Submission Guidelines

2009-01-03T07:12:00.000-08:00

The Way Station is a speculative fiction magazine. We are looking for the audio rights to high quality short fiction with a Christian bent. When we say high quality, we mean people need to bring their A+ game. Fiction in this arena has a reputation about it and it's not a good one.

Speculative fiction includes horror, fantasy, and science fiction. A blend of the three is certainly acceptable. Ultimately it's about telling a solid story with well developed characters that evoke a sense of wonder or awe and that at its core has a message compatible with that of the Gospel.

The rating on your story should shoot for PG or PG13. This means that some swearing, violence, or sexual situations are acceptable. Life is messy. People swear and do all sorts of regrettable things. Stories we publish will reflect that. On the off chance we get a really fantastic story that pushes the envelope, we may still accept it. Violence/sex/swearing for the sake of it or for shock value won't make the cut, it must serve the story. We will certainly accept G rated "family friendly" stories, but even those will be the exception.

There are two story lengths we are taking submissions for:

Short Stories - These are stories 2,000 to 6,000 words long. Somewhere about the middle of that seems to work best for audio fiction. The longer it is, the better it needs to be to keep the audience's attention

Flash - These are stories between 500 and 1,000 words. It's a special talent to be able to tell a story in that short of a space and do it well.

Licensing - All stories we release are licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license. It allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially. It's a solid license and it's what most podcasts use.

Pay - We plan on paying $10 for short fiction and $5 for flash, upon publication of your story. We will be community supported, meaning we will solicit donations.

Now, how do you get the story to us? Send all stories to Scott Roche. The subject line should read "Story Submission - Your Title Here". The body needs to include your name as you want it to appear, your mailing address (both for contractual and payment purposes), a brief publication history for the story (if any), a word count, the title, and the text of the story. Use single spacing, with blank lines between paragraphs and _underscores_ for emphasis.

We are currently shooting for a launch date of June 1st, 2009.

The Way Station Podcast

2009-01-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

This will likely be the holding spot for The Way Station home of the spiritual speculative fiction podcast