Tagged: Fiction

Greetings, children of the dark. I’ve spent much of this week recovering from the pure joy that was the UK’s Fantasycon last weekend – and from the dreaded con lurgy I picked up while there. As such, I haven’t quite processed the whole thing yet, and am still trying to work out how my humble self managed to have such a dazzling and busy conference. I met some great people and had some great chats and it was awesome to (briefly!) see TWF Towers’ own Vicky Brewster and Sarah Elliott IRL, too. One day soon I’ll get down my highlights on a digital page.

Despite the lurgy, I dragged myself into Covent Garden on Thursday night for a horror panel at Waterstones which, while suffering from a terrible turnout, was great fun. Plus, I got to say hi again to people met at Worldcon (hi, Nadia El-Fassi!) and Fantasycon (hi, Nicholas Pullen!), as well as the great M.R. Carey and V. Castro. Seriously, darkness fans, support your local book store events. It really helps the writers when they’re not facing an empty room!

That said, let’s support the writers for this week’s TWF menu. Our main course is from Matt Krizan, who’s tracking a battle between heaven and hell that requires human purity. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Penny Brazier’s harrowed haunt,
• F.M. Scott’s foggy fumblings, and
• Weird Wilkins’s satisfied hunger.

One final word: remember here at TWF we are seeking speculative fiction. A lot of our recent drabble submissions (and maybe our shorts, but we haven’t got that far yet!) have centred around real-world horror. And while they’re very good, they just don’t fit our speculative remit – there’s enough real-world horror around us, and we want to escape to space, a magical world, into some folklore or myth, or even to face a fantastical creature or two. We still want it dark, but add a little unreal element to it please. If you must submit a serial killer or revenge murder story, please at least make them vampires or something.

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. Short and sweet intro again this week as I’m presently, at the time of you reading this (if, indeed, you’re the one who waits for it to go live and pounces immediately), at the UK’s Fantasycon in the old Roman city of Chester. That means I’m writing this a good bit earlier than normal (yes, Stuart may well have a heart attack) and in something of a rush. 

So let’s get stuck straight into this week’s TWF menu, with a main course from Louis Inglis Hall and a bus journey that’s a bit out of the ordinary. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Meg Keane’s waking regret,
• Christopher T. Mayne’s ruined rumination, and
• Catherine Berry’s gardening tips.

And quickly, a final call for short story submissions! Our autumn/fall window opened on 1 October and will close tomorrow, Monday 14 October, so get in quick. I’ve acknowledged everything received up to Wednesday lunchtime UK time, and will get to the rest of you when I’ve returned from the con life. And yes, there are still a few stragglers from the last open window waiting to hear from us; you’re first in line and we’ll get to you ASAP!

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. This time next week, a few residents of TWF Towers will be on their third day of Fantasycon here in the UK: myself and my other half Chris Hawton, plus our own TWF Assistant Editors Sarah Elliott and Vicky Brewster, will be found loitering around panels and hallways and bars in the general hotel area for much of the weekend, and we’d love to see you there! Check out the programme, and grab your tickets via the British Fantasy Society. Lots of dark-tinged goodness is on offer. 

I’ll admit – and have admitted a lot recently! – that I never thought of myself as a fantasy person. I was firmly in the horror zone, but would equally get annoyed when people would declare “Oh I can’t deal with horror”. They always meant slashers and gore (and it was often said while they sat reading crime novels), and I was sick of explaining that wasn’t my kinda horror. And then I got dragged to a Fantasycon, and saw so many horror people there, and so many talks and launches and all sorts, usually around my brand of horror: folk horror, occult, supernatural and paranormal, ghost stories and hauntings and vampires and all that great stuff. So I got more involved in that community, and came to fully embrace the spectrum that is speculative fiction. Not all of it is for me, just as not all of it will be for you. I’m less keen on the epic sword & sorcery stuff, on quest narratives, on LOTR pastiches. But hand me some grimdark, a haunted house, even a darkly romantastic fae series, and I’m all-in. 

And honestly, that’s what we mean when we say we’re looking for dark speculative fiction in these pages. It doesn’t mean we don’t want your serial killers and psycho humans; what it does mean is that the more you lean into the speculative, the more it’s going to hit the mark for us. Take something a little unreal, a little dark magic, a little something lurking in the background, and see what happens to your story. We’d love to read it.

