Here’s a quick guide to this winter’s submission calls here at The Fiction Desk.

We have a total of four calls running this winter, all with a deadline of 31 January 2022. They are all open now:

• Our annual ghost story submission call, for all kinds of supernatural fiction.
• The first of our two special themed submission calls, looking for stories about books.
• Our second themed call, looking for stories about travel.
• If none of the above appeal to you, our general submission call is for stories on any theme, in any of the genres we usually feature in our pages.

(You can also combine the calls: stories of haunted books and supernatural travellers – or destinations – are all welcome.)

The deadline for all four submission calls is the end of our winter reading period: 31 January 2022. As always, don’t forget to read our submission guidelines before sending in your work.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for inspiration, or simply a good read, don’t forget to pick up one of our anthologies. They’re available in both paperback and Kindle formats. You can get the paperbacks directly from us here. (You can find the Kindle editions on Amazon UK here or Amazon.com here).

On Friday the BBC announced the shortlist for this year’s National Short Story Award.

There’s a total of five shortlistees, and we’re delighted to see that two of them are Fiction Desk contributors. That’s almost half the list!

The two writers whose work has appeared in our pages are Danny Rhodes and Richard Smyth.

You can find out more about the award over on the BBC’s website. The winners will be announced on 19 October.

Today we’re announcing the latest winner of The Fiction Desk’s Writer’s Award.

The Writer’s Award is presented to the author of the best story in each anthology we publish, as voted for by the contributors themselves. Because who could be better qualified than the people who write the stories?

This time around the award is for the best story in our latest anthology, Houses Borders Ghosts. With nine excellent stories to choose from, including one by a previous award-winner Alastair Chisholm, competition was tough, but in the end the votes gave us a winner.

So it’s congratulations to Zeph Auerbach, who takes home the £100 prize for his story ‘Desynchronisation at Seven Sisters’.

If you’ve not yet read his story, Houses Borders Ghosts is available now in paperback and Kindle editions.

We’re delighted to announce that our new anthology, Houses Borders Ghosts, is due for publication at the end of this month.

Houses Borders Ghosts contains nine new short stories in our usual variety of styles and themes from new and returning authors; our regular readers will be familiar with Alastair Chisholm, Jacki Donnellan, and Kate van der Borgh, and there are some fantastic talents making their first appearance in our pages.

Copies will be available soon in paperback and Kindle editions. You can find out more about the new anthology, or order your own copy, here.

We’re so busy getting our new anthology ready for press that we nearly overlooked our own birthday! This week sees the tenth anniversary of the publication of our first anthology, Various Authors.

In the years since then, we’ve published fourteen volumes, including 149 stories from 108 different authors. And we’ve got plenty more lined up.

So thank you to all of you — readers, contributors, and potential contributors — who have been with us along the way.

(Speaking of our anthologies, watch out for news of our new volume in the next couple of weeks.)

The daffodils are out, the supermarkets are full of chocolate eggs, and there was even half an hour of sunshine last Thursday. This can only mean one thing: our spring reading period is now open.

For this submission call, we’ve decided not to run a specific theme. Instead, we’ll be concentrating on general submissions, open to any of the themes and genres that we feature in our anthologies. So if you’d like to submit something to us, just take a look through a recent volume, and send us whatever you think makes for a great Fiction Desk story.

Submissions are open until 30 June, and you can find out more about the submission process on our submission guidelines page.

To celebrate Halloween (and the opening of this year’s annual ghost story submission call), we’re running a sale on Kindle editions of all our anthologies.

Our three New Ghost Stories volumes are just 99p each, and all other titles are just £1.99.

You can get the whole series so far (all 13 volumes) for just £22.87.

To grab yourself some bargains, just head over to Amazon UK (or Amazon USA, where you’ll find similar prices). Best hurry, though: the sale ends on Wednesday!

We see a lot of different file formats here at The Fiction Desk. Although our guidelines specify that submissions should all be in MS Word format (.doc or .docx), we do our best to open and read most document types that come our way. Sometimes it’s just not possible, and we have to ask writers to resubmit their story manuscript in an alternative format.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about file formats, so here’s a quick guide to the main document types, where they come from, and their pros and cons as submission formats.

When making a submission it’s important to always follow the publisher’s guidelines in terms of the file formats they can accept: after all, only they know which devices and software they have access to. Still, the following should provide you with some insight into why they make the choices they do, and what you can do if your preferred formats don’t match their requirements:

