We will be open to fiction submissions
from February 15 to March 5, 2011.

Wanted: Mid-list authors

  We need to place our resources behind authors who know how to promote their books. You don't necessarily need a national platform, a regional one will do. If you have demonstrated annual sales of 5k to 15k books, please consider placing your next novel or non-fiction book with Twilight Times Books or Paladin Timeless Books.

Rest assured we will always keep a few slots open each year for exceptional books written by first time authors.

  Twilight Times Books will present the works of those writers whose stories blend genres, are too literary for other publishers or seem too mainstream or "quirky" in tone. The requirement for consideration at Twilight Times Books is your novel must be entertaining; your non-fiction book must be informative. Both fiction and non-fiction book submissions must be professionally written and you must have a comprehensive marketing plan.

Purchase a book or read the stories in Twilight Times ezine to determine the type of writing we're interested in seeing.

First consideration will be given to authors previously published by Twilight Times Books, Paladin Timeless Books, Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine (FMAM), Twilight Times ezine and/or Web Mystery Magazine. Our current response time is four weeks to two months. Simultaneous submissions are frowned upon. We offer a standard publishing contract.

When we re-open to novel-length submissions on February 15, 2011, we will be especially interested in the following categories:
fantasy, historical, literary, mystery/suspense, paranormal romance, science fiction, SF romance and YA fantasy.

We have expanded our guidelines to include more nonfiction titles in 2009-2010 and are also interested in:
creative nonfiction, how-to books, humor/satire, juvenile, magic realism, mainstream/contemporary, military/war-related, nostalgia-related fiction and non-fiction, paranormal, Regency romance, regional, specialty/New Age, supernatural, the Sixties-related (fiction or nonfiction), World War II-related, women's fiction, writing advice, etc.

Send a cover letter, synopsis, first chapter and marketing plan in the body of an email message to the publisher

Your email message MUST begin the subject line with ttbooks or ttb or your message will be deleted.

No attachments, please.

Please note our formatting requirements.

We are generally open to submissions twice each year from Feb. 15th to March 5th and again from July 15th to August 5th.

FMAM Annual Anthology

Update 06-22-10

We received several great mystery short stories for the 2010 FMAM anthology. Unfortunately, the total word count for the stories that made the cut was less than the minimum needed to create a trade paperback which was the point of the project. We will open again to submissions August 15 to September 5, 2010. This will give you time to write and polish your stories.

Overall themes for the 2011 FMAM Mystery Anthology will be Americana, paranormal and a strong sense of place. You may combine one or more of the themes. Prefer stories 5k to 15k in length.

Twilight Times Books is committed to publishing a few top-notch mystery/suspense novels each year. Recent and upcoming releases include Mazurka by Aaron Paul Lazar, Murder in the Pit by Erica Miner, Shadows Over Paradise by Anne K. Edwards and Healey's Cave by Aaron Paul Lazar (August 2010, trade paperback).

Stories from Murder Past, Murder Present (November 2009, trade paperback), the AWCL anthology edited by R. Barri Flowers and Jan Grape, were nominated as ITW short story finalists as well as submitted for the Edgar and Shamus Awards.

In addition, "A Jury of His Peers" by Jay Brandon (Murder Past, Murder Present) will be included in Best Mysteries of 2010 edited by Lee Child (Houghton Mifflin).

Twilight Times Books is on the MWA list of approved publishers as well as the ITW list of recognized publishers.

Note to authors: If you send an email query outside the open submissions period, I can be very slow to respond. If you send a query letter during the open submissions period, I do try to respond within three or four weeks. If you do everything right, but forget to insert ttb at the beginning of the subject line, your email query may well be misfiled by my email filters and it could be some time before I come across it.