I want to send an apology to my readers for missing the last Submit Your Stories Sunday without notice. I’ve been hit with a pretty severe stomach bug and I’m still recovering. With a bit of luck, Submit Your Stories Sunday will be back on track by this coming weekend. In the meantime, stay healthy and keep writing.
December IWSG and the post-NaNoWriMo haze
Hello and welcome to the December edition of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG), place where writers of every persuasion can meet, build community, and encourage each other. Click here to see a full list of the other writers participating in IWSG or maybe join up yourself.
How was your November? I participated in and won NaNoWriMo on day 30, completing the zero and first draft of my planned novella. Wahoo!
I’ve written two new stories this month off the cuff, which is my favourite side effect of “quieting the inner editor” for NaNoWriMo – I move out of my own way and just get to the business writing without the doubts. Every year this ability lasts a little longer than the year before, but never quite into spring. Yet.
As for my finished project, it’s resting. I’ll give it some distance before I hit the big edits. The post-NaNoWriMo haze is still upon me, an odd combination of exhaustion and creativity I’d call drunk if I’d had anything to drink. I have another novella I plotted out in early October before my pitch for the one I did write got accepted, so I’ve been reviewing my notes and getting excited about it again. Two short stories which have been simmering on my imagination’s back burner are getting shouty and if I don’t write them soon they’ll never let me rest.
Full speed into December before the holiday slump hits! Did you participate in NaNoWriMo this year? How’d it go? Do you manage to get much writing done in December?
Submit Your Stories Sunday: Silk and Steel
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 submitting to Cantina Publishing‘s Silk and Steel anthology and we’re reading Tim Pratt’s A Champion of Nigh-Space in Uncanny magazine.
Silk and Steel: an Adventure Anthology of Queer Ladies
Eligibility: original fiction from 3 000 – 7 000 words, featuring a weapon-wielding lady with a love interest in a lady with softer interests. Trans and ace women welcome.
Take note: if you’d like to delve deeper into what Cantina wants for this anthology, be sure to click over to the kickstarter that funded this anthology.
Submit by: February 22, 2020
Payment offered: $0.08 per word
Click here to go to original call for more details.
A story to ignite your writing mojo
I’m not going to lie, I searched for hours for a story that would match this theme and I am flabbergasted at how hard it was. I’m so glad they are making this anthology. The closest I could find is this wonderful story about a heterosexual couple in a similar romantic entanglement, featuring a warrior lady with a softer love interest; A Champion of Nigh-Space by Tim Pratt. You can read this one at Uncanny magazine by clicking here.
This story has a few mature moments, so have your pearls ready for clutching if you need them. This is an engaging story of a lover who discovers that their partners isn’t quite what they expected. In fact, after a small kidnapping by some baddies, it turns out girlfriend might be an intergalactic hero. Meh, what are gonna do?
This story, while often cheeky, really shines in the way Pratt tosses out the tropes and surprises the reader and their characters with what we may not have realized we wanted to see. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
Okay, time to get writing or… I don’t know, keel over from post-NaNoWriMo exhaustion. Take a nap, you wrote hard. Then get up and write a story to submit to Silk and Steel. You want to be in this one, trust me.
Happy writing!
Submit Your Stories Sunday: DSF
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 Daily Science Fiction‘s open and ongoing call for flash fiction and reading Clayton Hackett’s Illegal Entry from their recent archives.
Daily Science Fiction (DSF)
Eligibility: speculative stories from 100-1500 words
Take note: writers will have to create a login to DSF’s submission system, and can use it to check their story’s status. Likewise, it’s free to sign up to receive DSF’s weekday offerings mailed to your inbox to get a solid feel for what the editors like.
Submit by: Daily Science Fiction accepts submissions year round with the exception of December 24th through to January 2nd.
Payment: $0.08 per word
Click here to go to the original call for details.
A Story to ignite your writing mojo
This week we’re reading a story that came out on DSF a few weeks ago, Illegal Entry by Clayton Hackett. You can read it at Daily Science Fiction by clicking here. I chose this story because it stayed with for a long time after I first read it. In this story, Hackett muses on what would happen if the unnamed Superman/Clark Kent boychild crash landed in rural America today.
It’s an unflinching look at a refugee’s story dressed in the face of one of our greatest heroes. Hackett does play with the form of flash fiction in this piece, mixing fiction with non- fiction: a quietly clever nod to Clark Kent as reporter for the Daily Planet.
Can you write a piece as powerful in as few words? You’ll never know until you try.
Happy writing!
November movember snowvember
Hello friends, I am crawling out of my NaNoWriMo-induced hole to a sea of Movember moustaches plastered on my friends’ upper lips, a dusting of snow on the ground… and I think I’m going to climb back in, to be honest. I haven’t made my 50k yet but I’m on track and the biggest story challenges have been worked out, the fores all shadowed, plot devices oiled up and ready to run, and now is the time to write the fun stuff.
I had a particularly good year NaNoWriMo this year, including our rural/elsewhere group being assigned an ML for the first time, which did wonders to create a sense of community, our weekly write-ins taking place on discord (online). She is also a generous ML, sending us swag packets including stickers from our previous NaNoWriMo years – which made me squee with delight because stickers turn me into a twelve-year-old every time. She also tossed in some chocolate writing fuel, a notebook, sweet bookmarks, and a tiny bottle I’m to open in case of emergency (I haven’t yet). This was on her own dime, not NaNo’s, to which all I can say is thank you.
On a fun note, someone introduced me to 4thwords, a web-based fantasy writing game wherein you have to write so many words in an alotted time frame to defeat a monster and move on in your quest. If you like games, it could be a wonderful tool to build your daily writing habit. There is a fee of $4 per month, but also a thirty day free trail to see if it works for you. Several of my writing friends are using it now and loving it, so I’m going to try it out after NaNoWriMo is over. Click here to go to the site and see if it’s something that will get you writing too.
Gotta go, my wordcount is waiting!
Submit Your Stories Sunday: Experimentation
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 submitting stories to Apparition Lit’s call for experimental stories, and we’re reading both Intisar Khanani’s Three Reasons Why Your Experimental Planet Needs Humans published in Daily Science Fiction and Sarah Gailey’s STET as published in Fireside Magazine.
Apparition Lit: Experimentation
Eligibility: speculative stories from 1-5K words with a theme of experimentation
Take Note: this market has specific formatting rules, be sure to double-check before hitting send.
Payment: $0.03 per word
Submit by: this theme ends November 30th, 2019. Check the website below for upcoming themes and submission dates.
Click here to go to the original call for full details.
A story to ignite your writing mojo:
There’s multiple interpretations of the term “experimental” we need to consider for this call. On the literal side, we could submit a story that uses an experiment as the story’s titular focus, such as we find in Intisar Khanani’s Three Reasons Why Your Experimental Planet Needs Humans, published in Daily Science Fiction and available to read here.
Experimental could also be interpreted as experimental in form, such as we see in Sarah Gailey’s brilliant story, STET, published by Fireside Magazine which you can read by clicking here. TW for child loss.
Either one of these interpretations are worth submitting, or maybe you’d like to mash the two together into something experimental-squared. Have a read, see what you can come up with, and get submitting.
Happy writing!
Jennifer Shelby Award Eligibility for 2019
Cat Rambo, an SF writer I very much look up to, firmly believes writers should post their awards-eligible work, to let readers know what stories they are proudest of, and get those stories into more hands. You can read Cat’s post about it here. And while I agree with her, I’ll admit this does feel uncomfortable BUT I think if I post this year, all subsequent years will go a little easier. Here’s hoping.
The original story published this year I am proudest of is my fantasy short story The Night Janitor in the anthology UNLOCKING THE MAGIC, edited by Vivian Caethe.
“The magic likes you,” said Solomon.
Zain felt like he’d had the wind punched out of him. His eyes stung with gathering tears. “Where was all this magic when I needed it most?”
Solomon grunted gently. “What if this is when you need it most?”
Zain gulped at the air. Things like this did not happen, not to him, not to anyone. A moon could not be hauled from the sky, sunbeams weren’t stored in bottles, and boys did not meet old murderers with guns in the middle of the night and survive. They died. Oh god, they died, and he wanted so desperately to live.
Submit Your Stories Sunday: tdotSpec
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 answering a call for submissions from Canada’s new market tdotSpec and we’re reading Yoon Ha Lee’s The Second-Last Client, published in Lightspeed Magazine.
tdotSpec
Eligibility: “cool” speculative stories from 100 to 10 000 words, original or reprint (reprints have a reduced rate)
Take Note: submissions are accepted on Mondays only (that’s tomorrow!)
Submit by: new market with ongoing subs, but only on Mondays
Payment: $0.015 per word, Canadian funds (T-dot = Toronto)
Click here to go to the original call for details.