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• .doc This was once the standard file used by MS Word, and the most common way to share text documents. It was replaced in 2007 by the .docx format (see below). These days, .doc files aren’t always quite as compatible or easy to open as .docx files, but are still fairly common. Use .docx if you possibly can — it’s a smaller, more versatile format — but if you’re running a pre-2007 version of MS Word you can still get by with .doc for the moment.
• .docx Now the industry standard. Although primarily associated with Microsoft Word, it can be opened, edited and saved with a range of programs, including free suites like LibreOffice. Like the .doc format, it also has MS Word’s ’track changes’ functionality, which will come in handy when your work is accepted for publication and you need to collaborate with an editor, allowing you to see and comment on edits.
• .docm This is a special version of the .docx file, used when the document contains macros (small apps within the document that can automate various tasks). Avoid using this format: macros are completely unnecessary in basic text documents like works of fiction, and are often used to transmit computer viruses.
• .dot These are template files used by MS Word; for example, you might have a .dot file in your system that provides the basic layout and styles for your short stories. If you’re saving completed stories in .dot format, though, you’re probably getting into a muddle with your templates.
• .gdoc This isn’t actually a file type at all: it’s a link to your file’s location on Google Drive. If you send somebody a .gdoc file outside of the Google ecosystem, the recipient won’t be able to open it. If your story is in Google Docs, you’ll need to save it to your computer as a .docx file before submitting. To do this, open your file in Google Docs, go to the File menu, and click ‘Download as > Microsoft Word (.docx)’.
• .odt These files are the text version of the OpenDocument format. You’re most likely to come across .odt files if you’re using a free open source office suite like LibreOffice or OpenOffice. Like .docx, they have the ability to keep track of changes made during the editing process. They’re quite widely accepted but check first: not all devices can open them, and it’s usually best to save your file as .docx before making your submission.
• .pages These files are created by Apple’s Pages software. They can only be opened on certain Apple devices, and even the different versions of Pages aren’t all compatible with each other. Awkward, professionally useless, and popular among people with no knowledge of computers, .pages is the Comic Sans of the file format world. Unless the market you’re submitting to says otherwise, avoid sending out work in .pages format. (The .pages format is lousy, but many people are happy writing with the program itself. If you’re using Pages, export the file as a Word .docx document before submitting.)
• .pdf These files are intended for use with Adobe Reader: they’re usually used for sharing finished documents like digital versions of magazines or fliers, as well as contracts, forms, and other documents. Many programs can export .pdf files, and operating systems usually have a way of ‘printing’ your work to a .pdf file. So should you submit work in .pdf format? Many literary magazines and other publishers do allow it; others don’t. While .pdf files are easy to read on a wide range of devices, it’s not usually possible to reformat them. This means that the reader looking at your work won’t be able to change the font size or reflow the text if they’re using a smaller screen, or if the formatting is otherwise difficult to read. To stay on the safe side, it’s best to avoid sending out work in .pdf unless you’re specifically asked for it.
• .rtf Relatively simple text documents, .rtf files can be read and written by most text editing programs. The formatting options are probably a little limited in terms of meeting submission guidelines for page layout, but at least you know that the reader should be able to open your file. Potentially useful as a last resort, if you really can’t manage to create a .docx file.
• .scriv / .scrivx These files are created by the popular writing tool Scrivener. They’re for your work-in-progress, but not for submitting work. Export your finished story from Scrivener as a .docx file, and check it in Word before submitting.
• .wps These documents are created by Microsoft Works, a basic office suite that was last released in 2007 and discontinued altogether in 2009. These days, .wps files are a nuisance to open, often needing special software to convert them to a readable format. Avoid submitting work in .wps format. (Tip: If you have a lot of old files in .wps format, your easiest option might be to download the free open-source office suite LibreOffice. LibreOffice can open .wps files, allowing you to read them and export them to a more modern and usable format.)

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That list should cover most of the basic file formats that you’re likely to come across or find yourself using for your text documents. Here’s the executive summary:

• Always check the publisher’s requirements before submitting: only they know the exact range of devices and programs they have available to read your work.
• The single best format to get accustomed to using is .docx. Although native to MS Word, many other programs can read and write this format, and it’s most publishers’ first choice.
• If you really hate Microsoft, or are unable or unwilling to stump up the cash for MS Word, look into LibreOffice. It’s a free, fully featured office suite available on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and can work with .docx files as well as various other types including its own native .odt files. It can also be used for collaborative editing using tracked changes. (Sending a file with tracked changes between Word and LibreOffice can be buggy, but your editor might well have LibreOffice installed for when its needed. After all, it’s free and available on nearly all computers. Find out more at www.libreoffice.org)

Today we’re announcing the latest winner of the Fiction Desk Writer’s Award. The Writer’s Award is presented to the author of the best story in each of our anthologies, and is voted for by the contributors themselves. The winner receives £100.

Our new anthology, Somewhere This Way, features some very strong stories and the voting was close, but for once we didn’t need a tie break: the clear winner is ‘Exhalation’, by Alastair Chisholm.

Congratulations, Alastair!

Find out more about Somewhere This Way or get your own copy right here.

If you subscribe to our email newsletter, you might already know that last week we launched our first themed call for submissions. ‘Houses and Homes‘ is all about the places where we live and the way that they affect our lives.

There should be plenty here for short story writers to get their teeth into: from domestic dramas to haunted houses, it’s an opportunity to explore psychology, class, politics, generational and cultural divides and a whole host of other issues.

In the UK (where The Fiction Desk is based), rising house prices have impacted hugely on the lives of their inhabitants and reshaped whole communities, as have the tensions between the different roles that housing plays: not just homes but investments, refuges, businesses, repositories of family memories. The conversation is by no means limited to Britain, either: as always, international contributions are very welcome.

Submissions to our themed calls work exactly like normal submissions. You submit through the same submission form, it’s still just a £3 fee, and we aim to reply to all submissions within two weeks. We pay at our usual rates for any stories we publish.

The ‘Houses and Homes’ call is open now for submissions, and you can find out more here. The deadline is 30th September. We’ll be announcing more themes over the year, so do sign up for our newsletter if you don’t already get it.