Author: Lauren McMenemy

Hello, children of the dark. Tell me, dear ones: do you have any stories hiding behind your couch? Maybe an idea that’s been burning a hole in your brain but you’re yet to put pen to paper? Or maybe there’s that thing you were *sure* would be accepted to that anthology but you were ghosted… If you have a story lurking in the shadows, please consider submitting it to us here at TWF. You can do that here, or just email us via [email protected].

You see, I fear I may have scared you all off last week with my diatribe about how we’re really searching for dark speculative fiction and not evil humans in the real world. Please don’t let that put you off trying! One thing I love about this publication is how open we are, as well as how we’re often a jumping-off point for writers who are nervous about submitting elsewhere, or those who are at the beginning of their journeys. But I say this a lot, and I need to add this afterwards: we also welcome stories from those writers who are well-established, and those who are anywhere in between. We have an insatiable need for submissions, so I can’t say this enough!

Here’s a random tangent, but trust me, it makes sense in my head: when I was growing up in Australia in the ‘80s, there was a character in a TV commercial called the Gobbledock. This purple hairy thing only wanted one thing, and that thing was potato chips (crisps for the Brits). It would run around calling out “chippy chippy chippy” as it searched for the gold. And lately, I kinda feel like the editorial Gobbledock, constantly calling out for “stories stories stories”. I’m a broken record and I even annoy myself. But it must be done.

It’s the end of the northern hemisphere summer, and real life is calling. Maybe we should all spend some time this month indulging our dark sides. Get your fingers on those keyboards, and write!

But for now, let’s turn to this week’s TWF menu. Our short story offering this week comes from someone we’ve published in drabble form before, but this is her first short story: welcome to the longer form, S.G. Perahim! This is then followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Ceferino Ruiz is trapped under water,
• DJ Tyrer channels old Hollywood adventures and heads for Egypt, and 
• Cassandra Vaillancourt finds things are not well at the mine.

Over to you, Stuart.

It was a time of crazy busy-ness. The cover is moving forward, however, no real updates outside of that. Sorry, more to come! 

For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree on places that aren’t Twitter, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads.

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.

Hello, children of the dark. I’m running a bit late this week (sorry, Stuart!), so I won’t do my usual rambling unfurling of my mad mind. I’ll just say hi, I’ve finally got my ticket to next month’s UK FantasyCon—spurred on by the fact I’ve now joined the British Fantasy Society as its PR and Marketing Officer—and I hope to meet a few TWF-ers while I’m there! Make sure you come and say hi if you see me. I’ll be the one in the corner that looks like me.

But for now, it’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. Our short story this week is a tasty bit of cosmic horror—thanks for this one, Patrick O’Malley! Patrick also marks the first of our new short stories now we’ve reopened after a year’s publishing backlog. We’re really trying to make sure that doesn’t happen again, but please don’t be shy about submitting your stories!

Speak of which, our timely cosmic horror is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Adam Ehrenberg picks up a hitchhiker,
• Caroline Jenner gets magical, and 
• Engilbert Egill has unfinished business.

BTW if you happen to be in the UK and in the vicinity of the Midlands town of Derby next month, be sure to check out this awesome event: the Paracinema Cult Film Festival happens 22-25 September!

Over to you, Stuart.

School has started up again, and I’m taking more classes than I have before, so, unfortunately, expect my usual complaint of not having much time. That being said – I’m closing in on the finish line of my MBA. I’m not there after these two classes, but I’ll be VERY close. Side note: I have everything I need now to get the TWF final covers formatted and am sending that over to our artist this weekend so expect some real news on that front SOON! (Finally! WOOHOO!) 

For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree on places that aren’t Twitter, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads.

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.

Hello, children of the dark. It’s great to see short story submissions back in our inbox—yes, in case you missed the news, we’ve re-opened to shorts!—but the team’s noticed a developing trend we’d like to nip in the bud, right here and right now. 

It concerns the type of “darkness” we’re looking for in our stories. Despite the name of the site, we at Horror Tree and Trembling With Fear don’t just concern ourselves with horror; we are fans of anything darkly speculative. When we say “dark”, we mean it’s not light and fluffy, nor full of hope and optimism. That could mean monsters or it could mean fairytales or it could be dystopia or it could be anything, really. 

But it’s the next bit that I really want to focus on: the “speculative” bit. Because this is where the trend is developing.

Speculative stories, says Masterclass, have “elements that are based on conjecture and do not exist in the real world”. They’re sometimes called “what-if” stories. They “change the laws of what’s real or possible as we know them in our current society, and then speculate on the outcome.” 

