Stories We See Too Often

As we gear up to hopefully re-open to submissions (depending on how our Kickstarter does), we've been putting up some posts that might help authors who are interested in contributing to our next anthology decide what to write for us (or what to send us from the stories they've already written).

We had a post on some of the most common reasons we reject submissions, and another on why we're usually not too keen on retold Bible stories. Today we thought we'd mention some of the story concepts we see too often.

These aren't necessarily concepts we dislike; but given our limited space, we aren't going to publish more than a couple of stories on any given theme. So rather than say that you can't send us any of these, we'll just caution you that the landscape is much more competitive, and you might have a better chance if you send something more unique.    

• Stories about dead people who don't know they're dead
• Time travel stories about someone trying to change the crucifixion
• Stories about angels and demons that are all too human
• Angels in general (we did publish four stories with angels in Mysterion 1, but we received a lot more)
• Missionaries to aliens/natives/mythic creatures
• Vampires and zombies
• Gabriel annunciates to a modern woman
• St. Francis meets a mythological creature
• Someone famous meets a Lovecraftian monster
• Retelling a Bible story (see our earlier post on this)

Having an original concept isn't everything, but it isn't nothing, either. 

Keep following the Mysterion blog for a future post on what we don't see enough of. And, if you want to see a Mysterion 2, don't forget about our Kickstarter! It's running for another 9 days, until 8:11 am on Saturday, August 19th (Eastern Time; GMT - 5:00).

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Donald and Kristin at their wedding reception.

Donald and Kristin are the editors and publishers of Mysterion.