Welcome to this week’s edition of Submit Your Stories Sunday. Every week I bring you a unique call for submissions to help you find a home for your stories or inspire a new one. Each call will contain a speculative element and will offer payment upon acceptance. Next, I’ll recommend a story to inspire your submission and help newer writers understand how to fulfill a call’s thematic elements.

This week we’re looking at The Arcanist‘s call for flash fiction and reading The Catfish by Earnest Nadim from The Arcanist‘s July issue.

The Arcanist: Flash Fiction

Eligibility: science fiction and fantasy flash fiction stories up to 1k words with a complete story and great characters

Take note: signing up for the Arcanist will deliver their stories into your inbox every Friday as well as being posted on their website, which affords you a wonderful opportunity to get to know what the editors like and reach a wide audience with your own if accepted.

Payment: $50, USD

Submit by: rolling submission dates, open at time of writ but please check the website if you’re reading from the future.

Click here to go to the original call for details.

A story to ignite your writing mojo:

Earnest Nadim’s story, The Catfish, was published on the Arcanist this past July and it’s a fun read, so don’t miss out. Click here to head to the website and read it.

There is something delightful about taking a familiar, possibly tired,  modern-day scenario and dropping it into a fantasy world. The classic catfish tale, told through texting orcs and a pegacorn’s eyes, has a freshness and heart to it that leaves the reader chuckling, the weight of the work week shuffled off their shoulders. It is these fantasy characters, secure in their tropes, that make The Catfish sing and add this freshness.

Nadim carries us from the discovery of the freshly dead and catfishing orc through to his victim, giving readers the complete story despite the short form. It’s tricky but it’s an important element of flash fiction, and one we must employ when we sit down to write our own submissions for this call.

Good luck, and happy writing.