March 2026

Here in snowbound Massachusetts, we've been reading the January submissions and editing the March and April stories. As of today, 183 remained unread (out of 282 submissions received), four had been read by one of us but not the other, and four had advanced to our short list.

We also took a trip to even-more-snowbound Ontario to visit Kristin's sister. Highlights included Kristin falling multiple times on a cross-country ski excursion with her sister and niece (being a competent downhill skier did not help at all), the artisanal bakery near her sister's house, and a day trip to Toronto to visit an early twentieth century castle built by an eccentric financier of that era, and to eat at the restaurant Kristin's other niece cooks at.

If this tower looks familiar to you, it might be because Casa Loma is a popular filming location and has served as a stand-in for several settings of interest to speculative fiction fans, including Wayne Manor and Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. It's worth a visit, with multiple rooms displaying period Edwardian furniture and other household items, including multiple antique (to us) telephones and a then-state-of-the-art shower. (Only the man of the house had a shower, but he and his wife were unusual among employers of the time for having multiple indoor bathrooms for the servants, rather than requiring them to use the outhouse.) They also have several temporary exhibits.

Trip highlights for Donald included playing games on his Steam Deck and spending time with our niece's cat Chickadee, preferably at the same time.

Fortunately, we got home just in time for the Great Blizzard of 2026, featuring even more snow. (If you're questioning the "fortunately", by the time we got to our gate in Toronto about a third of the remaining Air Canada flights to the US had been canceled, including everything to New York City and Philadelphia. But Boston didn't get hit by the storm until around midnight.)

Kristin is here pictured in front of the wall of snow at the end of our driveway. (We share the driveway with a neighbor who has a plow attachment on his truck.) It's not as high now, as we've entered spring thaw season. While that isn't great for our upcoming mid-March ski trip to Vermont, we do look forward to being able to see our lawn once again (not to mention Kristin's strawberry patch).

PATREON

We're very close to our next funding target, so it's a good time to subscribe! Right now, we're at $431/month. If we can reach $450/month, and stay there until we've selected stories from the January submission window, we'll be able to accept nine stories instead of eight.

We have several subscription levels available, from as low as $1/month all the way up to $25/month. A $3/month subscription gets you early access to all the stories we publish; or for $10/month, you get an eBook of the next two months' worth of stories every other month. Those two are the ones that most closely resemble a traditional magazine subscription. But even at $1/month, you can join our monthly Discord hangout for our authors and Patreon subscribers, and receive regular Insider posts about our life in publishing (plus book and videogame reviews that include the ones we didn't like as well as the ones we did).

You can also buy the individual eBook issues from our Patreon page, if you'd like to support us or want the issue featuring a particular author, but aren't interested in a monthly subscription. Look for the posts  titled with a date range (e.g., January-February 2026) and the "For Sale" link. They're $3 each, and the only catch is that we don't make them available until after all the stories have been published. The only way to get them beforehand is to sign up for our Patreon at $10/month! (They're also available on Amazon for $2.99 each.)

COMING SOON!

Our March and April stories are all about death and the afterlife.

In "Grackles", by K. Ferngall, a historian researching the lives of two purportedly magical vagabonds learns that their story is older and stranger than he could have imagined.

Next, Jared Oliver Adams returns to Mysterion with "The Skywhale in the Garden", in which a teenager facing an untimely death isn't sure he's ready for paradise. And while you wait, you can check out Jared's last story for us, "The Sojourn of Pope Packard the Third".

Finally, in Tao Yuan's short fiction debut, "Sonata", a musician convinced after death of the reality of  Glory has to communicate that reality to the one living person he's never been able to communicate anything to: his daughter.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you'll come back on March 23rd for K. Ferngall's story!

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