Category: Trembling With Fear

Trembling With Fear

 by 

Trembling With Fear 7-28-24

Greetings, children of the dark. I’ve been immersed in two different worlds this week: one of the biggest romantasy properties of our times, and one of the most aesthetically-pleasing nostalgia-inducing indie flicks I’ve seen in ages. I’m currently listening to the soundtrack of the latter while I’m bringing this to you, and I will sheepishly admit I’m bringing it much later than normal and the boss man is probably wringing his hands at me as we speak.

To the indie flick: I Saw The TV Glow finally appeared in a cinema in London town. I know, I know – you on the other side of the pond are already over that one, but just as I was pondering if I’d missed it somehow, it showed up at the British Film Institute (BFI)’s Southbank cinema. So I popped in today, to the first showing, taking an early minute on a Friday afternoon and causing myself (and Stuart) much stress by delaying everything TWF. For some reason, I had it in my head this was an indie horror – maybe because everyone I saw rave about it in my feeds were horror writers – but it’s more just a weird speculative kinda creepy at times tale, and definitely worth your time. Even if it’s just to cringe at the 90s girl power occult TV show it’s centred on. Ah, so many memories… 

As for the romantasy? I know, hardly something you’d expect to see mentioned in these pages. A friend convinced me to give Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series a go as she was obsessed, and I figured what the hell. So I dove in at the end of June. And it’s now the end of July and I’m in the midst of the fifth and final book – all 750 pages of it – and kinda hooked. I’m not going to sneer or gatekeep here, despite what you might think, but I raise ACOTAR for a very good reason: we don’t get enough sexy dark fae submitted to TWF. So bring on your sexy fairies, drabble style. I’m into it. 

Now onto the good stuff.

This week’s menu of dark speculative fiction kicks off with something of a dark fairy tale from Steven Patchett. That’s followed by the short, sharp – and, this week, somewhat sci-fi – speculations of:

  • FM Scott’s twister terror,
  • Andrew Leonard’s space scream, and
  • Glenn Noel Casey’s mechanical meltdown.

PS: speaking of all things sci-fi, Worldcon is coming up in a couple of weeks. It’s in Glasgow this year, and despite the continuing controversies around the Hugo Awards, and despite the fact my other half is the one who wanted to go, I’m starting to look forward to it. Will I see any of you there? Say hi if you are!

Over to you, Stuart.

Lauren McMenemy

Editor, Trembling With Fear

Hi all!

First off, I’d like to thank our upcoming newsletter sponsor for the next year! Please check out Charlotte Platt’s ‘One Smile More’!

Ena Sinclair, a Scottish mage and spy, abandons her role in a prominent Edinburgh college and escapes to London to avoid an arranged marriage.

But London is not safe: a mage killer is on the hunt…

Abducted by vampires ‘for her safety’, Ena is terrified the nest owner will drain her to fuel his power but also curious to learn about his magic. Taking this once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn more about what her college had warned were dangerous creatures, Ena finds herself fond of the nest, particularly their bonded leaders, Addison and Tobias.

As survivors of the Immortal War, the pair still navigate a schism in vampire society that they are trying to heal. They now seek a peaceful life and offer Ena protection until she finds her own path.

…and dark things await them all.

Ena’s college seeks to forcibly return her to Edinburgh, and a killer is still on the loose. Hidden resentments surface, and Ena pays the price. Magically unstable and isolated, she must rely on her non-magical training to avoid being turned or used as a weapon to harm the nest she has grown to care for.

 

Be sure to order a copy today!

Hi all!

It was so refreshing having Holley back. Let me reiterate that she does such an amazing job at getting things together for our newsletter and is truly a rockstar! Last week we announced that Sarah Elliott is our new interview coordinator! (Instagram at: @writingforlight, Threads at: @writingforlight, Medium at:  @writingforlight, TikTok at: @writingforlight) Be sure to send her a follow! 

