• Feb. 14, 2016, 7:41 a.m.

    Hey, all. This has nothing to do with anything TSW, but it seems like there are a decent amount of writers and artists in the cabal, so I thought I'd post this here. I'm starting a horror-themed zine for which I'm seeking submissions of fiction, artwork, and non-fiction. Below I will paste a link to the FB page for it and my initial call for subs. I'm half joking about how much I dislike steampunk in the call, but only half. Don't send me steampunk, please. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here or in-game, but be aware I'm often extraordinarily drunk in-game. πŸ˜€

    www.facebook.com/turntoashmedia

    Turn To Ash is a zine of horror fiction and related stuff. I need β€ͺ#β€Žcontent‬ for it, so I'm first asking you fine friends for submissions of short fiction and black and white artwork. I'll also publish relevant essays and interviews if anyone can come up with any.
    I'll be paying one cent a word for either fiction or non-fiction, and $35-$50 per piece for artwork. For fiction, I'd prefer things in the 3k-5k word territory, but I'm flexible either way. The zine will be professionally printed and either perfect bound or saddle-stitched.
    I'm not going to pitch a theme this time around, so send me whatever. I cast a pretty wide net on what I consider horror. Two of the most horrifying books I've ever read are Every Man Dies Alone and Knockemstiff. My favorite stories that are firmly in the genre tend to be quiet horror and capital "W" Weird, but I also enjoy splatterpunk and lots of stuff in between. There are many fine stories written about ghosts, too. As long as it's not steampunk, I'll consider it. You send me steampunk and I'm going to mark it as spam and report you. Send me stuff to turntoashmedia at gmail.com I'd like to start putting these out summer or fall this year. I'll start posting updates to the Turn To Ash page as I get submissions, and the ball starts rolling. Big thanks to Julian Dassai for the logo.

  • Retired 114 posts
    Feb. 14, 2016, 11:40 p.m.

    Super interested. Working on a short story right now about an alien expedition gone wrong while observing humans. Would that be good for your zine?

  • Feb. 15, 2016, 1:21 a.m.

    Hey!

    Very cool that you're doing this. Not sure where else you're calling for submissions, or even what country you're based in, but just wanted to make you aware of duotrope.com as a great potential space for getting the word out. It's a great submissions manager, used by myself and other writers I know, and journals on there are everything from online niche zines to more fancypants intellectual stuff.

    Even if you don't end up using it, it's a fun rabbit hole to travel down to discover new journals and writing. πŸ˜€

    Good luck!

  • Feb. 15, 2016, 1:45 a.m.

    If you like Weird, how knowledgable are you about Jeff Vandermeers work? Just curious, because his stuff is freaky-- The City of Saints and Madmen collection, which I have to say is one of the few books dense enough to confound me, as well as Finch, which is more urban fantasy but set within the same city (Ambergris), as well as his Southern Reaches trilogy, which is just Weird. Haven't read the second and third book in that trilogy, and I need to because Annihilation was definitely one of the most bizarre, and compelling, books I've read in a LONG while.

    He also published, under his Cheeky Frawg imprint, Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck in english, which was translated by Tidbeck from her native Swedish into English, which was delightfully bizarre.

    Most of my fiction, especially horror, god, I'd have to go, edit, reedit, re-read, condense, strip down, pare down, etc etc to actually get it into any way, shape, or form resembling something worth publishing.

  • Feb. 15, 2016, 7:36 a.m.

    Thanks for the replies!

    Emberien - I'll never know til I read it. Send it on over!

    MsMort - I've puttered around on duotrope before, but I hadn't thought of using it for this before. Thanks for the tip!

    Pyre - I'm more familiar with Vandermeer as an editor than an author, to be honest. I have his The Weird (big enough to use as a home defense weapon, that one) and The New Weird collections, The Time Travelers Almanac, and I think he had something to do with the new Leena Krohn collections, which are somewhere in my to be read pile. The Southern Reach Trilogy is also something I mean to get to, but I'm shit at reading novels. I read anthologies and single author collections at a ratio of probably 5:1 to novels. I dunno why. If you ever go through that edit, re-edit, etc etc process and want to send something over, please do. I'm planning on this being an ongoing thing.

  • Feb. 16, 2016, 12:16 a.m.

    Indrid: Those anthologies are SO GOOD....and I have actually used The Weird as a paperweight XD. Also Annihilation is a novel, but it's pretty short and spare in its prose, and stands by itself as a book.

    Pyre: Ahhh! you read them...hoorayHope that you're able to give the third one a chance; the second book dragged on a bit for me but the emotional payoff in the third book is amazing.

  • Feb. 16, 2016, 4:59 a.m.

    Oh yeah, I'm a huge fan of Vandermeer, need to get Authority and Acceptance. The strange weirdness,the subtly off, of Annihilation, and the Questions (what is The Biologists name? What is her husbands name? What's ANY of the characters names?!?) were amazing. Each book in the series is pretty terse and short, around 200-300 pages, so a light read for me (I can read 800+ pages in a single day if I get into my groove).

    I also am a big fan of Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, which was a really nicely strange/funny layout of creating imaginative fiction, plot, characters, etc. Funny as heck and VERY good.

  • Feb. 16, 2016, 6:04 a.m.

    Ah, Wonderbook has been on my wishlist for forever. I need to pull the trigger on that one.

  • Aug. 18, 2016, 6:56 a.m.

    I suppose since I posted this here way back when, I should give a little update and post an image of the first two finished issues...
    These are the reasons why I've barely in game the last few months. I like to pop in for a few once a week or so, and keep up with the forums here and over at the main forums. I'll probably be on a lot more in October, when all the Halloween stuff goes live. I'll need to log in for a bit before, and figure out how to change all my builds in light of the last few updates.

    Anyway, here they are - stories by Lucy A. Snyder, Michael Kelly, Betty Rocksteady, Jason A. Wyckoff, and a bunch more. Interview w/ Philip Gelatt (Europa Report) and two other pieces of non-fiction in the one on the left. All the details are at turntoash.com

    Cheers, guys. See you soon.

    turntoash.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/potatozinessmall.jpg

  • Aug. 18, 2016, 11:16 a.m.

    Awesome! I'm not entirely sure how I missed this to be honest :S

    Are you making more of them?

  • Aug. 18, 2016, 5:52 p.m.

    Yeah, I'm going to try and do them at least quarterly, if not more often (as often as time and money allow πŸ™‚ ).

    I've got another in the works now that's themed around a Coast to Coast AM-like paranormal talk show. There's a frame story about the host, and all the rest of the stories are written as callers to the show, recounting weird events that happened to them. I hope to have it done by around Halloween. I'm still picking through the submissions right now. turntoash.com/turn-to-ash-vol-2/

  • Aug. 18, 2016, 8:26 p.m.

    That sounds cool πŸ˜€ Are you still open to submissions generally? Not for me but I have a friend who I think is trying to get work out there πŸ™‚

  • Aug. 19, 2016, 11:57 p.m.

    I'm not at the moment, but I will be again in November. I'll make sure to drop a note here when the floodgates are open.