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Word of the week: Tacenda: things not to be mentioned or made public; things better left unsaid
Hello, readers! Can you believe it’s already October? Where did September go? Soon, the leaves will be changing, and Halloween decorations will give way to Santa hats and candy canes.
This week we are featuring an article by Deborah Sheldon on writing historical horror, which is an absolute must-read for any authors looking to set their horror stories in the past. We also have articles on fiction and psychotherapy, improving life and creativity, and whether or not fiction can make a difference in the world. As always, you can find me (Holley) lurking on Twitter @HLCornetto.
Horror Tree Update:
Shining a spotlight on guest posts: We're always open to guest posts and blog tours. That being said, going forward we can now better spotlight the author of each post. Previously, we had two author bios. One for the author which we handcrafted and one for the poster. (Originally Stuart, later Horror Tree.) Now, it will just display a bio for the actual author. As mentioned, initially this will only be on posts moving forward though we'll slowly be filling in older guest posts as well as time permits.
A quick request: If you run a website, we'd love to see more of Horror Tree in print and would truly appreciate any articles written up about Horror Tree, Trembling With Fear, the staff, etc. If you do a write-up, please send in a link to contact@horrortree.com (If you need any promo art or clarification on dates of when things happened for the site such as when HT or TWF launched, staff members joined, etc, let us know!)
Trembling With Fear update:
We're still open for our Halloween Edition of TWF as well and you can read the details right here. Time is running out!
Bonus Contest:
Horror Author David Viergutz is celebrating Halloween early with a massive 20+ Horror Novel Giveaway, all loaded onto a Brand New Kindle!
David has purchased the best-selling books for 20+ horror authors and is giving them away in order to show his support for the horror author community and bring eyes to their work. Every contestant will also receive a complimentary copy of one of his books as well.
Help spread the word and lets kick off scare-season right, with a whole mess of books designed to keep you up at night!
https://kingsumo.com/g/z0paol/halloween-giveaway-win-a-kindle-loaded-with-20-horror-books
Articles:
Here are the latest articles on writing from around the web.
On craft:
Ginger Nuts of Horror: Quick and Dirty Tips for Writing Historical Horror
General:
Writer’s Digest: How Fiction and Psychotherapy Complement Each Other
LitReactor: The Wisdom of Alan Watts: Improve Your Life and Creativity
Jane Friedman: Can Fiction Make a Difference in the World?
Free Fiction Roundup:
This week we have an exciting round up of free fiction, beginning with “The Good Father,” by Tim Coldstone, which was sent to us by a reader. I admired the grim tone of the piece, and the author’s ability to make the atmosphere of the story feel claustrophobic. Our second selection appears in Dose of Dread from Dreadstone Press. “Light Amidst the Plains” has an interesting and nonconventional format, which aids the telling and subtext of the story. Melissa Kerman explores the fine line between love and hate in “Karma’s Boyfriend.” The final selection for this week comes from Orion’s Belt. “The Crown of Fire” reads like a fairy tale or fable, and left a lasting impression on this reader.
Now, on to the fiction:
“The Good Father” by Tim Coldstone. Pyre Magazine.
“Light Amidst the Plains” by Gabrielle Bleu. Dose of Dread (Dreadstone Press).
“Karma’s Boyfriend” by Melissa Kerman. The Raven Review.
“The Crown of Fire” by Reuben Dendinger. Orion’s Belt.
If you post any writing content during the week and think it would be a good fit for us to feature, do reach out and let us know at contact@horrortree.com
Thank you Patreons! As always, the site's lifeblood is in your hands and we truly appreciate your support.
Looking To Help Horror Tree?
Here are the main things we're looking for:
- Advertising and either Site or Contest sponsorships!
- Article writers (articles, interviews, reviews, crowdsource compilations, etc.)
- Sharing guest posts with us or reaching out for us to be a blog tour host.
- The obvious one here is also to become one of our Patreons!
If you're interested in contributing and think you have something that would help out PLEASE don't shy away from contacting us! (contact@horrortree.com)
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Excerpts:
Payment: $.08 per word ($80 minimum), $40 per poem Theme: Optimistic futures: fiction, poetry & nonfiction envisioning solutions to climate change & imagining a better world. More detailed submission guidelines will be available soon. Flash Fiction: 500-1500 words Short Stories: 1500-7500 words Poetry: send up to 5 poems or 5 pages of poems, whichever is shorter. Prose should be submitted as fiction. Nonfiction: 1000-1500 words If our Kickstarter campaign is successfully funded, Solarpunk Magazine will pay professional market rates as defined by the SFWA. Those rates are as follows: Fiction: $.08 per word ($80 minimum) Poetry: $40 per poem Nonfiction: $100 per essay Via: Solarpunk Magazine.
