#and anthologies that aren't all by the same author

[unbearable-lightness-of-ink]

y'all i caved to peer pressure and made one of those lists of books. I got to be the first person to add some books by tumblr mutuals to this list website, apparently, so that's pretty cool. anyway pls tell me if you have read more of my books than I have bc I honestly need motivation to get through my tbr piles of shame.

[thebibliosphere]

I saw your post about ingram, and out of curiosity, is there some advantage to going through the whole self-publishing thing with retailers when you're just starting out? like I mean the way that fandom zines work is that they don't even bother going through ingram or amazon or whatever. they just set up a social media site (usually twitter) to gain followers, open preorders (usually 1-2 months in length) to generate the costs of printing upfront, and then sell anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred copies of their books (usually artbooks, but anthologies exist too). I've seen some zines generate over a thousand orders. they're kind of like pop-up shops, except for books. maybe the sales numbers aren't so impressive to a real author, but the profit generated is typically waaaay more than the $75+ apparently needed for Ingram Spark, so I still feel like new authors could benefit from this method too, especially if they just need some start-up cash to eventually move to ingram if they want to for subsequent runs of their book. I think authors would also have to set aside some of the pre-order money to buy an ISBN number to have printed on their book, and I'm not really sure what other differences there are, but I just wanted to ask about it in case there's some huge disadvantage I'm missing!

So, popup zines work well for some people, and I know some authors who kickstart their work successfully. But for a lot, it's just not feasible as a long-term stratedy. Or even as a means to get off the ground.

Fanzines succeed primarily because an existing fanbase is willing and ready to throw money at something they love. They’ve got a favorite writer or artist they want to support. Supporting all the others is just a happy by-product. They also take a HUGE amount of short-term but intense planning that just doesn’t always jive with how some of us work.

I, for one, would never offer to organize a fanzine. I’ll take part in them as a creator, but I’d rather throw myself off a cliff than subject myself to wrangling that many people and dealing with the legal logistics.

When it comes to authors doing anthologies, it'svery much the same. The success of the funding often hinges on having other big-name authors involved whose existing fans will prop up the project. Or having a huge marketing budget.

Most self-pub authors have zero marketing budget. I’m one of them, and I’m under no illusions that my work would not be as popular and self-sustaining as it is if I didn’t have a large Tumblr blog.

When I thank Tumblr in my forewards, I am utterly sincere. Tumblr brought fandom levels of enthusiasm to an unknown work and broke the Amazon algorithm so hard, that Amazon thought I was bot sniping my way to multiple #1 spots and froze my sales rankings.

That’s not the norm. And while I could probably kickstart my own work as an indie creator, that’s because I’ve put literal decades into building up a readership. I’ve been doing this since I was 16 and realized people thought I was funny. I didn’t know what to do with it or if I’d ever actually write anything, but it meant the groundwork was already there (thank you, past-me). I basically fell upward into my success by virtue of never being able to shut the fuck up and wanting to make people laugh. Clown instincts too strong.

New or first-time authors trying to sell their work without that will find it infinitely harder.

All of that aside, even if an unknown author somehow gets lucky and manages to fund their work, there’s still the question of shipping and distribution logistics. Are you shipping everything yourself? Better hope you’re able-bodied and have the time for it. (for reference, it took me months to ship out 300 patreon hardbacks because of my disabilites. It damaged my back and hands. I couldn’t type for several weeks after I was done.)

Are you going to sell primarily at conventions? Better hope you’re able-bodied, have the time and don’t have cripling anxiety about being in large groups...

Also, will selling a dozen to a few thousand copies in one burst be sustainable in the long run as a career? Not for me. Doing things via Ingram and Amazon means I earn a steady trickle of sales for the rest of my life provided the platforms remain and so long as I keep working and can generate interest in the series, not just when I have funds to pay for physical copies to sell. The one-time (in theory) cost of $75 to distribute through Ingram gets paid off pretty quick that way. And it doesn't require the same logistics as doing the popup/crowdfund.

Ultimately, it comes down to what you are capable of but also the type of work you’re doing. If you’ve got an extended network of fellow creatives who will back you or you’ve got a large following elsewhere, doing it like a popup might work for you.

If you’re an exhausted burnout who can’t fathom the short but intense amount of organization that sort of thing requires, not to mention doing it over and over and over... Ehhhhh. No thank you.

[proshippers-against-censorship]

omg there's so many antis in the bungou stray dogs fandom it pisses me off. specifically because i had a mutual realise i was proship and was like but writing about incest and pedophilia makes you all those things.

however, in bungou stray dogs there's two canonical siblings (there's theories they aren't actually related and are lovers pretending so people don't think they're dating bcz of a big age gap bcz bungou stray dogs characters are based off of novel characters and authors and thats a book plot with characters with the same names as these siblings, however it's just a theory) and it is HEAVILYYY implied they are fucking, even the characters themeselves aknowledge they act like lovers and are weird and tell the protaganists to just ignore them. and idk if it's my translation of one of the light novels but there's a line in one where it legit says "naomi(16 yr old sister) tried to force herself onto tanizaki(18 yr old brother)" probably not word for word but i havent read it in a while and its basically played for laughs bcz its mentioned as a one off line for when the brother goes into a kitchenette alone and never mentioned after, literally gave me whiplash i was like u can just drop that line and noT MENTION IT AGAIN??? and these antis are reading the manga and watching the show and aknowledge therae siblings are fucking and then harrass anyone who ships siblings.

Also, there's an anthology (although tbh i'm not sure if the anthologies are considered canon but otherwise it's also implied that this character is a pedo for his magical superpower that manifiests as a prepubescent girl) where this just calls his superpower that's sort of a prepubescent girl his "wife" and everyone in the fandom hates him for that (and never the fact that he controls the whole damn mafia and has canonically mentally messed with kids so bad one got put in a mental hospital and didn't even want to leave anymore) also like they harrass and call anyone who likes his character(or even finds him well written) a pedo. but the author, who wrote this probably a pedo guy and these siblings fucking, no one hates him (hell, there's even people saying it's all the 16 yr old girls fault bcz tanizaki is too pure, honestly like 1, seems kinda sexist how ur blaming the girl who's a child 2, THEY AREN'T REALLL, IT'S NEITHERS FAULT THAT THEIR FUCKING, ITS THE AUTHORSSS.

there's antishippers who will say anyone who ships a ship where one character met the other as a teen and adult should kill themselves bcz it's gross. however the teen canonically grew up after the guy died and said that if the guy was a woman he would've comitted double suicide with him (please note this is said by a character who makes it very clear they want to commit double suicide with a woman they find attractive and are in love with bcz it would be sooo "romantic").

like the author has written all these icky ships and given them some sort of material, if you're gonna tell the people who ship those ships to kill themselves and that you'll shit in their food (real things these antis have said btw) then at least denounce the author too? like not even sent hate but at least understand this fandom isn't for you and its for people can handle icky fictional stuff.