Let’s get stuck into this week’s TWF menu – though vegans and animal lovers may want to skip the truly juicy and haunting main course from John Westrick and go straight to the short, sharp speculations of:

• Charlotte Haley’s dog problems,
• Noland Taylor’s fame hunger, and
• Alan Moskowitz’s unintended consequences.

Finally, a quick reminder that we’re now in the midst of our October submissions window for short stories – yes, we’re looking for your flashiest flashes of up to 1500 words. This is our most oversubscribed section at TWF Towers, so please bear with us as we poor volunteers make our way through your fabulous work. It can take us a looooooong time, but we will get there. 

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. As you read this, I’ll be on my way back from Bedford, not far outside of London town, where I was repping the British Fantasy Society at the Innsmouth Literary Festival. As I write this, though, it’s a couple of days away and I’ll admit I’m slightly nervous. The event is dedicated to weird fiction, especially in the Lovecraftian vein, and it’s a world I’m just not that familiar with. I’m hoping I can get the lowdown while I’m there, but I’ve always been a bit nervous given, y’know, the whole Lovecraft bit of it! I’m sure there’s a difference between diving into Cthulu’s waters, and diving into the life and loves of the writer himself – which, as we now know, are a bit suspect – but it’s always felt too BIG for me to truly get it. 

So here’s a challenge to you, dear reader: send us your weird tales! Show me what it’s all about! How weird can you go while maintaining a coherent narrative in just 100 words? That’s something to keep you going in these spooky, quickly-darkening nights.

Not much weirdery in this week’s darkly speculative menu, though there’s plenty to sink your teeth into. This week Tiffani Angus contemplates the true nature of milk. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Corinne Pollard’s medical issues,
• Rory ffoulkes’s wildlife camera, and
• DJ Tyrer’s icy expedition

Some quick reminders to finish up:

Did you meet and greet all the new residents of TWF Towers? In case you missed it, last week we announced our new Assistant Editors, one to oversee each section of submissions. Meet them over in this article, but please join me in welcoming:

• Assistant Editor – Specials: Lynn Huggins-Cooper
• Assistant Editor – Serials: Vicky Brewster
• Assistant Editor – Unholy Trinities: Sarah Elliott

Remember we’re currently open to:

• Submissions for our Halloween special
• Serialised stories
• Drabbles
• Unholy trinities

But we won’t open to regular ol’ short story subs until 1 October, when our next 2-week window creaks open. Oh, hang on – that’s this week! Get ready, folks!

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. At the risk of becoming a broken record, another plea from me this week: if you submitted to our last short story window, please know we will get back to you as soon as we can. It takes a long time to read through the submissions and collate our thoughts – we always make sure multiple people read them so we don’t introduce any bias – and we’re all volunteers so things can get stuck for a while, especially over summer. We do try to make sure we get back to you before the next open window, which is coming up quickly!

But also: remember we’re only open to short story submissions for two weeks every season. This is to help us manage the submissions, because we were getting such a backlog that people were waiting over a year to be published, which I’m sure you’ll agree is less than ideal. We don’t have infinite space or budget, alas, and so we can only take one short story every week. That means there’s only 52 spots each year, and we get more than that for each two-week open call. You’re all way too keen and talented! 

But now, it’s time to prep for this week’s darkly speculative menu. This week we head to a birthday party for a very particular mother, thanks to Dave Musson. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• James Callan’s rural drama,
• Jonathon Worlde’s otherworldly issues, and
• Troi-Jeantte’s trapped trauma

Some quick reminders to finish up:

Did you meet and greet all the new residents of TWF Towers? In case you missed it, last week we announced our new Assistant Editors, one to oversee each section of submissions. Meet them over in this article, but please join me in welcoming:

• Assistant Editor – Specials: Lynn Huggins-Cooper
• Assistant Editor – Serials: Vicky Brewster
• Assistant Editor – Unholy Trinities: Sarah Elliott

Remember we’re currently open to:

• Submissions for our Halloween special
• Serialised stories
• Drabbles
• Unholy trinities

But we won’t open to regular ol’ short story subs until 1 October, when our next 2-week window creaks open. 

Over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. Did you meet and greet all the new residents of TWF Towers? In case you missed it, last week we announced our new Assistant Editors, one to oversee each section of submissions. Meet them over in this article, but please join me in welcoming:

• Assistant Editor – Specials: Lynn Huggins-Cooper
• Assistant Editor – Serials: Vicky Brewster
• Assistant Editor – Unholy Trinities: Sarah Elliott

A lot of this week’s intro is going to echo the last one, mainly because the call-outs are the same!

