Welcome to our latest newsletter. We have submission stuffs, workshop proposals, Trash Family happenings, Quick Reads and a quiet horror writing prompt.

Submission Stuffs

Time is ticking for our print anthology submission window, with its deadline of 30th June. All the details are here: https://trashcatlit.com/the-bin-collection/

We have now opened this call to REPRINTS which fit the theme, so have a root about in your published works to see if you already have the right treasure.

If you’re looking for un-themed submission opportunities, our Summer General Issue subs open on 1st June.
This one will mark exactly ONE YEAR since our inaugural subs call, so it’ll be a 1st Anniversary Issue!

Here are some other submission opportunities in fellow lit mags if you want to send your treasures out into the world.

• Cosmic Daffodil are open until 14th July for submissions to the theme of “Lost and Found”. Flash 300-600 and Shorts to 1000. All their guidelines are HERE
• For the horror writers in the bin, Sliced Up Press have a themed anthology call until 30th June. Stories should be inspired by early morning kids TV (any era). 1000-4000 words and they pay! Details HERE
• Retreat West’s journal, WestWord have a themed call for stories around “Gold”. Get in quick as deadline is 30th May. Micros to 350, Flash to 1000, Shorts to 3000. There is a £5 sub fee but WestWord also pay. All the info HERE

As with all literary publications, including Trash Cat Lit, you should always read a number of the published works before submitting yourself. Get to know what they like and decide if it’s the right home for your treasured words.

Trash Cat Lit on the Zoom

Write Along With Trash Cat

Workshopping with Trash Cat

We are looking to develop and deliver workshops and we’d be grateful for your input. What would you like to see/learn/expand on in a workshop? We have a few ideas already:

• Flesh out Your Flash – using genre to build on your core story
• The Cut-Up Technique – revitalise your fiction and poetry
• Introduction to Self-Publishing using KDP

Let us know your thoughts on this using this Comments box. We appreciate any suggestions.

Trash Family

We love to celebrate our contributors beyond Trash Cat Lit, here are some cool stuffs our Trash Family members have going on:

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Fiona McKay
(READ Black and Purple, Red and White and Mammals)

Fiona has published a very strange, creepy short piece in Ghost Parachute after it was developed in a Flash Fiction Festival workshop. It’s a breathless short that will have you twitching and itching and sleeping with all the lights on.
Click the image below to read.

Emily Rinkema
(READ Grace)

Emily has a triplicate of flash in Flash Boulevard which she herself calls “a bit of dream come true”.
The three shorts with titles The Gorge, Seventeen and For Everything, Everything, Everything, Everything, explore adolescence and have “Violent Femmes energy”. Click the image below to read.

Multiple Trash Family

We’re thrilled to see a binful of Trash Fam with flashes appearing in this year’s Flash Flood.
The online event, organised by National Flash Fiction Day, begins at one minute after Midnight on June 14th and a piece of flash is posted every five to ten minutes until eleven-fifty-nine pm that day.

An amazing celebration of flash fiction that will feature Trash Family: Catherine O’Brien, Fiona McKay, Kathy Prokhovnik, Bronwen Griffiths, Adele Evershed, Judy Darley, Jupiter Jones, Frances Gapper, Madeleine Armstrong, Beth Sherman, Jude Potts and Timothy C. Goodwin.

(apologies if we missed any Fam, we gathered the news from social media)

This will be a day for dipping in and out and immersing yourself in the best of short fiction.

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 three fantastic stories.
From our inaugural issue – Gill O’Halloran
From our Prompted Pop-Up – Jude Potts and Luuk Schokker

Now if you want to sink your teeths into something longer and more juicy – and by that we mean, full of worms – then we highly recommend you get yourself a copy of what we’ve been reading this last couple of months.

The best in quiet, creepy, off-kilter horror, Dantalion is a Quiet Place is written by our good Trash Pal, Mathew Gostelow (he and our Ed wrote a whole blumming book together).

Published by Dark Winter Lit, it’s available to buy on the ‘Zon. Click on the image to snag a paperback or Ebook, curl up somewhere safe and cosy and immerse yourself in this “dark twisting novella”.

Writing Prompt

We’ll end this newsletter with a prompt to help you get writing.

Inspired by Mathew Gostelow’s skill with quiet horror, we challenge you to write a flash that is full of dread and strangeness, but doesn’t have any gore or spatter. Keep the horror psychological, creeping, unsettling and unseen and all the scarier for it.

Here are some picture prompts to help establish a mood/setting.

Thank you for reading our newsletter.
We hope we have inspired you with the amazing writing and readings.
We’ll see you next month.
Happy writing and reading, and above all…