Submissions to my fourth Magical Menageries title, Sirens, are open right now. Actually, they’ve been open for a while now so I thought it was time for a brief update from the slush pile 🙂

As of right now the oldest unread submission in my inbox is from September 1st. If you submitted prior to that and you haven’t heard back from me, please query.

What I’m seeing:

• A lot of sea-based sirens. I’m hoping for a nearly equal number of sea and sky sirens but right now I’m seeing about twice as many water-based sirens than those who can fly.
• Several re-tellings of The Little Mermaid. I have nothing against Little Mermaid re-tellings… however, there’s only room in this anthology for one or maybe two.
• A lot of selkie stories. I love selkies and some of these stories are incredibly well-written but selkies aren’t (usually) sirens.

What I’d like to see more of:

• I’ve seen a few Anycity, Anytime stories. What I mean is they don’t have a sense of place, they could take place in Edmonton, Alberta in 2015 or London, England in 1894 or Honolulu, Hawaii in 1914 without it changing anything about the story. I generally prefer stories with a strong setting in both time and place (even if it’s an imaginary time and place).
• A steam or solarpunk siren story. Because.
• More sky-based sirens.
• More submissions. If you’re not sure send it. The worst thing I can say is no.

Submissions close on November 15th which is less than a month away so please get those stories in my inbox. You don’t want to miss this deadline 🙂

If you’ve any questions feel free to hit me up (here, twitter, email, wherever).

Note: I’ve received a couple short story queries. There is no need to query before submitting–just send me your story 🙂