Tag: horror

April 2, 2026

New SFF Anthology and Tea Event

Happy Spring! I have two pieces of news this month.

First (I finally get to announce this), I’m editing an anthology for Flame Tree’s Beyond & Within series. Those are beautiful books with shiny covers and exciting new stories. You may remember me sharing some pictures of them earlier.

The call for submissions is here, and I’m also sharing it below.

Climbing High Short Stories

Women’s ambition is not always welcomed, let alone encouraged. Speculative fiction is a context that offers other possibilities (and worlds), where writers and readers imagine what could be. Climbing High: Speculative Stories of Female Ambition will feature stories exploring contexts where female ambition is treated differently, aspiration and achievement in the face of adversity, and ambitions that extend beyond what’s possible in our contemporary world. This anthology takes an empowering stance of embracing ambition while being unafraid to explore the costs and consequences that characters may face in doing so and the impacts of ambitions pursued or fulfilled.

Stories may engage with the question of navigating disparate values and commitments (the often-asked and often-sexist question of “How do you balance x and y?”), or they may abandon all that, with characters who prioritise their desires above all else. Whether characters are reshaping the world(s), themselves, or aiming to brew the best cup of tea, their drives are the driving force of their stories. Contributors may feel free to question assumptions or norms related to women or gender while they’re at it. Authors are encouraged to explore spaces between representation and aspiration and be as bold as they like in imagining what could be.

This will be a fascinating new anthology for our Beyond & Within series. We’re looking for around four stories to join the selection curated by Melanie Bell!

Melanie Bell is a Canadian writer living in the UK. Her books include a poetry collection, The Heart Decided to Move; a YA novel, Chasing Harmony; a short story collection, Dream Signs; and a nonfiction book, The Modern Enneagram, co-authored with Kacie Berghoef. Her novella The Cliffman was included in the literary horror collection Hard for Hope to Flourish, and one of her stories is featured in the Whispers in the Earth illustrated anthology of world folklore.

Melanie and Hannah Doyle co-wrote Joan: The Musical which was performed in the Brighton Fringe in May 2025. Her short plays have appeared onstage at the Tower Theatre and Barons Court Theatre in London, on Morley College Radio, and in Liverpool’s 24 Hour Play Fest. She loves art, music, wondering and wandering.

Submissions to: anthologies@flametreepublishing.com

Terms:

Multiple submissions are fine but must be in separate emails.
Simultaneous submissions are fine but you must have the right to license your story in an anthology.
Stories that used AI for planning, editing, modifying or generating text will not be accepted. Please declare in your submission email if you have used AI in any way.
For accepted stories we pay Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) rates of 8 cents/6 pence per word for original stories.
We will aim to read each story and confirm its status within 4 months of the submission deadline.
Payment for the chosen stories will be made within 30 days of the final advertised publication date (see our website flametreepublishing.com for details), although some may be paid earlier than that.
Submission does not imply the right to publication. Each story will be read and assessed by the selection panel.
Please only submit unpublished/original/new stories for consideration. Reprints will not be accepted for consideration through this submissions route.

We’re always looking for better ways of working so we’ve tweaked our submission process to allow us to read more stories, and spend more time assessing the balance of our books.

Submissions must use the dedicated email address.
The subject line of the email must be the story title.
The file with the story must be attached to the email (.docx, .doc or .rtf format).
The name of the file must match the name in the subject line.
If submitting more than one story, please submit one story per email.

Other useful tips for a more successful submission:

The file name of the submission must be the story name only.
Please just use spaces between words in the title (not _ or – ).
If the story name starts with A or The, please use it at the beginning of the file name.
Story length is most likely to be successful at 2000–4000 words, but we will still read stories slightly outside this range.
If submitting a story that has recently been submitted to us for consideration to another anthology, please state this in the submission email.
Deadline for submissions is 3rd May 2026.

Literary Tea Salon With Bird & Blend Tea Co.

Here’s another collab I’m excited for! Bird & Blend Tea Co. is my favourite local tea shop. Their products are high quality and delicious. If you’re based in the UK, their shops offer free tastings and are well worth a visit, and they sell online as well.

So, while sampling some tea at the shop, I suggested a literary event, and the Bird & Blend team was interested in hosting one this spring. Here are the details for our Literary Tea Salon on May 11:

Join local author Melanie Bell and Bird & Blend Tea Co. for writing exercises, an author reading, and a book-themed tea tasting.

Monday, May 11 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Literary Tea Salon

Join us for a cosy, bookish evening blending two good things – writing and tea!

Local author Melanie Bell will lead participants in some creative exercises, read from her work, and answer questions about the writing process, while the Bird & Blend team will offer a selection of their literary-themed teas to taste.

Location

Bird & Blend Tea Co.

41 Gardner Street
Brighton and Hove BN1 1UN

Hosted in Bird & Blend’s flagship Brighton store, come along alone, with a loved one or in a group…all are welcome!

The store is fully accessible to customers in wheelchairs with NCP parking nearby. Please note there is no customer toilet on site but there is a wheelchair accessible toilet available in a nearby venue. We can tailor our experience to most disabilities – just let us know when booking.

Tickets on Eventbrite here (£15 each)

I look forward to reading your stories and meeting some of you for tea next month!

May 23, 2023

Book Review: Agony’s Lodestone by Laura Keating

Laura Keating, a fellow student from the University of New Brunswick’s Renaissance College program, is both a lovely person and a stellar writer. I read some of her work during our student days, and both of us have since been doing our best in the literary trenches. She’s carved out a niche and a name for herself in horror, and her debut novella, Agony’s Lodestone, came out in April. I couldn’t have been more excited to read it, and the book more than delivered on its premise.

To quote the publisher’s description:

Laura Keating‘s debut novella, AGONY’S LODESTONE, wraps you in its Weird, cold embrace, blending elements of Found Footage horror, fraught family drama, and a creepy-ass Canadian wilderness where time and space just won’t sit still.

-Tenebrous Press

Like me, Keating is from Atlantic Canada – more specifically, she hails from St. Andrews, New Brunswick. The region’s landscape plays a key feature in her haunting novella, with New Brunswick’s renowned “highest tides in the world” echoing through the caves in Cannon Park with a sound like cannon fire. The uncanny setting adds just the right amount of creepiness to the narrative. More on this later.

Agony’s Lodestone begins with a not entirely welcome sibling reunion. Survivalist loner Aggie has been toughing it on her own since the disappearance of her older sister, Joanne, a star swimmer. Her younger brother, Bailey, has capitalized on this disappearance with a flashy social media presence and a TV show seeking to solve its mystery. Their older brother, Alex, has devoted himself to raising a family. The three remaining siblings are all obviously grieving in their own ways, and their coping techniques rub against each other uncomfortably.

Bailey barges back into his siblings’ lives with a revelation: he’s found a videotape of Joanne. The VHS comes from security footage filmed at Cannon Park on the day Joanne left to walk their dog. The dog returned; the sister didn’t. On the tape, Joanne appears to flicker in and out of existence. And upon repeated viewing, the tape changes in terrifying ways.

The siblings, of course, must go to the park to see if they can uncover the truth behind their sister’s disappearance. Not one of them will emerge unscathed.

Keating crafts both character and setting with a deft touch. The siblings’ wounds feel fresh, and the New Brunswick wilderness is portrayed in unnerving detail, from the booming of unseen waves to the snapping of wood. The three characters find themselves trapped in the same uncanny reality that took their sister from them years ago, a place where time and space repeat themselves. They must use their wits to navigate this landscape that is never fully explained. The novella never loses sight of its emotional core, as much of the time, the siblings’ bruised hearts make their decisions for them. Creepy illustrations accentuate the story.

I’m looking forward to Laura Keating’s next book. For now, Agony’s Lodestone comes highly recommended!

March 3, 2021

Excerpt from my Forthcoming Novelette “The Cliffman”

I’m delighted to announce the publication of my novelette “The Cliffman” in Hard for Hope to Flourish, a Midnight Bites collection of three chilling novellas from Crone Girls Press. The e-book comes out on March 11 and you can pre-order it now. If you like dark fairy tales, supernatural beings, and complicated sibling relationships, “The Cliffman” has got you covered. The other two stories involve a man hearing voices and a disappearance in a marsh. “Literary tales of quiet horror,” as the blurb says.

Below is an excerpt from “The Cliffman.” Enjoy!

The Cliffman

He stood as children raced across the lap of the sand, as half-grown feet tore up marram grass which tore them in turn, as dusk gave way to moon and brambles on the periphery to raspberries, wax-leaved tufts to cranberries. He stood as tourists in visors shed tears over sand-spilled ice cream, as lovers tussled in cliff-caves or took to their vans, as the ozone layer thinned almost imperceptibly, as crabs tracked. It wasn’t often he could do anything but see.

* * *

See: two girl-slivers, wind-haired, seated on driftwood. A mother grown as a full moon, instructing: this thick viscous seaweed is kelp, this edible kind dulse. Tides are caused by the moon, and erosion happens as rocks wear away under sea. These are cliff swallows and this, running in the sand with its funny stilt legs, the rare endangered piping plover.

The mother was a teacher during the school year, and every summer day she taught her own girls. The father wavered between office days and sofa chair nights, never quite there, which made the older girl feel smaller. His driftwood books cluttered the table—covers with complicated spaceships, pearly moon-cities, knights in tall helmets.

* * *

“It would be nice if you’d interact with your own children,” the mother said.

“And what type of interaction do you expect? Everything has to be a lesson with you.”

“At least I spend time with them.”

Dishes clattered in the sink. The girls said nothing.

Here on the map was North America where they lived, here Africa, Australia, and this big lump on the bottom Antarctica, too cold for people. Here the first page of a bedtime story—sound it out.

A half page in, their mother fixed things: “Night, not kuh-night. The k is silent.” The younger sister squirmed away from her storybook. The older, unnoticed, shrank into the pillow.

Add up the change in the change jar. Take these toys and divide them between mother and sisters (not father who was never in the games even when home from work, and that was expected, accepted). The older sister loved these number games best, and took to playing store with the younger and counting out change. Numbers were regular, soothing as the tides. She took to counting by twos or fives or humming multiplication tables to carry her to sleep.

The younger sister collected feathers which she kept in a jar in her room, arranging them until they were almost perfect. She was a talker, so she made friends with most kids she ran into. Sometimes she made enemies, which was interesting, too, because she and her allies would make war against them with sticky beached jellyfish and handfuls of wet sand.

The older sister wondered how it could be so easy for the younger to just walk up and join the rush and noise. The kids bickered like her parents, their games as fleeting as the family’s yearly moves from house to summer cottage to house, trailing clumsy suitcases. When they asked her to make war, she ran into a cliff cave and watched crumbs of sandstone crumble from the top. She was happiest on her own, listening to seashells and looking carefully for patterns in the rock, cradling the notebook in which she kept track of inventory for her Someday Store. The tourists who flocked to the beach would buy everything.

On the day the two sisters were walking hand in hand and a voice boomed at them from out of the cliff, naturally it was the younger who answered.

“You think you know everything about this beach, don’t you?” That was the voice, presumably some man they couldn’t see. Full-throated. Presumptuous. Unremarkable enough.

The younger sister was indignant. “Of course we don’t! But I think we know a lot.”

The voice responded with a rumble that could have been a menace or a laugh. The older sister thought she felt the sand quaver beneath her feet. Being the more practical of the pair, she asked, in spite of her uneasiness: “Who are you anyway, and where are you?”

“Look above you,” the voice said.

The girls’ small heads poked up. There atop the rocks a figure stood. His skin was the red of island sandstone, and it was hard to tell if the earth-colored folds around him were clothing or some draping extension of his body. His face was rough, like the mock faces one sometimes finds worn into rocks, and he stood larger than a human man by half. He was still, dignified in the manner of stone and ocean. The sisters found him half-formed, masklike, hideous. How to speak to a person that was not a person but a walking mass of clay?

If you enjoyed this excerpt, you can order your copy of Hard for Hope to Flourish here.