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!
Upcoming Submissions Prompts
JANUARY SUBMISSIONS (opens December 1 - 4, 2025) — The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream about the brotherhood of humanity, but dreams don’t always have to be so big . . . or so magnanimous. This month, give us noir on the theme of dreams. Maybe it’s petty dreams about gangland glory, or maybe it’s a story about “a dream deferred” as Langston Hughes wrote. Let’s kick off the new year by taking a look at “what dreams may come,” and what happens next when all your dreams come true . . . or don’t.
Submissions are CURRENTLY CLOSED for our January SUBMISSIONS WINDOW
You dreamed a dream of days gone by . . . but you should have spent less time day-dreaming, and more time doing. The submissions window for this prompt is currently closed, but come on back for more opportunities to submit to Stone’s Throw next month!