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‘To Offer Her Pleasure’ by Ali Seay Reviewed by: Brandi Guarino TW: Animal death, gore Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you. Sixteen-year-old Ben Schon, still reeling from the death of his beloved father, is faced with the loss of his mother. Not to death, but abandonment, by checking out of life with booze and men, unable to deal with the loss of her husband. Now his mom has left him, taking off on a booze- filled trip with her boyfriend. Ben is used to being the adult in the house, so very little changes with her departure, other than the emptiness and silence of the house. Desperately missing his father, Ben begins seeking out relics of his father’s short life- wearing his Doc Martens, sipping his port, smoking his pipe, and exploring his dad’s books in his man cave. While perusing his dad’s bookshelves, he comes across a book titled To Offer Her Pleasure. Inside the book is a robed, horned woman standing in profile. Soon the robed figure communicates with Ben through the book with one word: Sacrifice. Soon Ben is seeking to fulfill the robed woman’s every appetite and whim, it only takes blood and sacrifice. When Weirdpunk Books offered the opportunity to review To Offer Her Pleasure, I jumped at the chance. Having just read and reviewed another of their titles, I knew I was in for a good read. I was most definitely not disappointed. Ali Seay knocked this book out of the park. I was hooked from page one and could not put it down until I finished Ben’s story. It is provocative, gory, and gripping....
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Deadline: February 1st, 2022 Payment: 15GBP Theme: Metamorphosis If you think you’ve got what it takes to terrify, scar and haunt our audience of 10,000 daily listeners, then we want your stories! If accepted, we’ll get our fantastic narration team to lend their voices, our editor will sprinkle some magic pixie dust on the track, and you could have your story heard by thousands of listeners each week. (Vol 78.) Metamorphosis II; deadline 1st February 2022 !!!NEW SUBMISSION PROCESS!!! SUBMIT YOUR STORIES USING THIS FORM If, this form isn’t working, then please email your submission to keztheeditor@gmail.com as a last resort. But please let us know why as we’re hoping to use the form going forward. Title your email with the following syntax: SUBMISSION | STORY TITLE | THEME | WORDCOUNT (e.g. SUBMISSION | THE MARTIAN | SPACE | 1,982) It is important that your story complies with our Submission Guidelines. Any stories found not to be in compliance will be immediately discarded. Click HERE for details If you think you’ve got what it takes to terrify, scar and haunt our audience of 10,000 daily listeners, then we want your stories! If accepted, we’ll get our fantastic narration team to lend their voices, our editor will sprinkle some magic pixie dust on the track, and you could have your story heard by thousands of listeners each week. HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO: • Stories must be 2,000 (10% tolerance +/-) • Save stories in a Word document – Times New Roman font, size 12 • Include a 1-2 sentence log line for your story at the end of the document • Ensure that your name and an email address are somewhere on the document • Stories must fit an upcoming theme • By submitting your story to us, you...
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Deadline: November 15th, 2021 Payment: $5 USD Theme: “Most” Speculative fiction, read below for specifics. Note: Open only for women-identified authors. Simply follow the schedule below to be notified when we close and open for submissions. Criteria Luna Station Quarterly publishes speculative fiction written by women-identified authors. We think women write awesome characters and really cool stories and we want to show it to the world. We will consider stories submitted by any woman writer, regardless of experience or writing resume. If you consider yourself on the woman end of the gender spectrum in any significant capacity, you’re welcome here! Stuff we want: Fantasy Science Fiction Space Opera New Fairy Tales (not retellings) Some creepiness Stories that explore the nooks and crannies of an original world Big events from the everyman perspective Unique settings and storytelling forms Well written stories with strong characters Stuff we don’t want: Anything biased toward any religion, race or moral preference Extreme gore or sexual content, in particular no explicit rape or sexual assault. (everything in moderation) Bizarro fiction Poetry Fan Fiction (original stories only, please) Bad grammar/punctuation (please proofread and watch your sentence structure!) Plagiarism A further note about sex and violence in submissions. Science fiction has a long-standing tradition of pushing boundaries and asking difficult questions. It is meant to challenge us and ask us to look at ourselves and how we treat each other and the world around us. That said, LSQ is centered on uplift and so any story that contains explicit sexual situations or violence especially toward women will be considered more carefully than other stories and the content must be justified within the story’s arch. Format and Details Stories should be 500 to 7000 words in length. We may publish longer or shorter works, but the greater your story is...