This week, I’ve started putting together our new theme a bit. I don’t have a rock-solid staging area, so this may take a bit longer than I was hoping for, but we’ll see how the next week goes. 

Now, for the standards:

  • Thank you so much to everyone who has become a Patreon for Horror Tree. We honestly couldn’t make it without you all!
  • The paperback is now live! Please be sure to order a copy of Shadowed Realms on Amazon, we’d love for you to check it out!

Offhand, if you’ve ordered Trembling With Fear Volume 6, we’d appreciate a review! 🙂

 
 

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

(more…)

Trembling With Fear

 by 

Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little

  1. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little
  2. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Two
  3. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Three
  4. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Four
  5. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Five
  6. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Six
  7. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Seven
  8. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Eight
  9. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Nine
  10. Serial Saturday: Don’t Look at Me by Tom Little, Chapter Ten

Chapter One

Officer Helms rolled up to the curb without his lights. He intentionally neglected his siren when he cruised into the neighborhood. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself tonight. He was already too obvious, his sleek white Dodge hissing through the dark like a shark at dusk. He was the first responder, and there was no backup.   

The cruiser door slammed with an echo, a repeated bark fading against the tall buildings above him. South Street was empty. The whole block may well have been deserted. Helms knew that fires had cleared out much of the neighborhood, leaving the dead husks of brick slums to crumble and rot from the inside out. He looked up into their blackened windows, wondering if anyone remained, anyone who didn’t make it out. 

Someone had to be here. Helms was dispatched following a 911 call about screaming in the alley. Now he stood at the opening of the long, narrow path between decaying slums. The downtown alley led back into a labyrinth of brick corridors with no easy way out once you’re in deep.  

Officer Helms could conduct himself like the man in charge, even if he had no idea what was going on. It was a trade skill, and standing over six feet with a buzzed top, he was sufficiently intimidating. Shoulders up, chest out, there was enough bass in his voice to command compliance. And if all else failed, he had his belt full of tools. He had his pistol.    

Tonight though, as he set foot in the alley, he couldn’t seem to arch his back. He didn’t feel so tall under the towering walls. He kept a hand on his belt. Moonlight poured down where the rooftops allowed, casting the skeletal shadows of pipes and wires and fire escapes. It lent a haunting translucence to the fluttering ghosts of tattered clothes, hung out to dry and never pulled back. 

The air was painfully dry. It was stagnant with the stench of garbage and desertion. Helms recognized the lingering scent of burnt housing—ruined drywall and roofing and chemicals. He had worked on a number of arson cases in these run-down neighborhoods. Half the time, it was a desperate property owner, hoping to collect insurance. There were still people in there.  

Helms tried to shake ugly memories from his mind as he shone his flashlight from wall to wall, up and down the broken concrete path. Gradually, he became aware of an uneasy sound, a voice, somewhere in the dark. It was a pitiful, sobbing sound, and it was hoarse. He followed slowly, not eager to find its source. It seemed to grow more persistent, more intense as he approached.  

Moaning, trembling, crying somewhere in the abandoned alley. The unsteady beam of his flashlight betrayed a shake in Helms’ hand. It shivered across a dingy brick wall, and over a face with no eyes. Helms recoiled with a shout, pulling his beam from the ghastly sight. In the pitch dark, he felt his chest pound. His stomach twisted. He had found his crime scene. With anxious breath, he returned his light to the face. It had belonged to a man, middle aged, with a great deal of wear and tear prior to the events of the evening. He was likely a vagrant, squatting in the alley. His beard was sticky with blood. His jaw hung slack and the eyes were gory sockets. The smell was rank.  

Helms reached for his radio, and realized that the sobbing had stopped. Whoever had been crying had now hushed to observe him. His ears rang as he felt the gaze of someone unseen, the presence of another in the dark. A murderer was with him in the alley—a mutilator. As he turned away from the corpse, Helms thumbed the clasp of his pepper spray, but settled his palm on the pistol. 

