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

This week we’re submitting stories to the Atthis Arts Community of Magic Pens anthology and we’re reading Michaele Jordan’s Antique, published in Abyss & Apex.

Community of Magic Pens

Eligibility: stories up to 3 000 words on the theme of ‘magic pen,’ both the magic and the pen aspect up to interpretation. Editors prefer hopeful over grim stories.

Take Note: the editors have tweeted being disappointed that few science fiction entries have been submitted, so if you have an SF idea, run with it!

Submit by: January 15th, 2020 (yes, this is close, but there’s still time if you start right away)

Payment: $0.08 per word

Click here to go to the original call for details.

A Story to Ignite Your Imagination:

This week we’re reading Antique by Michaele Jordan and published in Abyss & Apex. You can read it online by clicking here. While this story has no magic pens, it does contain many magical masks, each one with its own ability, which I think will serve to get your imagination thinking in different directions for creating your own magical instrument. Follow Elsa on her global search for the mask she saw in the cabinet of a childhood, around the world, gathering what skills other masks grant her, to her final and important lesson.

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 stories to Flash Fiction Online and we’re reading Ephemera by Catherine George from the November 2019 issue.

Flash Fiction Online

Eligibility: flash stories from 500 to 1 000 words, original or reprint (reprints are paid at a lower rate)

Take note: authors may submit up to three stories at any given time. The editors also link to a list of hard sells on their submissions page.

Submit by: open to ongoing submissions

Payment: $0.08 per word

Click here to go to the original call for details.

A Story to Ignite Your Writing Mojo

Ephemera by Catherine George was published in Flash Fiction Online last November and is available to read here. I chose this story because it made me feel and remember-clearly-the painful details of break-ups. In Ephemera, the souvenirs of a relationship, those small things that are forever linked to that person, get up and leave, off to find that person who abandoned you, choosing them.

That’s a fine premise for a story, but George doesn’t leave it at that, moving us through realizations of the dark side of the relationship that Rose had ignored, made small, and put up with to stay with that person. We journey with Rose in her arc of newly dumped to her re-emerging sense of self, that precious, life-affirming remembering we all get which lets us know we are healing, we can navigate our life without that person after all. This is a lot to pack into a thousand words and George has done this well in so few.

What kind of journey can you pack into a thousand words? Do you know anything inner arc intimately enough? Give it a whirl, take a chance, see where you get.

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 Cossmass Infinities and we’re reading The Paper-Doll Golems by Gwynne Garfinkle.

Cossmass Infinities

Eligibility: original, speculative stories from 2 000 to 10 000 words

Take Note: while we’re reading a story freely available on their website (linked below), Cossmass Infinities’ ‘about’ section links to the editor’s former podcast of stories which will help give writers an idea of what they like.

Submit by: current opening closes January 12th, 2020

Payment Offered: $0.08 per word for original stories

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

A story to ignite your writing mojo:

Cossmass Infinities offers a single story on their website to give us an idea of what they like. This is story is The Paper-Doll Golems by Gwynne Garfinkle and it’s the kind of story that stays with you, though somewhat uncomfortably. You can read it for yourself at Cossmass Infinities‘ website by clicking here. TW for internalized racism.

The Paper-Doll Golems is the story of an invalid girl fighting against her own helplessness. Ruthie has no power in any corner of her life and slowly watches her idolized older sister drift away from her. Her brothers tell her wild tales of a clay Golem come to life and she uses this concept to bring her paper dolls to life, certain she will have a friend to break her endless loneliness. Instead, Ruthie’s internalized racism and the destructive power of her long-term helplessness threaten to steal what little she has left.

Happy subbing, writers! I wish you a happy holiday and hope that whatever you are celebrating this week, you manage to find some time to write.

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.

It’s been a tough week seeing more than one good market close but we’re still here. We’ll keep reading, we’ll keep writing, and most especially, we’ll remember to support our favourite magazines whenever we can. Sometimes that means a retweet or a share of a story we love, and often it means financial help when we can too. All of it counts.

This week we’re submitting to Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores (CRES) and we’re reading The King of Flame by Janie Brunson.

Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores

Eligibility: speculative fiction 1 000 words and up, geographical diversity encouraged.

Take Note: anonymous, limited feedback is available

Payment Offered: $0.06 per word for new, original fiction, $0.02 for reprints

Submission Opening: December 21st -28th

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

A story to ignite your writing mojo

This week we’re reading a story that echoes the endless fires in the news, whether it’s Australia, the U.S., or in the Amazon, fires have been raging. In King of Flame by Janie Brunson, the author finds deep, mythological reasons for these fires.

There’s a blur here in the line between psychosis and myth, and if this is something you suspect might trigger you, please read one of the other wonderful stories available on CRES’ website. Otherwise, click here to go read Brunson’s story.

I’ve always been drawn to stories like this, of myths borne of insurmountable foes, that human desire to take something terrible and inconceivable and give it a story and a face we can recognize.  This is where humans first came into stories and this is still one of strengths of our collective imagination. It is the ability to empathize with phenomena and gain the ability to move forward despite a very literal helplessness. We’re screwed, but maybe there’s magic. And that magic – well, that can mean everything, especially in a story.

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 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!