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 to help newer writers understand how to fulfill a call’s thematic elements.

This week we’re subbing to Clarkesworld magazine and we’re reading D. A. Xiaolin Spires’ story Coffee Boom: Decoctions, Micronized from the March 2020 issue.

Clarkesworld

Eligibility: science fiction and fantasy stories from 1,000 to 22,000 words. Translations welcome.

Take Note: stories should formatted for online reading (i.e. overlong paragraphs or experimental paragraphing are discouraged). The editors also have a list of ‘do nots’ on their submission page (linked below).

Submit by: ongoing open call

Payment offered: $0.10 per word

Click here to go to the original call for details.

A Story to Ignite Your Writing Mojo

The current issue of Clarkesworld holds a story that is close to this coffee drinker’s heart: Coffee Boom: Decoctions, Micronized by D. A. Xiaolin Spires. Please click here to read that now. As the hordes, um, hoard toilet paper I’m sitting here worried about coffee. We don’t grow any in Canada. If shipping shuts down, I… (sobs).

I want to say I’m not some sort of coffee snob, but I only drink freshly, *finely* ground dark roast from my french press. It’s actually the perfect coffee maker if you live in an area prone to power failures like I do (crap, I hope no one realizes I was hooked on my french press long before I moved here). I also drink it black, but again, that doesn’t make me a coffee snob. I just got used to drinking it that way back when I was a student and I couldn’t afford luxuries like milk and sugar.

I’m glad we’ve established that I’m just a regular coffee drinking writer who would never be swayed by a story about a protagonist in search of the perfect cup of coffee. Or one where said protagonist would go so far as to plan the heist of super collider in search of the perfect cup of joe. Or, you know, one where the drinking of such a cup of java would vastly improve not only one’s life, but one’s entire outlook. I would never be able to empathize with characters or a story like that.

In short, this is a wonderful story. I hope you get to read it while drinking your favourite cup of coffee. { FWIW, I also love tea, but this story isn’t about tea, sorry, may I recommend John Chu’s Probabilitea to soothe your ruffled feathers? } Have a read of some of the other Clarkesworld stories while you’re there and get a feel for the editor’s taste. Wash your hands, write some stories, stay home if you can, and keep healthy. I want to read your stories one day.