Still Life Fiction is now accepting submissions for Winter Horrorland, our upcoming winter issue celebrating horror, dark fiction, fantasy, and experimental prose.
During winter, the days are shorter and the long nights find us huddled around fireplaces, sharing warm meals, and telling ghost stories. What tales would you tell that keep readers up at night? What strange and unsettling things lurk in your Winter Horrorland?
Calling all horror, dark fiction, fantasy, and literary writers! Send us your creepy psychological thrillers, twisted takes on Christmas, Hanukkah or another winter holiday, gothic and apocalyptic tales, ghost stories, folklore, dark fairytales, or genre mashups (sci-fi horror, dark romance, and more).
The setting should be winter or a winter holiday, including stories set in a tropical climate. We welcome stories that explore winter as a setting, atmosphere, cultural tradition, or the supernatural.
Our next issue, Winter Horrorland, is open for interpretation. Surprise us. Disturb us. Make us afraid to turn out the lights.
We’re delighted to welcome Rhonda Jackson Garcia, award-winning horror author and scholar, as our guest editor. Stay tuned for an interview with Jackson Garcia in the near future.
Submission window: November 9 – December 14, 2026 (deadline at 3 am Eastern).
If you’re like me, September and now October flew by. You may not have heard from me in a while, but boy have I been busy cooking up some new content.
This month, a new issue of my online literary and genre fiction publication Still Life Fiction is out and we’ve got stories for your spooky season.
The Fall issue explores the theme of Masks: the faces we present to the world, the secrets we keep hidden, and the truths that sometimes slip through the cracks. The masks we wear can protect us, transform us, or give us the courage to become someone or something we might not otherwise dare to be. But what happens when the mask comes off?
Our contributors approached the theme from different angles and genres, taking us through stories of loss, longing, unexpected revelations, and a little good old-fashioned flirty fun. Whether the masks are worn to conceal, pursue a desire, or serve as a symbol of a loving memory, each story reminds us that there’s often more beneath the surface than meets the eye. We’re delighted to share this collection with you. There’s something for everyone.
If you enjoy what you read, subscribe to Still Life Fiction so you won’t miss future stories and issues. You can also follow us on Instagram and help spread the word by sharing our stories with fellow fiction lovers.
If you’d like to support Still Life Fiction, please consider making a voluntary donation through our Ko-Fi page to help cover the costs of keeping the publication running.
More updates to come. I’ll share interviews with authors and much more, but until then, go check out these amazing short stories over at SLF. I’m so proud of our contributors!
I’m excited to share new stories now available at Still Life Fiction, the online genre fiction publication I founded and edit.
Our latest issue features two stories under the Freedom theme. Each story offers something different based on theme, and I’m thrilled that these writers are a part of the inaugural issue of Still Life Fiction.
A teenager working in his father’s business tells the story of the mysterious Candyman, whose hidden talent as a piano player reveals more to him than meets the eye in Junkyard Music. Category: Literary
Here is your invitation to submit your stories in the next issue. The current submission theme is Masks. What do we hide behind the masks we wear?
For our next themed issue, we’re looking for stories about masks. They can be literal or metaphorical, familiar or strange, human or monstrous. Give us horror, dark fantasy, gothic fiction, supernatural tales, psychological suspense, or anything that explores faces we show the world and what lies beneath them. Maybe the mask protects its wearer. Maybe it hides a secret. Maybe, once it goes on, it can’t come off.
Your story doesn’t have to be about Halloween. We’re interested in the darkness, mystery, and transformation that a mask can represent.
All genres are welcome, including literary and cross-genre fiction.
Submission window: August 8 – September 20, 2026 (deadline at 3 am Eastern). Selected works will be published in our Fall issue around Halloween and will be promoted across our platforms.
I’m excited to share that another one of my short fiction stories has been published! I’m proud to be a contributor to Slash Magazine with my psychological horror short story, “We Could Have Been More Violent.”
Here’s a teaser:
“The bell rang on the door of Eva’s Psychic Healing Shop.
Half of her expected to see Charlie; the other half wished he’d never return.”
The submission window for my genre fiction online publication, Still Life Fiction, is now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted their work. Stay tuned for updates on the selected stories and the magazine’s upcoming inaugural issue.
Stay Connected
Don’t forget to Follow, Like, and Share. You can find links to all my social media and other platforms on the Find Me @ page.
The deadline to submit your short or flash fiction to Still Life Fiction has been extended to June 17, 2026. This gives writers who saw the call for submissions via Duotrope additional time to submit.
About Still Life Fiction
Inspired by the still-life art form, the publication focuses on the elements of storytelling that endure: themes, characters, and ideas that linger long after the page is closed.
Still Life Fiction is a digital publication, with plans for an annual print edition featuring selected stories at the end of the calendar year. I’m starting simply, with a streamlined website, so that I can invest more time and energy where it matters most: reading and recognizing stories that resonate with me and with readers.
Our first submission window will run April 17 – June 17, 2026, with the inaugural theme: Freedom.
Please explore the site and share your thoughts in the comments. I would be thrilled to read your work, so start thinking about stories you want to submit.
Whether you’re writing your first novel or screenplay, Spring is prime time for opportunities to expand your writing career. Polish those drafts and get ready to submit, submit, submit!
May – June 2026
Writers Guild of America East 2026 Support Staff Basic Training Program (Deadline: May 15): The training program is a virtual bootcamp for underrepresented emerging writers looking to break into television at the support-staff level. The program will meet virtually for six weekend sessions in August. Your script must be registered with WGAE, so get started ASAP.
My online publication, Still Life Fiction, submission window is closing on May 15th. Submit your short stories and visit the guidelines page for details:
Screenplay Contests & Festivals (Some competitions have rolling deadlines. Click on the web links to see the final deadlines.)
I’ve been a busy bee this month working on a longtime dream of mine: launching my own fiction publication, Still Life Fiction.
Inspired by the still-life art form, the publication focuses on the elements of storytelling that endure: themes, characters, and ideas that linger long after the page is closed.
Still Life Fiction is a digital publication, with plans for an annual print edition featuring selected stories at the end of the calendar year. I’m starting simply, with a streamlined website, so that I can invest more time and energy where it matters most: reading and recognizing stories that resonate with me and with readers.
Our first submission window will run April 17 – May 15, 2026, with the inaugural theme: Freedom.
Please explore the site and share your thoughts in the comments. I would be thrilled to read your work, so start thinking about stories you want to submit.
What Writing My Own Stories Revealed About Creative Worldbuilding
Now that fans of the hit IT: Welcome to Derry TV show are discovering the ties between Stephen King’s various TV and film adaptations of his novels, I think I have a deeper insight into how writers build interconnected story universes.
I wrote a short story called Delphine the Hag and the main character was part of this family of supernaturally gifted women. I also wrote a short story called Healing Magick with another main character who went to her grandmother’s home for healing. I never sold that story, but it ended up giving me the idea for merging all of the worlds together for a TV pilot.
AI-generated TV series poster
I thought, what if the young woman in Delphine the Hag and the woman in Healing Magick were related and their grandmother was looking to pass down her magic to one of her granddaughters? I started pulling together all kinds of details about how the magic worked, who the villains were, what the family dynamics were, and ended up with a supernatural TV drama, The Bryant Women.
Needless to say, I freaking loved dreaming up my series bible for this TV pilot. I didn’t want to spread it out in separate short stories, so I merged it all together. And I keep wanting to go back to that well and think of other spinoff ideas, but I’m not there yet.
So, for me, I can see how Stephen King, who published The Shining first in 1977, then IT (1986), and Doctor Sleep (2013), finds it endlessly fascinating to keep wanting to go back to that world he created. I totally get it.
And in preparing to write this blog post, I thought about all of the other book series that I love. This is what drives fans wild, seeing how they can piece together Easter eggs from one book to another. You saw that happen when book fans patiently answered questions from TV-first fans about Stephen King’s books that were the source materials for IT: Welcome to Derry. It was an amazing one-week post-mortem of who, what, when, and why.
In addition to Stephen King, I also really enjoy book series by other fiction authors:
George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones fantasy universe
N.K. Jemisin is a prolific speculative fiction author and she’s written multiple book series. My favorites are: The Broken Earth, The Inheritance Trilogy, and the Dreamblood series.
Kresley Cole’s paranormal romance book series, Immortals After Dark, and her young adult fantasy series, The Arcana Chronicles
Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone fantasy series
Karen Marie Moning fantasy romance Fever series set in Ireland
Daniel Jose Older is a Latinx author who has a few young adult fantasy series under his belt that you should check out. He also wrote the novelization of a few Star Wars stories.
Finally, although he doesn’t write any universes, this author has written really good science fiction novels about living in space. I can’t forget Andy Weir’s The Martian.
In addition to being a film buff (I did not go to film school, but I have an MFA in Creative Writing), I’m also a huge book nerd. Definitely find me on Goodreads.com and friend me there. I listen to more audiobooks these days, but I also indulge in turning pages every now and then.
Eventually, I’m going to write book reviews on this site, but I’m not there yet. I want to reserve my time for writing about writing and actually getting my projects out there first.
Anyway, please feel free to post your book recommendations in the comments.
My TV pilot The Bryant Women placed in the Quarterfinals in the OutstandingScreenplays TV Pilot Competition! This script has been a labor of love, born from my desire to showcase the magic that already exists in the underrepresented communities of my home state, South Carolina. I simply gave it a supernatural drama edge. I’m thrilled to see my work recognized among so many talented storytellers. Onward to the next round!
This was the first script I’ve ever written, but not the first time that I’ve placed in competitions for this project. I’ve made the Quarterfinals in the Santa Barbara International Screenplay Awards and Semi-Finalist in the Wiki: The World’s Fastest Screenplay Contest.
Scroll all the way down for a poster for the TV show that I hope to see go into production someday.
