Author: Lauren McMenemy

Hello, children of the dark – and it really is getting dark out there, huh? I sat down to start writing this at 4pm London time, and I needed the light on despite sitting underneath a skylight. I’m never sure if I like the cold, dark, rainy short days or the long, bright sunny ones; the truth is probably both, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

These long, cold nights are, of course, perfect for curling up with a good story or three, whether you’re reading or writing them. And given I’ve been getting up on this soapbox every week asking you to write and submit to us, I thought it was time I give an insight into what happens once you press “send” on the form. 

With the size and age of this site, you might think there are loads of us behind the scenes – alas, no. The Trembling With Fear team is myself, Stuart (the founder of Horror Tree), and Amanda, who looks after the specials, unholy trinities and serials. We all volunteer with this site alongside our day jobs, and it’s very much a labour of love. 

An important note to start with: Before you submit and we get involved, please double check your story fits our submission guidelines. We do not accept stories with hate speech, rape, killing/torture of kids or pets, and more. We also don’t accept reprints, so if you submit something to us that is subsequently accepted for publication by another site, please let us know and withdraw your story. 

When you pass Go on the TWF board, a few things happen behind the scenes. First, one of the team will see the email come in and log it on our all-powerful spreadsheet (designed by former TWF editor Steph Ellis, it is the one true spreadsheet to rule them all). That person will also send you an email to say we’ve received it, and we’ll get back to you soon. How long that “soon” is will depend on a lot of things, but we aim to get back to you within a few weeks. 

Once your story is in the system, we all read it and make our comments. Once we reach a consensus, we’ll email you to let you know the outcome. This will be one of three things: we accept it; we thank you but won’t be able to publish it (and we always try to give feedback in this case); or we like it but feel it needs more work before it’s suitable for our site. If we ask you to revise your piece, it is always up to you; it’s never an order, and you have the prerogative to say no thanks and we all move on. But if we’ve asked you for revisions, it means we like your story and want to help you improve it for our audience. It’s important to remember that all sites and publications have different audiences, and you might want to try to find a different home for your piece as it is. That’s always an option!

That email is not the end of the road. If and when we accept the piece, we’ll ask you to sign a digital contract giving us the right to publish it, and once that’s signed by both parties we move to scheduling the story. What that magic date is will depend on how many stories we have waiting in the queue. For drabbles, it will usually be fairly prompt because we publish three of those every week. Short stories are another matter as we only publish one each week, and it will depend on the time of year you submit and are accepted; I’ve learned in my short time in this chair that there is a definite ebb and flow to these things! At the moment, we’re closed to short stories because we had an absolute rush of submissions between summer and Halloween; when I looked at the schedule to get this week’s pieces ready, I saw we are full right up until early summer 2023. That’s a long time to wait for publication, which is why we’re closed for a while. 

But don’t worry; we’ll always send you a note in the week before your story is published so you know to keep an eye out for it. We share published pieces on our social media accounts, and in our newsletter, too. Find details of how to follow these over on our contact page. 

And that’s the long and the short of it; it’s a fairly standard process, but we get a lot of first-timers submitting to TWF so I hope that helps to settle some nerves. I promise, we don’t bite! For now, take some inspiration from those who’ve been through this process: this week’s Trembling main course sees Charles Cole have some serious issues in the bathroom. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Helen De Cruz ponders what they see
• RJ Meldrum hears a whisper on the wind, and
• Don Money has trouble in space

If these stories inspire you to get writing, you’ll find details on how to submit to us over here. Remember, we’re currently CLOSED to short story submissions, but are always seeking drabbles – that’s a complete story in exactly 100 words, and a real test of your craft. We’re looking for anything darkly speculative – it doesn’t have to be a super gory horror story; we don’t get enough dark sci-fi and fantasy! And I’m very much in the mood for gothic tales as the nights draw closer…

Over to you, Stuart.

Last week I said things were crazy, imagine how crazy they are now that we’ve gotten a new chocolate lab puppy named Cocoa!
Crazy doesn’t even begin to cover it.