Now, because our site has “horror” in its name, we get a lot of horror stories. That’s understandable. But the bulk of those stories lately have been based in the real world, dealing with real horrors. Serial killers are not speculative; they are very, scarily real. So are plain-old abusers, murderers, tormentors. Humans are evil, for sure. And that’s not particularly interesting to us at TWF. 

If you take that tormentor and make it a supernatural being, that’s something we like. It doesn’t have to be a high fantasy, dark version of the Hobbit. It just has to be something a little bit unreal. A haunting. A creature. A nightmare. Use the darkest recesses of your imagination. 

With that in mind, we’re going to get strict on real-world horror subs now we’ve reopened. If you’re going to try us with a real-world horror tale, it better be bloody spectacular. That’s all I’m saying. We get that the world is shit; get catharsis by imagining something new!

Whatever your poison, you can find the guidelines and details on how to submit over here. 

But for now, it’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. Len Klapdor’s short story shows how dangerous it is to follow strangers. (And Len has been super patient as we worked through our big backlog of stories from last year – this is the last of the oldies; it’s all shiny new subs from here!) This is followed by three delicious quick bites: 

• Cassandra Daucus channels Austen,
• Vincent West faces omens, and 
• Catherine Berry seeks silent solace.

Over to you, Stuart.

We’re done with formatting and everything else for physical releases! Just waiting on cover edits and this year’s Trembling With Fear is finally going to be good to go. So excited for this to FINALLY be getting out into the wild. Also, we’re working toward finishing the first round of Shadowed Realms. Hopefully, the first round will be done by this coming weekend, though time will tell. 

For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree on places that aren’t Twitter, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads.

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.

Hello, children of the dark. I’m keeping it short this week because, as I write this on Thursday, I am still trying to hurriedly work on my presentation about witch tropes in pop culture for my event in less than 48 hours, aka the first time I’ve organised a writing event and sold tickets. Readers, I am rather anxious! But hopefully it will go smoothly—and if it doesn’t, hopefully the attendees are forgiving. The good news is, this one has been so well received that there will definitely be another edition of Writing the Occult, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, I’ve seen plenty of short stories coming into the coffers, which is great (I’m going to need a lot of reading time in the coming days!). Yes, we are now officially re-open to short story submissions, and you can find the guidelines and details on how to submit over here. Please use the website form to submit it rather than emailing us directly; it’s a good way to alert us that this is an important message rather than one of the many, many link-building requests we get into the inbox every day. And make sure you choose TWF from the drop-down menu!

But for now, it’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. Our short story course comes from Sarah Licht, and it is quite honestly the most innovative story format I’ve had the pleasure to publish since sitting in this chair—I’m only sorry the limitations of our system couldn’t do more justice to the format!. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Steven Patchett heads off to carve lovers’ initials,
• Hana Carolina is inspired by a real abandoned mental hospital, and 
• Emma Burnett catches her reflection in the mirror.

Over to you, Stuart.

PS – it’s my birthday tomorrow 🥳

We’re still working through our readings for the physical release and best of anthology! Things are going well, more soon!

For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree on places that aren’t Twitter, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads.

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.

Hello, children of the dark. It’s time. Yes, it’s time for your short stories to come back to us. I know it’s been frustrating having submissions closed for SO DAMN LONG, but we were a victim of our own success, and you’re all just too goshdarn talented. 

In celebration at the window reopening, I’m keeping it short and sweet this week to remind you of what we’re looking for, and to give a recap on our submission guidelines. All of this – including the form to submit – is over on this page.

Short stories

• Up to 1500 words – any longer and we won’t read it.
• Make the most of the word count, please; the sweet spot is at least 800 words for our publication.
• It needs to be a complete story in itself; no extracts from longer works please. We can tell (most of the time). “A complete story” means  it has a coherent and strong beginning, middle, and end, and a narrative that is well-paced. Descriptive prose is great for scene-setting, but there also needs to be some action and character development with it.
• We might be called “Horror Tree”, but we’re not just looking for horror. In fact, we want your best dark speculative fiction – emphasis on the speculative. Think fairy tales, paranormal entities, scary stuff in space, fantastical beasts, grimdark worlds. Get creative!
• We’re ready to read them NOW.

Drabbles

• Exactly 100 words – no more, no less.
• Also needs to be a complete story in and of itself, with a strong resolution (not just tapering off…)
• We have an insatiable appetite for these, and are always looking for more! (Otherwise we’ll have to start publishing pieces from Stuart and I, and we’ll look super self-indulgent – and you don’t want that, right?)

The intense but important warning

• No erotica, pornography, or graphic sex
• No rape (implied or explicit)
• No homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, misandry, ableism, or racism
• No killing or abuse of kids or pets – don’t cause great harm small sentient things!
• No reprints
• No fanfiction or stories in someone else’s established world – there are copyright issues

Be inspired/spurred on by this week’s efforts!