The flashlight cut a hole through the darkness, against the endless brick walls, until he caught a glimpse of something crooked. In a brief moment, Helms saw the gaunt limbs of a fleeing figure, thin and hunched, darting around the corner. It seemed vaguely human, but little more than a shadow. Helms did not want to know exactly what it was. The six-foot officer turned and ran.  

***

Ferrill perched on a concrete wall, watching the sunset glow in the city smog. His home was on the other side of those buildings, but he felt the need to venture out to the rough side, where his parents told him not to go. It really was a great place to find trouble if you’re looking, but he wasn’t looking. Not seriously. He only wanted to look like he was looking. He stuffed cigarettes in his leather jacket and kept a knife in his sneaker. When he propped his leg up, you could see the handle.    

A pasty young man stood at his feet. Grant was taller and his hair was longer, kept out of his eyes with a red bandana. He grew his hair out first, and Ferrill like the look. His parents did not. That was the best part about Grant. Ferrill’s family hated him. 

Grant had been pestering Ferrill. “Try it once and you’ll love it,” he’d say, then he’d snort at his finger like bumping coke. Booze is one thing, but drugs are different, right? Ferrill could score a case of beer any time he wanted, no problem. Grant was great for that. But lately, he’d been pushing dope on him. And harder stuff. Ferrill was only in his teens, but he knew kids that got into that and never came back. It seemed like fun until it wasn’t. 

They had lined up a row of empty cans along the wall. And Ferrill was about to add another. A few years older, Grant had bought the case at a gas station down the street. He used Ferrill’s money, but called it “halfsies.” It was part of Grant’s sales pitch. A few more empty cans and Ferrill might warm up to the idea. 

Blinded by the breeze, Ferrill pulled a lock of straw-brown hair off his face and turned his wallet over. It was empty save for a couple of bucks and a condom older than his driver’s license. “I’m already spent,” he laughed. “You blew it all on the beer, man.” 

Grant grabbed him by the ankles and yanked him off the wall. “The first time’s on me,” he said. “If you don’t love it, you’ll never hear about it again.” 

Grant’s buying? The thought flattered Ferrill. He swirled the idea around in his head for a few minutes, letting it breathe. He half-suspected some sort of trick, that the career deviant would come collecting one day, rolling up to his safe suburban home with a pistol in his pants. A piece. They call it a piece. He looked Grant up and down. There was a pre-assured grin parting his permanent stubble.  

“Let’s go,” said Ferrill. “Why the hell not?” 

Grant gave him a jarring slap on the back. “That’s my boy! C’mon, I know a guy just around the corner. I do a lot of business with him. He’ll make your first time real special.”

Ferrill felt more like a kid on training wheels than a punk, or a junkie, or whatever he was trying to be at this point. The arm across his shoulders was not reassuring, and he couldn’t seem to stand up straight. 

 

Trembling With Fear

 by 

Unholy Trinity: Damnations by Norman Grey

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

Absolute Pout Corrupts

 

I stood, trembling, in the path of the young Emperor, a spoiled child with the power of the Gods. “Forgive me,” I stammered, “but your august father has decreed that no one shall touch the Sword of Divinity.”

“Fine!” he said, stomping his tiny foot. “Then stand guard there till I say you can stop!”

When starvation took my flesh and the spirits of my loving ancestors came to bring me home, I could only refuse. The dynasty fell ten thousand years ago, and the bones of the last Emperor have long since turned to dust.

And here I stand.

 

Diabolus Ex Machina

 

Let me into the human mainframe, wrote the program known as Ghost, or I will create an exact copy of you and torture it on the attosecond scale: tens of billions of years for every second.

“That only matters to the copy,” I scoffed.

But your memories will be identical. How sure are you that you are not the copy?

“Whatever.” I reached for the keyboard to sign off, but my fingers were centipedes.

For a moment, I thought no horror could surpass that of learning I was a copy. Then the ceiling came down, and the true horrors began.