The BSD and BB fandoms are terrifying.

[pitlanewrites]

✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ f1 flash fiction ✧˖°

An ongoing anthology of flash fiction (short pieces only a few paragraphs long) originally written as practice for an English paper.

Total Word Count: 2185

Rating: T

Fic Count: 10

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ The Death of Ayrton Senna, As Witnessed By His Greatest Rival ✧˖°

Pairing: Alain Prost/Ayrton Senna

Word Count: 171

Alain Prost laments after Ayrton Senna's death.

author's note: this one's written in first person.

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ where childhood goes to die ✧˖°

Pairing: Mick Schumacher and Michael Schumacher (non-romantic)

Word Count: 180

Mick... poor little Mick...

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ rather than just saying 'i love you' ✧˖°

Pairing: Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri

Word Count: 240

They're looking at the stars. Lando has enough yearning to fill a rather large universe.

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ a multitude of ways in which having a crush can ruin a party everything ✧˖°

Pairing: Charles Leclerc/Max Verstappen

Word Count: 272

Max watches Charles at a party and forgets he's supposed to be pretending he doesn't want to kiss him.

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ portrait of a lover, across the expanse of sea ✧˖°

Pairing: Fernando Alonso/Lance Stroll

Word Count: 256

Lance yearns for his lover, Fernando, who's lost at sea somewhere far away.

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ aren't you a little young to be arguing with destiny? ✧˖°

Pairing: Kimi Antonelli vs the World (non-romantic)

Word Count: 155

The weight of the world is on Kimi Antonelli's shoulders.

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ reflections of a dreamer, a lover, a winner ✧˖°

Pairing: Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri

Word Count: 172

Having held victory in his trembling hands, Lando never wants to let it go.

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ notes on how to deal with love and death ✧˖°

Pairing: Gilles Villeneuve/Didier Pironi

Word Count: 152

Didier Pironi on Gilles' death, the aftermath, and his own.

author's note: this one is also first person

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ you're on your own, kid ✧˖°

Pairing: Logan Sargeant/Oscar Piastri

Word Count: 121

Logan attempts to come to terms with his departure from Williams, his love for Oscar, the cruel world that is Formula One.

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✎⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ if love and hate are the same thing ✧˖°

Pairing: Carlos Sainz/Oscar Piastri

Word Count: 130

Oscar and Carlos don't understand how to love, but they do understand how to hate, and maybe that's close enough for them.

read all of these fics here!

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC REVIEW—Tempted by Celestial Bodies: An Alien Romance Anthology

4.25/5. Releases 11/12/24.

Heat Index: 8/10

The Vibes: I mean, it's an alien romance anthology. You know the vibes. You know. YOU KNOW.

The Basics:

A collection of short stories and novelettes about getting down and dangerous with people from outer space!

The Review:

I shall confess: I am rather choosy about my alien romances. I select them sparingly; I am sometimes not in the mood for them, I shall confess. I picked up this ARC because I knew Charissa Weaks was included, and I'm so glad I did. Her contribution was great—but it's not the only story that makes this worth reading.

Standouts—

Weaks's Bound to the Primal Prince gave me everything I wanted and things I did not expect. I discovered Weaks this year, and honestly, I'm obsessed. If you love her work already, you're gonna love this. If you don't, then read this and then go on to her Witch Walker series, because she is legit. This story is an arranged marriage alien romance, in which the arrangement leads our heroine to discover that "primal prince" translates to "fuck alien". OKAY THEN.

At the same time, there's some genuine sweetness and romance and fighting monsters. I was sold on Thane and Adeira. Those crazy kids are gonna make it work. Also, he's kind of like, a fish. But not in a Shape of Water way, in a "he doesn't need to breathe underwater or under pussy" kind of way.

Resonant Drives by Erin Fulmer was another standout to me because like... You know. A girl loves some kidnapping. This does have some light dubcon, but for MEEEE, when I read a human/alien romance I kinda... want that. This is an abduction story, and it's well done.

The Twelfth Ambassador by Mindi Briar... Not to give too much away... He's like... a butterfly... A hot butterfly....

There are 15 stories in all here, however, and I truly think there's something for a lot of readers. They're on the higher end of the heat scale, some of the stories feature very humanoid creatures (like Weaks's) with a few extra appendages, while others have... Very non-human creatures. Which is to say, we're all leaving with something.

And you know what else? I didn't even realize there was ART. Each story comes with accompanying art! How cool! I'm so down for this.

The Sex:

Literally... pick it, and you'll probably find it here.

Like any anthology, you'll get great stories, you'll get good stories, and you might get a couple that aren't quite for you. But with 15 total, from an array of talented authors... This is a deal. And not just for the alien experts. The uninitiated will find something here, too!

Thanks to NetGalley and Storybook House for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[duckprintspress]

hey, I was poking around on the website, and I'm confused by the choice to use "penis in vagina sex" as a tag for erotica when you could use "vaginal sex" or "vaginal penetration" to say the same thing?

Hi!

There are lots of things that can be inserted in a vagina that aren't a penis, and those differences matter.

Specifying anatomy is a clear ways to communicate the information of who is putting what, where. Using straight-forward terms enables people to get a clear sense of what they'll be reading and what the body part(s) of the people involved are. Some people may be comfortable with a story that involves a penis going in a vagina, but may not be comfortable with a story in which a tentacle goes into a vagina. Someone may be comfortable reading a story where a dildo goes in a vagina, but not one where a penis goes in a vagina.

(Aside: we have a "dildo in vagina" tag, but it hasn't been applied it as consistently as I should be - at the moment, "penis" and "distinctly penis-shaped things" have both often ended up under "penis in vagina." This came up just yesterday, in fact, and I have Regrets, looking back, for not being more careful about differentiation for those cases. I'll be doing an overhaul on our tags in September for unrelated reasons (our website software has changed how it handles certain things) so there's no point in my fixing/changing this until then.)

There have been instances where authors have indicated that they're uncomfortable with that phrasing because of their own feelings about anatomy. In those cases, we work with the author to find a compromise that fits within our controlled vocabulary and also fits their comfort level. For example, in our upcoming erotica anthology, there's a m/m/m story for which that specific story DOES have the "vaginal sex" tag. That matches the author's comfort levels, and we felt that, when coupled with the m/m/m ship tag and the trans male tag, reader's will be able to assess and decide if it's a story they're comfortable reading.

