please visit http://www.mutherfudger.co.uk/

February 10, 2015

Submission Call – You left your biscuit behind

‘You left your biscuit behind’

Occasionally you hear something said that immediately creates a strong image or feeling. So it was, out for coffee with my parents that the phrase ‘you left your biscuit behind’ conjured for me a sense of crimes interrupted, lives shattered and moments captured. It had the feel of an anthology.

We are looking for ten mash-up crime stories of between 6,000 and 8,000 words to bring to life that feeling.

By mash-up crime we mean that the stories should be primarily in the crime genre, but cross-over with other genres is in fact encouraged, although straight crime is acceptable. The title phrase is not a required feature of the stories, but more of a writing prompt; what story does it bring to mind for you?

We want original works written for the anthology; we won’t be looking at reprints for this one because of the limit on stories.

There will be a token payment of £15 and a comp copy of the paperback and ebooks.

This is an open call closing on 1^st June 2015 and the book will be published in early 2016.

Please send all submissions to submissions@foxspirit.co.uk and title them ‘Biscuit submission’. Please include your name and email at the top of your submission and send it as an attachment, we will not be able to accept submissions in the body of the email.

Please read our submission guidelines for more information on fonts and formats.

This call will be added to our submission page during the next few days and no decisions will be made on submissions until after the closing date. We look forward to reading your interpretation of this one.

November 7, 2014

Blog post call

This is a call for the Fox Spirit Skulk. Our writers, editors, reviewers, artists etc. Anyone who has worked with us in any context or has a yes to work with us over the coming programme of work.

We wish to a couple of regular blog series next year. After some discussion on the foxy forum we have settled on ‘Five on Friday’ and ‘Monday Methods’. Depending how many responses we get I would like to do Five on Friday weekly from the Beginning of Jan to the end of Nov 2015 so we can use early December to produce a complete list (it will make sense in a minute I promise). Monday Methods may be more like fortnightly but again, it will depend on the level of response.

Monday Methods – This one is aimed at writers and artists. We would like a short post, a couple of hundred words at least, but no more than 500, preferably with an image or two (your desk space, your favourite mug, the mass of wine bottles waiting to be recycled, a shelf of books or wall of art you gaze at when you should be writing, your whiteboard) about the things that are essential to you in writing. Playlists are always a good addition to this sort of thing too.

Five on Friday – Five recommendations with a short paragraph on each (around 50 – 100 words is ideal) for fans of sci fi, fantasy, horror and crime. They can be fiction or non fiction, they can be books (at least one should be), films, tv shows (a specific episode or one series of a show is better than the whole show, so Star Trek bad, Star Trek the next generation ok, Star Trek original series, the trouble with tribbles best), music, comics, memorabilia, action figures, tentacle book ends, Dr Who cushions anything you love dearly and think we should all know about. Again, if you can send through images of the items that would be helpful, if not we shall find what we can.

Please send the posts to submissions@foxspirit.co.uk and title it either Method Monday or Five on Friday as appropriate.

There is no remuneration for these blog posts, they are just for fun and to engage with the readers, let them know a bit about who you all are.

October 22, 2014April 20, 2016

Tenebris Submission Call

Calling all foxy folk with a penchant for fairy tales. Our lovely friends at Tenebris are looking for new faces for their follow up to the gorgeous and brilliant ‘Willow Weep no More’ and have sent us details of the submission call.

You can find everything you need to know about the tentatively titled ‘Shadows of the Oak’ HERE on their site.

They are an excellent press so if the lesser characters of fairy stories have always attracted your interest get your submission over to them!