So, what did we do this week?
– Found out the sad news that Amanda Headlee will be stepping down as our TWF Special Editor at the end of the year. We’re already talking about a couple of candidates to help out.
– We’re currently making a major push for more author interviewers! If you love to talk to authors, please reach out!
– UK Readers, we’re currently giving away 3 Copies of ‘Origins of The Wheel of Time’
– I’ve been working on a new home office for awhile. 3 pieces of furniture have been stuck in THE SUPPLY CHAIN SHORTAGE and have finally arrived. So. Erm. More on that soon! I’m streamling my entire setup to help with both my day job AND Horror Tree. So, neat!

For those looking to support the site, we’ve recently launched a Ko-Fi and always have our Patreon going.

As always, I hope you had a great weekend.

Hello, children of the dark. I am emerging from my covid cocoon, though still coughing and spluttering all over the place. I’m thankful that, though this is my second round with the virus, I have managed to emerge relatively unscathed after a few weeks of rest and healing. Many others have not been that lucky, and I very much do not take anything for granted when it comes to my health. 

Not that long ago, I was at the very end of my tether. Something had to give, and for a while it looked like it would be my health that gave up. I had been in burnout mode, getting by on fumes, for years and my mental health finally cracked. I had a burnout-driven breakdown. I was fortunate to be able to take a year out from work and really focus on getting better, and while I’m nowhere near recovered yet, I am back out in the world. And it’s writing and reading that helped me through. I tracked my recovery via a Substack newsletter (my way of staying accountable), and I spent many hours with my nose in books, both non-fiction (OK, OK, self-help) and fiction. I got back into journaling. I joined the London Writers Salon and got cracking on writing that novel I kept saying I’d write one day. (That novel has since been shelved because it just wasn’t ready to come out of my brain. Too much too soon, perhaps?) I found myself, and I continue to find myself every week, every day, with the help of this wonderful global community of genre writers. 

I’m grateful that so many others are speaking up about their mental health journeys, too, and that the Horror Writers Association launched its Mental Health Initiative over the summer. Speaking out and speaking up helps those who haven’t yet found their voices, which I guess is why, when I opened up a document to start this week’s TWF intro, I found myself reflecting on the last couple of years. Please, if you need someone to talk to, please reach out to someone you trust.

But you didn’t come here for me nor my electioneering, so let’s turn to the task at hand: Ron Capshaw takes us in search of Bigfoot for this week’s Trembling main course. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Finbar Hussey hears the fox’s cry
• Margo Rife reminisces while sorting some boxes, and
• Santiago Eximeno seeks mythic help with a problem.

If these stories inspire you to get writing, you’ll find details on how to submit to us over here on our freshly-updated submission guidelines page. Remember, we’re currently CLOSED to short story submissions, but are always seeking drabbles – that’s a complete story in exactly 100 words, and a real test of your craft. We’re looking for anything darkly speculative – it doesn’t have to be a super gory horror story; we don’t get enough dark sci-fi and fantasy! And I’m very much in the mood for gothic tales as the nights draw closer…

For now, it’s over to you, Stuart.

I feel like I’ve been stuck in a slump lately. I’ve been getting writing done, but as our redesign has been pushed back until 2023, I feel like I’ve been treading water. I haven’t had a chance to make any major changes to the site lately and am unsure what we even might do in the near future outside of the fact that we may be switching to another network, with Twitter being an increasing headache these days. I’m not sold on Mastodon, but it seems like it might be the next feasible option, I’m just not a fan of how it allows you to ‘find’ new people, which is something that was much easier on Twitter. We’ll see. If you’re switching networks, what do you plan to focus on?

Also, speaking of the redesign, if there are any changes that YOU have been hoping to see, please reach out on our contact page!

For those looking to support the site, we’ve recently launched a Ko-Fi and always have our Patreon going.

As always, I hope you had a great weekend.

Hello, children of the dark. It’s happened, again: I’ve succumbed to the plague of the age once more. That’s what I get for taking myself off to the wilds of Scotland for a writing retreat. And so this week’s introduction is truncated, lest I say something ridiculous in my covid brain fog. Just a quickie, really: WE NEED YOUR DRABBLES. The cupboard is looking rather bare.

Meanwhile, by the time you read this, parks all across the UK will be smouldering with the remnants of bonfires and fireworks. Yesterday marked Guy Fawkes Night, the celebration of that time a bunch of rebels tried to blow up parliament. I won’t say we could do with that right now because that would be incendiary, but I *will* say that is a bloody good story starter, should you want to get revolutionary in drabble form.

