Announcing the New LegendFiction Season (& Anthology)—The Cocoa Café Chronicles:

10 Sip-Sized Stories of Magic, Mayhem, and Cocoa from the Authors of LegendFiction

and

Dec 26, 2024

Happy New Year legends, writers, and aspiring authors everywhere! Get ready… LegendFiction is launching our second season, from January 1 through March 31! The theme is: Cocoa Café, and we’re running a new anthology contest where we self-publish the top 10 best entries! The Cocoa Chronicles: 10 Sip-Sized Stories of Magic, Mayhem, and Cocoa from the Authors of LegendFiction☕🍫🌊✨

Eager to flex your writing skills and connect with other writing legends? Get your cup of sea-salted chocolate (or whatever floats your boat) and take a seat, author! This new season brings a host of storyforging to fuel your passion for storytelling and

get…

you…

published!

Here's what you can expect:

Short story contest
Publication opportunities
Community support with your writing
Chance to work with our in-house editor! (you’rs truly!)

Let’s get into it!

About The Cocoa Café Chronicles

I think most of us dream about having our own little bookish café where we can curl up with a hot drink, surrounded by stories. Or with a magic wand, surrounded by sword-wielders depending on you. Or with a mermaid’s pearl, surrounded by sirens.

Whatever your cup of tea (*cough* chocolate) is.

A couple of months ago, on a lark, Dominic dropped this exquisite idea in our community as a prompt.

And it skyrocketed! So many fun comments. You all took that idea and ran with it in the most glorious ways. So, we decided to keep the momentum going and take those gorgeous nuggets and turn them into an anthology.

Imagine salt-laced air, the squeal of gulls and the bone-deep creak of ships’ hulls at anchor, all the shouting of deckhands and local farmers stepping out of the bright seaside air, into a small den of old wood and fresh chocolate.

What happens in this harbor-girt oasis of ground cocoa and hot mugs? What makes this a story?

Go epic, go dark, go cosy… it’s not all happy times with chocolate. Sometimes a Balrog comes in with a return receipt. Or the dwarves tunnel up three feet early and miss the bank, landing in your cocoa-filled basement. Or… you get the idea.

So, snuggle up with your blanket and keyboard (or notebook), find some writing and drinking buddies (drinking chocolate, y’all), and dive into that dream, make it yours, bring it to life, then bring it to us on the page.

Let’s Get You Published Together

Say goodbye to solitude and hello to a supportive community of authors who love dragons, Jedi, and Hogwarts - just like you.

LegendFiction has opportunities for you to meet up with other writers and mentors EVERY SINGLE DAY. You heard me - every day.

Take a look the massive support LegendFiction offers. Most of it is totally free. Unlock the rest for $5 per month, with your 30-day free trial any time! Super generous.

Take advantage of these goldmines. We can buckle down on your stories together.

🎆 The Cocoa Café Chronicles Contest

Open to any faith-inspired, Catholic & Orthodox author anywhere! We’re a community for high school teens through to adults. (Questions about that? Check out how we keep teens safe and writing.)

Enter a cozy, dangerous, or mystical short story! (Details in the next section.)

Top 10 stories (and possibly a few honorable mentions) get published in a fiction anthology—Cocoa Café Chronicles: 10 Sip-Sized Stories of Magic, Mayhem, and Cocoa from the Authors of LegendFiction, to be made available on Kindle, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and more - all to help you grow your publishing career!
This anthology is reviewed and carefully designed by LegendFiction team volunteers, and we do it for free. All the income generated from sales of this anthology goes to two places:

To pay the LegendFiction team members for their time in designing the anthology
To pay for LegendFiction software and maintenance costs

This is how we give back to the community so that we can all continue creating together!

Read our contest details carefully! They’re pretty standard, but make sure you’re clear on it all!

📅 Dates, Details, & Deadlines

(Since we’ve used up our rations of alliteration with the letter C, we’ve moved on to D)

Story Rules

The story centers around a café that specializes in chocolate-based foods (PSST! You could even get zany with something like, say, chocolate chicken mole) that has been inherited. Both of those elements—cocoa shop and the fact that it’s inherited—should be fundamental to the story in some capacity. (NOTE: it has to be a cocoa shop - not a coffee shop that happens to serve hot chocolate; a hard core cocoa shop!)
The setting is a Harbor - but there’s no rule about what the Harbor has to look like or even what it’s called. Just be sure the setting is a harbor or by the beachside. (I didn't necessarily say it has to be on the land side of the beach—or even above water.)
All spec fic genres welcome. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be fantasy proper, but it can be sci-fi, scifantasy, (post) apocalyptic, horror, dystopian, or anything like that. If there's a little bit of something that doesn't currently exist, you're good.

Submission Rules

Earlybird Editor deadline is Friday, February 7th, 2025. Stories submitted by this day will receive extra-special, tender-loving-feedback from yours truly, the Legend Editor Prime (so far)—Gabriella Batel—so you can have your story in tip-top sparkling shape before the selection begins.
Final deadline for all submissions is Friday, February 28th, 2025. Stories chosen for publication will be announced on Friday, March 7th, 2025. Minimal editing may be included.
Post your story on your blog, and share a link to your contest entry here, inside LegendFiction. (Alternatively, if you don’t have a blog, leave a Google Doc link. Make sure you set permissions so we can view it.)
Enter Here
Your short story submission should be around 3000 words.
All spec fic genres welcome.
Ideally young adult fiction - not children’s stories, and no extremely mature content.
No fan fiction. Your creative world may be similar to your favorite series, but must have original content.
Contestants do not need to be paying members of LegendFiction, but you do need to create a free account to enter this contest.
All stories are subject to mentor review. We will select and review stories that best follow our content and contest guidelines.
All participants will be notified about the contest finalists through the LegendFiction community. Judges’ decisions are final.
We read all submissions ‘anonymously,’ meaning name, membership status, and past expertise does not influence our decision on the merit of your entry.

👉 Must-Read Links

LegendFiction Writing Guidelines & Copyright: Find out how we give feedback in contests, what kinds of stories you can submit, what your copyrights are, religious themes and graphic content.
Read our Short Story Checklist to level up from learner to Legend! We will use this for providing feedback on your story.

Ready to begin?

Drop a comment right here to let us know you're entering a story! We will open up the submission process when the season begins!

V. May the lore be with you!
R. This is the way!