“a premier venue for fantastic fiction, not just online but for all media”
–Locus online
Beneath Ceaseless Skies (ISSN 1946-1046) is a non-profit, SFWA-qualifying pro-rate online magazine dedicated to publishing literary adventure fantasy: fantasy set in secondary-world or historical paranormal settings, written with a literary focus on the characters.
We love traditional adventure fantasy, but we also love how the influence of literary writing on fantasy short fiction has expanded the genre, encouraging writers to use literary devices such as tight points-of-view and discontinuous narratives; to feature conflicts that are internal as well as external. We want stories that combine the best of both these styles—set in vivid fantasy or historical paranormal worlds but written with all the flair and impact of modern literary-influenced fantasy.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies publishes two stories per issue, with a new issue every fortnight. Readers can subscribe by email notification or by RSS feed, or for automatic delivery to reading devices. We release all issues as ebooks and selected stories as Audio Fiction podcasts. We maintain a News page, a Facebook page, and a Twitter feed @BCSmagazine to update submitting writers and to encourage reader discussion of our authors, artwork, and stories.
BCS is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization supported by reader donations (which are tax deductible), including via the BCS Patreon page.
BCS has “revive(d)... secondary-world fantasy as a respectable subgenre of short fiction, raising it from the midden of disdain into which it had been cast by most of the rest of the field.”
–Lois Tilton, Locus online
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Who We Are
Scott H. Andrews,
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
A replica late fifteenth-century dog-faced bascinet, and the Editor.
Scott H. Andrews is a chemistry lecturer, editor, musician, and writer. He was co-Fiction Editor of The William and Mary Review for two years. His literary short fiction won a $1000 prize from the Briar Cliff Review; his genre short fiction has appeared in venues such as Ann VanderMeer’s Weird Tales, Space and Time, and On Spec. He has taught writing for the Odyssey Workshop and Clarion West and online for Odyssey and the Cat Rambo Academy. He is a seven-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award for his editing and publishing of Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Scott lives in Virginia with his wife, two cats, nine guitars, a dozen overflowing bookcases, and hundreds of beer bottles from all over the world.
Kerstin Hall,
Senior Editorial Assistant, 2016-
The Editorial Assistant, with no headgear.
Kerstin Hall does not have a cat. She grew up and lives in Cape Town, South Africa. Her fiction has been published by Short Story Day Africa and she has worked as an editor for sub-Q and Type/Cast magazines. She is also a Mandela Rhodes Scholar. At one stage, she had a pet tortoise that bit people.
Deirdre Quirk,
Editorial Assistant, 2017-
The Editorial Assistant, with appropriately swashbuckling headgear.
Deirdre Quirk received a BA in Theatre from Reed College. She loves telling and being told stories and currently works in marketing for a publishing company. She lives in Portland, OR, with her wife and dog.
Rachel Morris,
Editorial Assistant, 2019-
The Editorial Assistant.
Rachel Morris attended UC Berkeley for English, Media Studies, and Creative Writing and UNC Chapel Hill for Library Science. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and a Pitch Wars mentee. When not reading fantasy, she can be found analyzing media (particularly gothic horror and video games) and writing far too many novels.
James Beamon,
Editorial Assistant, 2022-
The Editorial Assistant.
James is hatless. This ensures an even brownness on his head and the appearance that his half-baked ideas have been thoroughly cooked. He’s spent a dozen years in the Air Force, four years in Iraq and Afghanistan, a whole lifetime lying and, when he discovered people buy those when you write them down and call them fiction, over a decade selling stories. To date he has over forty short stories published at various sites as well as his Pendulum Heroes fantasy novel series. Being as extra as he is, he had to make the series four books instead of the usual three. He currently resides in Virginia with his wife, son, and attack cat.
Ryan Cole,
Editorial Assistant, 2022-
The Editorial Assistant.
Ryan Cole is a writer who lives in Virginia with his husband and snuggly pug child. He is a winner of the 2021 Writers of the Future Contest, and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Writers of the Future Vol. 37, Ember Journal, and the anthology Mother: Tales of Love & Terror by Weird Little Worlds Press. When not reading or writing, he loves to bake elaborate desserts and get lost in the world of Azeroth.
Kate Marshall,
Assistant Editor, 2010-2013
The Assistant Editor Emeritus, sans bascinet.
Kate Marshall has no bascinet, but she does have the requisite cat. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and her fiction has appeared in IGMS, Pseudopod, Nossa Morte, and Brain Harvest. She spends her days writing for a video game company in Seattle.
Nicole Lavigne,
Editorial Assistant, 2013-2017
The Editorial Assistant Emeritus, with appropriately genre-fiction headgear.
Nicole Lavigne has a BA in English and Theatre from the University of Ottawa. She still lives in Ottawa with her one cat but considers all of Canada her home after bouncing across the country as a military brat during her childhood. She is a professional storyteller as well as a writer and daylights as an administrative assistant for the government.
Christine Row,
Editorial Assistant, 2018-2019
The Editorial Assistant, sans headgear.
Christine Row prefers not to take the direct path anywhere. She discovered her passion for writing after pursuing degrees in engineering and medicine and is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. She lives in New Hampshire, where she regularly reassures her family in the Midwest that she’s not buried in snow.
Beth Horn,
Editorial Assistant, 2020-2022
The Editorial Assistant.
Beth Horn is a linguist whose favourite thing to do with language is tell stories. She lives with her partner near the University of Cape Town, where she works as a researcher and academic writing consultant. When she isn’t pondering the many uses of the word ‘like’, Beth can be found trudging through the South African wilderness and other fantastical realms.