Send Us Your Fiction #37 - Open
Only stories shared between September 6 - September 12
Hello Fiction Writers!
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TIF NEWS FOR WRITERS
I wanted to talk about the next TiF event, Inanimate Objects, and tell you about the amazing image that was commissioned by my wife (and also the one behind Killer Shorts who is sponsoring this event), and about bringing back StoryStack to help motivate & inspire you to do more writing, or even tell you a teaser about TiF Summit 2026 and what we’ve got in store (such at FIFTY different readers and an awards ceremony to close out the 3-day event??). I wanted to share all of that with you, but…I can’t…because it seems this new change in serials is still confusing some writers. And that might be my fault as I’m not communicating this information in as many places as possible.
There are people who submit their work to Top in Fiction but don’t read these emails or any of my other emails. Nor do they listen/watch the monthly recaps. It’s unfortunate because I think those are all great resources and places for both readers and writers to get important information. Like this amazing change.
Now, why do I think no one received the information about this change? Because this week we received 20 “Short Serial” submissions where only about 4 of them were actually short serials. The rest were all Serials. This could’ve happened for a few reasons:
I accidentally removed the Serial option for about half a day and put it back when it was pointed out to me, so you may have wanted to select Serial but were unable to. Understandable.
OR you know that Serials were removed from being featured due to his change that now highlights Serials in a different (and I hope better?) way so to circumvent this you decided to select Short Serial.
Unfortunately, I do spend time on each submission (50+ each week) and it slows me down when I have to stop and remove submissions that are not within the dates or say they are Short Serial when they are a Serial.
Because I had to spend a good portion of my weekend AND most of today correcting this (ie. removing all of the Short Serials that are clearly Serials from submissions) it took me all day to send out this past Monday email and therefore forced me to cut out the news I wanted to share to explain this instead.
All this to say: Short Serial is going to also be removed from being featured for the remainder of the year. You can (and should) continue to submit your serials and short serials. But by no longer including them in the weekly emails it will save me A LOT of time from having to correct these moving forward.
Why should you continue to fill out the form if you write a short serial and serial but it won’t be featured in the Monday emails? Because Serials appear on the Wall of Serials and Short Serials will be included in The Database. Both of which receive visits and clicks well into the hundreds on a daily/weekly basis.
Any news I planned on sharing today has been moved to Sunday’s email…
Top in Fiction is the place where fiction lives, but it’s also the place where a community of fiction writers and readers can come together every week to share in their mutual love (and respect) of fiction. Read the guidelines carefully:
Only fiction shared between September 6 - September 12 on Substack!
Any story shared BEFORE the dates listed above will be removed.
This form will CLOSE at 7am EST on Sunday, September 14.
Share fiction you’ve read AND/OR fiction you’ve written. (Self-promotion of your fiction is welcome!)
If self-promoting, submit NO MORE THAN 2 stories! This is a strict rule that will be enforced.
Story must be Free-to-Read (No portion of it can be behind a paywall).
Story must be written in English.
We DO NOT accept stories written by AI. If we discover, at any time, that AI was used, the story will be removed.
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