Upcoming Round Robin Story
The first fiction we’ll be offering you here at The Watchfire will be hitting your inboxes next week. It’s a round robin story (title TBD) where one author will get us started and others will pick up where the story leaves off. That’s a little bit different from previous flash fiction contests that we’ve run, but we’re excited to see where this one goes.
For a preview, here’s the prompt and other information we announced back in December:
Announcing our 2025 round robin story and opening chapter submissions.
An orbital monastery has gone silent.
There was no distress signal.
No report of technical failure.Only one final transmission:
“The manger is empty.
And the star is moving.”Bethlehem Station was built as a working monastery in orbit. Not a symbol. Not a museum. A place of prayer above the Earth. Now it’s dark.
We’re using this premise as the starting point for our 2025 Round Robin Story—a collaborative work of speculative fiction that will unfold one chapter at a time.
If you haven’t encountered a round robin story before, the rules are simple, but demanding. Each chapter becomes canon. Each new author must continue what came before. The story develops slowly, deliberately, and publicly.
The opening chapter matters more than the rest, so we’re treating it that way.
For the first round, we’ll be accepting submissions up to 2,000 words, giving the opening author room to establish the setting, tone, and central mystery. In addition, that author will propose two possible directions the story could take next. We’ll choose one of them, and the second chapter will follow that path.
Follow-up chapters will be limited to 1,000 words. Authors of selected installments may choose any ebook issue of Silence & Starsong Magazine as their reward. Stories will be published on our website.
All of our usual guidelines regarding appropriate content apply. Please see our website for full details.
The manger is empty.
The star is moving.What happens next is unwritten.
— The Editors
