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Submission Rules

For the Children Anthology

A Fundraiser to help children in South Africa​

 CALLING ALL WRITERS OF SHORT FICTION AND POETRY

 

Read to the bottom before submitting

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*For the Children may or may not be the title of the book. Currently, it's just a filler title, subject to change. Also, the royalties will go to a ministry that helps more than just children, but they run baby homes that I, Anne J. Hill, volunteered at a few years back, so that is the main focus for this project.

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Anthology Publishes: Sometime in 2024, or 2025, TBD (hoping for April 2024, but may change if it's too much to do that fast)

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Genre: Any (horror, erotica/smut will not be accepted)

 

Reader Age Range: Around 18+ (Upper YA, NA, Adult). Appropriate for ALL ages but geared for 18+ audience. 

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Categories: Adoption, Foster, Found Family, or Other (book will not be split into categories and you may include more than one.)

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Payment: Royalties will go to support 1Hope Ministries, either to the ministry as a whole, or to specific missionaries, or baby homes they run, whatever is the greatest need.  

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Length: Poetry can be any length under 3,000. Short stories/flash fiction between 200 and 7,000 words. Novellas will be considered but a max of 20,000 words.

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Due Date: November 18th, 2023 midnight in Eastern time zone

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We are also looking for people willing to donate services (or discounts!), such as editing, cover design, artwork, formatting, beta reading, etc. Since this is a fundraiser to support 1Hope, we would like to put in as little money as possible so we can afford to give more royalties to the mission. If anyone is interested in this, please shoot us an email or message Anne J. Hill on Instagram.

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Tip! If you don’t grab us within the first paragraph, it's likely we won’t even read the rest.

We get a high volume of submissions so do everything you can to wow us right out of the gate.

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Content Guidelines:

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Theme— Adoption, foster, found family, or anything in that vein (basically, helping children in need in any capacity) with a Christian missions bent. (Missions does not HAVE to be included, but we would like to see a handful of stories that are about following God's call to help children even when it's hard.) We do not want, however, overly cheesy sunshiny stories. Make them raw, and true, and deep.

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​Categories—

The categories aren't as important as our previous anthologies. Just try to include one of the following.

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Adoption, Foster, Found Family, or Other (book will not be split into categories and you may include more than one.)

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​​Submission Guidelines (MUST READ):

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Not a requirement, but the most important thing to note: Please polish your entry as much as you can before submitting it. Get beta readers; have others read and critique it (who aren't Anne); get an editor if you can. If you don't love your entry, chances are, we won't either. Entries that require much developmental and major line editing are unlikely to be considered.

 

FAILURE TO FOLLOW THESE GUIDELINES WILL AUTOMATICALLY DISQUALIFY

YOUR ENTRY FROM ACCEPTANCE. NON-COMPLIANT ENTRIES WILL NOT BE READ.

 

  • The title of your submission must go in the name of the document, with the name you want to publish under (your name). For example: Story Title-Author Name

  • In the document, put only the title of your story, the category it falls under, genre, if it’s been previously published, and the word count. All five elements MUST be included. Do NOT put this in the document's header, so it shows up on every page. It should only appear once at the beginning of the document. 

  • Times New Roman, Double Spaced, each new paragraph indented. (Poems don't need to be double spaced or indented.)

  • See image for example. 

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  • You may submit with either Google Docs or Word. Submitting through another format will not be accepted. All accepted entries will be edited on Google Docs only as this is the best format to allow our authors and editors to collaborate. (If Word is best for you, we will consider making an exception.)

  • All entries need to be submitted with EDITOR turned on. PDFs cannot be accepted. We need to have access to edit the actual document, so we can adjust formatting if needed for reading. Entries sent as "view only," "comment only," or "suggest only" will not be accepted. (We will not change anything in your document, other than potentially formatting.)

  • If you submit a Middle-Grade story, we will not accept it if it's written in a dumbed-down manner. The readership is aimed at older readers but appropriate for all. If you have a child main character (which is definitely an option), please do not lower the quality of your writing. Too many Middle-Grade books/stories make this error.

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Our definition of clean for this anthology: no sexual content. It may be implied, but do not show it on the page. No swearing for this anthology in the slightest (made-up words may be fine.) Keep violence to a minimum as long as it’s not gratuitous or unnecessarily graphic.

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You can enter as many submissions as you want. No limit. 

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Stories/poems that have been previously published are fine to submit, although unpublished stories will be prioritized when deciding which stories get accepted. There will be a contract locking in your rights and our right to publish if you're accepted. Authors will retain full rights to their stories to publish again in the future.

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Accepted pieces will be thoroughly edited before publishing. Twenty Hills Publishing will not publish your work until we believe it is fully edited and up to our standards. Authors who are unwilling to have their work fully edited will not be published.

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Estimated editing timeline (highly subject to change):

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November-December: First round of edits

January-February: Second round of edits

March: Anne will do a final sweep for last minute grammar errors while preparing the files for formatting and will make changes on authors' behalf, unless she finds anything bigger than grammar, then she will contact the author about the change

April-publish, hopefully

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Not all entries will be accepted, but send them all!!! We love reading your submissions, and we are so excited to see what you come up with.  

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Acceptance letters will be sent out by the end of November, 2024 at the latest. ​If you don’t hear back from us, then you haven’t been accepted. We will not be sending out rejection letters, only acceptance letters. 

 

If you have any questions, please go back and read the guidelines again first. Chances are, the answer is here. If you still can’t find it, email any questions to twentyhillspublishing@gmail.com. Please do not contact us elsewhere to ask questions. Thank you.

 

​Thank you in advance for your stories and poems. It is you, the authors and poets, who make these anthologies possible and bring these projects to life!

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Please email submissions to twentyhillspublishing@gmail.com, or hit the Submit button below.

 

Happy Writing!

 

-Anne J. Hill 

© 2021 by Anne J. Hill. Proudly created with Wix.com

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