New submission window, new pay rate, new stories
Mysterion is now open to submissions until the end of July! Send us your Christian-themed science fiction, fantasy, and horror. We consider stories of up to 9000 words.
What do we mean by Christian-themed? Find out here.
We're buying stories to publish between January and July of next year, so keep that in mind if you have a holiday-themed story you'd like to submit. Anything Halloween- or Christmas-related should be submitted in January. (We do get quite a few Christmas stories and can really only accept one or two each year, so your odds are a lot better with other holidays.)
We especially want to see more science fiction, horror, humor, and stories by and/or about Christians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We do welcome submissions from authors of all backgrounds and perspectives, Christian or otherwise. Just make sure that if you're writing about a group you've never belonged to, that you've done your research!
We're excited to announce that we are able to raise our pay rate for original, unpublished fiction to 8 cents per word (4 cents per word for reprints), in keeping with the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America professional short fiction rate increase. This will be in effect starting with stories sent in during the July submission window.
Being able to raise our rates is entirely due to the generous pledges of our Patreon supporters. The monthly support we receive through our Patreon page all goes toward paying authors and artists. So if you like what you've been reading here in our webzine, please consider adding your own monthly pledge! Patrons can contribute as little as $1/month, and every dollar we receive really helps. There are a number of rewards available for supporters at various levels, including early access to all the stories we publish, and opportunities to chat with the Mysterion editors via our upcoming Discord server.
The next Patreon goal we're aiming for is to be able to publish an additional two stories each year; so we would have two stories instead of one every April and October as well as January and July. Only $53/month to go before we reach that target!
We're also ready to announce the July and August fiction lineup. Over the next couple of months, we will be publishing:
July 8 - "Whoever Is Not For Us", G. Scott Huggins
July 22 - "Saint Denis and the Pot of Basil", Catherine Heloise
August 26 - "The Orderly", Elise Forier Edie
Scott's story "This Far Gethsemane" appeared in the Mysterion anthology, and we're thrilled to welcome him back to Mysterion with another science fiction tale about human and alien cultures colliding.
Donald and Kristin will be at a couple of science fiction conventions in July. We aren't on any official programming, but feel free to let us know if you'll be at either or both and would like to meet up. At Realm Makers, there will be copies of the Mysterion anthology available for $12 (even cheaper than you can get it at Amazon!).
Readercon, July 11-14, Quincy, MA
Realm Makers, July 18-20, St. Louis, MO
(Yes, we have in fact noticed that this is pretty much back-to-back without much opportunity to recover from one before heading off to the next. Fortunately, Readercon is basically a 5-minute drive from our house, which should make things a bit easier.)
It's going to be a busy summer for us, as Kristin also has family visiting from out of town the week after we return from Realm Makers. Not only that, but we also need to get all the stories we accepted during the January submission window edited and contracted before the SFWA professional rate goes up September 1st, to ensure that the 6 cents per word that was in effect then will still qualify.
Which means that you should expect a longer-than-usual response time if you send us a story in July. According to The Submission Grinder at Diabolical Plots (a great way to track your submissions if you're an author, by the way), our average response times for recent submission windows have been 44 days for rejections and 98 days for acceptances (though keep in mind that the average time for rejections is affected by the fact that stories held until the final round of consideration have the same longer response time as acceptances). (Also keep in mind that the population using Submission Grinder skews more toward published authors than our slush pile does; they list our average acceptance rate as 9-10%, but it's actually down below 5%.)
Looking forward to seeing what people send us this month, and to hopefully meet some of you at conventions this summer!
Want to help us publish more stories? Support Mysterion on Patreon!
What do we mean by Christian-themed? Find out here.
We're buying stories to publish between January and July of next year, so keep that in mind if you have a holiday-themed story you'd like to submit. Anything Halloween- or Christmas-related should be submitted in January. (We do get quite a few Christmas stories and can really only accept one or two each year, so your odds are a lot better with other holidays.)
We especially want to see more science fiction, horror, humor, and stories by and/or about Christians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We do welcome submissions from authors of all backgrounds and perspectives, Christian or otherwise. Just make sure that if you're writing about a group you've never belonged to, that you've done your research!
