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 a call for submissions from Wizards in Space and reading Ari Koontz’ second star to the right (and straight on till morning) from their second issue.

Wizards in Space

Eligibility: speculative and literary stories up to 5k. Nonfiction, art, and poetry is also accepted, please see the original call for guidelines.

Take Note: for this opening, editors are looking for stories contrasting light and dark, winter and summer, and coming full circle from pain into joy.

Payment: $40 flat fee per story

Submit by: this opening closes October 18th, 2019.

Click here to go to the original call for details.

A story to ignite your writing mojo:

I’m going to switch gears a bit this week and suggest a work of creative non-fiction from this same magazine, second star to the right (and straight on till morning) by Ari Koontz, because it has a story’s soul, it captures the spirit of the full circle journey, and it’s written with the exquisite prose the journal seeks. You can click here to read it on the Wizards In Space website.

I’m always going to have a soft spot for space fantasy, and the fear and wonder in this piece takes my breath away. I don’t feel the claustrophobia Koontz feels when she looks at the Perseids, I don’t feel afraid of the vastness of our universe, but I, too, am “made of stories and science.” This is the story of finding one’s true name on the other side of all this fear, and coming around to joy after pain. This is the emotion we need to capture for this call, that moment in time, as only we can tell it.

Think about it, find your story, write it down, send it in. It’s just that easy, and that easy. Good luck writers, and happy writing.