March 2024

As spring approaches, we continue to read through story submissions from January. Currently, we have 181 unread submissions (out of 245 received), 6 that have been read and liked by either Donald or Kristin, and 1 that has made it to our final round of consideration.

Please consider supporting us on Patreon! All our Patreon income goes toward paying our authors and artists, and it still only provides about half of what it costs us for fiction and artwork. You can sign up for as little as $1/month, but $3/month gets you early access to all our stories, and for $10/month you also get them in an e-book. (And even $1/month comes with access to our Discord server and the monthly chats we host there with our supporters and authors, as well as monthly Insider posts about writing and publishing.)

We're currently at $246/month, but if we reach our next fundraising goal of $275/month before we finish selecting stories from January, we'll be able to accept 8 stories instead of 7. So this is a great time to sign up!

Our most recent story was "Deymons", by returning Mysterion author Andy Dibble, in which an avid gamer who wonders if the Bible might hold the key to his last unwinnable boss fight finds both more and less than he had hoped for. Andy is also the author of "The Baptismal Status of Persons Wetted by the Sprinkler Deluge", if you're looking for more of his work after reading "Deymons".

Later this month (March 25th), we'll have Canadian author K.A. Wiggins's contemporary supernatural fantasy "The Patron Saint of Flatliners", about a young woman who died tragically but now has the power to help draw others back from the edge. It's not an easy story, but isn't unremittingly dark either.

In April, look out for "Her Neighbor's Keeper", a post-apocalyptic future fantasy from Jessica Snell. (While you're waiting, you can read Jessica's last story for us: "Vocation", which came out in the summer of 2021.)

For May, we're delighted to bring you "Profane Intervention", by Shawn Vincent Wilson, with a clever twist on a popular trope. A game store owner who made a deal with a demon got what he asked for, and now it's time to pay up! 

We aren't always on top of getting these monthly From the Editors columns out on schedule (i.e., the first Monday of each month), but our excuse this time is that Kristin was busy preparing to host her 50th birthday party last weekend. Kristin likes to celebrate her birthdays by inviting friends over, cooking way too much food, and then being too stressed and exhausted to socialize with anyone. But she's gotten better about having the food ready before guests arrive.

This was Kristin's first birthday party since 2019. She was going to have one in mid-March of 2020, but you can probably figure out why that didn't happen.

The cats have their 3rd birthday coming up in April.

Crocuses are blooming in our neighborhood, and even a few daffodils; which means that Kristin's enforced winter hiatus from gardening is coming to an end. We hope that you also have plenty to look forward to this spring (besides our exciting lineup of stories!), and want to extend our best wishes for a Happy Easter to others who celebrate it.

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