But for now, let’s turn to the reason you’re here: it’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. For this week’s short story, Paul Lonardo tells the sad tales of a man who collects haunted houses. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Cassandra Vaillancourt enters the darkness of the cave,
• Tom Ray receives a dreaded postcard, and 
• Alan Moskowitz goes off for a date night.

Over to you, Stuart.

We’re still working through our readings for the physical release and best of anthology! Things are going well, more soon! 

For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree on places that aren’t Twitter, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads. 

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.

Hello, children of the dark. As we start to reach our fingers into August, my world is full of two things—well, three, if you count the fact our beloved elderly bunny familiar has been very poorly of late. 

August is my birthday month. I grew up having winter birthdays in Australia, and was excited at the prospect of a summer birthday when I moved to London. Seventeen years later, and I don’t think I’ve had a sunny birthday even once? Put your best weather vibes out there for my birthday, please! I mean, I’ll officially be in my mid-40s after this one, so anything will help!

But much more importantly, it’s only two weeks until I run my first chunky online writing day. I’ve partnered with Alex Davis (read the Horror Tree interview with Alex here) to create “Writing the Occult”, a soon-to-be regular series of events bringing together writers and experts about various occult matters. The idea is to help writers working in these areas to explore, ask questions, and learn more to spark ideas for their writing works. 

So, on Saturday 12 August (incidentally a few days before the aforementioned birthday), I’ve gathered a handful of amazing humans to talk all things witches and witchlit for Writing the Occult: Witches. You’ll meet:

• Claire Askew & Alice Tarbuck, poets, writers, and editors of the Watkins anthology The Modern Craft: Powerful Voices on Witchcraft Ethics
• Tiffani Angus, award-nominated SFFH writer and co-author of Spec Fic for Newbies (learn more about the book in our Horror Tree interview, here)
• Stacey Thomas, author of the just-released historical witchlit, The Revels
• Chelsey Pippin Mizzi, tarot queen, writer, and coach
• And, well, me! I’ll be kicking off proceedings with a look at the witch trope in pop culture.

If you’re witch-curious, meet our speakers over here and grab a ticket. I’d love to see you there – and make sure you let me know you’re a TWF-er on the day! I love to meet our contributors and readers IRL.

Speaking of witches, a quick shout-out to Horror Tree’s own Holley Cornetto. I’m in the midst of reading the first book in the Trailer Park Witches series she’s created with S.O. Green, and it is GREAT. Keep an eye out for my review on this site, coming sooooooon.

But for now, let’s turn to the reason you’re here: it’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. For this week’s short story, Gregory Von Dare heads to the weekly poker night in the basement. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Harrison S Foreman has some sight challenges,
• Engilbert Egill has a cold case breakthrough, and 
• Ceferino Ruiz has a creepy teddy bear.

Finally, some reminders for your creativity:

• You’ve only got a few days left to submit to our summer special. Get your summer shorts and drabbles in by the end of July via our submissions page, and our lovely specials editor Shalini will review and make her choices for our summer special edition.
• We are, as always, looking for your darkly speculative drabbles. We publish three every week, and try not to publish the same writer twice within a month, so we’re always looking for new voices. Why not give it (advance pun warning) a stab?

Over to you, Stuart.

We made a LOT of progress on our Trembling With Fear physical release. I’ve finally pulled my weight being out of the MBA class and did just about everything I can on pushing it forward with 2-3 small changes over, so we should see some real finalized progress in the next week or two. Super excited! I’ve also but the time your reading this should have hit and passed the half way point for all of our other stories that are in the queue. So much reading!

For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree on places that aren’t Twitter, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads. Though, no promises on how active we’ll be on either until after this semester.

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.

Hello, children of the dark. You lot are keen beans, eh? Since we announced we’d soon reopen to short story submissions, a few eager beavers have snuck into the inbox already. It’s great to see enthusiasm, but please note anything submitted to us before we officially re-open next month will not be read. You will need to keep it and re-submit it when we open. We won’t be keeping hold of the pieces to add them to the list when the time comes – that kinda defeats the purpose of having submissions windows! 

Which brings me to the matter of those short story submissions. One of the things I love about the role I play here at HorrorTree.com is the ability to nurture and support new writers. So many of our submitters are taking that leap for the first time, nervous about how it might go – even nervous about having to write a bio because they’ve never done it before. I don’t want to lose that about TWF; it’s one of the great things about it…

However, I can tell you that we’re going to need to be much tougher on short stories in future. 

