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 getting ready to submit to Cast of Wonder‘s Dinovember: intelligent dinosaurs call, and at their behest, we’re reading Ann Leckie’s The Endangered Camp as published by Escape Pod.
Cast of Wonders: Dinovember
Eligibility: stories featuring intelligent dinosaurs up to 6k words
Take Note: Cast of Wonders requires anonymous submissions and will reject your story if your name is found anywhere on your submission. So don’t miss your last name in the header of your standard manuscript format like I did that one time. Ugh.
Submit By: opening is from March 15-31st, 2020, so get plotting!
Payment Offered: $0.08 per word
Click here to go to the original call for full details.
A Story to Ignite Your Writing Mojo
Cast of Wonders has made it easy on me this week, offering their own example of a story that meets their call’s criteria. That story is none other than The Endangered Camp by Ann Leckie, and you can read or listen to it at Escape Pod by clicking here.
One of the elements that stands out in Leckie’s story (for our purposes) is the perspective of the dinosaurs. They aren’t human, but dinosaurs filtered through a human gaze. Their worldview, culture, mannerisms, and motivations are (dino)saurian. Often referred to as ‘furry fiction’, the reader is pulled into a strong, non-human point-of-view. This requires a deep understanding of the animal in question and strong world-building skills.
For this call, you need to pick your favorite dino, get into their heads, and take them on an adventure. We really do have the best job, don’t we? Good luck, or rather, GRRRRAAARRRRRR!
Jennifer Shelby 
Dang it, my intelligent dinosaur story is already way over 6K words. But if anyone wants to do research on dinosaur intelligence, make sure to look up the Troodon (pronounced true-o-don). Based on the size of its brain compared to the size of its body, Troodon may have been the most intelligent dinosaur to ever live, and some paleontologists have suggested that, if not for that mass extinction event, Troodon may have been on the path to evolving human-like intelligence.
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Wicked! I’m not familiar with the Troodon but I want to learn more about them now.
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They’re amazing. They’re one of the biggest what ifs I’ve ever read about in science.
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