On the 1st of March we open a three month long submission window for our first print anthology. We plan to reveal the title and cover in Autumn 2025.

This anthology will raise money for UK charity The Wildlife Trusts.

We are looking for stories up to 2500 words about “treasure found in unexpected places” – but what does that mean, exactly?

Here Trash Cat will give you some insight and prompts.

What do we mean by an UNEXPECTED PLACES?

We’re interested in the places people don’t see anymore, places that go untouched, become derelict and overgrown. Broke-down places where people go to hide, hang out with friends, seek danger, survive.
The sort of places you wouldn’t expect to find anything of value (we’ll discuss ‘value’ in the next section).

The apocalypse of course, or any dystopian setting, certainly lends itself to being the unexpected place. In that situation; survival, food, companionship, medicine – could all be treasure.

• A bunch of troubled teens break into a long-abandoned train, find something that could change their screwed-up lives
• A homeless woman seeks shelter in the once decadent room in a derelict hotel. An animal shows bravery to share her meagre food – relieves a long held loneliness.
• In the falling down shed at the bottom of his grandparents old cottage, a man finds memories he had thought lost.

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Alternatively, what makes the place so unexpected could directly relate to the “treasure” your character finds there. They are both inexorably linked.

“I didn’t expect to find…in that place”

• A source of water discovered in a world ravaged by drought and heat
• A friendship struck up in a hospital waiting room
• A book, decades out of print, is found by the author in a charity shop
• An envelope of photographs is found in a van sold at auction, setting the new owner on a path of discovery

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It is your skill as a storyteller, the voice you choose to narrate your piece, that will sell the unexpectedness of the location to us. Make us believe it through your character’s response. Immerse us in the location.

What do we mean by TREASURE?

Firstly, your treasure doesn’t have to be a corporeal thing, something you can hold in your hand. You can treasure peace, hope, love, a song, a taste. It can be something ephemeral as well as something weighty.

Here’s where we swing back to VALUE. Of course you can have your character find something of monetary value in an unexpected place: old coins, jewellery, bricks of cash etc. Show us why that find matters to your character, what they decide to do with it, how it improves or destroys their life.

However, value is a subjective thing. For example, Trash Cat places great value on the affection of pets during difficult times, a jellybaby thought lost under the couch, friends made through writing, a cup of tea. In the apocalypse, that last one would be of immense value!

• Two women find love in the aftermath of war
• At a yard sale, a young boy sees something that reminds him of his deceased father
• A scientist discovers the potential to cure a disease in a strange new mushroom
• In a town made silent by strange happenings, two children find a record player and one scratched LP

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So, as with your location, your place, it is how you sell the treasure to us that makes us see the treasure. Don’t just have them tell us.

Your character’s reactions and feelings, how they are changed, will show us how valuable this thing really is. We’ll feel it too, we’ll believe that it is treasure.

Finally, we’re not looking only for happy endings here. Treasure can turn bad, can bring danger and worse. Dark stories are very welcome here. As with most of our calls, this is genre free.