January 2025
Happy New Year! We are now open to fiction submissions until the end of January. Although January is when you should usually send us Christmas stories, our Christmas story inventory for 2025 is full. If you send us one we like, we will almost certainly tell you to resubmit it in January 2026.
Authors sometimes query to tell us about their idea for a story and ask whether it's something we'd be interested in. But, as long as it's a speculative fiction concept that has something to do with Christianity, we really can't answer that question without seeing the actual story. So much of whether a story works for any particular editor is the execution of the idea, not the idea itself.
We're open to art submissions year round, so if you're an artist, feel free to send us a link to your portfolio at any time. You should receive an automated response acknowledging your submission, and then we'll reach out to you if we see anything in your portfolio that we're interested in licensing. We only use 3-5 images each year, so this might take several months (or years) even if we really like your work. However, we do look at every portfolio that we receive, as long as our guidelines are followed.
CONVENTION APPEARANCES
We aren't on any programming at Arisia this year, as the window for panel signups fell squarely in the middle of our trip to Japan, and we were struggling to stay awake long enough in the evening to edit the November and December stories, let alone read through all the panel descriptions and figure out which we might be interested in. We may or may not make it to the convention at some point over the weekend, but it is a fun experience with a lot going on, and we do recommend it, as well as Boskone and Readercon, if you're in the Boston area and would like to see what science fiction conventions are all about.
If you only have time for one, Readercon is the most "bookish" and Arisia the least (they do talk about literature at Arisia, but it's one topic among many there). Readercon is also the least accessible by public transit, especially now that it's moving back to Burlington after several years in Quincy, but easiest and cheapest to park at if you're driving your own vehicle. (Boskone is probably the easiest to get to on the T, though the 5-minute walk from the Silver Line stop feels much longer on a cold February night. Arisia used to be at the same hotel as Boskone, in the Seaport District, but has now moved back to the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, a 20-minute walk from Central Square; or you could take a bus or crowded shuttle that you have to wait for out in the cold.)
This year, we signed up to attend LibertyCon in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in June, a first for us. It's very popular, and fills up within a day or two of memberships going on sale. So you might not be able to see us there unless you're already going, and we're unlikely to be on any programming anyway, our first year. But, if you are there, and sufficiently interested in Mysterion that you're actually reading this sentence, hopefully we'll at least have the chance to meet you!
We've been prioritizing convention attendance less in recent years, largely because we're not convinced the return on investment (either financial or time) is worthwhile, especially if we have to travel. But we do hope to be back at Arisia in 2026, and are hoping that LibertyCon will be an opportunity to introduce our work to a slightly different audience than we see at Massachusetts conventions (though there's certainly some overlap, looking at the guest list). We also hope to attend Capclave again at some point, as it's the only science fiction convention we know about that focuses on short fiction and is probably a better fit for us than most others.
We used to go to Worldcon and World Fantasy more often, but it's hard to justify regular attendance at large, general interest conventions as anything other than a vacation; and if we're going to take a vacation, Kristin would rather go sightseeing in Japan and Donald would prefer to stay home and play video games. (Realm Makers is also worthwhile, especially if your focus is novel-length Christian speculative fiction, but it's structured more like a Christian writers' conference than a general market science fiction convention, and is significantly more expensive, so it might be best for those who are writing primarily for a Christian audience and are prepared to take full advantage of their educational offerings and opportunities to meet with agents and writing mentors.)
AWARD-ELIGIBLE STORIES
If you especially liked any of the stories we published last year and would like to nominate them for awards, here's a list of what we published, conveniently separated into the short story and novelette categories used by the Hugo and Nebula Awards. We didn't publish any reprints in 2024, so everything should be eligible for award nomination. Canadian authors are also eligible for the Aurora Awards, so we've indicated Canadian-ness where known.
If you're curious about which stories others especially liked, "The Patron Saint of Flatliners" and "In (Future) Memory of an Absent Father" were both mentioned on the Tangent Online 2024 Recommended Reading List.
SHORT STORIES
"Thomas the Doubter" by Patrick Hurley
"Soulman" by Ralph Mack
"Deymons" by Andy Dibble
"The Patron Saint of Flatliners" by K.A. Wiggins (Canadian)
"Her Neighbor's Keeper" by Jessica Snell
"Profane Intervention" by Shawn Vincent Wilson
"The Beacon, the Swamp, and the Sacrifice" by Joshua Lampkins
"All Eyes" by Pamela Love
"Irrationality" by Stephen Case
"The Interrupt" by Constantine Singer
"The Willow" by L.G. McCary
"In (Future) Memory of an Absent Father" by A.W. Prihandita
NOVELETTES
"One Two Three" by Hannah Onoguwe
"Changeling Child" by Miranda Miller
HOLIDAY CELEBRATION AND TRAVEL
Donald and Kristin enjoyed a quiet Christmas at home with some friends who also don't have children and weren't traveling to visit family. Kristin cooked dinner for everyone. Then we went to Calgary for New Year's week to visit Kristin's brother and his family. They live just outside the Calgary city limits, and we often saw coyotes and foxes out the back windows. On a clear day, the Rocky Mountains were visible out the front windows.
For New Year's Eve, we ate too much and watched the hockey game, rang in the New Year early at 10 pm with Champagne or sparkling juice so we could go to bed early, and then stayed up until midnight anyway.
We also went downhill skiing one day, though Donald stayed at the house and played video games, since he doesn't ski.
PATREON
Please consider subscribing to our magazine on Patreon! You can sign up for as little as $1/month for monthly news updates and an invitation to participate in our monthly Discord chats, but $3/month gets you early access to every story we publish, and for $10/month you also get eBook editions of our magazine (check out our Patreon page for a full description of all our membership tiers).
Our monthly Patreon income is currently $260, and if we reach (and stay at) $275/month, we'll be able to accept an additional story from each open submission window. So it's a great time to sign up, as we only need a few more subscribers to get to that next funding goal!
NEW YEAR, NEW STORIES
Our first stories for 2025 are all about priests and missionaries facing down demons or other monstrous beings.
First up, on January 13th, Marshall J. Moore is back with his 3rd Mysterion story, "As the Stars of Heaven". We especially liked the aliens in this science fiction piece, which "resemble an enormous terrestrial nudibranch" and communicate through bioluminescence and physical contact. A human missionary to this species is horrified when a member of his congregation becomes possessed by a demon; and he's not the only one to worry about the unique danger that spiritual afflictions might pose among a people who can share memories through touch.
On January 27th, we have a story by another returning Mysterion author, Frederick Gero Heimbach (Fred's 4th story with us). "Thin Black Line" features priest-detectives in an alternate world where only demons commit felonies.
Stay tuned for even more stories about detectives, priests, missionaries, and the powers of darkness, in the months ahead!
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