Rebecca Treasure & Crepuscular: Launching a new Micro Mag

By Angelique Fawns

 

Rebecca Treasure likes her fiction short and isn’t afraid to dive into the darkest waters of story. She is launching a new venue for microfiction on Friday October 13th called Crepuscular. If you’re like me, and have never heard that word, it’s an adjective that means, “resembling or relating to a period or state of obscurity, ambiguity, or gradual decline.”

Crepuscular Magazine is looking for stories of no more than 250 words and will pay 10c for every creepy one of them. These pieces should explore “places, characters, and questions buried in the gray areas between this and that, here and there, night and day, alive and dead, evil and good, feminine and masculine, up and down, real and unreal. If you’re not quite sure what that means, lean into that feeling.”  There will be launch stories to read over the next few months that will showcase the kind of stories Crepuscular is looking for.

Rebecca is the managing editor and flash fiction editor at Apex Magazine, and  you can find her work in Zooscape, Seize the Press, Galaxy’s Edge, Air & Nothingness Press, and The Dread Machine, to name a few. 

AF: What inspired you to create Crepuscular?

RT: I was the sole judge (and executioner?) for the microfiction on the Apex Magazine Patreon for almost two years. I’d read between thirty and fifty microfiction stories every month, winnowing down the pile to one winner. During that time I really fell in love with the form. When microfiction is good, it’s just so powerful and impressive. When we moved to flash (a form I also love!), I found that I missed doing the microfiction. I thought about creating a microfiction market for a while and decided to just go for it!

 

AF: How will this magazine be funded and what are you hoping for?

RT: As of right now, it’s funded by me and the Patrons who have supported the magazine on Patreon. The eventual hope, of course, is to be fully funded by Patreon. Long term hopes? I’d love to add more stories, maybe open up to flash length in addition to microfiction. No plans to expand into longer forms, though – I love short short fiction!

 

AF: Any insider hints for submission success?

RT: Surprise me. One thing I noticed with the microfiction themes is that there would be a lot of stories that were fairly similar in theme. The month the theme was VOID, for instance, I read a lot of black hole stories. Some of them were excellent, but the winning story took the theme and used it in an unexpected way. Crepuscular isn’t themed beyond the overarching theme of in-betweenness, but I still want stories that make my jaw drop open, whether because the use of language is so unique or because the story goes somewhere I wasn’t expecting or because it touches my soul in some way. Surprise me!

 

AF: How experimental can writers be with form and content?

RT: I love epistolary fiction, I love poetic writing, I want to be challenged as a reader and editor. That being said, Patreon doesn’t allow for easy formatting, so stories that rely on creative or unique paragraphing won’t be an easy sell. Beyond that, see the above answer and surprise me!

  

AF: Who will be helping you with this project?

RT: As of right now, it’s just me! I’ve had friends helping me with gut checks and brainstorming, making sure the graphics work, but mostly it’s just me! If the slushpile is overwhelming, which would be amazing, I’ll probably bring on a first reader or two.

 

AF: Will there be any intersection between Apex and Crepuscular?

RT: None beyond me! The team at Apex has been so supportive of my creating Crepuscular, and I’m grateful to them! But beyond that, they’re separate. Crepuscular might have some tone overlap with Apex if only because I love the kind of fiction Apex publishes, but Apex tends toward the darker fiction and while I love that and will definitely take some, I’m also going to be looking for lighter fare for Crepuscular than I would select for Apex. Dusk and dawn exist as ranges/spectrums, after all.

 

AF: What’s new and exciting in the writing life of Rebecca Treasure beyond this venture?

RT: I’ve got stories coming out soon from Zooscape Magazine as well as Murderbugs, which is running a Kickstarter right now. I’m currently deep into edits on a contemporary fantasy novel about a woman with a therapist and a corgi. My work at Apex keeps me pretty busy! Find me at www.rebeccaetreasure.com

You can find out more about the new magazine Right here!