To the task at hand: Our trembling main course this week has Deborah Sheldon get poetic in the hospital. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Jameson Grey fights the zombie apocalypse
• Mike Rader turns breeder of killer chickens, and
• LJ McMenemy (that’s me!) ponders the date from hell.

If these stories inspire you to get writing, you’ll find details on how to submit to us over here on our freshly-updated submission guidelines page. Remember, we’re currently CLOSED to short story submissions, but are always seeking drabbles – that’s a complete story in exactly 100 words, and a real test of your craft. I’d love to see what you come up with! (I’ve been avoiding publishing my own drabbles that have been in the waiting room since Steph’s TWF days, but if you don’t sub more then you’re going to get more of mine.)

For now, it’s over to you, Stuart…

I would like to wish everyone working on NaNoWriMo the best of success! Finish that novel, novella, editing, and extra word counts. Whatever your writing goal(s) is I am rooting for you!

We’re still setting up a Writers Job Board over at WriteCareer.com. It ‘works’ though is still a work in progress.

With the new layout being delayed until next year, this is just a reminder that if there are any changes that YOU have been hoping to see, please reach out on our contact page!

For those looking to support the site, we’ve recently launched a Ko-Fi and always have our Patreon going.

As always, I hope you had a great weekend.

Hello, children of the dark. It’s our time now. It’s the night before All Hallow’s Eve, before Samhain, before the veil is at its thinnest and we can cross between worlds, speak to the dead. It’s our time, the dark time. 

Truth be told, it’s all still a bit new to me. Growing up in Australia in the 1980s, we never *did* Halloween. Every so often someone would put on a BBQ and we’d get a bit dressed up, but there was no trick or treating, there was no decorating the house, there was nothing like what we see all over the world today. But I still paid attention. I still knew it was a special time. 

I was clearly just waiting to be able to adult my way through the dark festive season.

That said, it’s not like I really do anything to celebrate these days either; old habits die hard. What you see in the movies, what pop culture considers Halloween, I’ve found to be a rather American tradition. In my part of south London, we generally don’t decorate the house, and that hour when the local kids knock on the door is a chore rather than something fun. Yes, I’m an official Grumpy Old Woman in that regard. 

But then, Halloween isn’t a once-a-year thing for me. I embrace the darkness all year round. My writing desk is covered in trinkets I’ve bought in the supermarket’s seasonal aisle every October; my clothing is adorned with ghosts and bats and skulls at the best of times. I tried to hide this side of me for a really long time; I tried to conform, to avoid black clothes, to gravitate away from my spooky self. Ironically, it was being locked in the house during the pandemic that really gave me the confidence to unleash my inner weirdo and let her go wild. 

This Halloween, embrace your darkness, and remember the immortal words of Nancy from The Craft: We are the weirdos, mister.

Pop on your witch’s hat and prepare for this week’s TWF tasting menu. Our Halloween special is coming, too – it’s a separate beast!

Our trembling main course from Hana S Elysia warns of the dangers of thievery. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Rachel L Tilley messes with the fabric of creation
• Jessica Gleason strolls through an airport terminal, and 
• Christina Nordlander examines a fungal infection

If these stories inspire you to get writing, you’ll find details on how to submit to us over here on our freshly-updated submission guidelines page. Remember, we’re currently CLOSED to short story submissions, but are always seeking drabbles – that’s a complete story in exactly 100 words, and a real test of your craft.

For now, it’s over to you, Stuart…

We’re still setting up a Writers Job Board over at WriteCareer.com. It ‘works’ though is still a work in progress.

With the new layout being delayed until next year, this is just a reminder that if there are any changes that YOU have been hoping to see, please reach out on our contact page!

What kind of changes is minor enough to look into adding? We’ll probably add a few more ways to subscribe to our newsletter in areas around the site. I’d also be looking to do simple yet streamlined things, such as last week’s announcement that the Trembling With Fear Submission Page now has the submission form directly on it. If there are things that would help you navigate the site easier, please, do reach out!

For those looking to support the site, we’ve recently launched a Ko-Fi and always have our Patreon going.

As always, I hope you had a great weekend.