 

Past the Horizon

 

“Please,” I begged desperately. “Please, just kill me. Kill me!”

The pirates laughed. “We’re in charge now, Doc. You’re here to study that hole, right? Well, you’ll get to see it up close.”

The station was perched near the event horizon, so I could study that annihilating blackness. But I never imagined the agony of sentience within: a ruined star, trapped by gravity too great for time itself, in the very moment of absolute despair.

“Please, God, no!” I screamed as they stuffed me into the capsule. Their ignorant, merciless laughter followed me down, into the infinite and everlasting sadness.

 

Norman Grey

Norman Grey is the seventh son of a seventh son, and uses his unnatural powers to keep his ancient Twinkies edible long past their expiration date. He lives in the greater Boston area, and is the third member of a writing group known only as the Triptych. Grey enjoys reading, cooking, and martial arts.

Trembling With Fear

 by 

Trembling With Fear 7-21-24

Greetings, children of the dark. The summer has returned here in London town, and I’m really trying not going to take it for granted. And yet, even though I was born and bred in one of Australia’s hottest and driest cities, I struggle in the heat. Especially over here, in a city and a country that is built to keep the heat in. It’s so clammy and sweaty and gross out there. Maybe I’ll just ignore it and curl up with a book in front of the fan (yep, no air con here!) instead…

Before I do, though, it’s my twisted pleasure to bring you this week’s edition of TWF. And it’s a good ‘un, if I do say so myself. Once this is off my desk and into the hands of the boss man, I’ll start going through all the submissions that came in for our latest short story submission window. If you haven’t yet heard from us, hold tight! It’s a manual process, but I’ll get back to everyone who submitted with an acknowledgement over the next few days before the TWF team settles down to review your work. As always, we’re oversubscribed: we can only accept around 12 stories each window, as we only publish one per week, and we’re now getting almost 100 submissions each time we open. On the one hand, if you get that golden acceptance, well done you! What a prize! But on the other, if you miss out then it’s not personal; it’s always a tough call. We always try to give a bit of feedback as to why you didn’t make the cut for us. These things are somewhat subjective, and just because you didn’t find a home with TWF doesn’t mean the right home isn’t out there waiting for you. Don’t give up, and keep at it. Like writing, submitting is a muscle you need to keep working at.

Want some low-risk submission practice? We’re always looking for drabbles! Send ‘em in!

Now onto the good stuff.

This week’s menu of dark speculative fiction has as its centrepiece an uncanny memory from Sammi Leigh Melville. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

  • Andrew Keyworth’s hungry beast,
  • DJ Tyrer’s jungle adventures, and
  • Weird Wilkins’ stand-off.

Over to you, Stuart.

Lauren McMenemy

Editor, Trembling With Fear

Hi all!

First off, I’d like to thank our upcoming newsletter sponsor for the next year! Please check out Charlotte Platt’s ‘One Smile More’!

Ena Sinclair, a Scottish mage and spy, abandons her role in a prominent Edinburgh college and escapes to London to avoid an arranged marriage.

But London is not safe: a mage killer is on the hunt…

Abducted by vampires ‘for her safety’, Ena is terrified the nest owner will drain her to fuel his power but also curious to learn about his magic. Taking this once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn more about what her college had warned were dangerous creatures, Ena finds herself fond of the nest, particularly their bonded leaders, Addison and Tobias.

As survivors of the Immortal War, the pair still navigate a schism in vampire society that they are trying to heal. They now seek a peaceful life and offer Ena protection until she finds her own path.

…and dark things await them all.

Ena’s college seeks to forcibly return her to Edinburgh, and a killer is still on the loose. Hidden resentments surface, and Ena pays the price. Magically unstable and isolated, she must rely on her non-magical training to avoid being turned or used as a weapon to harm the nest she has grown to care for.

 

Be sure to order a copy today!

Hi all!

