Author: Lauren McMenemy

Hello, children of the dark. Summer has kinda disappeared on this side of the pond (it threatens a return, don’t worry!), which has got me thinking more about the light and the sun and the green open fields and the seaside settings. Why is it we see so little dark fiction set in the daylight? 

I know the very name of it – dark fiction – tends to bring to mind claustrophobic spaces and midnight jaunts and something hiding in the shadows. And these stories are our bread and butter here at TWF. 

But just because it’s usual doesn’t mean it’s the only thing possible. 

Think of something like Midsommer, which brought horror crashing into the eternal sunshine of the Nordic summer. Or Picnic at Hanging Rock, with its Valentine’s picnic gone awry. Sunshine and BBQs and boat trips can actually be rife for dark tales. What would you do with a prompt that required a summer story fit for Horror Tree’s shelves? 

While you ponder that, I’ll remind you: we’re still open for submissions to our summer special! Yes, there was theory to my madness (and also I’ve just come from a class about “summer frights” so it’s on my mind). As we say on our submissions page: “We’re looking for horror on the beach, at a B&B, on a cruise, backpacking, road trips, glamping, end of the pier. What about a drabble as a holiday postcard: Wish you weren’t here?” 

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 get to the reason you’re all here. It’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. For this week’s short story, Henry Martin is left behind deep under the ground, with horrific consequences. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Cassandra Vaillancourt heads for open waters,
• Patrick Norris spies on the kids next door, and 
• G.B. Dinesh survives a plane crash.

And finally, a quick reminder that we are reopening to short story submissions in a few weeks. Get those darkly speculative flash fiction tales ready for us!

Over to you, Stuart.

So, had a great Fourth of July with the kids. Our new puppy also, thankfully, has 0 care in the world when it comes to fireworks. I’m sure having two young boys that run around the house constantly has helped her not be surprised by loud noises. Our elder pup also is good with fireworks so it was a great extended weekend of fun with family and the doggos. 

I’m in the last two weeks of my current MBA class. The next semester is going to likely be as challenging as this one has been if not more so, however, I’m in the home stretch. It is putting me massively behind on things. My goals in between semesters are to finish up the TWF print release, finish reading the Best Of stories, and finishing fulfilling a couple of our Patreon edits that are almost overdue. Past that? I can’t say I have much in mind quite yet. 

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. July already, huh? And it feels simultaneously like the year has whizzed by and also that it’s crawling along. So much for all those grand plans for 2023! I better get moving!

It also feels like an age since we closed to short stories, because it really has been. After an absolute deluge of great submissions last summer, we took the rare decision to temporarily close our doors for anything other than drabbles. It wasn’t easy, but it had to be done – otherwise writers would be waiting literal years for their pieces to be published, and that’s not fair on anyone. 

We had hoped the submissions window would reopen in early 2023, but we kept pushing it back. Some of you have tried your luck and subbed shorts anyway, and we’ve had to decline with a vague “we’ll reopen at some point, so please resubmit then”. As we sit here this week, we’re still scheduled through beyond the end of this summer – another 10 weeks worth of stories still waiting for publication. Yes, I wasn’t kidding when I said ‘onslaught’; we were getting around 30-40 a week at one point last summer! 

That said, we’ll need to reopen at some point, and it’s only fair we give plenty of notice. With that in mind, I will say we’re aiming to re-open to short story subs from the beginning of August. So, get your short stories ready for us! We love anything that’s darkly speculative – not just all-out blood-and-guts horror, remember; try us with your dark space operas and dystopias and all the speculative sub-genres – as long as it’s no longer than 1500 words long. Yes, it’s really a flash fiction market. Make sure you send it in via our submission form, and that you upload it in a Word document, not a PDF or a screenshot please. We accept simultaneous submissions, but do let us know if your subbed piece is accepted elsewhere so we can withdraw it from contention.

But for now, let’s get to the reason you’re all here. It’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu. Our short this week has Dylan James in the North-West Territories during elk season, which is rarely a good idea. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Victoria Huntley reflects on some marital difficulties,
• Jakob Wild runs from *something*, and 
• Sean MacKendrick doesn’t resist at all.

Over to you, Stuart.

Another small hiccup with hosting this last week lead us to get an upgrade that has made the site lightning-fast on the backend, Hopefully, that speed has increased to your reading experience as well! Still reading through stories and working on this year’s TWF, hopefully, news soon. I’ll be honest, I won’t expect a big update next week with it being the 4th and whatnot. 

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 writing this on the eve of the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, and pondering life and goals and meaning and purpose as is one’s wont at these milestones. I also happen to be in the dip phase of my depression cycle, and these things are not great to coincide. 

(Sorry, this intro might be ponderous; feel free to jump to the stories!)

I’ve been considering my purpose for a while now, and coming up blank. I’m sure it’s there, and it revolves around creativity in some way. I am a huge believer in the importance of the creative arts to the world, though I seem to be a minority these days. But what does that mean at an individual level—particularly when at this individual level I am also bereft of motivation and in the midst of one giant hill of writers’ block? 

I’d love to know how you deal with these troughs, dear readers. What’s your magic wand when things get tough? How do you survive the dips so you can conquer the peaks? All suggestions welcome!

For now, though, it’s enough of the navel gazing; let’s get to the reason you’re all here. It’s time for this week’s offerings on the TWF menu.

Our short this week comes from the strange mind of Amanda Leslie as seen through her smart doorbell. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Ceferino Ruiz faces the end of the world
• Francesco Levato faces a very lyrical end, and 
• Fiona M Jones tries to find out what is at the end.

Over to you, Stuart.

Still feel like I’m treading water. Lots of short stories being read for our Best Of anthology and lots of work being done toward our release of the next Trembling With Fear. I have 3 weeks left of my current MBA class, and I’m honestly not sure if things will calm down until the program is done at the end of the year at this point. Fingers crossed! 

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 I’m putting together this week’s issue for you, I’m also listening in to a talk on how we can use AI for creative collaboration. The speaker is passionate and knowledgeable and tends towards the speculative side of writing. I’m finding myself getting swept up in the possibilities.

But then.

Yes, but then.

I’m just not sure. AI, and particularly Chat-GPT, has turned the fiction world on its head. Lots of publications—ours included—have updated submission guidelines to say we are only looking for human-generated stories. And I agree with that. But I also know that this thing is here to stay, and we need to find a way to adapt. To grow. To evolve. 

At the moment, we’re scared because there’s a lack of transparency. There’s also the ethical question of where, how, and on what these AI models have been trained on. These are Very Large Questions that we won’t easily solve or answer. And then there’s this, which I put to this speaker via the chat: it does make me wonder what new ideas or new spins on things will be left if we’re just consuming stories based on stories based on stories based on… Or maybe we’re already doing that anyway? Is there anything new left?

The human element is essential. I’d like to believe that will never go away. But then, there are enough people out there getting so excited about possibilities that they are maybe not thinking straight, or thinking ethically, or logically, or with a future-proofed-for-humanity mind. Who knows what they’ll throw at us.

And all of this just makes me want to turn to writing sci-fi to figure out what I think!

How about you? Have you got a speculative tech-based story that is burning a hole in your pocket? Duncan Cave did, and this week he brings us a very different conversation with the Administrator—one with world-changing consequences—for our short story. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Nancy Pica Renken has a very dangerous shower,
• Emma Burnett struggles for an idea, and 
• Catherine Berry finds out what happens when you mess with nature.

Over to you, Stuart.

I don’t have too much to say quite yet! I’ve been starting to spot-check the Trembling With Fear collected anthology and have been reading short stories for our Best Of anthology. Outside of that? Work and school have been killing me this week so I don’t have too much to really add in that is new. More to come!

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. This week, I’m deep in the healing phase of my multiple broken bones and feeling the frustration of things not moving fast enough. To rub salt in the literal wounds, the weather has been glorious here in London Town. We don’t get much sun, and I’m missing these few weeks that will no doubt be the English “summer’! My Aussie heart weeps. 

That said, there is plenty to keep me occupied. Not only have I had plenty of your drabbles, children of the dark, to read and respond to, but I’ve also been planning and launching my very first online writing event! Alongside the UK con legend that is Alex Davis, I’ll be hosting a day about witchlit on 12 August. All the details are here – and be sure to check out the other things Alex has coming up. There’s his regular horror school (started this week), and a week-long celebration of folk horror for the solstice, as well as other things going on. 

If the witchlit thing gets good interest (and it seems to be so far, touch wood!), I plan to expand it into a series of events looking at different aspects of writing in aspects of the occult and paranormal. What would you like to see us tackle? Maybe we can aim to take over TWF with tales of witches and vampires and demons!

None of that for you this week, though. Our short story comes courtesy of regular contributor Ron Capshaw, and has him delving into secret worlds of cover-ups and conspiracies. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Stéphane G Perahim channels some hungry kitties,
• Josh Clark gets more than he bargained for, and 
• Cassandra Vaillancourt finds a home-based “experience” is a little too real.

And a few reminders before I let you go: 

• We love a drabble. Please send them to us! 
• We also love three drabbles, connected by some form of thread. We call these Unholy Trinities, and our specials editor Shalini Bethala would love to see some more in the inbox.
• Ditto serials. Have you got a longer story that could logically be serialised into four parts? We have great need of these! Check out our submissions page for details, then send ‘em in to Shalini. Honestly, she’s lovely. She just has some dark reading proclivities.

Over to you, Stuart.

Before I tell you the MULTITUDE of things that have me busy this week and next, I will say that Steph has sent us a fully fleshed-out Trembling With Fear draft. Due to our editorial changes, we may very well be including everything in one book this year, though it is already likely that we’ll be back to two next! 

So, what has been keeping me busy? Preparing for an office move that occurs next week for the day job. Oh, and someone also thought it might be a good idea to schedule our 50-person new hire session for the same week, and my team works on both of those projects. No pressure! My MBA class is also keeping me busy with a pile of assignments and a paper due next week. At least there was one bright moment in the sea of endless work. I took a half day to celebrate my oldest son’s 10th birthday and take him and some friends to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse! As a die-hard Marvel fan whose favorite characters have generally tended to be the Spider-People, I loved being able to share this with my son. (It was his idea too!) 

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.