Hello, children of the dark. I’m going to have to make it short and sweet this week as I’ve missed my deadline (sorry, Stuart!) and I’m prepping to go to the Scottish Highlands to spend a week with my work in progress. I do, however, have a very important announcement, and a bit of an explanation.

If you’ve submitted to us in the last few months, you’ve likely noticed that we (as in: me) am running behind on reading submissions an awful lot. To give you a peek behind the curtain, that’s because we have had an absolute storm of submissions coming in. That’s brilliant and great and I love that you’re considering us as a home for your work, but it does mean that our little team (we are but three volunteers!) has been a bit overwhelmed. It also means we have a monstrous amount of accepted stories waiting to be published.

Long story short, those who are getting accepted at the moment are being scheduled for March 2023. Yes, FIVE WHOLE MONTHS away. That’s a long time to wait for your story to appear online. 

So, here’s the important bit: we’re now closed to short story submissions for the next few months while we catch up on this publishing backlog and ensure everyone gets a fair chance to see their stories published in this here ‘zine. 

I know, I know – it’s crappy news. The upshot, though, is I know we have so many great stories waiting for your eyeballs’ attention. And we are not the only market out there; after all, Horror Tree itself was built to showcase amazing paying markets that are crying out for your stories. Head here for what’s currently seeking wordage.

This isn’t permanent. We will open up again in the new year, and will be clamouring to give a home to your great works of dark art. But we need to give it a breather or we’ll end up making you wait over a year to be published and that’s just… well, it’s a bit silly, right?

And we’re still very much looking for drabbles! Maybe the essence of your story could be clipped back to exactly 100 words? It’s a great exercise in tight writing!

For now, though, I bring you this week’s TWF tasting menu. 

Our trembling main course has Robert Walton lead us to the war-torn frontlines. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Santiago Eximeno considers what price familial love
• Alan Moskowitz searches for inspiration, and
• Cassandra Daucus gives us a glimpse into a final email

If these stories inspire you to get writing, you’ll find details on how to submit to us over here on our freshly-updated submission guidelines page. Drabbles only, please!

For now, it’s over to you, Stuart…

I am mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted this week. It seemed to come from all sides, from work to school to the kids. Oof. I. Am. Tired. I don’t have much to report this week, we’re still chugging along on everything without many major updates on changes. I did spend some time optimizing images that show up on all of our pages which might shave a ‘small’ amount of time from loading on the website. Fingers crossed! Also spent some time on adding more videos for our video player to keep things mixed up a bit. More to come on those as well!

Just a reminder, we’ve set up a Writers Job Board over at WriteCareer.com. It is still a work in progress, but if you’re looking for a new writing gig outside of fiction, this might be of help!

With the new layout being delayed until next year, this is just a reminder that if there are any changes that YOU have been hoping to see, please reach out on our contact page!

What kind of changes is minor enough to look into adding? We’ll probably add a few more ways to subscribe to our newsletter in areas around the site. I’d also be looking to do simple yet streamlined things, such as last week’s announcement that the Trembling With Fear Submission Page now has the submission form directly on it. If there are things that would help you navigate the site easier, please, do reach out!

For those looking to support the site, we’ve recently launched a Ko-Fi and always have our Patreon going.

As always, I hope you had a great weekend.

Hello, children of the dark. I must say I’m at a loss for words this week; the exhaustion of burning the candles at both ends has caught up with me, and there’s not much end in sight for another week or so. I’ll spare you the ramblings of my feeble mind, and rest in the knowledge that I’ll be spending the last week of October at a tutored retreat in the Scottish Highlands.

I’ve been lucky enough to secure a place at Moniack Mhor’s gothic retreat, which will be led by CJ Cooke and Natasha Pulley, with special guest Andrew Michael Hurley. If those names weren’t enough to drag myself through the next few weeks, the idea of a whole week in what Ali Smith has described as “a place of rare space and weather-wildness and beauty” definitely is. Moniack Mhor is a former croft built on the site of an ancient baron’s house, and surrounded by fields rich in the remains of Bronze Age civilisations. It’s a few miles from Loch Ness, and magic is in the air. 

I’ll be counting on that magic to get me actually started on my dreaded first draft, but how could I not be inspired by those surroundings? Have a look at their Instagram for the views, and you might even spot a mythical Highland Coo. Yes, I’m a bit excited.

Let’s bring me back down to earth so I can talk about this week’s TWF tasting menu. 

