Lost Colony publishes one masterfully crafted mid-length (10,000-25,000 words) story of speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy in all of their manifestations) every quarter. Quarterly stories are published for free on our website (with ads) and for a small cost as an ebook (without ads). Once a year, all four of the stories that have appeared in the magazine are published in an annual anthology, both electronically and in print. If you buy the ebook of either the quarterly story or the annual anthology, or if you buy the print version of the annual anthology, you will also get editor’s notes, explaining why each story was chosen for publication.

I started Lost Colony after I wrote a mid-length story and very quickly ran out of outlets to submit it to. I thought that the mid-length story should get more love, so I decided to launch this little publication. 

I named it Lost Colony because I had moved to Roanoke, Virginia, shortly before launching it. Roanoke, Virginia has nothing to do with the lost colony of Roanoke (which was in North Carolina), but it was the first thing that I thought of when I learned about the city, so it made sense to me. It also evokes a sense of mystery, the supernatural, or even the exploration of the cosmos, so it fits nicely with what I’m looking for in the stories that I publish (for more details on what I’m looking for, check out the Submission Guidelines).

About the Editor

I’m M.E. Pickett, but you can call me Mike. As far as credentials, go, I have a B.A. in English Literature from Brigham Young University (Go Cougars!), an M.A. in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College (Go…Lions…I think?), and a J.D. from the University of Texas (Hook ’em Horns!). The J.D. probably doesn’t help much when it comes to editing fiction (it might actually hurt), but it plays into what I do for a living and explains why I can’t publish more than one story per quarter.

You can learn more about me at my personal website.