Submission Window: September 1st-30th, 2022
Payment: $100 for the chosen story + 50% of subscription revenue
Theme: Any genre, short story
Changing the world, one story at a time
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Title: The Name of Fear Collection Tales of Anton the Undying
Author: Scott Harper
Publisher: Input/Output Enterprises
Genre: Occult
Release Date: 11th March, 2022
Synopsis: Rome may have fallen, but its greatest hero still fights to keep the supernatural world in check.
Once a powerful gladiator, Anton is now a vampire enforcer tasked with eliminating creatures that expose the secret supernatural society hidden within our world. But not all monsters are willing to lay low—some passionately yearn for a return to the good old days when they fed openly and dominated humanity. These diehards will go to any lengths to achieve their goal, even if it means destroying Anton. But Anton guards a terrible ancient secret, and those foolish enough to challenge him soon discover there are things even monsters fear.
Howdy, writers of the dark. You are my favourites, each and every one of you. How else can we process what’s going on in this world if not through writing our darkest fears, through exploring the possibilities and exorcising our demons on the page?
In the spirit of processing through writing, I asked Twitter the other day for recommendations. As I sit here, an Australian in London, watching everyone trying (and failing) to deal with this new threat of constant heat, I realised I want to read more climate-based fiction, both of the dystopian and of the solarpunk variety. It’s something I’ve dabbled in, and I’d love to do more exploration myself.
And you know what? Twitter is a dumpster fire most of the time, but sometimes the tweeters really come through. My notifications were flooded for days with recommendations from all over the place; so much so that I now feel a need to pull together those recommendations into a document that I can share, just to spread the love. Maybe you have your own beloved CliFi pieces? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter, and let’s keep building this list of greatness
Not much climate stuff for you this week, but as it’s my birthday (yes, today, the 14th) I have decided to indulge myself and bring you stories that align with my own mission: folk horror, the natural world, the mythic, monsters and… ghosts. Of a sort, at least.
This week’s trembling main course is an exploration of religion, nature and faith through the eyes of a child and a very intriguing woodland. This was actually one of the first pieces I read when I took over from Steph, and it took my breath away. Thanks, Matthew Crowder!
For the quick bites, we have three delicious offerings:
Enjoy my birthday selection – and be sure to share your own stories with us, too! You’ll find details on how to submit over here.
Over to you, Stuart….
Lauren has been just an amazing new resource for Horror Tree! Not only is she keeping me on track with Trembling With Fear’s incoming stories, she has also helped us update our Trembling With Fear Submission Guidelines! Behind-the-scenes, she’s also helping us get a bit more organized in other areas, though that isn’t really something front-facing but will be hugely beneficial to the site on the whole. We’ll have a few other page changes coming up and I should be seeing the first preview of the new layout by next Monday which isn’t a full preview but will be a framework and I’m thrilled to check it out.
In other realms of working on expanding the site… Did one of our recent Author Interviews end up on Microsoft Start?! We would all LOVE if you can throw us a follow on MSN!
For those looking to support the site, we’ve recently launched a Ko-Fi and always have our Patreon going.
As always, I hope you had a great weekend.
Never judge a book by its cover. It was my mother who first taught me this valuable life lesson. The adage resonates like a divine mantra or a proverb gifted to me by a wise sage. (Which mom certainly was)
As authors, I would like to believe we are an accepting lot with open minds and humble hearts; that we don’t make assumptions about others and are not judgmental on first impressions. I would also like to believe that the world is progressing and that our community is blazing the trail. At the end of the day, we are all different in our unique way. It might be the color of our skin, our race, religion, our sexual identity, or our gender. Still, with all these wonderful flavors and varieties, we are more alike than we are not. And judging someone by any of these identifiers or their cover would be impossible.
Hello everyone! A couple neat things to talk about today, first up: we’ve updated our Trembling With Fear Submission Guidelines! These haven’t been touched in a couple of years, and we really wanted to clarify a few points on them. Secondly, one of our recent Author Interviews ended up on Microsoft Start! We would all LOVE it if you can throw us a follow on MSN!
Now, to show off some of our favorite open calls from the week:
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Deadline: December 1st, 2022
Payment: $25
Theme: Cross-Genre stories
We’re looking for genre authors who cross boundaries. Authors whose stories twist the tropes to showcase in a cross-genre anthology of stories that entertain, but read fresh and new. Send us the story that you can’t classify: a story that can’t be pigeon-holed into a single subgenre, or that pushes against your genre’s boundaries. We want to showcase authors who write uncommon fiction. For example:
Today, we’re thrilled to offer up two copies of River of Ashes by Alexandrea Weis for our UK readers! Our own Melody E. McIntyre previously did a River of Ashes book review, with the publisher describing it as “River of Ashes and the St. Benedict series is a smart and gripping Southern Gothic, Psychological Thriller reminiscent of Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, Caroline Kepnes, and the Gothic horror and family-sagas of V.C. Andrews. Inspired by true events, The Nerd Daily called it, “The type of cautionary tale that keeps you alive by reminding you that sometimes the biggest horrors aren’t the monsters hiding under the bed but the ones hiding in plain sight.””
This one is really easy to enter and we’ve got two physical copies up for grabs!
Enter to win below!
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Title: Gothic
Author: Philip Fracassi
Publisher: Cemetery Dance
Genre: Horror
Release Date: 1st January, 2023
Synopsis: On his 59th birthday, Tyson Parks—a famous, but struggling, horror writer—receives an ornate antiquarian desk in the hopes it will rekindle his creative juices. Tyson Parks’s last best seller was years ago. His agent hardly takes his calls anymore. Tyson is running out of money, and ideas.
I’d like to take this time to give special thanks to our Patreon Sponsors who are at the Level 3 reward level and above!
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