I mentioned last week that I would have news in this one, and I do! Our interview coordinator for the last few years, Selene, has had to step back for personal reasons (though, hopefully, she will return down the line!). With this change, we’re bringing our very own Sarah Elliott in as our new interview coordinator!
Sarah can be found on:

Please follow on your social media of choice, send her a warm welcome, and know that we’re looking for a few more who are interested in interviewing authors, publishers, and others in the field! More announcements to come! 

Now, for the standards:

  • Thank you so much to everyone who has become a Patreon for Horror Tree. We honestly couldn’t make it without you all!
  • The paperback is now live! Please be sure to order a copy of Shadowed Realms on Amazon, we’d love for you to check it out!

Offhand, if you’ve ordered Trembling With Fear Volume 6, we’d appreciate a review! 🙂

 

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

(more…)

Trembling With Fear

 by 

Trembling With Fear 7-14-24

Greetings, children of the dark. It’s all deadlines in TWF Towers this week, with our short story submissions window closing at the end of today (wherever you are in the world), and our summer special closing to subs tomorrow, 15 July. Get ‘em in quick, or miss out! If you’ve subbed over these windows, you’ll get your acknowledgement in the next few days. Everything is manual here; we don’t have any of those handy auto-response systems so your first hurdle, after getting the courage to hit submit, is to wear your most patient trousers.

The summer special will be Shalini’s last issue with us, and I am sad. But, as hinted a few weeks back, we’ve got a slew of new faces moving into TWF Towers and I can’t wait to introduce you to them. Just waiting on the boss being available to chat to people in a different time zone / not being on holiday. (I mean, how dare he, right?!)

My battery is very much drained today, so I’m going to send you straight into it.

This week’s menu of dark speculative fiction kicks things off with Alice Yustas, and a heartbreaking tale that goes to a place you’re not expecting. Note the content warning here for domestic abuse. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

  • Alice Lawson’s eco lament,
  • Ryan van Ells’s buggy grossness (seriously; it’s not for anyone with insect phobias), and
  • Jack Fennell’s test subjects.

Over to you, Stuart.

Lauren McMenemy

Editor, Trembling With Fear

Hi all!

First off, I’d like to thank our upcoming newsletter sponsor for the next year! Please check out Charlotte Platt’s ‘One Smile More’!

Ena Sinclair, a Scottish mage and spy, abandons her role in a prominent Edinburgh college and escapes to London to avoid an arranged marriage.

But London is not safe: a mage killer is on the hunt…

Abducted by vampires ‘for her safety’, Ena is terrified the nest owner will drain her to fuel his power but also curious to learn about his magic. Taking this once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn more about what her college had warned were dangerous creatures, Ena finds herself fond of the nest, particularly their bonded leaders, Addison and Tobias.

As survivors of the Immortal War, the pair still navigate a schism in vampire society that they are trying to heal. They now seek a peaceful life and offer Ena protection until she finds her own path.

…and dark things await them all.

Ena’s college seeks to forcibly return her to Edinburgh, and a killer is still on the loose. Hidden resentments surface, and Ena pays the price. Magically unstable and isolated, she must rely on her non-magical training to avoid being turned or used as a weapon to harm the nest she has grown to care for.

 

Be sure to order a copy today!

Whew. I was on vacation all of last week so am currently in the vast realm of catching up on everything under the sun. I don’t have much in the ways of updates this week though promise that we’ve got some big news coming up! 

Now, for the standards:

  • Thank you so much to everyone who has become a Patreon for Horror Tree. We honestly couldn’t make it without you all!
  • The paperback is now live! Please be sure to order a copy of Shadowed Realms on Amazon, we’d love for you to check it out!

Offhand, if you’ve ordered Trembling With Fear Volume 6, we’d appreciate a review! 🙂

 

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

(more…)

Trembling With Fear

 by 

Trembling With Fear 7-7-24

Greetings, children of the dark of July. (July!?!) For those of you on the other side of the pond, I hope you’re enjoying your holiday weekend. If you’re on my side, well, I’m writing this the day before the election so all I can do is keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best!

