What I’m Looking For Next Issue:

Authors:

For our regolith-breaking inaugural issue, we’re looking for our feature short story to focus on something new and something moon. We’d like to see first moon landings, pioneers on a moon in a galaxy far, far away, or the first discovery of a strange, black monolith on a moon – not exactly those ideas, but you get the idea.

We’re looking for something pretty new and exciting here: each triplet tale will be made of three stories of 500 words or less, each written by a different author. We’re looking to make a whole greater than the sum of it’s parts, so think about how your flash fiction story’s choices can be seen in counterpoint with others. I encourage groups to get together here on Myouterspace and write flash fictions trios together and submit them to the Anachron slush pile noted as such.

Here are the two central premises we’re setting for the flash fiction trios:

1. – Central Plot, Diverse Character – center this story triplet on the future revolution of the Dwarf Planet Ceres against a colonial power from Mars. Ceres is large and has plenty of water ice resources; lets say they have an extremely efficient solar-energy collection system for power. The central event of our story is a solar-energy blockade enforced by Mars – something like a giant solar sail, except it’s in place to block all of Ceres’ power collection. Each separate flash story should focus on a different character dealing with the power shortage and/or attempting to overcome the blockade against the background of the larger struggle.

2. – Central Character, Diverse Plot – center this story triplet around everyman Sam Barrie. He’s an odd-job fix-it man who specializes in obsolete technology most people don’t bother repairing. In each of our three flash fiction stories, Sam Barrie finds himself called to fix what seems like an unimportant item that has somehow become crucial to a revolutionary struggle. In each case, Barrie has moved on to a different location – somehow with him, its always wrong place, wrong time. Let’s look at him in different stages of his life.

Editors:

When you’re reading the slush pile for suggestions for our feature story, keep an eye out for a fresh concept that takes us to a moon we might never imagine - but also keep in mind that we want to invest in the life of the character, find something true in it. C.S. Lewis suggested that interesting people shouldn’t tell us about interesting places, but remember that people don’t have to be odd or eccentric to be interesting. The central struggles of human life are still the same; the innovation in the story we need helps us past our rabid hunger for the new to see what we may be overlooking or ignoring.

For the flash-fiction submissions, try to take a more active role. If you see two authors whose stories might really go well together in the triplet, suggest they read each other. Put together your own team of three authors and pitch them your spin on my premises above. If you read something you love, but don’t see how it could fit with the other flash stories, suggest that author write something new to go with your favorite other two, or shoot me a note and we’ll all jump in and mold something together.

Bang! Zoom! (You know what comes next…)

- J. Lewit