written by David Steffen
Diabolical Plots was open for its yearly submission window for the month of July. During that time, 803 writers submitted 1070 stories. This year, the maximum word count was raised from 2000 words to 3500 words, and this year instead of one story per month Diabolical Plots will publish two stories, for a total of 24 stories that will begin running in April 2017 which is when the Year Two stories have all been published.
Thank you to all the writers who submitted. You made the final choices incredibly difficult, which is a very good problem for an editor to have. If we had the resources to publish more right now, there would have been plenty of excellent stories to choose from.
OK, without further ado, here is the list of stories and authors and their publishing order!
April 2017
“O Stone, Be Not So” by José Pablo Iriarte
“The Long Pilgrimage of Sister Judith” by Paul Starkey
May 2017
“The Things You Should Have Been” by Andrea G. Stewart
“The Aunties Return the Ocean” by Chris Kuriata
June 2017
“The Existentialist Men” by Gwendolyn Clare
“Regarding the Robot Raccons Attached to the Hull of My Ship” by Rachael K Jones and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
July 2017
“Monster of the Soup Cans” by Elizabeth Barron
“The Shadow Over His Mouth” by Aidan Doyle
August 2017
“For Now, Sideways” by A. Merc Rustad
“Typical Heroes” by Theo Kogod
September 2017
“Strung” by Xinyi Wang
“The Entropy of a Small Town” by Thomas K. Carpenter
October 2017
“Lightning Dance” by Tamlyn Dreaver
“Three Days of Unnamed Silence” by Daniel Ausema
November 2017
“When One Door Shuts” by Aimee Ogden
“Shoots and Ladders” by Charles Payseur
December 2017
“Hakim Vs. the Sweater Curse” by Rachael K. Jones
“The Leviathans Have Fled the Sea” by Jon Lasser
January 2018
“Six Hundred Universes of Jenny Zars” by Wendy Nikel
“Brooklyn Fantasia” by Marcy Arlin
February 2018
“9 Things Mainstream Media Got Wrong About the Ansaj Incident” by Willem Myra
“Artful Intelligence” by G.H. Finn
March 2018
“What Monsters Prowl Above the Waves” by Jo Miles
“Soft Clay” by Seth Chambers
ETA: Note that this list originally include “Smells Like Teen Demon” by Sunil Patel, which was removed from the lineup. This list has been edited because it is the easiest way to reference which stories are in which year, and I didn’t want this to be a source of confusion.