Horror Tree

Full details

Deadline: Ongoing
Payment: Trembling With Fear was designed as a way to give back to Horror Tree. Since it’s inception we now offer an optional $5 payment on short stories to be paid by the time our yearly anthology which contains the story will be released. At this time, drabble are still considered donations to the site. Moving forward, as our Patreon levels grow, this will change for the better in both areas. ‘Trembling With Fear’ is a new ongoing outlet for creatives that we’re trying out on Horror Tree. We’re going to be opening for submissions on drabbles and short stories to be printed on the site which will potentially be made available in a collection at the end of the year.
Each week we will accept and post up to one flash (1500 words and under) and up to three drabbles (exactly 100 words, not including title.) Each post will include a bio and social links for the author. (Note: The flash pieces we prefer reading in the 800-1500 word range.)
We will be asking for non-exclusive rights on these pieces to a) keep them online indefinitely and b) the ability to include them in a print anthology to help continue to fund the site. With reader support, Trembling With Fear has become a token paying market. If not donating your story to help the site grow, we pay $5 per story by the time our yearly anthology is released (not however the drabbles quite yet.)
We’ll be looking for original work here though certain weeks will have specialized calls and some will include a call for reprints. We’ll be announcing those shortly. Specialized calls will allow for up to two flash and five drabbles.

What We Want:

• Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy or anything that fits in related speculative fiction genres that still are thematically dark! We obviously started off as horror but are open to all of the above and related genres. (Note: Themed calls will not need to be as dark and just genre specific.)
• A complete story.

What We Don’t Want:

• Erotica, porn, or graphic sex.
• Reprints

Theme’d Calls

Please note in your submission if it is for a specific theme and not a standard Trembling With Fear call. As a side note, going forward these will likely be collected in a secondary collection each year.
February – Valentine. Submit between December 1st and the beginning of February (though we can squeeze in a few late submissions). Ideally, please have these in by January 25th.
Summer Holiday Special (to be published in August). Submit from February to end of July. Horror on the beach, at a B&B, on a cruise, backpacking, road trips, glamping, end of the pier. Why not even write a drabble as a holiday postcard: Wish you weren’t here?
October – Halloween. Send in from July through October 13th.
December – Christmas. Send in from July through December 7th.
Dates above are approximate. If you’ve got something you want to send in sooner, please do so.
For all specials, we are prepared to accept stories up to 2500 words, again with a little flexibility. Let the story tell its tale.

Serial Killers And The Unholy Trinity

Over the past year we’ve expanded ‘Trembling With Fear’ to include two featured sections which run outside of our standard Trembling With Fear postings. Details on these two can be found below:

Serial Killers:

Here we’re looking to expand the short stories which we print by including something longer. These tales can go up to 15,000 words but the key aspect here is that they must be able to be broken up. We’re ideally looking for works which can fall into 4-10 installments of 1,000-1,5000 words or so in length.
We’re not looking for a story to just be cut up though, these have to work as mini-chapters for the overall tale being told.

The Unholy Trinity:

We’re taking a slightly different approach with flash fiction here. What we’re looking for is three drabbles which serve as stand alone stories and also have a theme or plot that can be tied together to tell something larger. This can be a story, an ideal, or whatever your heart desires. As long as the three pieces are separate but share some kind of a connective tissue, we’re interested in reading them!
While not required, we’d love to also include a little note on how these stories are connected and what inspired your work to be included as a brief introduction!

The Fine Print:

• Please submit your work in a .doc or .docx format.
• In the body of your email please include a bio of no more than 150 words and up to 4 links (ie: Homepage, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon page, or whatever else applies!)
• When submitting your work send it to contact at horrortree dot com with the subject of TWF: Your Title
• We’re not a stickler on fonts as we’ll change everything to match the site. Just don’t use Wingdings or something equally annoying.
• Again, we’re looking for non-exclusive digital and physical print as well as online rights. Distribution will be through this website and potentially in a print or digital book format. At this time we are not asking for audio or film rights.
• We will try to respond to all submissions within 3 weeks.

Let’s see if you can make us all end up trembling with fear in a super short story!