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How to Write a Horror Story for a Child and an Adult Reader Fairytales and old folklore stories include many supernatural elements that are somehow related to our fictional reality. While it’s natural for such altered events to be part of our lives through the collective subconscious, many of them are not taught to children out of an unknown fear. We don’t want to put our kids in danger or affect their reality in any way. This is why we don’t allow them to watch horror movies or thriller shows. We try to keep them as far as possible from these myths. In reality, children should understand that there is a mysterious part to our conscious world, that synchronistic realities can, in fact, interfere, and that horror stories are nothing but a part of our subconscious imagination. According to this article on The Cut, children exposed to scary stories learn how to handle fear in real life. Kids need to learn that energy is real, and it could have both positive and negative valences. Here’s what you need to get started. Explore what fear means Fear can mean many different things to many different people, so your first goal is to explore what fear means to kids. What provokes fear? When are you scared? And what aspects of fear do you wish you would’ve learned earlier in life? The most common answer is ‘the fear of the unknown.’ A good way to exploit fear in fiction is by withholding information. Browse for an unconventional yet soft topic There are three main topics you could explore since your goal is staying far away from the real world. The first one is paranormal – ghosts and stuff – the second one is monsters, and the third one relates to murder. The third...
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Deadline: January 1st, 2022 Payment: Royalties Theme: Starships and their crews, heroic captains, villainous alien armadas etc. TRUE STORY: A few years ago at the back of every single Star Trek novel, there was a physical address for any aspiring writer to send off their own Star Trek manuscripts for publication consideration! As the years have gone on, the laws have tightened up and characters and names have been strictly copyrighted. So what does this have to do with our space opera call, you wonder? Well simple – we’re going to put out an anthology for all of you who always wanted to write an episode inspired by Star Trek, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers or The Orville but missed those days of golden opportunity. If you enjoy the thinking man’s drama of the iterations of Trek or the pulpy exploration elements of say Flash Gordon or even the more comedic chops of something like The Orville, this is your time to shine. We look forward to reading your tales inspired by the space opera greats (including Battlestar Galactica, Firefly etc.), just make sure your story is set in space and that the universe, setting, characters and names are original and completely your own creations. Title: Space Treks Theme: science fiction, space opera, pulp, drama Word count: 2,000 to 12,000 words Submission opens: OPEN Submission closes: January 2022 (or when full) What we would like to see: Starships and their crews, heroic captains, villainous alien armadas etc. Things of the hard pass variety: Horror, rape / excessive gore Compensation: Royalty Split Eligibility: Open to all Multiple submissions: Yes Reprints: Yes Simultaneous submissions: No At Starry Eyed Press we strive to share the best possible version of your stories with the world. Therefore, all accepted material will receive professional in depth editing and formatting. If you are uncomfortable with this, please do not submit to us....
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Deadline: October 31st, 2021 Payment: 1 cent per word Theme: Queer tales of supernatural love Beyond the Veil: Queer Tales of Supernatural Love Submissions Open Until October 31st We’re looking for queer tales of supernatural love for our next major anthology, slated for a February 2022 release to coincide with Valentines Day. Sweet, sexy, scary or tragic… We’d love to see your own interpretations on what queer love means to you. We only ask that your story has a supernatural / Gothic / dark element of some kind. Length: Anything between 1,000 – 6,000 words. Payment: 0.01 USD per word via PayPal and a digital contributor’s copy. Publication: E-book and print. Deadline: 31st October 2021 Rights: We request first worldwide and electronic rights for 3 months after the date of publication, after which rights revert to the author. All copyright remains with the author. We accept simultaneous submissions but no reprints please. Multiple submissions not accepted. All submissions will be responded to after the deadline. Email your submission as a .doc/.docx file to beyond@ghostorchidpress.com with “Beyond [your pen name] [your story title]” in the subject line. Please see our Submission Guidelines for more information on formatting. Via: Ghost Orchid Press.