We’re all volunteers with lives and jobs and other commitments, so we don’t have the time to sit and go back and forth with writers multiple times to help stories to take shape. Whereas before we might’ve taken a chance on a writer that we could see had potential but needed a lot of nurturing, we may now need to send that writer on their way with some feedback but not a potential acceptance. If we don’t, we’ll end up with another year-long backlog of acceptances and will need to close again to subs, which we don’t want to do. It’s not fair on you, the wonderful community of darkly speculative humans (and other creatures). 

If we do face another onslaught – and part of me hopes we do, because it’s wonderful to see so much enthusiasm for genre writing out there! – we’ll need to consider other options. Like having a quarterly subs window. Or even an annual one. Who knows. It all depends on how the coming months take shape.

However, there’s still plenty of space for new TWF subs this week. We are always, always looking for drabbles, and it’s also the dying days to sub to our summer special. Get your summer shorts and drabbles in by the end of July via our submissions page, and our lovely specials editor Shalini will review and make her choices for our summer special edition.

But for now, let’s turn to the reason you’re here: it’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. For this week’s short story, Paul R. Panossian explores the abandoned cabin in the woods. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Matt Krizan is counting drips,
• Ken MacGregor faces excitement in a pub, and 
• Emma Burnett has a secret to share.

Over to you, Stuart.

I’m officially in between MBA classes and The Great Reading has begun! There is a lot of progress on our two anthologies and I’m hoping the reading and proofing will be done in the next week as we’re really behind on our TWF release. 

For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree on places that aren’t Twitter, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads. Though, no promises on how active we’ll be on either until after this semester.

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.

Hello, children of the dark. In my race last week to announce our re-opening to short story submissions, I totally missed a milestone: it’s now been a whole year since I took over leading this publication from the inimitable Stephanie Ellis. A whole year! I can’t believe it either.

So in celebration/commiseration, I thought I’d share five things I’ve noticed about you, our wonderful writers and readers, in that time.

1. We have some prolific regular subbers! A quick shout-out to those writers who are in our inbox a lot with fresh tales. We appreciate you.
2. There’s an ebb and flow to submissions, with peaks in summer and, unsurprisingly, at Halloween. But we’re always open, so you don’t have to wait until specific periods to get your dark tales into our coffers. In fact, if you’re writing earlier in the year, you might have a better chance at acceptance. Just saying.
3. There’s also trends in topics. Right now, we’re getting a lot of horror based in real life—things like serial killers and murders, or hitchhiking gone bad, or traumatic events, or terrible people in general. Those are fine, but we are first and foremost a publication for speculative fiction, so we’ll always give precedence to dark tales with a hint of otherworldliness to them. 
4. If you want to stand out, try writing a dark bit of science fiction or fantasy. The site’s name might have “horror” prominently in its title, but we do cover all sorts of speculative fiction. We don’t get anywhere near enough space dramas or epic fantasy creations!
5. Finally, remember we’re a small team of volunteers, and we’re actual humans! When you receive an acknowledgement email, or an acceptance email, that is legitimately coming from me. I’ve typed it out just for you. There’s no automation involved (apart from the tech that sends the submission form to our shared email). So say hi every now and then, please!

What’s the next year got in store? Well, if Stuart keeps me around, we have some big stuff on the horizon. First and foremost, we’re reopening our short story submissions at the beginning of August. They’ve been closed for almost a whole year because of the sheer volume of submissions we had last summer (told you about the peaks and troughs!), so I’m excited to see what you’ve had percolating all that time. 

We’re also still open for submissions to our summer special! Get your summer shorts and drabbles in by the end of July via our submissions page, and our lovely specials editor Shalini will review and make her choices for our summer special edition. Successful stories could also make our annual anthologies, so there’s double the chance at publication!

But for now, let’s turn to the one-year-plus-one-week anniversary of my first TWF. It’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. For this week’s short story, Jason Fischer has some sleep worries. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Frances Castaneda gets digging,
• Cassandra Daucus gets writing, and 
• Adam Eherenberg gets resurrecting.

Over to you, Stuart.

I’m not sure if Lauren reads my additions as I add them after she’s done, to everyone who reads this, I am 110% hoping to keep her around! She’s been a fantastic addition to the team!

So, not much to say yet again. I’m soon to be in between MBA classes. My main goal, as stated last week, is still to be finishing up TWF and our Best Of anthology. No major changes past that quite yet. Still too slammed to think past that and I only have about a month to burn through timewise before classes start up again.

For those who are looking to connect with Horror Tree on places that aren’t Twitter, we’re also in BlueSky and Threads. *I* am also now on BlueSky and Threads. Though, no promises on how active we’ll be on either until after this semester.

If you’d like to extend your support to the site, we’d be thrilled to welcome your contributions through Ko-Fi or Patreon. Your generosity keeps us fueled and fired up to bring you the very best.