A story to ignite your writing mojo:
Our featured publisher is looking for, and I quote “cool $#!t” which is fairly open to interpretation. Send them the stories you’ll chuckle with your buddies over after work. But Jennifer, you say, my cool friends don’t want to talk about short stories. That’s because they haven’t THIS story yet. My response to this call for submissions is to share a story that I passed along to my friends this week, because I thought it was “cool $#!t.”
On that note, we’re reading Yoon Ha Lee’s The Second-Last Client, published in Lightspeed Magazine and available to read free of charge here. In some ways, this story wasn’t enough for me, and I want more from it, but I’m translating that into an earnest hope for more from this universe. This is the kind of story that takes something everyday and thwacks reality on the head, breaking open your imagination. In this case, we’ve got a pair of interdimensional… characters (?) who attend to the apocalypses of what they call Seedworlds rescuing (get this) characters from books. Us? We don’t get saved, we’re just here to seed the stories. If that’s not cool $#!t, I’m out. I sent this story to every short fiction fiend I know, and I posted it on my blog (ahem).
Last week’s story, Elly Bangs’ The Last Stellar Death Metal Opera, would fit this submission call as well. Between this week and last week, our cool levels should be pretty high, so now it’s up to you to translate that into a new story and get submitting.
Happy writing!
IWSG: November, NaNoWriMo, and being a rebel
Hello and welcome to the November issue of the Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG), a monthly meeting of writers to spill and share their tales of woe and ink. Click here to see a full list of participating blogs and find yourself an insecure, writing soul mate.
It’s November, which is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and writers everywhere have holed up in their favourite writing nooks with mugs of coffee and probably some chocolate. My bulletin board is crowded with plot points and sticky notes with reminders of tone, terrible sketches of the alien species featured in my story. I’m still in the early days of struggling, but I’ve been here before, so I know I’ve got to push through until I reach the elation of being fully immersed in my novel. Well, novella, as I’m something of a NaNoRebel this year (again). I write my zero drafts by hand, and then type them up, during which I completely rewrite because those zero drafts are awkward monsters just figuring themselves out. My goal this year is to complete the zero draft of my novella (25-35K) AND get that first draft rewrite complete.
Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? I’d love to hear about it.
This month, IWSG gave us the optional question “What is the strangest thing you’ve ever researched for a story?” When I was writing Toby’s Alicorn Adventure (Cricket, September 2018) I had to research if rhinoceroses had lips (they do). Never mind that my rhinoceros had wings, I felt the need to be biologically correct before I could make the beastie whistle. #facepalm BUT because some rhinos have differently shaped lips than others, the whole whistling thing turned into a ridiculous rabbit-hole of research that resulted in me cutting the whistle out in its entirety hours later which effected the story… not in the least. Ouch.
In writing news, my short story The Feline, the Witch, and the Universe has found a home in the upcoming issue of Space and Time Magazine.
Wishing every writer the grit to make it through NaNoWriMo, any other goals you have for the month, and beyond. Happy writing!
Submit Your Stories Sunday: Escape Pod. Also Death Metal. And Endangered Birds.
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 submitting to Escape Pod and reading (or listening to) Elly Bangs’ The Last Stellar Death Metal Opera from Escape Pod‘s episode 697. TW for suicide ideation.
Escape Pod
Eligibility: science fiction stories from 1 500 to 6 000 words
Take note: All submission must be anonymous. Escape Pod publishes story texts on their website and produces an audio version for their podcast. They buy first print and audio rights. Also reprints, please navigate to their website linked below for those details.
Submit by: Escape Pod will close submissions for the summer season starting June 2020
Payment: $0.08 per word, USD
Click here to go to the original call for full details.
A story to ignite your writing mojo:
This week we’re rocketing into Escape Pod‘s archives to read (or listen to) Elly Bang’s The Last Stellar Death Metal Opera. TW for suicide ideation. Click here to go read or listen now. Trust me, don’t skip this one, it’s a delight. I picked this story because it’s easy to connect with and a lot of fun, which is rare and wonderful, and because it asks deep questions about what humanity might be like if we became immortal. Who will our heroes be? Who will we fixate upon and where will this hero worship lead us? And more importantly, if we don’t save those octopodes from being flash-boiled in a supernovae, who will?
And now for something different:
I rarely share calls that do not offer payment to writers, but sometimes ones come up for charities that capture my attention, like this one. Back from the Brink is a UK conservation agency seeking sci-fi poetry and fiction up to 2k words with a focus on saving endangered species. Science fiction has long had the reputation for inspiring tech, and this collection is seeking to focus that reputation to solve a worldwide dilemma. Have any ideas? Again, this is not a paying market, but you might be able to do some good. Check out that call by clicking here.
Jennifer Shelby 