I'll own, I'm also confused by this ask, because to me, the differences seem pretty clear? Neither "vaginal penetration" nor "vaginal sex" conveys the same information as "penis in vagina sex," like, those aren't synonyms.

In and of itself, "vaginal sex" is virtually useless as a tag in my opinion, because "vaginal sex" is...any sex involving stimulation to a vagina. And there's lots of ways to make a vagina feel good that have fuck-all to do with a penis, which is why we have things like clitoral fingering, vaginal fingering, and cunnilingus as separate tags.

Likewise, all "vaginal penetration" tells you is that someone's got something going into their vagina, without specifying what, and while some people might be comfortable discovering while reading that "what" is a penis, other people may not be.

In a world as gender-diverse as the one we live in, and one in which we as a publisher are juggling competing needs (the need to create a consistent system across stories, the need to ensure readers can determine with specificity what the contents of a story are, the need to accurately describe each story, the need to find terminology that is comfortable for the author, etc.), we decided a system that focused on simplicity and clarity, accuracy and specificity, would be the most applicable across the most situations. And the current system isn't perfect, and we tweak it fairly often to course correct, increase accuracy, fix mistakes, or address oversight. But well. All the above is why we use "penis in vagina sex" (and "tentacle in vagina sex," and "vaginal fingering," and "dildo in vagina sex," etc.) instead of just "vaginal sex" or "vaginal penetration."

[meimi-haneoka]

Thank you Cinzia! I seriously need to check my notifications more. I didn't even realise that you had answered my ask. Loved your timeline and fanfics. I completely get what you are saying about writing fanfic. It kind of just flows out when you are that invested in a pairing. Also, that CCS in Public domain ask.... if I am not wrong, Japan seems to have a different approach to it. I mean I have seen doujinshis and light novels being sold legally featuring (and being advertised with) CCS characters. I am not sure but it seems that is legal in Japan? Not sure of all this but I assure you that I have come across some R18 doujinshis featuring Junior High aged SyaoSaku. The horror...... Also, I didn't realise that Akiho and Sakura had lived together as sisters for 5 months post Alice in Clockland. I mean, they all don't look much different (I kind of presumed that it had been just a bunch of weeks, like autumn is over and winter has begun). Frankly, they should be nearer to the heights in the final chapter of OG CCS manga if the second year is about to begin (since Sakura and Syaoran were reunited in the beginning of the second year of JHS in the OG manga). Oh well, I will just chalk it down to art style change.

Thank you so much for reading my drabbles and finally check my timeline, Aubretia!! 😁I'm glad in the end it worked for you! ✨

About the doujinshi matter, hehe, it's not that simple. From what I know, doujinshi are considered 二次創作, "derivative works", and as such technically they aren't legal, if they don't have the authorization of the author. Often fanartists who produce doujinshi also produce what we call "fan merch", like printing their art on acrylic keychains, stickers, acrylic stands and such. Those fall into the category too. However, in the industry there is an unspoken agreement that such works are "tolerated" by copyright holders as long as the price they're sold at can be proven as a mere "reimbursement of the cost" to produce such merch (like the printing cost for the doujinshi/anthologies and the manufacturing cost for other items). Basically, the fanartists don't have to earn money from this (or I guess the don't have to earn too much). Usually artists print a definite amount of copies to sell at conventions and a definite amount to sell online, so it doesn't "become too much" and attracts "too much attention" from the copyright holders. These are tolerated only because it turns into further promotion for the IP, so of course the fanartists need to know their place and not overdo it. So it's not legal, but it is common practice to "close an eye" on it (and yes, this means that there's literally anything, as you pointed out, out there).

For Akiho and Sakura living together, yeah it's more or less from 4 to 5 months! I calculated this from the fact that when the play started, they had barely changed into their winter uniform at school, and usually that happens on a set date in Japan, on October 1st. Now, in the chapter of the play (63) you can see lots of people attending the school festival, and many of them wear short sleeves, while other wear mid or long sleeves. This definitely made me think that there were still quite nice temperatures so it probably wasn't in late October but rather at the beginning of it (I even thought it might have been September and they changed uniforms early). When Kaito activated the forbidden magic, things continued exactly from where they were left off before he brought Sakura and Akiho to Clockland, so when we come back in chapter 70 it's still everything on the same day of the play. And then, when we see how things are going for them in chapter 71, we see everyone wearing the "super winter uniform", as I jokingly call it, along with coats, scarves, gloves, it's even snowing at some point! And they also say that "soon" Sakura is going to become a second year student at Tomoeda Middle school, so I had already pinpointed the month when all of this was happening as end of February. When the last chapter dropped, turns out I was right, because just 4 days after the "last battle" Akiho says she would've left Tomoeda one month later, and when we see her and Kaito on their departure day, cherry blossoms are starting to bloom, so that means that they are at the end of March. So, in short, Sakura and Akiho spent as sisters an indefinite part of October, all of November, December, January and all of February together before they realized what the heck was happening. Yeah, it's all a matter of looking around you and observing "the silent hints" (isn't all of Clear Card like that, after all?) and you can get a lot of the context. 😉👍

And oh, I absolutely don't suggest to take any of the OG manga panels as a reference for the heights and such because back then CLAMP's style was very different. They tended to make their characters so tall (and their legs so long!) especially when they had to indicate that kids had grown up. Their chins were more pointy, the shoulders wider (I always laugh when I look back to Syaoran with those wide shoulders)...yeah it was something completely different. Now Mokona sensei respects body proportions a lot more and I also have to say that the poses of her characters are more natural and not "stiff" as they were before. I also love how more expressive they've become. I do agree though that if she could make them a tiny bit taller it would be better. This is something that I've constantly "complained" about during the serialization.

Besides, I always understood that Sakura and Syaoran were in their first year at Tomoeda Middle school, at the end of the OG manga? Cause Sakura says "my brother is going to poke fun at me oversleeping even though I've become a middle schooler!" so it suggests that the change had just happened? Well, Clear Card is its sequel and it starts exactly like the last pages of volume 12, with an "extended version" of the finale, so I think that the kids being in 1st year of middle school is what CLAMP had always intended since 2000.

