July 2026

It's July, which means we're open to fiction submissions. As of Friday morning, we had received 136 stories.

We will consider any short fiction up to 10,000 words that includes speculative elements (science fiction, fantasy, and/or supernatural), and that engages with Christian ideas or themes. We'd especially like to see more pure science fiction that does not include overt fantastical or supernatural elements; and that also wasn't obviously inspired by Star Trek, The Expanse, Interstellar, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, etc. We're also very interested in stories that are not set in the United States, by authors who are from or have lived in the places they're writing about.

Kristin and Donald spent the last weekend in June at LibertyCon in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This was our second year attending, and our first year participating in programming--we were on two panels, and spent some time in the Author Alley trying to sell our books. Unfortunately, Kristin had to miss Friday night karaoke this year, as we were on a panel that overlapped with the first hour (it went until after 2:00 a.m., apparently (karaoke, not our panel)); also she was getting over a cold and needed to not stay up too late.

LibertyCon is a fun convention with a politically diverse and welcoming crowd and great room parties. The focus tends to be military SF, hard SF, STEM (they have a strong science track, especially in space exploration), and adventure/pulp fiction, so it might not be the best audience for short fiction anthologies that lean more toward fantasy than SF (we're still trying to find our audience). It's also not the easiest for us to to get to (no non-stop flights and Google Maps says sixteen hours to drive). But highly recommended, especially if you're into what they're into, and/or live closer to Chattanooga then we do! You need to act quickly, though; attendance is limited to 1000 and they sell out the first week they go on sale (sometimes by the end of the first day; which, this year, is July 18th).

Earlier in June, Kristin had two different sets of friends visiting from out of town, though only the second set stayed at our house. This meant that she ended up doing a lot of Massachusetts sightseeing, visiting Rockport, Salem, and Plymouth (where the Mayflower brought the Pilgrims, and where the Mayflower II, a seaworthy replica of the original, is docked); and eating a lot of lobster.

The cages in the left foreground are lobster traps.

If you're ever in Salem, the Real Pirates Salem museum is surprisingly good, given the name and kitschy branding. It's built around the wreck of a specific pirate vessel that sank in a nor'easter in 1717 and was recovered in 1984, and includes artifacts found on the ship and exhibits about the archaeology involved.

It also includes mural illustrations by Gregory Manchess, whose work we've seen in the art shows of many an SF convention. Interestingly, his bio doesn't even mention his speculative fiction art; a reminder that what creative people do in our field may be only a small part of their overall body of work.

COMING SOON

For our July story, "We Must Love as God Loves", Rajiv Moté introduces us to a nameless village filled with old secrets, and a loving father who can't let himself think too much about what might have happened in the past.

Then, in August, we're thrilled to be bringing you new author Kurtis Hessel's first fiction publication, "Above the Vaulted Sky". Three brothers who've come together to bury their father end up watching satellites explode overhead, without warning, and each has a different explanation for what it means. This is one of our few "true SF" stories, without any fantastical or supernatural elements, so be sure to check it out if you want to see an example of what we're looking for in that genre (but don't get hung up on the "set in the southwestern US" part, because we're not talking about setting here).

We usually have two stories in July, but had to delay the other due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control. It will be appearing later this year, though! Instead of publishing two stories in July and two in October, we'll now be publishing two in September and two in November (and one in each of the other months).

Subscribe to our Patreon to read the July story now! An email subscription, where we send you each story at the start of the month in which it will be published, is only $3/month; for $10/month you get the bimonthly ePub and PDF editions of the magazine as well.

NOW ON PAYPAL!

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CONVENTIONS

Kristin will be at Readercon this weekend (only on Saturday), though not in any official capacity. But you might see her wandering around.

Donald and Kristin both plan to be at Capclave in the DC area, first weekend in October. For next year, we're considering Boskone, Readercon, the Realm Makers Expo in St. Louis (July 23rd-24th) and Worldcon in Montréal; though we haven't actually registered for anything in 2027 yet.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you'll come back on July 27th to read Rajiv Moté's story!

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