Trembling With Fear 4-27-25

Greetings, children of the dark. I, like I’m sure a lot of you did, saw Sinners last week. My word, what a glorious piece of cinema that is. I’ve got a piece in the summer issue of the BFS Journal all about how we’re not meant to be in an uptick of vampire stories, but if Sinners is anything to go by then… oh my, I am going to be a very happy cinema-goer in the coming months! I bloody love a vampire, as I’m sure regular readers will know. I’m not exactly quiet about it.
Have you got a vampire story hanging around, inspired by the cinematic resurgence of the dark ones? Well, a quick reminder: we are officially closed to short story submissions until our next window opens in July. Between then and now, the residents of TWF Towers will be hunkered down reviewing the almost-60 submissions we received for the 12 available spots. Please be patient with us while we get through them!
And while we’re on the subject of submissions, we’re already getting some early submissions for the annual summer special, which is great—just remember that our new specials editor John won’t be reviewing these for a while yet as we’ve only just entered Spring! While you’re welcome to send them in, please be aware they’ll be filed away for safekeeping until probably June at the earliest.
Want to get a response earlier than that? We’re always, always, always looking for drabbles, unholy trinities and serialised fiction!
For now, let’s head over to this week’s edition of dark speculative fiction. Our main course, Peter Bakumov takes a trip to the end of the world. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:
- Rob Butler’s soaring bird,
- Christopher Mattravers-Taylor’s ill-fated dive, and
- S.G. Perahim’s gym bro woes.
One final quick reminder: the next edition of my Writing the Occult online event series is fast approaching. We’ll be talking about relics on 10 May—all those cursed things dug up from the ground, found under the water, buried deep in the hope they would never again see the light of day. We’ll be chatting about the weird things we do with human remains, about Egyptology, about archaeology and shipwrecks and museums and more. There will even be a workshop with acclaimed horror writer Ally Wilkes, who will lead us through an adventure in cursed objects. You know you want to join us, right? Head over here for details and tickets.
For now, it’s over to the boss man.
Hi all.
I jinxed us last week. The Trembling With Fear physical edition is still at 78%. So close to being done but not quite there yet.
However, I did have some time to work on the new layout, and Lauren has sent in some great key changes to make sure things happen properly. I may take an agile approach and get the site on the new layout with some of the key pieces and implement other new changes over time. We’ll see. I fear that if I wait for everything to be ready, it may be another year before I can get it done.
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.