So far this year we've had maps and pictures themed issues (go check them out - 37 fantastic little stories, and a great intro to 101 Fiction if you're new here). This year's theme cycle is the ways we record our world(s), and so our new theme is: books.
If you're here then you're a writer or a reader and likely both which means a passion for books and everything they might contain. Whether that's a single great roll of parchment, brushstrokes visible in each pictograph, or an exquisite leather bound book with gold-edged pages, or a holographically projected e-library implant containing every work ever published.
Your hero could be the librarian, defending his library with monsters conjured from the horror section, or it could be the fictionaut, diving into imagined worlds and returning with unreal treasures. Perhaps in a post-apocalyptic world survivors find escapism by snorting the ashes in a burnt out library, or a rebuilding society models itself on a handful of surviving books, their gospels, not realising they are works of fiction. Maybe a horror book tells of an insipid creeping madness infecting the human mind as the brain absorbs certain eldritch knowledge, knowledge the book itself contains...
A book or books of some form must be central to the story but other than that, go wild. We're primarily a genre magazine - horror, sci fi, fantasy - but we try not to limit ourselves, if it makes us sit up and pay attention, if it pings the wow centre in our brain, if it makes us want to re-read for all the right reasons then it's what we're looking for.
The story must be exactly 100 words, with a one word title. The title cannot be 'book' or any variation thereof. And for our full guidelines and submissions email click here.
Imagine.
Create.
Have fun!
