All posts by Tim

WILLIAM MITCHELL: Is This Why We’ve Always Felt So Alone?

Adventure, Submissions, , ,

For decades we’ve travelled between stars, searching, yearning for contact.

Our findings? Just dead planets, ruined civilisations.

Yet all predictions concur; at least one civilisation should survive, to colonise the galaxy. So where are they?

I look back, at the settlements and outposts we’ve established along the way.

It’s us.

William Mitchell lives in East Sussex in the South of England. He is an award-winning author, having had early success with various Horror and Science Fiction publications before winning the Writers of the Future contest in 2012. His latest book, The Still and Silent Stars, offers an in-depth investigation into the likelihood of alien life and alien intelligence existing elsewhere in our galaxy.

TIM BOITEAU: …if you do …if you don’t

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

He stayed, despite constant fighting—there was the baby to consider. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d have been happier had he left.

He left, baby or no—ragged from constant fighting. Still, miles down the road he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d have been happier had he stayed.

Tim Boiteau is a Writers of the Future winner and Editor at Every Day fiction. He is the author of the novel The Nilwere (Grendel Press, 2024).

GABE BONNEY: Images of You

Amusing, Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , , , , ,

Every morning when I peer around the door frame, your slumbering teen body is a new shape.
A toppled Roman statue, all broken limbs and alabaster skin.
A wild dog in the desert, curled hard against the midnight elements.
A man emerging; Michelangelo’s Davide.
My love for you is incandescent.

Gabe has been writing and editing for 30 years, from her home base in Sydney. She doesn’t plan on being replaced by AI any time soon.

JON FAIN: Hitching a Ride

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , , ,

Infants in car seats reach up, playing with invisible beings. Baby radiation causes the attraction, but it’s temporary. When babies wail, it’s when the entities leave. They kick and holler, wave to attract another batch.

Parents—driving, talking on the phone, listening to music, sipping hot coffee—have no clue.

Besides 50-Word Stories, Jon Fain’s micro fiction has appeared in Six Sentences, The Dribble Drabble Review, The Daily Drunk, Blink-Ink, ScribesMICRO, Molecule, The Woolf, and elsewhere. See more at chillsubs.com/profile/jonfain.

SHERRI BALE: Charging the Batteries

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

I went to the ocean to clear my head and get some writing done.
Darn! Forgot my laptop charger. Now what?
Took a walk on the beach: cool water, crashing waves, sweet warmth of the sun.
Laptop battery dead, but I am recharged.
Found pencil and paper in a drawer.

Sherri Bale is a retired geneticist, part-time personal trainer, Jack Russell Terrier mom, and writer of fiction as short as 50 words and as long as 90,000. Whatever it takes to tell the story.

JOANNA NORLAND: A Letter to Yarden Bibas

Artistic, Submissions, , , , , ,

Yarden, I think of you, in that gunshot moment when you learned that the body in the coffin was not your wife’s.

Did you allow a bright bullet of hope to pierce your darkness, even though you knew that it was aimed, with ruthless precision, at your thrice shattered heart?

Joanna Norland dedicates this story to the Bibas family — Yarden, Shiri, Ariel (age 4) and Kfir (9 months), all abducted from the Nir Oz Kibbutz on October 7, 2023, and held in Gaza. Only Yarden returned to Israel alive, February 1, 2025. Hamas claimed to return the bodies of Yarden’s wife, Shiri, and children on February 20, 2024, but DNA testing revealed that the woman’s body was not Shiri’s. Her fate remained unknown until her body was returned by Hamas on the evening of February 21, 2025, and identified by Israeli officials.

NEWS: Change to Story of the Month Prizing

News

Beginning in April 2025, there will no longer be a $10 Canadian prize for the story of the month.

I pay out the prizes via PayPal, and the flat rate fees per transaction have been increasing over time. At this point, it costs me almost $15 each month to send the $10 prize. It is not a question of whether I can “afford” to pay out those prizes; it’s more that I can’t justify paying a 50% fee  to a big corporation in order to get that prize into the authors’ hands. As a result, I have made the decision to remove that prizing.

I will still provide the Story of the Year with the same $50 Canadian prize.

My apologies to future monthly winners. I know how special it is for a writer to receive payment for their work.

ROBERTA BEACH JACOBSON: Motion

Artistic, Poetry, Submissions, , , ,

Under the Milky Way
she intensifies the pace
while humming a few notes
as she negotiates the bike trail curves

Once the trail ends
she pedals upward to the sky
into a hidden realm
one new to her senses

Her story expands
as it continues
through starlight
Is she flying?

Roberta Beach Jacobson is the fleakeeper at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry.

BILL COX: Down the Plughole

Artistic, Submissions, ,

Jean liked washing the dishes. It gave her time to think. With her hands soaking in suds, she considered her relationship with Brian, looking for a sign about how to proceed. Then, when she pulled the plug and watched the grubby water gurgle down the drain, she found her answer.

Bill lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. His mind soars across all of space and time, breaching dimensions and quantum realms in its search for truth and beauty. His body likes to sit on the sofa.