Launched: Midnight, New Year’s Eve, 2015 – 2016
About Us
These are the pages of Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores. Our Mission… is to explore our universe and its wild eldritch shores, to seek out new writers and story forms, to boldly go through time, mind, and the cosmos.
Here are stories and art — classic and new, imagination and fact, serious and humorous — from around the world and throughout time, our own special brew and broad-spectrum formulation for young and old, of words, artwork, graphic novels, videos, animation, and podcasts in…
Science fiction — hard as steel, soft as velvet, electrifying as lightning, solid as gold, insubstantial as interstellar near-vacuum; from space opera, steampunk, AU, cyber, to humorous
Fantasy — AU, epic, historical, urban, magical realism, steampunk,
Myths, legends, fairy tales — ancient original versions and present day reworkings, from all times and parts of the world.
Eldritch — But what really is Eldritch? some people ask. It’s not horror, but it’s an elusive thing; try to pin it down and it may flutter away.
Eldritch is otherworldly encounters, beyond the pale, ghostly, eerie, mysteries of the night and the mind, slipping between the spaces, the strange, the indefinable, the liminal, the uncanny things between the spaces that sweep tingles over us… good luck finding it!
We will have resources and helpful articles for writers and artists, interviews, competitions, and reviews of books, movies, music, fan events, and cosplay. Until September 2019 we were a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) qualifying market, but we are not presently able to meet the rate hike they put in place at that time; when we are, we’ll let you know.
We love fact as well as fiction. We have articles and links about a few of the fascinating facts of our world and surrounding universe.
You can read about the members of the Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores team here.
★ Updates Soon (for 2020 and 2021)
★ We are still an SFWA qualifying market — For the span of time we weren’t able to pay writers at the rate hike mandated by SFWA, we have now back-paid authors so their stories qualify and our qualification continues.
★ We’re listed as a professional market with Duotrope, Ralan, and the Grinder.
★ For 2019:
★ Our story “The Witching Hour“, by Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald, won the 2019 Nommo Award from the African Speculative Fiction Society
★ Tangent’s Recommended Reading List for 2019 includes seven of our stories:
— “The Ice Angel of Leningrad” by Eugene Morgulis, 1/19, two stars
— “The Memory Bank & Trust” by Patrick Hurley, 4/19
— “Wild Ships” by Phoebe Wagner, 5/19
— “Entanglement” by Christopher Blake, 8/19, two stars
— “A Ladder to the Moon” by Naoko Awa, 9/19, translated from the Japanese by Toshiya Kamei
— “Still Life” by Adam Stemple, 10/19
— “A Possession of Magpies” by E. E. King, 12/19, one star
★ We received favorable reviews from Locus, print and online, for three of our stories.
★ We published:
— 12 illustrated short stories of new science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tale, and eldritch.
— 12 podcasts of narrations of past stories, with video background
— 2 author interviews
★ We were an SFWA qualifying market since Jan. 1, 2016 up to September 2019.
★ We’re reviewed by Tangent Online under their EMarket/Monthly section.
★ We’re listed as a professional market with Duotrope, Ralan, and the Grinder.
★ For 2018:
★ Our story “The Moon Fox”, by Amy Fontaine,was nominated for the Cóyotl Award for Best Short Story and a Leo Literary Award.
★ We’re reviewed by Tangent Online under their EMarket/Monthly section.
★ Tangent’s Recommended Reading List for 2018 includes eight of our stories:
“Ice” by Diana Silver
“Rapunzel – A Re-Winding” by Joan Stewart
“The Mirror Crack’d” by Jordan Taylor
“Spicer’s Modest Success” by Jared VanDyke
“The Book of Winter” by Caroline Friedel
One Star:
Cat and Mouse” by L.C. Brown
Two Stars:
“Got Time?” by Lee Rutty
“The Witching Hour” by Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald
★ Locus, print version, favorably reviewed our story “The Mirror Crack’d” by Jordan Taylor.
★ We published:
— 12 illustrated short stories of science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tale, and eldritch.
— one video
— one science article
– 1 science interview
— 1 artist interview
— 1 author video interview
— began a series on novel writing
★ We’ve been an SFWA qualifying market since Jan. 1, 2016.
★ We’re listed as a professional market with Duotrope, Ralan, and the Grinder.
★ As logged by our visitor’s map on the home page, since April 17, 2016, visitors have visited the Main Terminal from 2164 locations around the globe, and clicking on the map shows our Main Terminal has had more than 15,584 visitors.
★ For 2017:
★ We had four of our stories on Tangent Online’s Recommended Reading List for 2017
★ We published:
— 33 illustrated short stories of science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tale, and eldritch.
— 2 articles, one on science and one on fairy tales
— 1 interview
★ All authors of new fiction stories are paid at the rate of 6¢ per word.
★ We’ve been open since Jan. 1, 2016.
★ We’re listed as a professional market with Duotrope, Ralan, and the Grinder.
★ We’re reviewed by Tangent Online under their EMarket/Monthly section.
★ As logged by our visitor’s map on the home page, since April 17, 2016, visitors have visited the Main Terminal from a total of 1977 locations around the globe, and clicking on the map shows we’ve had more than 11,000 visitors.
★ For 2016:
★ We published :
— 37 illustrated short stories of science fiction, fantasy, myth, legend, fairy tale, and eldritch.
— one fractal animated and scored video
— one interview with a professional fantasy artist
— one science article for kids
★ All authors of new fiction stories are paid at the rate of 6¢ per word.
★ One story is on the SFWA recommended reading list for Nebula Awards.
★ One story was nominated for a new category in the PEN awards.
★ We published one story in its original Russian version and in English translation.
★ We’ve been open since Jan. 1, 2016.
★ We’re listed as a professional market with Duotrope, Ralan, and the Grinder.
★ We’re now being reviewed by Tangent Online under their EMarket/Monthly section.
★ According to Dave Truesdale of Tangent Online, we have “one of the most beautiful sites out there”!
★ As logged by our visitor’s map on the home page, since April 17, 2016, visitors have visited our site from a total of 1135 places around the globe, and clicking on the map shows we’ve had 4,546 visitors.