December 2025

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers! We also finished selecting stories from our July submission window, a day ahead of our self-imposed deadline of November 30th. If you sent us a story and haven't heard from us, you should query ASAP (after checking your email inbox and junk folders, of course).

Since our monthly Patreon income has gone back up, we were able to accept seven stories. This means we'll be publishing one on the 4th Monday of each month, plus bonus stories on the 2nd Monday for each of January and April. A very generous subscriber has temporarily increased their monthly contribution, and we're committed to always doing more for our readers and authors when that happens.

It was a good time to have some additional funding, it turns out, because July was a record month for us. We received 304 submissions. Of those, eighteen ended up on our short list of stories that we both really liked and that fit our submission guidelines, and from those eighteen, we selected the final seven.

We would say that we always reject a surprisingly high number of submissions for not following our guidelines; but really, it wouldn't surprise anyone who's ever edited or read submissions for a magazine. It doesn't matter how amazing your writing is--if it's not actually a short story, or it's longer than 9000 words, or it has no fantasy, science fiction, or supernatural content, or has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity, your odds of acceptance here are not good. 

We are going to be open to submissions again on January 1st, as always. Because of how our submission periods align with our publication schedule, January is the month to submit Christmas stories! We don't want to see them in July, after we've already set our publication calendar for the rest of the year. If you do send us a Christmas story in July, and we love it so much that we don't want to take the chance of missing out on publishing it, the best you can hope for is that we'll accept it for publication in December a year later. But we'll probably just reject it and tell you to try again in January.

Speaking of Christmas: for December this year, we have a Christmas horror story from new short fiction author Wes Berger. "Stray" goes to some very dark places, as a divorced father's reluctant decision to invite an apparently homeless woman into his apartment during a winter storm threatens to derail celebrating Christmas with his son. Although this is Berger's first short fiction publication, he's not exactly new to writing, with an established track record as a playwright and stage director in his home city of Toronto. You'll be able to read "Stray" here on December 22nd--or, if you subscribe to our Patreon at $3+/month, you can read it right now!

FELINE (AND MURINE) UPDATE

Mice live behind our trash compactor, sustained by food scraps from the kitchen trash. We aren't sure how to eliminate their hiding spot without remodeling our kitchen, and we aren't prepared to poison them for fear of harming our cats.

Marie knows they're there.

We have seen fewer mouse droppings around the bottom edge since Kristin started liberally sprinkling any food waste that goes in with cayenne pepper. Like most mammals, mice dislike spicy food. But now we're at a impasse. Maybe we can pull the compactor out temporarily without tearing apart our cabinets? Now that Kristin's an expert in home improvement?

Each year as temperatures fall, Maxwell rediscovers his fleece-lined tent in the bay window as a cozy spot for a nap:

Wishing all of you (and your four-legged friends) a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Don't forget that we have books available if you need a last-minute gift idea. 

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to sharing all the great stories we just accepted!

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