First and foremost, you must have an author account, and be logged in, before you submit a story to us. Go here to create your account if you don't yet have one. Note: Just because you are subscribed to the magazine and receive email stories from us, does not mean you have an author account. The two databases are completely separate.

Stories must be submitted as plain text* via our web form. Please don't put your address, word count, title, name or other information in the form. Please don't retype your entire story--copy and paste it into the form (once you've saved your document as plain text). If a story is accepted for publication, we'll contact you to incorporate any formatting and layout needed.

*Plain text means no smart quotes, no curvy apostrophes, no magic ellipses, no clever Microsoft formatting that sometimes makes your story harder to read. If working in Word, save in rtf format, or at least go into File, Options, Advanced, and turn off every "smart" or automated feature that you can. Also, at http://utils.paranoiaworks.org there is a free diacritics remover for the text of your story.

Stories must be 100 to 1,500 words long. Stories under 1,000 words will have a much better chance of being published.

Please write "End" at the end of your story, so we can be certain the entire story came through.

Please don't put anything other than your story in the "story" box. Your name and address, cover letter, title, and added notes can all go into the "cover letter" box. There is no need to include a cover letter, but please put your name, as it appears for your account, in the "cover letter" box. This helps us to reunite the story and the author on the off chance they get separated.

If your account has an incorrect email address, our response will not reach you and we will not know that it has not. Please note that our system responds to the email address you used to login, not to anything you type into the cover letter box.