• We’re currently open to submissions for our Halloween special!
• We’d love to see more Serials coming in!
• And please feed the drabble beast!

If you submitted to our last short story window, please know we will get back to you as soon as we can. It takes a long time to read through the submissions and collate our thoughts – we always make sure multiple people read them so we don’t introduce any bias – and we’re all volunteers so things can get stuck for a while, especially over summer. We’ll be much quicker with these things now we have extra hands on deck.

Enough with the welcomes and the caveats: let’s get to this week’s darkly speculative menu. This week’s gothic main course is some quietly longing hauntings that whisper in the air, courtesy of Mave L. Goren. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Ryan Benson’s emotional depths,
• Christina Nordlander’s woodland waiting, and
• Andrew Leonard’s skewed caring

BTW as a final thought, let me direct your attention to a blog published by the inimitable Gabino Iglesias last week. He’s using his investigative journalism background to trap scammers preying on the self-publishing market. Very worth your time; you’ll find it on his Substack. 

Now, over to you, Stuart.

Greetings, children of the dark. I got a bit of a shock earlier—always a good way to introduce some dark fiction, right? Someone had asked me how long I’d been editing TWF and I honestly couldn’t remember, so I looked back at my files to see… that this edition marks my 112th in the editor seat! I can’t believe it’s been that long. More than two years! It feels like yesterday the great Stephanie Ellis sat me down in Scarborough to see if I’d be interested in stepping into her shoes, and now, here we are, more than two years later, introducing a new and expanded team for TWF.

Yep, we’ve given each section of TWF a dedicated editor, and I’m so grateful to these wonderful people for putting their hands up to move into TWF Towers and help the bossman and I with this mega-thing we try to lovingly caress into existence every week. You’ll find out more about our new Assistant Editors over in this article, but please join me in welcoming:

• Assistant Editor – Specials: Lynn Huggins-Cooper
• Assistant Editor – Serials: Vicky Brewster
• Assistant Editor – Unholy Trinities: Sarah Elliott

You may recognise Sarah as our new Interviews Coordinator, too—she’s taking over! (Look out, Stuart…)

We also welcome Annette Livingstone to the team as our Editorial Assistant. She’ll be helping Stuart and I keep on top of the always-overflowing inbox and general administrative bits and pieces to keep us ticking over. An absolute godsend, if you ask me!

And that just leaves me to remind you we’re currently open to submissions for our Halloween special—and Lynn looks forward to reading them!—and we’d love to see more Serials coming in, too. (I think Sarah’s got a healthy dose of Unholy Trinities, but could always do with more!)

Oh: and please feed the drabble beast! It’s looking at me far too closely, like I’m just right for its next meal… 

So to this week’s darkly speculative menu. We kick off this week with Andy Martin showing why you need to be careful dancing around a stone circle. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Rich Duncan’s eldritch stirring,
• F.M. Scott’s CCTV antics, and
• Richard Meldrum’s grumpy survivors.

Now, over to you, boss.

Greetings, children of the dark. It’s the first of the month, and the first day of a new season, and we’re getting ever-closer to our favourite month of the year: Spooktober. We are, of course, running our Halloween special again this year and are still open to submissions for that—please make sure your story is themed to Halloween! If it’s a general short story, you’ll have to wait until our next submission window is open, which will be in exactly one month from now. 

Let’s whet your appetites by diving into this week’s darkly speculative menu. We kick off this week by going behind the scenes of a webcam girl facing some peculiar monsters, thanks to Divo Faustino. That’s followed by the short, sharp speculations of:

• Jen Poteet’s woodland wander,
• Shiloh Kulman’s unwanted visitor, and
• Mansi R’s visionary child.

Before you jump in, one quick plea to those who’ve been considering subbing to us: we are looking with much effort for MORE DRABBLES, as always, but also our serialised stories need some love. Have you got a longer story (up to 15,000 words) that can be easily broken into chapters for us to publish over a weekly period? We have a new serials editor who awaits your great and magnificent new worlds! Sub in the usual place. 

And a final plug: on Tuesday (3 September), I’m hosting a panel of writers from across the fantasy spectrum—James Logan, Kit Whitfield, and Peter Mclean—at Waterstones Covent Garden, in central London, on behalf of Arcadia and the British Fantasy Society. Join us to hear about the speculative fiction market in the UK, and what it’s like to be navigating it in the trad pub way. Tickets and details over here. 

Now, over to you, Stuart.