Trembling With Fear 11-12-23
Hello, children of the dark. You know how we’re all told to do big, scary things every now and then? Well, last week I did a big, scary thing I never thought I would do ever again: I started working full time, in an office, in the Big Bad City. Before you get too worried for my sanity, I can confirm it’s a temporary arrangement while one of my freelance clients recruits for a new permanent team leader (and, heck, I needed the money). It has, however, reminded me of a few things:
- Commuting into London is still hell, but actually this one isn’t too bad as the tube ride is relatively quick
- Oxford Circus in the lead-up to Christmas is worse than hell, especially later in the week, and especially when there are tourists around, but at least the lights are pretty
- I actually quite like being in an office around other people?!
- I can do hard shit when I put my mind to it
And speaking of hard shit, a reminder of the Big Scary Decision we made/announced last week: we’ve made changes to our submissions process for short stories only. If you have submitted a short story since we reopened just a couple of months ago, rest assured we have your piece and it’s with the team for review. Please also remember that we all do this in a volunteering capacity, and we have A LOT to get through, so it will take us some time to respond. Patience, please! If you do seek publication elsewhere and your story is accepted before we get a chance to respond, please let us know so we can pull the story from consideration. We don’t take reprints.
A recap of how to submit to TWF:
- Drabbles, serials, and unholy trinities are still open all the damn time, and we still have an insatiable need for them
- Short story submissions will only be open in 2-week seasonal windows, and you can find those details on our submissions page; next one opens on 1 January
- Special editions submissions are still open in their own seasonal windows, and again the details are on the submissions page
Any short stories submitted to us outside of these new seasonal windows will be returned unread; we will NOT be keeping them on file for you. You’ll need to resubmit, if you are still interested in doing so, when we announce that we’re reopen. Make sure you’re following Horror Tree on all the socials!
As I said last week, I’m sorry we have to be such hard-asses about this, but we can only afford to publish one short story every week—and at the current rate of submissions, it will take us years to get through everything we have. I hope you understand why we are making this change. We want to protect your great work while making sure we can keep up with spotlighting the best of you.
Let’s turn away from hard-asses and towards the darkest corners, and this week’s edition has Addison Smith needs to keep quiet amidst the debris. That is followed by three delicious quick bites:
- Sarah Elliott needs a defibrillator,
- LN Hunter needs a reboot, and
- RJ Meldrum needs a routine.
Over to you, Stuart.
ATTENTION YOUTUBE WATCHERS: We’ve had some great responses so far but are open to more ideas – What type of content would you like to see us feature? Please reach out to [email protected]! We’ll be really working on expanding the channel late this year and early into next.
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.