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 Translunar Traveler’s Lounge and we’re reading Catherine George’s Calling on Behalf of the Dark Lord.

Translunar Traveler’s Lounge

Eligibility: fun, speculative stories up to 5,000 words

Take Note: stories should offer hope rather than bleak futures

Submit By: this opening closes April 15th, 2020

Payment offered: $0.03 per word, with a minimum of $20

Click here to go to the original call for details.

A Story to Ignite Your Writing Mojo

This week we’re reading Catherine George’s Calling on Behalf of the Dark Lord from Translunar Traveler’s Lounge’s current issue. Click here to go read that now.

I like this story because it catches the rare fun aspect TTL is looking for, and it gives us something new to consider at the end. The protagonist has been listlessly going from dead end job to dead end job and finally ends up at the dreaded call center. Except in this call center, she’s a demonic telemarketer hunting up followers for the Dark Lord. It’s a far cry from the partial year I spent in the hell of call center work. People don’t yell at you when you’re calling direct from Satan, apparently. The job seems to suit our protagonist, she gets better and better at it and it starts to change her… drastically. You’ll have to read to find out the rest, I’m afraid.

Stay safe everyone, wash your hands, and please take care of your mental health. If you feel like everything is too much, that you’re teetering on the brink of a breakdown, take a step back. If getting a rejection on top of this pandemic is going to be too much, then don’t submit right now. Rejections can hurt on good days and these are not good days. We are all handling this differently, so please tend to your creativity. Writing can be an excellent escape and that is the only purpose it needs to serve until we are on the other side of this.

Be well.