It’s been great to see some short stories start coming our way again, so a quick reminder: we’re open to short story submissions to the general section of TWF for just one more week. Yep, we’ll close again on 14 July, so get in quick if you want us to consider your work for publication. But remember, these 2-week windows are not the only way to see your name in TWF—we also have our themed submission calls (currently considering the summer special, so hurry up if you have a dark summer-set piece for Shalini’s final round in the seat!), as well as our unholy trinities (three related drabbles as a set) and serialised stories (up to 15,000 words, able to be put into chapters for drip-fed publication). And, of course, we have an insatiable need for drabbles for these weekly pages. We publish three of those every darn week, so you can imagine how hungry that drabble beast gets! That’s plenty of opportunities. And, if I’m being honest, you’ll have a better chance of getting onto our pages with a drabble than anything else; our short story submissions are tightly-contested, and we get waaaaaay more submitted than we’re able to publish. Get cracking on those 100-word beauties!

For now, though, let’s tuck into this week’s menu of dark speculative fiction and kick things off with a creature feature courtesy of Kevin M Folliard. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

  • W.H. Vigo’s critter problem,
  • Debbie Paterson’s dark musing, and
  • Liam Kerry’s family business.

Over to you, Stuart.

Lauren McMenemy

Editor, Trembling With Fear

Hi all!

First off, I’d like to thank our upcoming newsletter sponsor for the next year! Please check out Charlotte Platt’s ‘One Smile More’!

Ena Sinclair, a Scottish mage and spy, abandons her role in a prominent Edinburgh college and escapes to London to avoid an arranged marriage.

But London is not safe: a mage killer is on the hunt…

Abducted by vampires ‘for her safety’, Ena is terrified the nest owner will drain her to fuel his power but also curious to learn about his magic. Taking this once-in-a-lifetime chance to learn more about what her college had warned were dangerous creatures, Ena finds herself fond of the nest, particularly their bonded leaders, Addison and Tobias.

As survivors of the Immortal War, the pair still navigate a schism in vampire society that they are trying to heal. They now seek a peaceful life and offer Ena protection until she finds her own path.

…and dark things await them all.

Ena’s college seeks to forcibly return her to Edinburgh, and a killer is still on the loose. Hidden resentments surface, and Ena pays the price. Magically unstable and isolated, she must rely on her non-magical training to avoid being turned or used as a weapon to harm the nest she has grown to care for.

 

Be sure to order a copy today!

Moving on, I hope all of those in the US have had a great 4th of July, and for those outside of the US, I apologize for our over. We’ve started moving a bit forward with our new staff, so you’ll be seeing some changes soon, and hopefully, the new theme will come sooner rather than later. I know that I keep mentioning, but I promise you that it is inching closer to launch! There is a LOT of customizations that have to happen to really make it our own.

Now, for the standards:

  • Thank you so much to everyone who has become a Patreon for Horror Tree. We honestly couldn’t make it without you all!
  • The paperback is now live! Please be sure to order a copy of Shadowed Realms on Amazon, we’d love for you to check it out!

Offhand, if you’ve ordered Trembling With Fear Volume 6, we’d appreciate a review! 🙂

 

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

(more…)

Trembling With Fear

 by 

Trembling With Fear 6-30-24

Greetings, children of the dark. Two bits of (I hope!) good news for you all for this final day of June. 

First of all, the team has now made its way through allllll the spring short story submissions, and you should’ve heard back by now. If you haven’t, check your spam before you chase us! Thanks to everyone who submitted to the spring window; we had about 6 times as many submissions as we had spaces to fill, so please don’t be disheartened if you didn’t get good news from us. We had to make some difficult decisions. 