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7 Deadly Demons Of Tales Of The Frontier In the world of The Frontier, monsters are everywhere and travellers should take care on the road day and night. And as bad as some monsters are, there’s nothing quite as dangerous as the demons that are waiting in the darkness to prey upon humanity’s weaknesses and cause destruction. Demons are among the most feared and chaotic supernatural entities on The Frontier and here’s seven of the deadliest demons to run like hell from. Nukelavee The sea is a dangerous place at the best of times and there are many creatures lurking in the depths. The Nukelavee is one of the most hideous beasts to encounter. This sea demon has the appearance of a giant flayed horse with the torso of corpse stitched onto its back. Long, grasping arms help it glide through the water and reach out to yank sailors down to its lair. The Nuckelavee is also a plague-spreader. The noxious fumes it secretes can bring famine and pestilence to seaside communities and if you thought you were safe on land, think again. The demon can survive on land, due to a pair of lungs located on the underside of the ‘horse.’ On land, Nuckelavee gallop in bursts of speed to eviscerate their victims. Aramu We’re all prone to bad dreams and a creature straight out of a nightmare is the aramu. A shadowy demon, aramu feed on fear and nightmares, often visiting sleepers when they are at their most vulnerable. There are even times when aramu are summoned specifically to take away bad dreams. This is a slippery slope, as once the aramu has been allowed to feed, it will consume positive dreams and take away hope. Aramu...
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Deadline: October 31st, 2021 Payment: $0.01 CAD Theme: Stories from a variety of genres and styles focusing on the sea, life in and around the sea, and the stories we tell ourselves about the sea. Note: Must be a Canadian author to submit Open Call for Sea Story Short Fiction. Over the last six years, the From the Rock series has become one of the preeminent anthology series’ in Atlantic Canada. We have been home to some amazing established talent and helped some new authors break through that have gone on to dominate their fields, becoming genre bestsellers in their own right. From the Rock is a title readers consistently ask for, review well, and is a great way for avid readers to get introduced to indie talent they might find interesting. Since 2018, each entry in the series has become a Canadian bestseller based on pre-orders alone! We are currently accepting submissions for the eighth entry in this series: Sea Stories from the Rock, to be available in Winter of 2022. Editors Ellen Curtis and Erin Vance are scheduled to return to helm the project. Many authors have expressed interest, but anyone can submit to be a part of this collection! Deadline is October 31 2021, but get your stories in as quick as you can, as it gives our wonderful editors more time to work with you and make sure it is as good as it can possibly be! We’re looking for stories from a variety of genres and styles focusing on the sea, life in and around the sea, and the stories we tell ourselves about the sea. The collection will be a well-rounded companion for lovers of the ocean. What is the target audience? For this specific collection, we’re going for an equivalent of PG to...
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Deadline: November 1st, 2021 Payment: $.02 per word and a contributors copy Theme: Optimistic views of the future SOLARPUNK SUNSCAPES: OPTIMISTIC VISIONS OF THE FUTURE Story Length: 500 to 7,500 words Story Payment: $.02 per word + contributor copy Poem Length: 5 poems or 5 pages Poetry Payment: $30 per poem + contributor copy Submissions Open: September 1 — November 1, 2021 Expected Publication: Summer 2022 Editor: Justine Norton-Kertson What is Solarpunk? Solarpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that developed as a reaction to cyberpunk, the decades long dominance of apocalyptic fiction, and a growing desire to tell, read, hear, and watch stories that provide solutions to the very real and potentially catastrophic challenges of climate change. Solarpunk tells optimistic and hopeful stories about future societies (near-future or distant) powered by renewable energy, and where nature and technology coexist in harmony rather than in conflict. This is a subgenre that’s about restoring the web of life that connects us all. It’s about a desire to protect all life, not just human life. It’s about the drive to embrace and empower life, and restore the planet. Solarpunk futures aren’t usually “perfect” utopias. Well sometimes they are, or at least really close — but not always, not even usually — and even when they come close they are still never without conflict and challenges. But they also are absolutely not dystopias. A perfect utopia will never be achieved. However, if solarpunk societies haven’t yet reached some sort of utopian ideal, then the communities in solarpunk stories have still either solved, or are at least in the process of optimistically working together to solve or adapt to the climate crisis. They are consciously and collectively working to create a better world that is ecologically sustainable and is also free from racism, patriarchy, greed and inequity, war, hunger, etc. In short,...
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How I write quiet horror By: Die Booth As an author I’m absolutely delighted that the term ‘quiet horror’ is recently gaining a bit of traction in the writing world. I’ve struggled for years to come up with the right, understood, term for the stories I pen that manage to straddle the horror and ‘literary’ genres in a way that is sometimes a nightmare to market or even describe. So here are my tips on how to write quiet horror. What is quiet horror? For me, it’s easier to define quiet horror by what it isn’t. Slashers, gore, body horror – all of these are much-loved horror subgenres (and that’s not to say all of these can’t be quiet horror too, if handled in that way) but they tend to be a lot more in-your-face than quiet horror. Quiet horror isn’t the cannibal in the attic, it’s the insidious, creeping feeling that there might be a cannibal in the attic but you’re too scared to go and look. It’s not the jump-scare, it’s the soul-shrinking anxiety that at any point something might jump out. It’s not screaming and running from the bloody fiend that dragged itself from the cellar, it’s your throat closing silently because you’re too afraid to scream at what you cannot even see to run from. In short – it’s not what’s said, it’s what’s not said that defines quiet horror for me. Not saying things I find it can be a tricky balance to strike between saying too much and not saying enough. Make it too vague and things can get boring. Spell it out too clearly and it can break the tension. Here’s some tips to try and help with that. Create atmosphere When you’re writing horror, you...
