Hello! We are glad you’re here! Our call for stories is closed. We generally open our calls in June with submittals due in August or September for the next season. Subscribe to our website to receive email notification when the calls open. The content below provides an overview of our requirements. We look forward to reading your story!

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Mysteries to Die For (M2D4) is a story telling podcast with a companion anthology that structures mysteries to give the audience a chance to beat the detective to the solution. Reminiscent of the Ellery Queen radio show, whodunnit style mysteries are told up to the critical point, at which the hosts and audience enter into a deliberation to find the culprit. Then comes the big reveal. Each M2D4 season has a theme that is core to the stories – the more interesting the better. We highly recommend listening to episodes to understand our format.

General Story Requirements

Complete, drafted stories must be submitted in the provided format and meet the following requirements:

• Story length: 4,000-8,000 words
• Story style: whodunnit mystery using the season’s theme
• Story structure: chapter style, with each chapter having a title and the “big reveal” in the last chapter. While this is not traditional for short stories, it is our format for podcast and print
• Suspects: 3-6 suspects credible

General Payment, Ownership & Rights

If accepted, the author will receive $25 (US), e-book copy (.pub and .pdf) and one (1) print copy of the anthology in exchange for the exclusive rights to use the story for 1-year from end of that podcast season. After that date, our rights to the story become non-exclusive and the author may seek publication elsewhere.

The author will be exclusively featured on one episode of Mysteries to Die For, which will include:

• Distribution of the episode to domestic and international markets via Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, and other podcast platforms
• A 80 word pre-roll advertisement to promote your backlist, your next release, etc.
• Direction of the audience to the author social media and/or websites.
• Episode promotion via Facebook, Instagram, YouTube
• Episode posting on m2d4podcast.com
• Author picture, bio, link to your website, and your episode on our author page

Artificial Intelligence

Story content creation is to be completely human generated. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is limited to research, editing and polishing. Authors are required to disclose the use of AI for creating the story content. Contracts will include documentation of the self-disclosed use of AI. Stories using AI for content creation may be excluded from printing in the anthologies. The decision to exclude from the anthology is at the sole discretion of TG Wolff and Jack Wolff.