Trembling With Fear 5-18-25

Greetings, children of the dark. Boy, do I feel better for not lagging so behind on our submissions pile! Most of last year I was running ragged, always behind, always guilty, always apologising… Last week, we published the last of our January window stories and are mid-way through reading and getting back to you all on the April window stories. We’re back to operating in the timeframe we’re meant to be in! My heart rate has slowed every so slightly…
That said, I’m noticing a few things in the short stories we’re reading right now: First and foremost, too many seem to have had no one else read them yet. I’m really proud that TWF provides so many writers with their first publishing credit, and that as free fiction it’s super accessible, but that doesn’t mean the writer can submit any old thing. We’re not only looking for whether a story adheres to our general theme of dark speculative fiction; we also need it to be a solid and coherent narrative, told in a format that makes sense to the story, and that’s had at least a pass for spelling and grammar. Please, please, do your editors a favour before you submit a story somewhere, whether it’s to us or any other outlet: get someone else to read it for you. Get some feedback. Then check the submission guidelines and make sure you fit what they’re looking for, not just in terms of theme but also how you’ve laid out the story, the file format (we really, really hate getting PDFs, people!), and just basic things like this. Too often lately it feels like people have chucked a brain dump into the submission form. I would love to publish your work, but you have to help us help you.
Before this turns into yet another editor ranting about things no one else really cares about, let’s get to this week’s menu of short, dark, speculative fiction. Our main course comes from Rory Kane, and shows that true love knows no bounds – not even the apocalypse. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:
- Tatiana Samokhina’s nighttime visitor,
- Christina Nordlander’s annoying buzzing, and
- Geoff Holder’s space nightmare.
Over to you, Stuart
Hi all.
By the time you read this, I’m really hoping that we’ve already got the new covers back! We’ve gone through and figured out everything for our overdue 2 releases of Trembling With Fear and should be able to launch it soon (and dive RIGHT into the one that IS due out this year.)
Outside of that, I’m still playing around with the new layout and the new newsletter (I’m actually sending out a copy of this one internally as a test to see how the layout works and to start fiddling with other things in it to make it work smoothly.) Lots of progress is finally happening!
Now, for the standards:
- Thank you so much to everyone who has become a Patreon for Horror Tree. We honestly couldn’t make it without you all!
Offhand, if you’ve ordered Trembling With Fear Volume 6, we’d appreciate a review!
For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree as we’re not really active on Twitter anymore, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads.