Author: Lauren McMenemy

Greetings, children of the dark. I don’t know things are where you are, but on our side of this dystopian nightmare I have now added seasonal allergies which is making me *very happy indeed*. There’s nothing like sore, itchy eyes and a constantly-stuffed-or-runny-nose to add to the unfolding apocalypse that is the world in 2025. I’m planning on channelling my rage into a story or two ASAP; how about you?

If you get around to your rage-story in the next 24 hours or so, remember you have ONE DAY LEFT to submit to our April/Spring window for short stories. The window will close decidedly at midnight on 14 April, so get in quick by filling in the submission form, choosing the TWF short stories option, and hitting send. Remember, we cover the dark side of all speculative fiction: sci-fi, fantasy AND horror. The team at TWF Towers looks forward to reading them.

Consider taking inspiration from the talented folks featured in this week’s edition of dark speculative fiction. For our main course, we’ve got an interesting deadly stream-of-consciousness from Samuel Marlinga. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Deborah Sheldon’s troubled birdbath,
• Geoff Holder’s apocalyptic survivor, and
• Annette Livingstone’s demented doll.

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. Keeping it short this week to throw all the attention on this one thing: Our April/Spring window for short story submissions is now open! This is your call to submit, submit, submit! And you know what? It’s spring or autumn, depending on which end of the globe you live in, so let’s make a special call for some folk horror coming our way. It’s either planting or harvest season, so lean into those pagan motifs and get your outsiders into a closed community for some shenanigans. This is my greatest wish for this window. You have until 14 April to get something to us, and then we’ll close again until the summer. 

Until then, let’s celebrate the talented folks featured in this week’s edition of dark speculative fiction. For our main course, we’re following Bob Gielow’s media coverage of the apocalypse. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of a trio of regular contributors:

• Kevin M. Folliard’s mid-air issues,
• Robert Allen Lupton’s genetic manipulations, and
• Weird Wilkins’s brush with the wild.

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark on this second-to-last day of March—which, btw, WTAF?! How does time work these days? I am, as ever, back to being behind on life because my brain is refusing to do its job lately, so I’ll just pop one note in here and then let you go about your merry ways…

Our April short story submission window shall be declared open on TUESDAY. Yes, that’s April Fool’s Day, but I promise you this is no prank. 

We’re right up to date on our slush pile now, so come on and fill it right up again! We want your best and brightest (well, darkest) speculative fiction. Your gothic tales and mythological beasts. Your killer-on-a-spaceships and your dystopian futures. Your dark dabblings with magic and your haunted happenings. Come on and submit—just make sure you read our submissions guidelines first, and please please please submit a clean, plain Word document. Bonus points if you do the following:

• 1.5 or double spacing
• 12pt font size
• Arial or similar font
• Word doc – not pasted into the submission form; not a Google doc link; not a PDF
• Have your name and story title on the first page

We’re not asking you to follow any strict particular formatting here; just the basics of helping us be able to open and read the document, identify what the story is, and who wrote it. Honestly, it’s formatting issues that have delayed the anthology publication because we now need to go through and proofread it carefully and check it for consistency, so do us a solid and let’s start out with the consistency, yeah?

But now, it’s time for this week’s edition of dark speculative fiction. For our main course, we have a gorgeously dark and haunting morsel from John Dougherty. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Catherine Berry’s trash,
• Sean MacKendrick’s possession, and
• Gideon Smith’s bargain.

Want to join these four in the illustrious pages of TWF? Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Always, always with the drabbles – those short, sharp bursts of exactly 100 words. Make it dark and make it speculative (scifi, fantasy, horror). We publish three of these every darn week of the year.
• Unholy Trinities – that’s three drabbles that are connected in some way. Sarah Elliott awaits your tales.
• Serials, or dark speculative fiction that can be serialised on the site over several weeks. Vicky Brewster is ready for ‘em.
• Finally, our next submissions window for general short stories opens on Tuesday!

Send your submissions via the form at the bottom of this page (and you may as well read the content of that page, since it tells you our guidelines).

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. We are heads-down here in TWF Towers, desperately trying to get through the proofreading of the 2023 anthology so we can get it into your hot little hands. No, that wasn’t a typo; I’m seriously talking about the anthology from two years ago. This is how utterly destroyed we were last year—we just did not have the bandwidth to even think about it. Now we have a host of new helpers, we’re trying really hard to catch up (yes, the boss man is even cracking the whip). Hopefully we’ll have a new helper dedicated purely to the anthologies soon, and that will help us get back into shape. Slowly, slowly, dear children of the dark. Be patient with us, for we are emerging from the ashes. 

But enough apologising; let’s dive into this week’s edition of dark speculative fiction. For our main course, we’re dining with some sinners, landlords, and K.A. Sweitzer. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• SG Perahim’s glimpse at future film,
• Sian O’Hara’s snowed-in hotel, and
• Shiloh Kuhlman’s otherworldly paramour.

Want to join these four in the illustrious pages of TWF? Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Always, always with the drabbles – those short, sharp bursts of exactly 100 words. Make it dark and make it speculative (scifi, fantasy, horror). We publish three of these every darn week of the year.
• Unholy Trinities – that’s three drabbles that are connected in some way. Sarah Elliott awaits your tales.
• Serials, or dark speculative fiction that can be serialised on the site over several weeks. Vicky Brewster is ready for ‘em.
• Finally, our next submissions window for general short stories opens at the beginning of April. 

Make sure you check our submissions page here for what we do and DON’T want. That last bit is super important – don’t waste your time sending us things we have publicly stated we’ll reject! (Seriously, you’d be surprised…)

And finally, if you’re in the vicinity of Kent, England, this Saturday 29 March, make sure you head to Westgate Hall in Canterbury for the UK Indie Chapter’s next indie horror marketplace. You’ll find all the details over on Facebook. I went to the first one in Birmingham last year and it was fab. This time they’ve got 40 indie horror authors from across the UK and Europe, with book signings, readings and panels throughout the day—plus free entry, so you get more money to buy books directly from the creators. See you there, maybe? 

Over to you, Stuart.

Oh, and PS: Happy birthday to my other half!

Greetings, children of the dark. Apparently it’s Women in Horror month, which I hadn’t even realised because I’ve seen basically zero promotion of it. It was only when our own Steph Ellis tapped me on the shoulder for something that I realised the month was half-way through and I hadn’t even realised. 

Whoops?

Not sure how much these set months actually help anyone, but it feels like there are a helluva lot more women and non-binary humans and basically not-white-men in horror these days. Let’s all raise a glass to ‘em and mark the occasion. Run to your local indie book store and grab all the things, buy the books, shout about how awesome your faves are. 

And actually, the whole WIHM thing suddenly makes sense, because I’m going to a panel about women in horror at a local book store next week. It all becomes clear!

Before I make any more of a fool of myself, let’s dive into this week’s edition of dark speculative fiction. For our main course, we’re peeking into the inbox of Brendon Vayo to see exactly what an indie author must face these days. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Alexandra Beaumont’s brush with myth,
• Sophie Jarrell’s car sale, and
• John Nugent’s frozen fear.

(PS John is one of our new assistant editors, and he’ll be reading your summer special submissions soon!)

Want to join these four in the illustrious pages of TWF? Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Always, always with the drabbles – those short, sharp bursts of exactly 100 words. Make it dark and make it speculative (scifi, fantasy, horror). We publish three of these every darn week of the year.
• Unholy Trinities – that’s three drabbles that are connected in some way. Sarah Elliott awaits your tales.
• Serials, or dark speculative fiction that can be serialised on the site over several weeks. Vicky Brewster is ready for ‘em.
• Finally, our next submissions window for general short stories opens at the beginning of April. 

Make sure you check our submissions page here for what we do and DON’T want. That last bit is super important – don’t waste your time sending us things we have publicly stated we’ll reject! (Seriously, you’d be surprised…)

OK, rant done. Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. I don’t mean to alarm anyone but… I’m actually up-to-date on reading submissions! Yes, after being almost an entire year behind, I’ve been reading like a madman and sending out feedback and contracts left right and centre. We are absolutely 100% up to date on drabbles (as at time of writing), and I’m just waiting on the bossman looking at the last few short stories from the January window and then we’ll be done. Which means: if you submitted in 2024/25 and haven’t heard from us, please get in touch as the gremlins might’ve been hard at work as well.

The reason I’ve been able to spend so much time catching up? That’s simple: we have so much help around TWF Towers these days. It is so, so lovely to have housemates to keep us ticking over, to pick up the slack, to keep us on track. The biggest help in recent months has been the lovely Annette taking over inbox management – I’m sure you’ve seen her name in your inboxes acknowledging your submissions. Just having that admin taken care of is a huge help, and means that you don’t have to wait so long for me to get time to respond to things. Soooo helpful!

But of course, it’s not just Annette’s help that’s got us bursting at the seams around here. We welcomed a couple of new Assistant Editors a few months ago to take over the mantles of Serials and Unholy Trinities –  hi, Vicky and Sarah! – but we’ve now got another four on board to help with the special editions. Yes, that’s a total of six assistant editors in TWF Towers! As interest in this free fiction publication has increased, and we’ve gotten more and more submissions through, we needed to grow the team. It had to happen, or Stuart and I would’ve imploded in a very messy way. (Stuart may still, given he’s trying to revamp the site.) Please join me in welcoming our new residents:

• Jane Morecroft, who you met when we published the Valentine’s Edition
• John Nugent, who’ll be looking for all your dark summer stories very soon
• Angela Zolner, taking up the Halloween Queen mantle, and
• Ahlissa Eichhorn, our new festive fiction specialist 

You can meet the full TWF team over here. 

These newbies are also helping us get out the incredibly-very-late-embarassingly-so 2023 TWF anthology; the great Steph Ellis has laid it all out, and we just need to proofread it all, so hopefully that will be out by the end of the month. Then we’ll get cracking on the 2024 anthology, and hopefully have a new Publications Editor to help with that!

So yes, lots and lots of new blood around TWF Towers now, but we can always do with fresh blood for Horror Tree as a whole. If you’d like to get involved as a reviewer, interviewer, blogger, social media person, website manager, etc etc, do get in touch and let us know. Or, pitch an idea! You never know what the bossman will be in the mood for…

With that out of the way, it’s time for this week’s edition of dark speculative fiction. For our main course, we’re off on an autumnal walk with Austin Anna; it’s full of nostalgia, strange characters, and, well, suckers. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Karin J Robinson’s monster under the bed,
• Margaret Eve’s danger outdoors, and
• Geoff Holder’s economics of grave robbing.

Want to join these four in the illustrious pages of TWF? Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Always, always with the drabbles – those short, sharp bursts of exactly 100 words. Make it dark and make it speculative (scifi, fantasy, horror). We publish three of these every darn week of the year.
• Unholy Trinities – that’s three drabbles that are connected in some way. Sarah Elliott awaits your tales.
• Serials, or dark speculative fiction that can be serialised on the site over several weeks. Vicky Brewster is ready for ‘em.
• Finally, our next submissions window for general short stories opens at the beginning of April. 

Make sure you check our submissions page here for what we do and DON’T want. That last bit is super important – don’t waste your time sending us things we have publicly stated we’ll reject! (Seriously, you’d be surprised…)

OK, rant done. Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. This little two-week period has been full of gothic goodness in my world. Last weekend, the other half and I headed off to Derby (in England) for the UK Ghost Story Festival. It’s been a regular fixture in my life since 2020, and it’s such a great small festival filled with lovely people and lots of workshops. I’ve been brainstorming yet more stories, dear reader! I have no idea where all this creative energy has come from…

And I’m absolutely sure I’ll have been capitalising on it this weekend (insert hands-over-eyes emoji) at the British Fantasy Society’s retreat. At the time of writing this missive, I’m a couple of days away from heading to Wales to join the crew, and I’m still not sure what I want to (or need to!) work on. I’m prepared for a mess, but hopefully I’ll get some stuff done. Even if that *stuff* is just my next article for the BFS’s Journal – I’m digging into the resurgent popularity of the humble vampire. The issue is out in the summer, so why not talk about our favourite creature that’s allergic to sunlight? 

Quickly moving on from my ridiculousness… It’s time for this week’s edition of dark speculative fiction. Our main course takes us to a very interesting hotel with a secret, and our guide is P.N. Harrison. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Andrew Keyworth’s gothic note,
• Christina Nordlander’s forest trek, and
• Kevin M. Folliard’s chicken trouble.

One more thing: we now have a full complement of new assistant editors to helm our special editions! I hope to introduce you to them some time in the coming week, so keep an eye out.

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. Short and sweet here this week as I’m coming to you live from the UK Ghost Story Festival. It’s been a bit of a year of writing for me so far – I cannot believe I’ve finished a second story already, making it two stories and a total of 11,000+ words in the last 4 weeks. WTAF?! Ghost Fest this weekend, then next weekend I’m off to the British Fantasy Society’s annual retreat at the very iconic Gladstones Library, so maybe the floodgates are trying to prise open? I’m going with it, at any rate. I’d love to hear how your own writing is going – let me know in the comments below, or find me on social media. 

Handing over to the talent in this week’s edition, and we find our main course is a tribute to audio thanks to Erik Keevan. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Emily Jones’s warning label,
• Robert Allen Lupton’s warning from space, and
• Weird Wilkins’s warning from beyond.

Over to you, Stuart.