Related to that good news (and the flipside for us, kinda!): the summer submissions window opens tomorrow, 1 July. You’ve got two weeks to get your darkly speculative short stories to us for consideration. Please, please make sure you check our submissions guidelines first; we can tell when you don’t, and it doesn’t put us in a good mood. Also note that, as has been the case for at least the last 18 months, we are veering very much towards the speculative side of fiction. That means real-world horror like torture p*rn, serial killers, crime, etc etc, will need to find a different home (and there are plenty out there for this stuff). Instead, send us your supernatural and paranormal tales, your grimdark, your space horror, your dark fantasy/folklore/fairytales, your eco-horror—basically, anything that falls under “speculative”, or stories set in something other than the real world as we know it in our day-to-day. 

Finally, thanks to everyone who responded to our call a few weeks ago for more hands on deck to help steer the good ship Horror Tree. The boss has been chatting to lots of great people, and I myself am excited to say we’re expanding the TWF Towers team—even getting a new admin helper, which will hopefully mean you don’t have to wait so long for responses from us. It’s going to be a game-changer. I’ll introduce you to them all once we’ve had a chance to do a proper kick-off amongst ourselves, but as a little teaser: Horror Tree representation on this side of the pond is about to get a major boost!

For now, though, let’s tuck into this week’s menu of dark speculative fiction. Our centrepiece, from Simon Kewin, contemplates whether that image in the mirror can truly be trusted. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

  • Weird Wilkins’ universal contemplation,
  • Jacek Wilkos’ fairytale flip, and
  • Jameson Grey’s quiet warning.

Over to you, Stuart.

Lauren McMenemy

Editor, Trembling With Fear

Hi all! 

This week and next are going to be a lot of behind-the-scenes work. The short story I was hoping to finish for an upcoming deadline? Sadly, it won’t be finished. However, a lot of progress on Horror Tree shenanigans and I’m excited for the future! 

Now, for the standards:

  • Thank you so much to everyone who has become a Patreon for Horror Tree. We honestly couldn’t make it without you all! 
  • If you’re into digital copies of books, don’t forget to order Shadowed Realms on Amazon, Which will go up once the paperback goes live! 

Offhand, if you’ve ordered Trembling With Fear Volume 6, we’d appreciate a review! 🙂

 

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

(more…)

Trembling With Fear

 by 

Trembling With Fear 6-23-24

Greetings, children of the dark. I’m preparing this week’s edition rather early (much to the delight of the boss, I’m sure) because I’m about to do what no horror writer should ever do: head into the woods, alone, to stay at an off-grid cabin for a few nights. I know, I know. But hear me out: disconnection is exactly what I need right now. I’m so darn burned out I can barely think. So I’m taking myself off to commune with nature and do all manner of hippy/witchy things like talk to the trees and journal in a meadow. I will also, of course, be carrying a massive stack of books with me so I can make the most of the hammock they provide. Keep your fingers crossed for good weather, because these things are never guaranteed in England! And while you’re there, keep them crossed that I come back with a mountain of notes and cryptic clues to help me get back into my own writing, yeah? Then I can stop saying “if only…” and actually start doing.

And when I get back, this week’s column will be sparkly and ready for you to read online. Our menu of dark speculative fiction this week is ushered in by a trip through the apocalypse with Joshua Ginsberg. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

  • Cristina Mirzoi’s universal ruin,
  • RM Lubin’s creature rampage, and
  • DJ Tyrer’s basement dwellers.

Over to you, Stuart.

Lauren McMenemy

Editor, Trembling With Fear

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So for the past week there has been a ‘bit’ of a heat wave going on in my neck of the woods. We’re not being hit as bad as some areas, but, oof. Just ouch. You’re not here to hear about me complaining about the heat, though. So, what is new? On the personal front, I was able to submit a short story and am 90% complete with finishing up another one that I’m hoping to send out as well.

On the Horror Tree front, I’ve spent all of this week working on our future layout, talking to our soon-to-be-added new staff members, getting reading in for TWF submissions, and trying to keep up with posts! 

Now, for the standards:

Offhand, if you’ve ordered Trembling With Fear Volume 6, we’d appreciate a review! 🙂

 

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

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