[thehorrortree]

Submission Window: January 1st - 31st, 2023 Payment: 8 cents/word and 4 cents/word for reprints Theme: Speculative stories--science fiction, fantasy, horror--with Christian themes, characters, or cosmology Note: Reprints Welcome Mysterion is looking for speculative stories--science fiction, fantasy, horror--with Christian themes, characters, or cosmology, and for artwork for this site. Fiction Guidelines Technical details Stories can be up to 9000 words (thanks, Patreon supporters!). This is a hard limit--our submission system will enforce it. We pay 8 cents/word for original stories (or original translations of stories that have not previously appeared in English), and 4 cents/word for reprints (thanks again, Patreon!). Authors are paid once we've agreed on edits and signed a contract, prior to earliest publication (generally on our Patreon page). We are seeking 6 months' exclusive worldwide publication rights for original works (with exceptions for established Best of the Year anthologies), and non-exclusive worldwide print and electronic rights thereafter for both original works and reprints. We want to publish your story online in our webzine and keep it there indefinitely. We're also acquiring the right to offer ebook versions of the stories we publish, as Patreon rewards or for purchase; and to publish a print and ebook anthology of all the stories that appeared in the webzine over a given 1- or 2-year period. For original fiction, we want to be the only place publishing it for the first 6 months; after that, you're welcome to publish it anywhere else in any format you like. No multiple or simultaneous submissions. If multiple writers co-write a story, we consider each distinct group of writers a different submitter. In other words, if two people co-write a story, and they submit the co-written story, and each of them also submits a story written on their own, that would not violate our no multiple submissions policy. Submitting two stories co-written by the same two people would violate our no multiple submissions policy. Don't resubmit a story we've rejected unless we request revisions. We usually manage to respond to everyone within four months of the submission window's closing. Feel free to query (editors@mysteriononline.com) if it's been longer than four months since the end of the submission period. Format requirements: Stories must be double spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman or Courier font. The story title, your byline, a word count, and contact information should appear on the first page, and your last name, story title, and page number should appear in the header information of all other pages. If you want to make our lives easier, our preferred format is Times New Roman, italics for emphasis, one space after periods and colons, smart quotes, m-dashes instead of double hyphens, and first line of paragraph indented 0.5" in Paragraph formatting instead of with the Tab key. But we aren't that particular about any of this when evaluating your stories. Stories should be submitted via the Moksha submissions system: https://mysterion.moksha.io/publication/mysterion. Submit your stories in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format. Your cover letter should contain a list of your three or four most prestigious publications (if any), and any pertinent biographical details: tell us if you're an astronaut writing about space travel, but not if you're an astronaut writing about the elf-dwarf war. Invert that if you're an elf. If you've met us in person, feel free to mention it. Finally, let us know if the story is previously published and where it first appeared--even if it appeared on your blog or Twitter feed. Don't try to summarize your story or explain why it's a good fit for our publication (if it's a good fit, we should be able to tell by reading it). Theme guidelines The story must have a speculative element. It needs something beyond the everyday. We love science fiction

and fantasy, enjoy good ghost stories, and think there's great fiction material hidden in the mysteries of Christian theology--cherubim, leviathan, nephilim, visions, prophecy, and more. The story must engage with Christianity. We want stories with Christian characters whose faith affects their actions, with Christian themes such as grace and redemption, or with a Christian view of the supernatural. Note that we're not saying that you must be a Christian. We are not in a position to judge your faith and won't try, and we welcome submissions from authors of all backgrounds and perspectives. Nor does your story need to be unambiguously pro-Christian. If you can tell a good story that meaningfully engages with Christianity, we want to read it. We publish accepted stories submitted in January between July and December that year, and stories submitted in July between January and June of the next year. If your story is seasonal (Christmas, Easter, Presidents' Day), please take this into consideration. Read more about what we're looking for in our Theme Guidelines. For even more information, see our posts on what we want or read the stories we've published so far. Artwork Guidelines We are looking for art of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the miraculous. While subtle Christian themes are a bonus, they are not required. We pay $125 for a non-exclusive license to display the artwork on our website for a period of up to 6 months, and to use it as cover art for ebooks we distribute to our supporters on Patreon. As long as you own the artwork and no one else has an exclusive license to it, we're not concerned with how else it has been or will be used. We may also use the artwork for ebooks that are made available for general purchase through Amazon and other vendors; but if so, we will pay an additional $25. While displayed on the front page, the artist will be credited and linked to in the sidebar. Afterward, a lower resolution version will be kept on the Art page, with a link to your site. Please send a link to your portfolio to submissions@mysteriononline.com, with the subject ART: , where is your name, and feel free to mention a few pieces you think we may be interested in. We'll get in touch with you if there's something we would like to use. We'll be looking for art that's available in resolutions at least 1800 pixels across, and that has between a 2:1 and 3:1 width to height ratio. We'll want JPEG format. Due to different screen sizes, parts of the image may be cropped on different displays, so we need images where the focus is localized. We can control which sides of the image are cropped, so we can focus on any of the upper left, center, or right, or the bottom left, center, or right, but an image that depends on having both the right and left sides intact won't work. Try changing the window size of the home page to see how the cropping of the image adjusts for an example. Via: Mysterion.

[kingthunder]

Ever since I was a little kid inhaling books off the sf/f shelves at the local library ten at a time, I wanted to be an author.

I put that desire on hold for decades. Not because I didn't want to do it, but because I was one of those gifted-track ADHD kids who internalized the whole idea of, "if at first you don't succeed, the lesson is never try—then they won't know you're skating through everything by the skin of your teeth and are actually incompetent." It took me until I was in my 30s to undo that mentality. It seems like real kindergarten stuff to realize that if you want to get better at something you have to practice. All I can say in my defense is that my own father used to tell me repeatedly, and very smugly, that only losers who aren't good at stuff have to practice, and that we (him and me) were winners who didn't have to do things like that.

(I also think that he has ADHD, and that he cultivated that own mentality in himself to make himself feel better about also lacking executive function, but if I told him that he would dismiss the thought before I was even done getting it out of my mouth. alas.)

Sometime between my middle school dreams and the crushing weight of the undiagnosed health problems of my 20s, I stopped reading. Books, anyway. I would read fanfiction in spurts. A few months here, a few months there, just when a particular fandom was calling to me. So when I finally got over my own infuriating blend of superiority/inferiority and decided to start practicing writing, it was with fanfiction. It made sense to me. I liked reading it. It gave me the benefit of having pre-made characters and settings, so I didn't have to learn how to create those things and learn the mechanics of storytelling at the same time. Plus, I'd have a readership already. Wins all around.

It went well! I look back at the stuff I wrote when I was first starting, and compare it to now, and the progress is clear (to me, at any rate). I still want to get better, of course, I don't think I'll ever want to stop getting better, but it turns out that practicing works.

My problem now is that...I don't how to move back to published fiction. I just really love writing fanfiction, and I really love reading it, and trying to pivot away from that and into the realm of published stuff sucks, actually. I'm constantly checking books out of the library, reading one, ten, fifty pages, and setting them aside out of boredom or anger. It's almost impossible to find anything that holds my interest enough to finish. It's like the genre of book I want to read only exists as fanfiction.

