Submission Window: November 1st – 4th, 2025
Payment: $25
Theme: Your story must have the setting of an office holiday party
DECEMBER SUBMISSIONS (opens November 1 – 4, 2025) — The office holiday party is the setting for this month’s Stone’s Throw prompt. What happens when you’re forced into a social setting with a bunch of people you would never willingly socialize with except for a paycheck? How does dipping into a less formal space embolden your protagonist to tell Jan from Accounting what they really think of her? What hare-brained schemes can your protagonist come up with after knocking back a few cold ones and eyeing up the unguarded bank safe? And what fresh hell and awkward hangovers await the story’s characters the morning after?
Stone’s Throw is the monthly online companion to Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, delivering shorter, sharper content on a regular basis in an electronic medium, before collecting all 12 stories for an annual print anthology. Each month, writers will be given a submission prompt, and the best of the best, by our estimation, will be posted here the following month.
Interested in Submitting?
Stone’s Throw will open for submissions the first three days of every month, from 12AM on the first through 12AM on the fourth (with some wiggle room here and there to account for the editors being human). We’re looking for all the same dark fiction, crime, and noir as our usual submissions, but with a target length between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and aligned with the monthly submissions prompt (see below). We’ll read through each story, choose the one story that shines brightest, and publish it online the following month, paying $25 per accepted story.
After a year, we’ll collect all twelve stories into a Stone’s Throw Annual Anthology, to be published alongside our other print issues.
PLEASE NOTE — If you have been accepted within the calendar year for Stone’s Throw, you are ineligible to submit again during that same calendar year. However, we look forward to reading your submissions during our regular RHP Magazine open calls!
Via: Rock and a Hard Place Magazine.