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Deadline: December 10th, 2021 Payment: AU$5.00 for stories under 2500 words / AU$10.00 for anything above 2500 words Theme: Feet Colp is our ‘anything goes’ genre-free anthology collection. Expect to see a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Current theme: FEET Most people have mixed feelings when it comes to feet. So what about you? Do you love them? Hate them? Are they just something to get you from A to B? An unusual request we know, but for this collection, we would like stories that in some way involve feet (whether they be human, animal or otherwise). Be creative. Colp is for everyone and therefore we are willing to read stories that fall into any genre. So, no matter whether your story is a horror, adventure, romance, sci-fi or historical fiction piece, please send it on through. Be original. We also encourage new and unpublished writers to take the leap and get in touch. Please ensure that you read through the general guidelines and format your submission accordingly. If you have any specific questions please contact us using the form on the home page or via the listed social media accounts. To help make sure that your submission gets to the correct place, please include the following in the subject line of your email: Colp – Feet – Story Title. Word count: 1000 – 5500 words Deadline: December 10 2021 Payment: AU$5.00 for stories under 2500 words / AU$10.00 for anything above 2500 words Via: Gypsum Sound Tales.
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Deadline: October 20th, 2021 Payment: 1 cent per word ($10 for every 1,000 words prorated, $50 for every 5,000 words prorated, and so on) Theme: Short horror stories with a focus on ghosts, the supernatural, paranormal, monsters, and dark tales. Scare Street is accepting submissions for short horror stories with a focus on ghosts, the supernatural, paranormal, monsters, and dark tales. Unpublished short stories must be 3,000-7,000 words and will be included in our Night Terrors anthologies consisting of ~65,000 words each. These stories will be published in e-book, print, and audio formats in English within 6 months after the submissions close date. Based on reader reception, we may also publish them in e-book, print, and audio formats in German and Spanish. WHO ARE WE? Scare Street is a horror publishing company dedicated to helping fellow horror lovers experience sleepless nights. We’ve been around since September 2015 and have published 200+ e-book and paperback titles along with 150+ audiobooks (and counting!). WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU? Get visibility from thousands of horror readers. We will promote your work on our email list (12,000+ subscribers), Facebook Page (30,000+ followers), Facebook Group (12,000+ members), Pinterest (nearly 200k+ monthly views) and the rest of our social media channels. Afterwards, thousands of readers on Amazon and other retailers will organically find your stories. Our first few volumes clenched the top 3 new release spots in horror anthologies category and continue to be found on the first page of various horror categories. Work with an experienced publisher. We’ve been publishing high-quality manuscripts, non-stop for 5+ years. We’ve ironed out the kinks and know what it takes to bring stories to the masses, operationally. And we know a few things about getting your stories read, too! Distribution in e-book, print, and audio formats, in various languages. You’ll also receive a...
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What would happen if Children’s Books Were Presented as Mystical Horror Stories? Mystical horror stories are designed to immerse their audience into a world where their lives are put at risk. They usually have one common element, the antagonist is perceived as supernatural; this antagonist can be either evil or simply very powerful. This type of story could be used to teach children about greed and its consequences. Since the antagonists are perceived as supernatural, they would be considered evil. The protagonist of these stories could either outsmart or kill the antagonist to realize what it has done is wrong. This type of story could be used when teaching children about greed and how an individual can overcome their selfishness before it takes over their character completely. You could use Scrooge from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as an example because even though he was greedy, his personality changed for the better once he humbled himself. On the other hand, sometimes some characters do not follow the rules simply because they are too powerful, like Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost or Zeus in Homer’s Illiad, so the protagonist would have to fight instead of outsmarting or appease them. This type of story could teach children about greed and how following the rules ensures that they are safe, appropriate lifelong friends who have their backs. You could use Thidwick from Dr. Seuss’ Big-Hearted Moose as an example because even though he let his friends live on his antlers, it led him to be attacked by hunters who looked for antelopes with six horns instead of 4. If Thidwick refused to share his home with others, he would not have been in danger. Are horror stories bad for kids? Why should we Actually Consider sharing Sad and Scary Stories with Our Kids Horror...
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