Meanwhile, I'm bashing my head against a wall trying to make myself start writing original fiction that I could possibly publish. I've managed a little of it. I've taken classes. Applied for some workshops I didn't get into. Won one flash contest and got the dinky little 300 word story published in an anthology. But every word is like pulling teeth. It's agony.

And I'm asking myself why, about all of it. I don't like reading books; what made me think I'd like writing them? Like obviously I'm not having a good time writing them. I'm frustrated to the point of tears constantly when I realize I've gone yet another week with nothing more than brainstorming stories I didn't write a single word of. But I don't want to give up either, because giving up on this means giving up on the one goal I've ever set for myself in my entire life, and it feels too much like giving in to the "you're actually incompetent" brain demon.

Persisting feels like pain, but giving up feels like numbness, and I'd rather hurt.

There's no point to this blog post. This isn't a feel-good essay with a breakthrough or lesson at the end. I have no neat narrative ends to tie up. I'm just screaming into the outer void, because screaming into the inner void hasn't been doing me a crumb of good. Thanks for listening. I'm going to go back to staring at en empty word doc and feeling guilty for not typing anything into it.

[broke-on-books]

✒️ please!!

Send me a ✒️ and I'll pick a poem I think you'd like

After flipping through my notebooks I decided to go with my first instinct for you, which was "A Toast to the Alchemists" by Laura Gilpin. This poem hasn't been published online officially, so they're aren't a ton of sites that have it that I could find with a quick Google search. However I've attatched photos of a reddit post with it along with my version in my journal.

I picked this poem because of its themes of time and the passage of time, as well as magic and giving emotional significance to the most mundane and clinical of things (atoms and elements). In other words, taking magic from the world around us, especially through a lens usually seen as lacking wonder or whimsy. Also vibes, I mainly did it based on vibes.

Some other poems I considered in my search/additional recommendations are listed under the cut:

If you liked the writing of this poem, and haven't read it already (or have) I definitely recommend "The Two-Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin. It's by the same author and is her most famous poem and is fairly well known and also soooooo good. So good.

Poems with similar themes:

Poems with similar themes to "A Toast to the Alchemists" are

"Dusting" by Marilyn Nelson 💘 (literally cried to this. To be fair it was 10 minutes after I finished the HDM finale so it was mainly because of that but still. Great poem.)

"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" by Albert Goldbarth

"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (90% sure you've read this one its the time theme but inverted and it's great if you haven't)

Rejected picks/Poems that gave me Anu vibes (many for no particular reason):

Poems by Ted Kooser for some reason??? NO idea why they're very different from the ones above but some of my faves are "Selecting a Reader", "In a Country Cemetery in Iowa", "The Constellation Orion" and "Flying by Night" (I'm v much questioning this pick now but I'll keep it up here just in case)

Honestly a bunch of random unrelated stuff was popping out at me ("Listen" by Miller Williams, "Cartoon Physics, Part 1" by Nick Flynn, "Snow" by David Berman) and like a million billion more which I all got from the same anthology (Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins) so if you want to read a bunch more poetry, based on vibes alone, I'd say look for the book, the website, or the sequel. The poems from that book aren't too similar to the one above but it's really one of two books I generally recommend people right off the bat (it was my lit teachers favorite lol) because it's meant to get young adults and teens into poetry and introduce contemporary poetry in general. Idk how much poetry you've read whatever but even if you aren't new to it it's still a good compilation of late 90s/early 00s poetry that makes you think but isn't super long/totally incomprehensible

Anyways that got WAY longer than I anticipated or anyone probably wanted but poetry is an obsession of mine and recommending poetry is much more complicated and harder that it looks, even for the people you know best in the whole world AFTER interviewing their opinions on poetry, not to mention how difficult it would be for internet friends on tumblr. But anyways there's a couple poems, I got the vibes as close as I could with the poems I had on file. (Although i do feel like I'm missing something big 🤔) Anyways thanks for the ask Anu! Hope you thought my pick was alright!

[good-night-my-sweet-prince]

this is so important!!!

queering has been and continues to be such an important part of queer literary studies but also queer identity formation as a whole

i immediately thought about this one fragment from the first chapter of Gregory Woods' A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition

"Indeed, if one were seeking to erect a memorial at the birthplace of gay literature, it would make sense to site it [...] in one of Oxford’s relatively unloved Victorian buildings. I am thinking of some space where impressionable youths sat at the feet of men like Walter Pater or Benjamin Jowett, or solitary garrets where the same youths read the classics in Greek and Latin and where they made lists of mythic and historical figures who felt the same as they did on catching sight of a muscular physique. Those lists would eventually turn into the contents pages of our gay anthologies and our histories of gay literature." (13)

queer literature and queer literary canon exist because of and for queer people. limiting queer literature to explicitly queer texts leaves out a wide range of texts and authors dealing with queer topics implicitly and covertly, because that was the only way those topics could be dealt with (don't forget that explicitly queer books were often banned and openly queer authors persecuted). it also ignores an entire group of texts that aren't "really" queer, explicitly or not, and were probably never intended to be, but despite that still hold significance to queer people and might even be an important part of their queer identity, or a major factor in shaping it.

all of these are absolutely enough to show the importance of queering, but there's more!!

queerness is about subversion, it's about existing outside of set rules and norms, about rejecting them and breaking them.

queerness is rebellious. queerness is punk!

so queering can also be used on texts (and other things) that are absoltely NOT queer, never were queer and never will be queer. you can read a text as queer just because you want to, you can look at the most aggressively cishet character in the history of literature and queer them anyway! just because you can, just because it challenges the notions treating cisheteronormativy as default, a societal standard, just because it will piss off queerphobes (maybe even the queerphobic author?), or just because it's simply fun

moral of the story: be gay! do crime! every book is queer if you say it is!

"it's not queer fiction unless the queerness is explicitly declared in the text according to currently accepted terminology and in a way that meets the approval of the entire audience" I mean follow your heart I guess but I trust myself as a queer person to recognise queer themes

[cielsosinfel]

For once I'm cross-posting a Dreamwidth post here lol. I wrote way too much about the one and only book I finished so far this year, so tossing it into the reading log tag.