We're excited to announce that we are able to raise our pay rate for original, unpublished fiction to 8 cents per word (4 cents per word for reprints), in keeping with the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America professional short fiction rate increase. This will be in effect starting with stories sent in during the July submission window.
Being able to raise our rates is entirely due to the generous pledges of our Patreon supporters. The monthly support we receive through our Patreon page all goes toward paying authors and artists. So if you like what you've been reading here in our webzine, please consider adding your own monthly pledge! Patrons can contribute as little as $1/month, and every dollar we receive really helps. There are a number of rewards available for supporters at various levels, including early access to all the stories we publish, and opportunities to chat with the Mysterion editors via our upcoming Discord server.
The next Patreon goal we're aiming for is to be able to publish an additional two stories each year; so we would have two stories instead of one every April and October as well as January and July. Only $53/month to go before we reach that target!
We're also ready to announce the July and August fiction lineup. Over the next couple of months, we will be publishing:
July 8 - "Whoever Is Not For Us", G. Scott Huggins
July 22 - "Saint Denis and the Pot of Basil", Catherine Heloise
August 26 - "The Orderly", Elise Forier Edie
Scott's story "This Far Gethsemane" appeared in the Mysterion anthology, and we're thrilled to welcome him back to Mysterion with another science fiction tale about human and alien cultures colliding.
Donald and Kristin will be at a couple of science fiction conventions in July. We aren't on any official programming, but feel free to let us know if you'll be at either or both and would like to meet up. At Realm Makers, there will be copies of the Mysterion anthology available for $12 (even cheaper than you can get it at Amazon!).
Readercon, July 11-14, Quincy, MA
Realm Makers, July 18-20, St. Louis, MO
(Yes, we have in fact noticed that this is pretty much back-to-back without much opportunity to recover from one before heading off to the next. Fortunately, Readercon is basically a 5-minute drive from our house, which should make things a bit easier.)
It's going to be a busy summer for us, as Kristin also has family visiting from out of town the week after we return from Realm Makers. Not only that, but we also need to get all the stories we accepted during the January submission window edited and contracted before the SFWA professional rate goes up September 1st, to ensure that the 6 cents per word that was in effect then will still qualify.
Which means that you should expect a longer-than-usual response time if you send us a story in July. According to The Submission Grinder at Diabolical Plots (a great way to track your submissions if you're an author, by the way), our average response times for recent submission windows have been 44 days for rejections and 98 days for acceptances (though keep in mind that the average time for rejections is affected by the fact that stories held until the final round of consideration have the same longer response time as acceptances). (Also keep in mind that the population using Submission Grinder skews more toward published authors than our slush pile does; they list our average acceptance rate as 9-10%, but it's actually down below 5%.)
Looking forward to seeing what people send us this month, and to hopefully meet some of you at conventions this summer!
Want to help us publish more stories? Support Mysterion on Patreon!
Dear Donald and Kristin, Please could you tell me, will you read submissions in the order they come in or will you stockpile them and then read them in random order after July? I have something for submission that I have revised many times, but the perfectionist in me will always edit it some more to submit at the last possible moment... Many thanks, Luke
ReplyDeleteHi Luke,
ReplyDeleteWhile we read the stories mostly in order, and start rejecting stories right away, it's not quite so linear as that. Read this post for more information: https://www.mysteriononline.com/2018/11/the-queue-and-you.html
The main takeaways are that it may take a while to get to a story, and we can't say how quickly it will be read, we don't decide on which stories to publish until the very end, and finally, you cannot resubmit a story we reject unless we specifically request a rewrite.
So it is safe to wait until the end of the month to send in your story, and it will still receive the same consideration as the stories submitted first. However, if you do forget and miss the deadline, expect us to be inflexible and make you wait until January to send it in. And if you send in a version that you later decide you weren't happy with, and we reject it, you won't get a second chance with that story.
ReplyDeleteThank you both, that is very helpful. I knew I remembered reading about your submission queue somewhere but I couldn't locate the post. I think I will choose doing even more revisions across July over having my story read slightly earlier, so that my story is as good as it can be. Your system can expect it some time in late July. It will definitely arrive by the end of July because at some point enough is enough and it needs to get off my desk one day... Many thanks.
ReplyDelete