Jennifer Shelby

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 Hybrid‘s Future//Tense: Gender anthology and we’re reading Merc Fenn Wolfmoor’s The Frequency of Compassion in Uncanny.

Hybrid’s Future//Tense Gender anthology

Eligibility: the Future//Tense anthologies focus on identity in the future, this one specifically on gender identity. 5K to 15K words preferred.

Take Note: Hybrid has no restrictions on gender or orientation. #ownvoices encouraged.

Submit By: open to submissions until April 1st, 2020

Payment Offered: $0.025 per word, to a maximum of $100

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

A Story to Ignite Your Writing Mojo

For this call we’re reading one of my favorite short stories, The Frequency of Compassion by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor. You can read this story online at Uncanny magazine by clicking here.

The Frequency of Compassion follows an autistic, agender protagonist, Kaityn Falk, into deep space, accompanied by their AI, Horatio. Extremely introverted, their solo expeditions suit Kaityn well, though their memories follow and haunt them in the darkness. When Kaityn and Horatio stumble into an unusual distress call, Kaityn’s gender identity is what gives them the tools to understand and survive First Contact.

What I like about this story is it’s emphasis on compassion and that it tackles the question of gender representation head-on within the story. In a flashback we hear Kaityn’s ex argue that Kaityn’s gender identity would only confuse any alien species they might encounter in deep space. The story itself acts as rebuttal to the ex’s argument.

Happy writing!

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 subbing to Cast of Wonder’s Halloween special and we’re reading Natalia Theodoridou’s Of Pumpkin Soup and other Demons and Austin H. Gilkeson’s The Ghost of Granny Goneril from Cast of Wonder’s 2014 Halloween special.

Cast of Wonders: Halloween

Eligibility: speculative stories written for a young adult audience up to 6, 000 words, on theme of Halloween.

Take Note: writers can check out the Cast Wonders’ staff wish list by checking #ShortStoryWL on twitter

Submit by: this opening runs from March 1st to March 7th, 2020

Payment Offered: $0.08 per word

Click here to go to the original call for details.

A Story (or two) to Ignite Your Writing Mojo

This week we’re heading back to CoW’s2014 Halloween special, where not one, but two eerie and delightful tales await: Natalia Theodoridou’s Of Pumpkin Soup and other Demons and Austin H. Gilkeson’s The Ghost of Granny Goneril. Click here to go read or listen to those now.

Theodoridou’s story captures the eerie essence of Halloween, the thinned veil and the who-knows-what-may-come-knocking quality to the year’s spookiest night. We don’t get all the answer, either, leaving us to wonder who that boy’s father might be, and how a storm could have a child of it’s own, after all. It’s eeriness, unexplained, stays with the reader like a good ghost story should. Just enough reality to settle into your bones and too much supernatural mystery to probe too deeply for the truth.

Gilkeson’s story, coming second, is lighter fare, capturing the fun of Halloween horrors. That opening line “Dead grandparents give the worst candy” sets the tone right away. This will be more fun than creepy, it promises. And it delivers. This story is cheeky, delightful, and solidly YA. It hits many notes of a teenager’s life and shifting experience of Halloween, while tying in more traditional Halloween tropes and staples in an engaging way.

What kind of Halloween story do you want to write? Will yours be a trick or a treat?

Happy writing!

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 sub to Unidentified Funny Objects in April, and we’re reading Alex Shvartsman’s You Bet.

Unidentified Funny Objects

Eligibility: humourous speculative fiction stories from 500-5,000 words.

Take Note: as markets go, this one’s tough. UFO has published big names like Neil Gaiman and George R. R. Martin. Keep that in mind when you sub, send your best, and don’t take it personally if your story is rejected. If you are able to read the forewords written by editor Alex Shvartsman of any of the previous UFOs, he happily drops a dozen hints of what he likes and what he’s looking for. Maybe amazon’s ‘look inside’ feature will help you read those if your local library is short on copies.

Submit by: UFO is open from April 1st to April 30th, 2020.  We have time to write and polish and polish again. Let’s do this.

Payment offered: $0.10 per word plus contributor’s copy

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

A Story to Ignite Your Writing Mojo

UFO’s website offers no less than seven free stories to give you a feel for their preferred humour – click here to go directly there. If you’re financially able to obtain a copy of the past volumes or lucky enough to have a library that stocks them, one of my favourite UFO stories is Chad vs the Rebel Alliance by Shane Halbach in UFO7. Yes, I am a Star Wars fan, and yes, this story carefully skirts any copyright infringement, but between us it’s Stormtroopers as dude-bros and it is DELIGHTFUL.

However, since most of us are starving writers and our libraries may not carry UFO7 (but you should ask them to), we’re going to dip inside Alex Shvartsman’s You Bet. Click here to go read that now.

Shvartsman is the editor of the UFO series and wrote this story as a Kickstarter campaign prize. I think it’s a good choice for our purposes because it shows us what the editor himself finds funny. Rather than puns, cleverness is the way to go if you want to get into UFO. In You Bet, Shvartsman introduces us to poker game where the players are tropes. They’re playing for their own relevance, and they only leave the game when they disappear from the larger culture. The story’s humour revolves around the trope characters themselves and how they see the world, so while it makes us chuckle, the jokes also serve to deepen its own themes. That’s impressive.

Now it’s your turn. How do you make your friends and coworkers laugh? Have you tried translating that to paper before? You’ve got nothing to lose but a bit of ink and a little time. Let’s get writing.

Happy writing!

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!

Happy writing!

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 Abyss & Apex’s upcoming opening and we’re reading Joy Kennedy-O’Neill’s The Roots That Roam from A&A’s 2019 archives.

Abyss and Apex

Eligibility: speculative, character-driven stories up to 10K words

Take Note: flash submissions must be copied into the submission email, not attached

Submit by: this opening is the first week of February, 2020

Payment: $0.06 per word to a maximum of $75.00 USD

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

A Story to Ignite Your Writing Mojo

This week we’re dipping in Abyss & Apex‘s archives to read The Roots That Roam by Joy Kennedy-O’Neill. This will help give us an idea of what the editors like. Click here to go read The Roots That Roam now.

This is a tiny story that sandwiches it’s own grimness between two slices of wonder. Trees are walking around, but the civilization’s gone and our heroine is trapped by dint of her uterus, but maybe there’s a chance for freedom yet, if she takes it. Imagining her future is left to the reader to fill in after the story closes, which, in cases like this, reads like a gift.

Good luck to everyone submitting next week, and be sure to let us know when one of your stories makes it in.

Happy writing!