Independence Day 2022

Happy belated Fourth of July! Celebrate with a belated blog post.

Watching illegal fireworks on Wollaston Beach in Quincy, MA. Not quite the Esplanade, but what the impromptu show lacked in professionalism, it made up for in exuberance. 

We do apologize for the delay, but between having family visit us, the holiday, Donald being out of town and Kristin being sick, it took a while to get this out the door.

In other news, we are now (also belatedly) open to submissions until the end of July. If you have a science fiction, fantasy, or horror story that engages with Christianity and is less than 9,000 words long, please see our submission guidelines on how to submit stories through our submission system. We don't accept fiction submissions via email.

We often receive emails and contact form submissions from authors describing a story they've written, and asking us whether we'd be interested. In general, if this submission doesn't meet our guidelines, then the answer is no. We do not publish novels, even serially. We're not going to risk our SFWA qualifying market rating so you can sell us your longer than our maximum wordcount story at a discount. We don't publish poetry or screenplays or plays or cartoons.

However, if it is a story that matches our guidelines, even loosely in terms of genre and Christian themes, then we're interested. But we can't tell you how interested, because we don't know until we see it. So much of what makes a story work is in the execution, not the ideas. We've seen clever ideas fall flat, and prosaic ones soar. So send us your story. We'll let you know whether it sings for us once we read it.

Recent and Upcoming Stories

If you haven't already, be sure to read Andrew Hansen's story, "Grandad and the Lockbox." Ollie always knew the Lockbox was magic, but he wasn't prepared to be responsible for the world he glimpsed within. 

The first few stories we've selected from the January submission period will be appearing on the website in July and August.

• Coming July 11th - "Mark the Days" by Kat Heckenbach. Originally published in Volume 2 of the Mythic Orbits anthology series. Denver can live out his days in any order simply by placing an X on the calendar on his chosen day. But what happened on May 14th that fills him with sufficient dread to have left that day unmarked?
• Coming July 25th - "The Gift to be Healed" by Annaliese Lemmon. Originally published in the author's collection Drops of Pain and Promise: a collection of Latter-day Saint short stories. A sequel to "The Gift of Tongues", published in Mysterion earlier this year. A struggling young mother who was once allowed to exchange a magical gift for any other wants a chance to choose differently.
• Coming August 22nd - "The Tithe" by Frederick Gero Heimbach. Sister has sacrificed more for her God than anyone she knows; surely the God will not punish her now for holding back a tithe from this last, terrible offering?

Wondering why we published two stories in July? Want to read all these stories right away? Our Patreon is the answer to both those questions. More support allows us to publish more stories, and our supporters of $3+/month can read both of this month's stories right now. Supporters of $10 or more can read all three of the upcoming stories in special e-zine form.

Cats and Visitors

Right now, Kristin's brother and his family are visiting us. Donald got to see them this weekend, but had to leave for New York for work on Monday. One thing we like about our house is that it's big enough to have guests, but a family of five in addition to ourselves is enough to make things feel pretty crowded.

Marie getting into hamburger buns Kristin had bought for a meal she was planning for her brother's family. While Kristin was showing Donald the partially eaten buns, Marie got the other package of buns from the grocery bag. 

At least, one of our cats certainly thinks so. Marie's always looking for more people to pay attention to her, but Maxwell is feeling a lot less happy about all the visitors, especially the three boys. We've found him hiding under our bed more than once, which is unusual for him. (We found them both hiding under the bed when one of the boys started practicing the saxophone.) Maxwell's more of a one-on-one cat.

Maxwell resting in Kristin's lap.

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