CW: non-descript discussions of sexual assault and antisemitism (both separate from one another)

The last book I finished was an anthology of fairy-tell reimaginings: Black Heart, Ivory Bones, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Avon Books, 2000). This was actually a random used bookstore find- I was once again looking for anthologies with Tanith Lee short stories, and there happened to be three different ones edited by these two authors- this book; another book in the same series called Black Swan, White Raven, and an anthology of fantasy erotica titled Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers. I really lucked out in all of these having Tanith Lee in them, and some other authors I'm interested in. I haven't started the other two yet, though. (I also just a few days ago found ANOTHER book in this fairy tale series, Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears at the same bookstore... would have missed it if I hadn't asked the clerk to check their Tanith Lee stock lmao.)

So, about this anthology:

The Tanith Lee short story in Black Heart, Ivory Bones is the first story in the anthology, and a reimagining of Rapunzel- a prince, who is putting off returning from campaign, because he does not want to return to his father who is coping with grief by obsessively fixating on heroic tales and legends, meets a girl living at the foot of a ruined tower in the middle of the woods. I didn't like this very much at all, to be honest, though there's one passage from the king I like. But one thing that stood out to me is another example of a pattern I've noticed in Lee's books: women- usually women who have already been raped- being able to just tell if a man is a potential rapist or not; men asking women if they aren't worried he's a rapist, only for the woman to tell him they would know and he doesn't have the look of one.

It's a trend I've seen throughout multiple of her novels and short stories at this point. The idea that all women can tell, based on a man's appearance and the way he carries himself and speaks, whether he will rape her. Even her most aggressive or stoic heroes have some innate quality of their being or their appearance that tells women he's safe, as far as sexual assault goes. And there's a lot to unpack there, a lot of long-existing societal biases that it just kind of reaffirms (because certainly there is a very long history of people thinking rapists and other sexually violent individuals have a certain "look" to them.) But I was also thinking about what a power fantasy this is, in a way- to be able to look at a man and know at a glance that he is safe, trustworthy, that you can desire him and know him desiring you back is not a risk. Especially as a survivor of sexual assault! What a superpower that would be.

But yeah, so that's the Tanith Lee story, mostly unremarkable. A lot of this anthology didn't stand out to me, tbh. Neil Gaiman has a short poem in it that I thought was pretty awful lmao. There's a lesbian retelling of the Red Dancing Shoes fairy tale, "The Red Boots" by Leah Cutter, that I liked- the prose is snappy and I thought the author used it to get across the energy of country dancing very well! I liked that there's no Happily Ever After resolution either- despite all the possibilities the protagonist has at her fingertips, with this dance-loving woman who is like her and mutually into her, in a place so hostile and lonely for women like them, she still can't stop treating dance as a competition she has to win. And so she will never be free of her shoes, and she'll never be able to settle down into a life of shared peace, bliss and love.

The last story that stood out to me was "The Golem" by Severna Park. The book opens to a pogrom decimating a shtetl in historical Poland, and the main character, an older woman named Judith, watching her husband Motle, the rabbi of the village, be gunned down by Christians. The shtetl is massacred, and Judith escapes into the woods with two other older women, Nekomeh and Moireh. They're reeling from the trauma they just witnessed, the grief, and the danger of being caught and killed, so decide to band together to try to make it to Leva, another much larger Jewish village outside Cracow. Judith has a dream the first time she sleeps following the massacre, where her husband tells her to make a golem to keep herself safe. What she forms out of the mud is a golem that takes on the exact appearance of her and Motle's long-dead daughter, Reva.

This is a short story but it packs in so much- surviving great violence and loss and yet not being allowed any reprieve before you're go go going to avoid even more violence and loss; the bonds between women who face misogyny, patriarchyt and violence both from within and without their communities and culture; the grief of a wife and of a mother who needs to learn to embrace and let go; the need for violence in defense vs violence as revenge and whether it would really make you better, improve your situation. I thought this was a very good piece of writing.

I really liked the ending:

"With her thumb Judith drew a trembling diagonal next to the Met and added short vertical strokes at the top and at the bottom.

Aleph. Mem. Tav.

She took a step and stumbled where the bank went soft. She fell to her hands and knees where the golem had vanished, tried to get up and stopped.

Spring flowers burst from the fertile dirt between her fingers. They pressed themselves up in green buds from under her knees. They sprouted around her feet, blooming in the sunset, dense and fragrant, trembling in the evening breeze.

Judith made herself stand. If the very earth had risen for her against its will, perhaps there was a place in the shadow of Cracow's walls where an old woman could seed the ground with new things. Not revenge. Not fear. Maybe not even peace, but she could do something.

And this time, she could not find it in herself to be afraid."

So that's the only book I've finished since 2024 started, and even then I kind of skimmed short stories that I knew I wouldn't be into. I'm still working through Lee's Kill The Dead (more like still working through health problems that have made doing anything very difficult), and I also started Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Heart Reader a day ago- I'm already halfway through, it's a very fast read, and I have a lot of thoughts about it that I've kinda posted elsewhere lol.

I've also been speeding through Final Fantasy IV DS. I keep meaning to post about it here but then I forget, I'm just so exhausted. I haven't played it in a couple days actually. It's one of those games I never had the patience to play as a kid, the SNES version at least. If we ever had the DS version I don't remember it, but I remember thinking the SNES version was suuuuuper frustrating to play lol so I didn't bother... But I'm enjoying the DS version a lot! It's definitely very frustrating with the boss battles, that octomammoth fucked me up. I'm enjoying Cecil's character arc, and I'm eagerly awaiting Rydia, Rosa and Edward coming back to my party. I'm enjoying the homoeroticism of Cecil and Kain's friendship turning into a horrific violent antagonistic mess- Kain going from standing up for Cecil and risking angering the Baron to argue for Cecil's sake, to Kain fighting with Golbez to be the one to kill Cecil... Also the whole mind control thing with Golbez is super hot, though I wonder how much of it is totally mind control and how much of it is Kain willingly going along with Golbez because of Rosa, it feels kinda unclear in latter cutscenes. But yes, the characters are fun, the localization script is very fun, the art style is endearing, and the game play is fun once you get into the rhythm of it. (I am also hardcore following this guide to make things much easier on myself lmao.)

Maybe I'll try to put down my impressions when it is not 12am and I'm not running on extremely little sleep.

[woggle-bugger-me]

"the one where everyone dies because of nuclear fallout" what???

You have no idea how excited I am to have an opportunity to talk about Shadows of the Emerald City!

Basically, it's an anthology of horror stories set in Oz. Some are book-accurate, some aren't, and they're all by different authors so there's a lot of variation.

The one you're talking about is "Dorothy of Kansas" by JW Schnarr. It's a post-apocalyptic story wherein nuclear war has broken out and destroyed most of civilisation. The fallout eventually spread to Oz, causing a nuclear winter and killing almost everyone except the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow. They try and get to Kansas, hoping Dorothy will somehow be able to help them (spoiler alert: she can't).

