Mating Habits of the Skybound Electric Snake

From Sarah Rees Brennan’s tumblr.

The links she gives are Lightspeed and Ralan.com

[Anonymous asked: Hi Sarah, I was wondering whether you could recommend any magazines or respected websites or such places that take submissions and publish short stories? Or um. Do people still do that? I’d really like to improve my short story writing skillz and see whether anyone thinks the way I write is any good… also, I’d like to read more short stories because all I really read anymore are books the size of bricks and y’know, variety is nice!

People absolutely still do that. There are a lot of super well-respected websites and magazines around: Lightspeed (http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/) and Strange Horizons among them.

And here’s a website that you can use to find the exact right place for your piece of fiction, with price guidelines and links: http://www.ralan.com/

It’s very useful!

And good luck, of course. And don’t be discouraged by rejection. I’ve been rejected many times. (All right, peanut gallery, settle down…)

Strange Horizons once sent me a rejection letter that in retrospect was very fair. ‘We’re just not sure…’ they said, ‘where you were going with the… cannibalism. Or the incest.’

[An image of Sam and Dead Winchester from Supernatural looking baffled]

(This picture merely meant to represent Strange Horizons’s bafflement and not imply anything about these two young men who I understand are related by blood!)

And I hope you will enjoy the short stories! I like writing short stories myself, and I am constantly creeping like a creeper on Kelley Armstrong’s and Holly Black’s online short stories. ]