For our first Halloween issue, we want HORROR flash with a biohazardous flavour and a speculative seasoning and a speculative seasoning. There are many subgenres in horror storytelling, and we’d love to see a variety in this call. The submission window for this one is between 27th September and 11th October.
Body, cosmic, gothic, paranormal, sci-fi, apocalyptic, psychological, supernatural eco, quiet, weird, slasher….and more…
Our Guest Readers for this call are Joyce Bingham and Zoe Davis
We also want a dark biological element to to this story.
Give us microbial apocalypses, deadly dinners, unexplained gross stuff, encounters with the natural or unnatural that cause things to change, things you shouldn’t poke or sniff, alien biomes, mutated fauna, newly zoonotic infections, sentient waste.
Immerse us in the setting, discomfort us with tension, make us ick and itch, give us a sensory onslaught, make us reach for masks and a hot shower.
“The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is the virus.” – Joshua Lederberg
“Release the toxic and infectious – spreaders of misery, souls destroying souls, and poisonous liars.” – Giorge Leedy
“What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life’s history is a constant domination by bacteria.” – Stephen Jay Gould
LET THE MOVIES AND BOOKS INSPIRE YOU…
Some Quick Ideas
- Take a cute critter and make it dangerous
- Something is seeping through the ceiling
- As the world’s temperature rises, new microbes appear
- After an unprecedented snowstorm, the thaw reveals…
- It looks like a weed. It won’t be destroyed.
- Teenagers poke around in a seemingly abandoned factory, they won’t ever be the same
- Noises are coming from the landfills, and it ain’t seagulls or rats
- A parasitic infection leads to terrible host change
- Something is killing the roaches
- Space waste crashes in a rural community, it’s not alone
- A food poisoning outbreak grows beyond comprehension until humans are the food
- What a pretty bug. Touch it, you know you wanna
Submission Guidelines
- We ‘re looking for Flash Fiction only (no CNF or poetry) between 100 and 1000 words (excluding title)
- One submission per writer – new and unpublished stories
- All horror subgenres considered – but don’t rely on shock and excessive gore, we need Story
- Use simple formatting – 12pt, easy-to-read-font, double spaced
- No name etc. on the story doc – the filename should be the title only. We do not want to see Shunn formatting please.
- Submission is via the Google Form linked below.
- For our Ts & Cs please refer to our Submissions Page
DO NOT SEND
Trash Cat Lit will not tolerate any work that is racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, ableist or is hateful towards any person or group. Further, we do not wish to read anything that is gratuitously violent or erotic or contains excessive gore or animal cruelty.
Trash Cat Lit will not accept any work generated using AI. We would prefer you don’t use any of the monstrous, world-ending chatbots for research, plotting, planning or writing your work. We want your work, not some stolen version of anyone else’s.
Ready to Submit?
This link is open until 8pm on 11th October (UK Time)