As you can imagine, it's very grim. There are a few kinda comedic moments, but for the most part it's taken very seriously. I personally liked it, but it's definitely not for everyone due to how heavy the subject matter is (the same can be said about most of the stories in this anthology).

I really recommend checking this book out if you don't mind darker and/or weirder Oz stories. Not every story in this book is a masterpiece, but most of them are really good!

[inthemirrordorkly2]

I got the free trial so you don't have to. Here's a paragraph-by-paragraph summary of the article and all included links (some of those links are also paywalled though):

Professor Nicholas Dames has taught Lit Hum (Literature Humanities) at Columbia University since 1998. He notes that in the past decade, his students feel overwhelmed by the prospect of reading multiple books a semester. Other professors have noticed the same.

Dames is shocked when a student tells him that she has never before been required to read an entire book for a class; her high school only assigned excerpts, poetry, and new articles.

Dames realizes that students simply don't know how to approach reading a full book. Link 1, Atlantic article "Why kids aren't falling in love with reading"

Quote from Martha Maxwell “Every generation, at some point, discovers that students cannot read as well as they would like or as well as professors expect.” Dames acknowledges that it's common for people to go "kids these days?!?!" Are kids today actually worse at reading books?

Dames does think his students are worse at reading, as his students 20 years ago could read long classics like Crime and Punishment and Pride and Prejudice. Students are slower and also struggle to balance paying attention to small details with paying attention to the plot.

There's no data on this trend, but the author has spoken to 33 professors at various universities who corroborate Dames' opinion. One professor says his students struggle to focus on sonnets.

Link 2, Atlantic article "End the Phone-Based Childhood Now" Teenagers are always on their phones and are distracted. In 1976, about 40 percent of high-school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11.5 percent who hadn’t read any. By 2022, those percentages had flipped. (No studies are cited for those statistics)

Link 3, Atlantic article "The Schools That Are No Longer Teaching Kids to Read Books" Link 4, New York Times article "English Class in Common Core Era: ‘Tom Sawyer’ and Court Opinions" Common Core and No Child Left Behind emphasized standardized test scores, leading more schools to teach to the test; teachers now teach short passages to mimic the style of standardized testing.

There's no way to measure long-form reading stamina; teachers have stopped assigning classic books. Links 5 & 6 of My Antonia and Great Expectations.

Link 7, Education Week article and survey "How to Build Students’ Reading Stamina." Of about 300 third-to-eighth-grade educators, 17 percent said they primarily teach whole texts. An additional 49 percent combine whole texts with anthologies and excerpts. Nearly a quarter say books are not the center of their curricula. Link 8, bookshop link the The Odyssey. More anecdotes from teachers about how students are reading fewer books and more excerpts with other types of media included in the curriculum.

Private schools still read more books, but the shift away from whole texts is happening in private schools as well.

The issue at elite universities is different from the literacy issues at community colleges and nonselective universities. Students can still decide sentences, spell, etc, but they still have short attention span and aren't as ambitious as previous generations of students.

Many college professors have dealt with this by also relaxing their standards and assigning fewer texts. Link 9, bookshop link to The Iliad

An American literature professor at Columbia, Andrew Delbanco, now teaches excerpts and short stories instead of full texts in some of his classes. Links 10 & 11 to bookshop pages for Moby Dick and "Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories"

Columbia has trimmed its reading list, which to be fair, has grown in recent years. The program's chair, Joseph Howley, says he'd rather students focus on reading in depth.

Some professors don't believe that shortening their reading lists will solve the issue, as current students are more focused on their job prospects than in the past.

Both enrollments in the humanities and students' time spent reading are declining, possibly due to the same factors. Link 12, Harvard student life survey. Students spend nearly as much time on jobs and extracurriculars as on academics. Link 13, Harvard 2020-2022 grade report, showing that 79% of grades were As for that school year.

Students today are reading fewer books. Older adults have always read more books than younger adults, but fewer people overall are reading books for fun. Some professors report that students see reading novels as a retro activity.

The economic survival of literary magazines like the Atlantic hinges on people reading, but reading is also important for helping people build empathy for those different than them.

Link 14, NPR article on deep reading. Short form works don't allow for the empathy that long-form works do.

Paragraph OP screenshot; students say their favorite books are Percy Jackson instead of Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. (There are links to all 3 of these but I'm tired and y'all know how to look up books. Maybe I'm the problem with this generation lmao)

Author light-heartedly opines that while the Percy Jackson books have merit, they aren't a replacement for reading all of The Iliad.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/03/children-reading-books-english-middle-grade/673457/

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects/677722/

3. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/nyc-schools-stopped-teaching-books/678675/

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/nyregion/english-class-in-common-core-era-nonfiction-joins-the-classics.html

5. https://bookshop.org/p/books/my-antonia-introduction-by-jane-smiley-willa-cather/396405?ean=9780525562863

6. https://bookshop.org/p/books/great-expectations-penguin-classics-deluxe-edition-charles-dickens/11702080?ean=9780143106272

7. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-to-build-students-reading-stamina/2024/01

8. https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-odyssey-penguin-classics-deluxe-edition-homer/15509341?ean=9780140268867

9. https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-iliad-penguin-classics-deluxe-edition-revised-homer/15279783?ean=9780140275360

10. https://bookshop.org/p/books/moby-dick-or-the-whale-herman-melville/18595562?ean=9780142437247

11. https://bookshop.org/p/books/billy-budd-bartleby-and-other-stories-herman-melville/9364272?ean=9780143107606

12. https://features.thecrimson.com/2023/senior-survey/academics/

13. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/5/faculty-debate-grade-inflation-compression/

14. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/30/1196979151/how-to-practice-deep-reading

Ppl on the other hellsite losing their minds over this in every imaginable direction lmao

[owlishintergalactic]