Warning: this week’s main course from Joe Prosit is not for the faint of heart. This is the grossest bit of bathroom drama you’ll read today. To cleanse your palate, we have three delicious quick bites:

• Joshua Gage gets talking through spirited magnets
• Micah Castle pleads to the cosmos, and
• Finbar Hussey reads a last will and testament.

If these stories inspire you to get writing, you’ll find details on how to submit to us over here. I’ve mostly caught up on our submissions backlog now, but we are currently scheduled for short stories through to the end of this year. If you’re thinking of submitting to us, you’ll have more immediate luck with drabbles if that helps to channel your creativity.

For now, it’s over to you, Stuart…

As Horror Tree is all about helping your writing career, we have an external website that we’re launching soon. This will be more for those who write for work outside of their fiction. Technical writers, editors, publicists, etc. We’re setting up a Writers Job Board over at WriteCareer.com. Now, the board itself is up and working. However, I would like to stress that the site is still in its early phases. There are incomplete sections that we’re going to be working on buffing up. I did want to open it up to those who might be getting into the holiday season and are looking to change things up in the job department or who are looking for work. Hopefully, this can help you find something. I do apologize that it isn’t fully polished quite yet but if I waited for it to be 110% ready, it would likely never be launched. 

With the new layout being delayed until next year, this is just a reminder that if there are any changes that YOU have been hoping to see, please reach out on our contact page!

What kind of changes is minor enough to look into adding? We’ll probably add a few more ways to subscribe to our newsletter in areas around the site. I’d also be looking to do simple yet streamlined things, such as last week’s announcement that the Trembling With Fear Submission Page now has the submission form directly on it. If there are things that would help you navigate the site easier, please, do reach out!

For those looking to support the site, we’ve recently launched a Ko-Fi and always have our Patreon going.

As always, I hope you had a great weekend.

Hello, children of the dark. How’s October treating you? Here in the UK the world is continuing to go mad around us (who needs a functioning government or economy anyway?!) as the days get shorter and the dark gets deeper, but there is one bright light on the horizon: the London Film Festival has begun. I volunteer with the festival most years – let’s be honest, it’s mainly so I can watch movies while I “work” – and I was excited to see a few dark offerings on the programme this year. Unfortunately, the horror night I was down to work at has decided they don’t need volunteers anymore, but I’m going to try to sneak in anyway… don’t tell anyone, ok?

There is no shortage of new and reinvented horror coming our way this month, especially as the supermarkets stock up on treats with spooky packaging and our social feeds are full of ads for Halloween costumes. And yet, I can’t help but feel sad that alllll the big attention comes upon our dark little hearts just once a year. Don’t the mainstream know that there’s great horror and dark fiction being released all year round? Like these, from this week’s TWF tasting menu. 

We head to the water for our main course from Kacey Rayburn, who takes on the mermaid, the selkie, the myth and the legend, in their own way. This is followed by three delicious quick bites:

• Nancy Pica Renken gets a bit road ragey
• Gully Novaro heads to the land of all you can eat, and
• Michael Stroh tries some zombie diplomacy.

If these stories inspire you to get writing, you’ll find details on how to submit to us over here.

And a quick note if you’re waiting on a response from us about a submission: it’s my bad. I’m running super late because we’ve had an absolute avalanche of short story submissions lately – so many that I’m actually now scheduling publication through the new year. Yes, the future! Those who are waiting: I will get back to you soon, I promise. In the meantime, if you’re thinking of submitting to us you’ll have more immediate luck with drabbles if that helps to channel your creating.

For now, it’s over to you, Stuart…

My plan for the website was to not make too many adjustments until the new layout was launched. Unfortunately, it is looking more and more like that is going to have to wait until next year. So, with that being said, if there are any changes that YOU have been hoping to see, please reach out on our contact page!

What kind of changes is minor enough to look into adding? We’ll probably add a few more ways to subscribe to our newsletter in areas around the site. I’d also be looking to do simple yet streamlined things, such as last week’s announcement that the Trembling With Fear Submission Page now has the submission form directly on it. If there are things that would help you navigate the site easier, please, do reach out! 

For those looking to support the site, we’ve recently launched a Ko-Fi and always have our Patreon going.

As always, I hope you had a great weekend.