Mercurial Stories is a tiny, independently-run digital press that was founded in 2017. The motivation behind Mercurial Stories is simple: to get writers writing. Ray Bradbury once said: “Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.” That is the seed from which Mercurial Stories has grown.

How it works is like this:

Every Monday, a prompt will be posted on the front page. Writers have until the following Friday (at midnight EST) to submit their story.

Stories will be posted on Sunday (by 6 am EST).

In order to be published with Mercurial Stories, writers must be responding to the prompt. The idea is to build your writing chops, not recycle an old story just to get published. The better writer you become, the more likely you will be to get published. While we are flattered that some like to use Mercurial Stories as a publishing credential, that should never be the primary aim of submitting to Mercurial Stories.

All stories submitted to Mercurial Stories should be edited for spelling and grammatical errors before being submitted. If errors interfere with the readibility of the story, it will not be included in that week’s publication. Again, we are a tiny press and while we are using the collective pronoun, the editor is quite singular.

Do not submit AI-generated work. This is a human-endevour and we have detection software. Your work will be rejected. Again, Mercurial Stories is about writing, not publishing or promotion. Let’s keep it human.

If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch.
hello@mercurialstories.com

Thank you.