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 Arsenika and reading J. M. Melican’s The Story of Your Name from their archives.

Arsenika

Eligibility: unpublished, original speculative fiction only. Writers may submit two flash stories (up to 1 000 words each) AND five poems (line count limit not given)

Take Note: writers of fiction may send up to two pieces for this call

Submit by: this market is already open and closes April 30th, 2020

Payment offered: flat rate of $60 USD for fiction

Click here to go to the original call for full details.

A story to ignite your writing mojo:

This is the kind of story that truly thrills me, the kind that quickens my pulse, that makes my heart give a little gasp of delight, and my eyes never dare to leave the page/screen for fear of breaking the magic. This is The Stories of Your Name by J. M. Melican – click here and have a read, you won’t regret it.

The Stories of Your Name begins with the romantic imaginings of a lover that travel beyond the expected, wooing and seducing as much as the imagined lover. Or perhaps it is the soft possibility that we are eavesdropping, or playing the lover ourselves. This lover takes us to distant worlds and unknown cultures, spinning tales of the elusive name, and all the while drawing us again. It’s a haunting, wonderful little piece.

This is the kind of story Arsenika seeks to publish; stirring, original, untamed, and written with an elegant prose. This might be a trifle intimidating to new writers, but you’ll never know if you don’t try and trying is how you get good at it.

(editorial note – I have reviewed this story, so if it feels a bit familiar, it’s not just you, but this story still takes my breath away and I want to share it with as many people as I can.)

Stay well writers, wash your hands, stay home, be safe, I love you.