This is an anthology of original stories written by fanfic writers. One of them is my own. For so long, fanfic writers have been discouraged from sharing their links to fandom in the original stories world and from disclosing they write fic to the publishing industry. Fic writers have been told many things. We're told we are inferior writers. We're told fic isn't real writing, but practice for originals and, simultaneously, that our originals will never fly because we cling to our beloved tropes and the conventions of our genre. I took these things to heart, for a long time, even as I knew there was an audience out there for the kinds of stories I wrote. Folks who would love the slower, more character driven adventures I wrote with fluff scenes interspersed throughout the action. Who consumed character studies and emotional prose as if they were as necessary to life as food and water. Who were desperate for the sort of inclusiveness in origfic that fanfic has always had. The same inclusivity the publishing industry has barely begun to tap into. So many of my fandom friends can point to a 200k word story they swear is better than any published novel and that it would suffer greatly from being forced into the 100k word or less box Big 6 publishers insist on to reduce risk. It can seem impossible to get your name and your words in print when you want to tell your stories, not those of the publishing industry, and you don't want to stop writing fic, much less renounce it. Self publishing, too, can seem like an insurmountable mountain of work and self-promo. I could sit here and talk about indie presses and niche zines and how they are, for the most part, a friendlier place for fanfic writers, but I mostly want to get the word out that there are two (that I know of) who specifically only take on fanfic writers and have built platforms around supporting those of us who want to be published: Duck Prints Press (@duckprintspress) and OFIC Mag (@oficmag). In the interest of full disclosure, I am both published with Duck Prints Press and became a part of the editorial staff after my story and contract were finalized for printing. I don't speak now as a staff member, but the author I am. I don't ever want to hoard opportunities, because we all benefit when there are more stories out there for us to read. I've got no affiliation with OFIC Magazine and haven't submitted a story to them (yet), but they appeared on my wall and inspired this post. I truly, deeply, down into my very core, believe in the missions of these companies and want to see them succeed (it's why I accepted a staff position in the first place). Publishing needs diversity; not just in authors and characters, but also in style and structure. It needs new stories. Fresh stories. The kinds millions of fandom folk already love to read. We don't need to grow out of our tropes or write something to Market with a capitol 'M'. It's not the only market, and it excludes so many people and so many beautiful, impactful stories. And I am glad there are people willing to put in the time and effort to publish books, anthologies, and publications to showcase all of these amazing tales of adventure, sorrow, intimacy, fluff, and love. If you're looking for paid opportunities to write the kind of stories you love, please check out https://www.oficmag.com/ and https://duckprintspress.com/ for upcoming opportunities. As I learn of more fic-writer-friendly publishers and zines, I will try to share them here as well as my fic-friendly general writing advice and answers to Asks on writing, making the transition from fic writer to origfic writer, and how my birds/guinea pigs/child/wife are doing. And, if you aren't interested, pass these opportunities along and keep on writing and reading. You're all amazing.

[thehorrortree]

Deadline: April 1st, 2024 Payment: $10 and a contributors copy Theme: The kiddos are ready for their night of mischief and mayhem as the evening of Trick 'r Treating gets started. Write a horror story that takes place on Halloween night and centers around a child/children visiting the neighborhood's houses. The horror element can be from either angle: either there is something spooky going on in the house or with the child/children. Location details below Deadline: April 1st, 2024 at 11:59pm CST Length: 2,000-6,000 words Format: Must be submitted as a Google Doc file which must have terrorcorepublishing@gmail.com as an owner with editing turned on. You will provide the shareable link in the form upon submission. Use only one tab and do not use spaces to start a new paragraph. Do not write "The End" at the end of the story. In the header, please include the following: 1) your name, 2) the title of the story, and 3) the word count of the story. Submissions that do not follow these guidelines will not be read. The title of your story cannot include "Doors of Darkness" in it or the house number. Eligibility: If you were published in the first volume of Doors of Darkness, please note that this is not a continuation of what happened on Fern Street. There should be absolutely no connections to characters from that volume. Compensation: Selected authors will receive (1) contributor mass market paperback copy of the anthology as well as a one-time payment of $10. The $10 may be used in order to purchase additional author copies to be shipped at the same time as the complimentary contributor copy. The $10 will buy up to an additional 2 copies of the book. Please refer to the chart below:  Printed Copies Compensation 1 Copy $10 2 Copies $5 3 Copies $0 For additional author copies beyond the compensation value, you will be given a special code to use in the Terrorcore Publishing store in order to get your author copies at the printing cost plus shipping. International Submissions: While Terrorcore Publishing loves receiving submissions from international writers, the truth is that is very costly to ship items across the world. At this time, we ask that if you are international (outside of the U.S.A.) that you provide the difference. Terrorcore will pay at most $10 to ship the contributor copy and anything in excess will need to be covered by the author. In lieu of shipping the item, international writers can receive $15 (which is the standard commission + the cost of the one copy you would have received).  Rights: The author will retain all rights to their story. It can be published elsewhere in full. The publisher will not keep said rights nor prevent the author from selling their story elsewhere. However, it is important to note that after the author is selected if they choose to publish it elsewhere they need to ensure with that publisher that they aren't getting sole rights to the story and that Terrorcore will have the right to continue to publish it in this anthology, as well as future "best of" anthologies, if any come about. Style: Set in the 1980s or has a 1980s vibe. Genre: Horror. Any kind. It can be paranormal, slasher, psychological, mystery, thriller, etc. There is no such thing as TOO FAR for this anthology. Prompt: The kiddos are ready for their night of mischief and mayhem as the evening of Trick 'r Treating gets started. Write a horror story that takes place on Halloween night and centers around a child/children visiting the neighborhood's houses. The horror element can be from either angle: either there is something spooky going on in the house or with the child/children. Setting: The neighborhood is to be kept vague but will be somewhat North Eastern USA. You should NOT name the neighborhood and any reference should be to "the Neighborhood". You will need to pick a house number from the map below. If your story is tied precisely to that location/number then that should be indicated in the submission

form as there may be a need to move stories around in the editing phase and the preference is to give it to the story that needs it more. Map: Your story must take place at a location on the map. As such, you are allowed to make references to other locations and houses on the map, but those items are subject to change within the editing phase. You should keep references to neighbors to a minimum as those too will need to be cohesive with the other short stories. If you are using the address in a sentence, please abbreviate Street to "St." and if you're just vaguely referring to the street, then spell it out. For example: "I live at 13 Pike St." vs "Do you want to go to Pike Street?" This year, the horrific street will pay homage to Christopher Pike and the horror stories he has created. Therefore, we will welcome Trick or Treaters to Pike Street. PHASES Selection Phase: Stories are estimated to be selected by May 15th, 2023. This timeline may change depending on the number of submissions received. Editing Phase: Selected stories must agree that they will be able to participate in an editing phase where a small reference to a neighbor and/or neighborhood will be weaved in. This is done to make the stories feel as if they exist in the same space, which we believe is what makes the Doors of Darkness anthologies unique and special. The editing phase is estimated to occur during May-July 2024. Proofing Phase: Proofs will be done in July 2024. Preorder Phase: Preorders will go live in August 2024. Publication Phase: The tentative publication date is Tuesday, October 1st, 2024. Link to form if the submission box below is not working. A valid Google Account will be required! If you do not have any way to use Google, please reach out on Instagram and we can discuss another option. Via: Terrorcore Publishing.