Something else we want at the moment
Strange Horizons is suffering from a dearth of short submissions lately. Or at least, of short submissions that we want to buy.
We've only bought a total of about a dozen standalone stories under 800 words long (not counting Ben's and Jay's and Jenn's clusters of short-shorts), and never one under 500 words long, so I'm not asking for super-short flash fiction per se. But we've bought about 50 stories between 800 and 2000 words over the years, and I think it's easier to put some real emotional depth and richness into stories in that range than into the shorter ones. (We do sometimes buy stories that are cute or fun or entertaining or interesting or clever, without much emotional depth, but I think it's generally harder to interest us in those.)
So if you're trying to decide whether to send us, say, a 5000-word story or a 2000-word story, at the moment the latter might be a better choice, all else being equal. And if you're thinking about writing a story to send us, consider coming up with a good story that's under (say) 2000 words long.
As always, no quotas; we'll still consider and buy longer stories. But we'd love to see some more shorter ones that really knock our socks off. 'Cause we've been wearing these socks for a while.
