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.
