2024 in Review

In July, 2024, I launched The Literary Fantasy Magazine and began taking submissions. Since the magazine's launch, I've been floored by all that we accomplished. Going into 2025, we are headed in such an exciting direction.

Staffing Up

I had the idea for The Arcanist for a long time, and only gained the confidence to pursue it after taking "The Context of Writing," a 300-level course in my program at SNHU dedicated to the fundamentals of the publishing business in the United States. The textbook: Writer's Market. I learned a lot there and it solidified my path as a career contrarian (no AI here, folks!).

Additionally, I met some folks who would go on to join under the Arcanist banner. Between ENG-350 and the SNHU Creative Writing Club, I reached out to several prospective applicants interested in helping the pub off the ground. Lee, Juliette, and Menke joined the team for their tenacity and merit; all are peers from my beloved university.

The Arcanist is a new indie publication, with no funding outside my own paychecks. Our volunteers have paved the way for our successful upcoming release of the inaugural issue of The Literary Fantasy Magazine in January.

So thank you to my team, y'all are amazing and I can't wait to see what else you accomplish.

We operate on a royalty split basis in these early days, so if you'd like to directly support our team check out our first issue, releasing January 31st, 2025. You can buy it on our site or on Amazon.

Is it the The Arcanist or The Literary Fantasy Magazine?

We launched under the name, "The Arcanist: Literary Fantasy Magazine."At the time, my intention was only to be a magazine. Quickly, my ambitions grew and I discovered another magazine of a similar name. So I changed some terms around to better reflect our mission and identity as a publisher.

We are a publishing entity called: "The Arcanist: Fantasy Publishing." This is the name we registered with Bowker Identity Services to receive our ISBN numbers, and the name we'll use to register our LLC. The name also retroactively encompasses my freelance experience before the magazine. Soon it will all be merged as we expand into other sectors.

Our main product is: "The Literary Fantasy Magazine." We aim to be the quintessential journal of character-driven fantasy.

Collaborations

We partnered with the Storytelling Collective during their Short Story September writer's workshop. It was a wonderful opportunity and marked a lot of growth for us as a publication. We just finished reading submissions from the special priority window we opened for participants and accepted several for publication in our Summer 2025 issue and our website!

A couple months ago, I was lucky enough to interview one of my literary heroes on behalf of The Arcanist. I'm still working on that project, but it will be available here on our blog and on YouTube sometime soon.

Looking Towards 2025

It's going to be a big year folks, I'm not sure the (my) world is ready to handle a full calendar year of our arcane shenanigans. In addition to the release of our bi-annual issues (Winter 2025 and Summer 2025, respectively), we are working towards the first phase of expansion; we will publish at least one fantasy novel in 2025, and we have more in the oven. We aren't accepting unsolicited manuscripts right now, but the time is near.

There are also conceptual plans to re-enter table-top game design (i.e. my experience freelancing) and to start making children's books, but these are likely beyond the scope of 2025.

Website Stories vs. Printed Stories

We hold a prohibitive standard of writing for our submissions. Sometimes this means we're passing on good ideas from newer authors, and that wasn't always sitting right with me.

Our submissions have always been in consideration for both the site and the printed issues, but it wasn't clear what should go where. Lately, I've taken to the unconventional habit of reaching out to authors requesting revisions and/or offering to collaborate with them on edits, then scheduling their story to be published on the site if they adequately revised the manuscript based on my feedback.

While this is a lot more work on the editor side of things (and the author's), I think this practice is extremely beneficial: it grants the author a chance to showcase their dedication to the craft, learn through trial and error, and come out of it with a publication credit. It benefits us by yielding more fantastic material to publish (we're small, and good stuff is hard to come by!) Further, it helps us hone the future minds of Literary Fantasy, rather than discourage them from submitting again. We want people to write more, we want them to read more, so we're dedicated to teaching when we can.

This practice is not easy on us, but we believe it contributes greatly to the community as a whole. This does not mean our submission standards have been compromised, however. We are dedicated to showcasing the best we can find. At the same time, we are not interested in discarding great ideas for superficial reasons.

Story Mentor Services

We're still working out the details, but sometime in the new year we will open up Story Mentor Services to new/learning authors for a fee. This is similar to our revision process discussed above, but this would instead consist of a pure learning experience without promise of publication (ethically, we cannot do this. No amount of "donations" will make you a good writer; only time, effort, and work will).

This service would help us fund our projects, and help to train prospective authors in the tenants of good fantasy. Perhaps we can grant a priority submission for a new story they wrote after the service. More details on this soon.

Thank You!

That's all for now, folks! I'm so excited to see what stories the new year brings. We are always looking forward, and we hope to see you there. Thank you for visiting our humble website, we hope to provide more fun and value to you for years to come.

Happy new year,

James D. Mills, EiC