May updates

Story Update

We're pleased to announce our next two stories, coming out in May and June.

• May 27: "Meeting at the Crossroads" by Joel Limmer
• June 24: "The Mark" by Forrest Brazeal

Both these science fiction stories (far and near, respectively) ask deep questions about faith and fear. And while you can wait two months for them to come out, one or both of them are available now if you support us on Patreon.

Patreon Update

As we haven't been shy about saying, we're engaged in a bit of a push right now for Patreon, which helps to support this site and pay our authors. Right now, we're especially eager to reach the $200/month mark, which will let us increase our pay rate to 8 cents per word, so that we can keep up with SFWA's definition of professional rates. Our Patreon campaign pledges go up and down as new people pledge and others drop off or reduce their pledges (not that we begrudge anyone deciding to reduce their giving—no one owes us anything, and we realize that changing circumstances sometimes require belt-tightening, as all those pledges and subscriptions can really add up). Right now we're closer to our goal than we've ever been, at $192/month. With just another $8 in pledges, we could meet it. Since Patreon has to get its cut, this adds up to one $10/month pledge, which comes with an e-zine of the upcoming stories for the next two months (including instant access to both stories mentioned above), or three $3/month pledges, which will get three patrons access to new stories at the first of each month (meaning you can read the May story right now).

So if you appreciate what we do and want us to be able to keep paying professional rates for stories, please support us on Patreon!

Submissions Update

Speaking of stories, we are finally finishing up the selection of stories from the January submission period. Which is good, as we need to get them all edited and contracted before the new professional rates go into effect September 1st. We've now finished reading all the stories, and are down to thirty-one finalists. After we pick the seven or eight out of these that we want to publish, we'll be ready to go.

Special thanks to Mysterion first reader David McDonald, for helping us get through the backlog of submissions right at the end! All our first readers are volunteers, graciously donating their efforts to help us reduce our response times. They're also writers, so if you want to thank them, a great way to do that would be to read their work. You can find out more about the Mysterion team here.

Non-Mysterion Publishing News

Donald and Kristin are fiction writers too; and every so often, another magazine decides to publish one of our stories. Donald has a story in the latest issue of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, and you can read a preview right here. In "Domus Lemurum", Roman patrician Septimus runs a profitable business buying haunted houses at bargain prices, and re-selling them once the troublesome spirits have been banished. But some evil runs too deep to be cast out so easily...

If you've ever been curious about what the Mysterion editors do when they're not working on the magazine (besides gardening and playing video games), now's a great chance to find out!

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Did we mention that you should support Mysterion on Patreon?