Issue 1 Available!

Here is a link to a PDF of >>WHETSTONE 1<<. Many thinks to all the talented contributors! Please feel free to share this. Looking forward to issue 2!

Cover for Inaugural Issue

Here is the cover of our inaugural issue; it features a great illustration by Bill Cavalier. Publication date: Friday, June 12th! ⚔️✊😊

Submissions Update #1

Just checking in (full transparency): as of today, we have received a total of **26** story submissions. We have not begun reading them yet. Our three story editors plan on convening on April 1st, 2020 for our initial reading session. *So, to those interested, you still have the rest of March to write and submit your story! We hope you do!* ✊😊⚔️

10th Flash Fiction Monday: Sword and Sorcery and Unadorned Prose

10th Flash Fiction Monday: great art, literary art specifically, manages to discover synergy between form and content, style and theme. Consider an example of prose narration that 100% avoids figurative language, metaphor, lyricism, excess description, etc., a prose style that is as unadorned as a soldier of fortune’s cruel, plain, but razor sharp blade. With what “theme” would such a Spartan, unadorned prose style harmonize? Write a S&S story of no more than 300 words that avoids figurative language, complicated syntax, and that uses language precisely and economically. In doing so, tell a thematically appropriate story for this style, a story of the unadorned, the undecorated, the plain, the profane, the raw.

WHETSTONE will now provide token payments to contributors.

We have been researching the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America requirements for venue membership. Getting WHETSTONE to qualify will be a long and incremental process. Two key components (there are several more) are that the venue must be *print* and it must *pay contributors.* We have received a lot of support from readers and submitters and are encouraged to start the multi-year journey of qualifying as an SFWA Market. This intention was is due to the fact that we have received a small donation that will allow us to provide a $10 token payment to contributors. This payment is not much and almost completely symbolic but it does allow us to accurately describe WHETSTONE as a paying market. Give us a few days to update the CFP on the webpage and elsewhere. Thanks for your continued support!

Whetstone Promises to Submitters and Readers

The Official Whetstone Seal

Here is the official "Whetstone Seal," illustrated by Bill Cavalier.