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
NOVEMBER 2026 SUBMISSIONS (opens October 1 – 4, 2026)
DOES THIS MASK ACTUALLY CAPTURE MY REVOLUTIONARY SPIRT AS INTENDED? — CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT
A couple hundred years ago, a Catholic extremist tried to blow up the House of Lords with stacks of hidden dynamite. Since then, Guy Fawkes has become an icon and a symbol, appearing in legendary graphic novels, pretty okay movies, and on the faces of Internet hackers mocking the rich and powerful. This month, we want stories of the Fawkesian impulse, and so we’re looking for stories of revolutionaries, rebels, agitators, and terrorists. Show us what happens when their good plans go bad, or their bad plans go worse. Give them a noble cause or a despicable one. Show us what happens when the revolution comes and the flag is planted. And then show us whose chest that flag is planted in. CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT!DECEMBER 2026 SUBMISSIONS (opens November 1 – 4, 2026)
BING CROSBY WAS A LYING BASTARD AND WE’RE GLAD HE’S DEAD
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” right? Well not here at STONE’S THROW, and, we’re guessing, not wherever you are either. The demands. The wants. The needs. The bills. The pressure. Everything feels ten times heavier in December. Everything feels ten times tougher to move. In other words, everything feels perfect for STONE’S THROW. This month, we want your stories of holiday pressures and holiday rage. This month, we want to see what happens when the pressure becomes too much. This month, we want to see what happens when someone dreaming of a white Christmas is suddenly unable to see anything other than red.JANUARY 2027 SUBMISSIONS (opens December 1 – 4, 2026)
PROMISES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN AND BLED UPON
It’s a new year, and with it comes all kinds of promises. Promises to be better. To clean up. To find new, happier ways of living. But this is STONE’S THROW, and we know a promise is something made to be broken. This month, we want stories of betrayal. Of promises made and then broken. Make the betrayal hurt. Make it STONE’S THROW.
Submissions are CURRENTLY OPEN for our NovemBER SUBMISSIONS WINDOW
Remember, remember the 5th of November… or the 4th of October, when your STONE’S THROW stories of revolution are due. Get ‘em in! CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT!