Welcome to our first newsletter of the year. We have submission opportunities, Trash Family happenings, Quick Reads and a wildlife related writing prompt.
Submission Opportunities
Our Spring General subs open on the 1st February until the 15th (unless our caps are reached). We’re excited to be doing a REPRINT only issue to fill our recycling bin. So many stories end up lost – if magazines fold or go quiet, or if a lot of time has passed. We want to help you revitalise and re-love those treasured words.
This call does have a tenuous theme; all the details are HERE. We have the fantastic, lyrical writer Sarah Royston reading for this call – send her your best preloved words.
On the 1st March we open a three-month sub window for our first print anthology – a collection of stories up to 2500 words to raise money for The Wildlife Trusts. Stories should be about treasure – and how you and your MC define that is up to you – found in an unexpected place.
Lots of details and inspo HERE.
As always subs are free and there are no genre limits.
As well as getting ready to sub to Trash Cat, you might check out these other submission opportunities:
- Frazzled Lit have a quick January sub window – details HERE
- Our Trash Pal, Mathew Gostelow is looking for quiet horror to publish in a print anthology – The Whispering Gallery – find the details HERE
- The Hooghly Review are open for a huge range of forms until late Feb – get the info HERE
- Have a dark story that has a theme of Patterns? Want to write one for Bag of Bones’ latest charity anthology call? Get on it HERE
Trash Family
We published fifteen writers in the Winter Pop-Up and ten of those were welcomed as new members of the Trash Family. The others were repeat bin offenders (we love to welcome back our contributors!)
Here are some cool stuffs our Trash Family members have going on:
Martha Lane (READ The Scavenger and The Eel Catcher’s Daughter)
Martha hosts the most user-friendly, generative writing workshops – our Ed published two flash started in these workshops – and so we highly recommend one if you’re looking to kickstart some new writing.
The latest is An Apple a Day (26th January 4pm-5pm) and Martha says you can “use this workshop to think about how an illness could jumpstart a story, or take it in an unexpected direction.”
Click image for more details and booking and join Martha for inspirational prompts and devoted writing time. You might even draft something that can be subbed to Trash Cat in the future!
Gavin Turner (READ Light the Fire and Flocks)
Gavin has written a fabulous piece of CNF (creative non-fiction) inspired by a strange conversation with a fellow dog owner – The Bone Ole is published with Roi Faineant Press.
“The man started the conversation about dogs. This is the only reason anyone can strike up a conversation with a stranger.”
“If he starts talking about human bodies, I am on my way right now, I thought.”
SJ Townend (READ I Vomited Every Hour for Three Days After You Ended Things)
SJ is Editor of Bag of Bones – a superb magazine publishing horror anthologies for charity – and a fantastic horror writer in her own right.
She has released her debut short story collection, Sick Girl Screams.
The reviews describe it as “disturbing” “truly terrifying” and “Gory. Bloody. Insane” which should entice any fan of the genre. As should that gorgeous cover – click on it for buying options.
A Trash Trio of Quick Reads
Whether you’re on your lunch break, the train, the couch while the kids are out, or in bed with that sublime hour to devote to reading – here are three stories from the Trash Cat bin archive for you to savour.
Click on the images to read Andrew Monge and Leigh Loveday (from our Autumn Pop-Up of prompted stories), and Mags Campbell (from our Winter general issue with the theme of Monstrous)
Tag Number Forty-Two
The Unknown Life of Luiza
Caged
Writing Prompt
We’ll end this newsletter with a prompt to help you get writing.
The charity we have chosen for our first print anthology, The Wildlife Trusts has a heading on their website “Making nature part of life“.
With that in mind, write something about an encounter with wildlife that impacts someone’s life. Here are some quick ideas:
- A young deer helps a child find her way through grief.
- Ravens bring strange objects to a lonely woman – are the miscellany connected in some way?
- In the post-apocalypse, a group of survivors rally to save the animals trapped in a grotesque travelling circus.
Thank you for reading this inaugural newsletter.
We hope we have inspired you with the amazing writing.
We’ll see you next month.
Happy writing and reading, and above all…
TRASH CAT LIT 