Talking Horror with SA Bradley

Plus extra mid April Calls

Archive of the Odd

Found fiction - open now till May 15 - 500-8000 words - pay 1.5c - anon subs - They call themselves a home for the strange, the uncanny, and the odd. Archive of the Odd is a biannual magazine of found fiction—stories told in the style of found footage, also known epistolary, neo-epistolary, found file, or found document fiction. Essentially, stories told in the form of other documents.

All submissions must be found fiction. We realize this is oddly specific, so if you’re not sure what we’re looking for, the best way will be to look at the stories on our website, or buy an issue to see the full zine treatment (in fact, if you email us or DM us on Twitter we’ll give you a coupon code for being a savvy author… just saying). Alternately, think about all the things you read on a daily basis that aren’t fiction. Newspapers? Emails? Product support guides? …Submissions calls? (ba ha)

MY INSIGHTS - I’ve had four rejections from this market since 2022. They aren’t always open, but I find them interesting. I’m sending in an excerpt from my Steampunk Detective series featuring Alma the forensic scientist who can talk to ghosts.

Sub here

NoSleep Podcast

Horror - ongoing subs - pays $60 for flash up to 1199 words - pays $250 for stories 1200 +- pays $5000 for 15,000 +, - Here at The NoSleep Podcast, we love nothing more than hearing from up-and-coming or seasoned horror writers who’d like to work with us. We want you to frighten us and mess with our heads, so we in turn can terrify our listeners. As such, we’ve prepared a handy list of submissions guidelines to get your relationship with our show started. We welcome and encourage a broad, diverse range of submissions from all across the horror genre, and can’t wait to read the spine-tingling tales you send us.

MY INSIGHTS -So this market is a biggie and my wonderful writing friend Yelena Crane recently made a sale here! I am so excited for her. She also has one of the coolest voices for reading horror, in my opinion, plus you can hear her on Cast of Wonders!

Listen to Yelena

I recently got a VERY positive rejection letter from them (for Doomdel, the Creepy Clown, a story I had withdrawn, actually), and I’ll share it here. It encouraged me enough to send them another story yesterday.

On a personal note, I will say that this was very close to a yes, and you’re an excellent writer whose submissions I’d love to see more of. In this case I just felt like the story could be even better with a bit more expansion, and limiting it by running it as a standalone audio piece would be doing it a disservice. If we were a prose publication I’d have accepted it in a heartbeat, so I do hope you find a home for it, and also send us future work!

Sincerely,
The NoSleep Podcast Editorial Team

Sub to NoSleep

Doomdel will be forthcoming in Ethereal Nightmares this May, published by Dark Holmes Publishing. You can read all about it in this post.

Tableware Magazine

Lit - open april 1 till may 15 - Pays $50 - up to 15 pages - We accept original, unpublished art, poetry, fiction, essays, photography, reviews. Most anything you can print on paper. One of their taglines is “Art is Messy Business.”

MY INSIGHTS - I’ve been trying to find information on this new magazine for a couple of weeks. Thanks to

Angela Yuriko Smith

for finding the actual website! (I love her

Authortunities with Angela Yuriko Smith

) I’m going to send them in my weird creative non-fiction story about the dead cat. Why not?

Learn more

Terrorcore Publishing

SOMETHING OUT THERE - Horror - deadline April 30 - 2500 -7000 words - pay $25 - Welcome to Bellflower, a sleepy (fictional) Nevada town where nothing much happens. Well, except for the influx of tourists asking about Area 51, which lies to the southwest, and the annual UFO festival, which happens every August. For years, man watched the skies. In Bellflower…the skies watched back.

We're looking for submissions that take place during or around this festival, a town-wide event where locals dress up, set up telescopes, take tourists on shady desert tours, and stay up all hours of the night, hoping for a glimpse of something from the great beyond.

All stories should take place in the 1980s. So keep this in mind with the technology you feature. The stories should lean more into the horror genre but can be horror/sci-fi. They should include an alien encounter of some kind and mention the annual UFO festival in Bellflower, but they don’t have to take place at the UFO festival. Anywhere in the general vicinity (see map) is acceptable as long as it ties back to Bellflower somehow. For example, it could be a family road trip to Vegas along the Extraterrestrial Hwy and one of their stops is Bellflower, etc. Some other examples could include but are not limited to:

1. a slumber party

2. kids in a treehouse

3. mysterious rock falls from sky

4. weird goo in water

5. flashing lights in the sky

6. getting lost in the nature reserve after hours and experiencing something weird

7. encounters with the eccentric “townspeople” of Bellflower themselves

8. Military run-ins

My Insights: I love the concept of this, but I don’t have anything I can squish into this Bellflower world. I’d love to write fresh for it, but I PROMISED myself I’d concentrate on finishing Dancing into the Dark by June. (with the help of my lovely co-writer Rachel, of course.)

Learn more

WOMAN’S WORLD MAGAZINE

Romance- pay $500 - word count 750-800 words - They also look for mysteries. Those are 500 word stories, 450 for the plot, 50 for the solution. MY INSIGHTS - They are asking for Father’s Day and Memorial Day subs.

5-minute Romance offers the reader a feel-good fiction “snack” that shimmers with hope and possibility. Participants of focus groups have revealed that they consider this one of the classic columns that differentiates Woman’s World from other magazines—in fact, they said that it wouldn’t be Woman’s World without it!

Most Woman’s World readers are avid fans of romance novels, so we look for manuscripts that are clever, concise, and contemporary (no fantasy or historical romance), with heartwarming themes and classic romance tropes including: enemies-to-lovers, meet-cutes, long-lost loves, finding love after giving up, love after 50, etc. Each story should have:

● Realistic relationships: Whether it’s a couple who has just met or is about to celebrate their 50th anniversary, the emphasis in our stories is on real relationships—but real life that sparkles with feel good, fluttering romantic possibility and, in the end, reflect a hopefulness for the future. Stories must also revolve around a true-to-life relationship dilemma; may feature either a female or male protagonist; and may be written in either the first or third person.

● Character and chemistry: We look for appealing, engaging, relatable and down-to-earth characters (no yuppies or jet-setters) who may be married, single, divorced or widowed. There should be an obvious physical and emotional “butterflies-in-the-stomach” type of chemistry, but no overtly sexual or racy innuendoes. For instance, the steamiest we get is a kiss—and that is rare.

● Seasonality: Each story should be anchored seasonally, like a fall festival, summer picnic or a holiday celebration. Writers can join the Facebook group “WW Writers” and will be kept up to date regarding what season or holiday we are working on.

Submissions: Please email manuscripts to Fiction@WomansWorldMag.com. Please be patient: Due to the volume of manuscripts we receive, our turnaround time may range from two to six months. If after that time you don’t hear back, feel free to resubmit.

Did you enjoy hanging with me and subbing this morning?

If you can’t join a paid tier, perhaps buying me a coffee would be easier.

I offer my content for free, but caffeine helps. https://ko-fi.com/angeliquefawns12932

S.A. Bradley discusses why we love horror

What is beneath the chills and thrills? Why do we love horror? I attended a Fyrecon writing class last October with S.A. Bradley called How Horror Performs “Cultural Shadow Work” and he had me enthralled. The presentation focused on how allegory and metaphor in our favorite horror movies and books help a society heal. Bradley is also the brainchild behind Hellbent for Horror, an award-winning podcast where he discusses everything horror. He’s in high demand for his live shows and book readings, but he took the time to sit down and discuss our favorite subject with us here at Horrortree. Of course.... horror.

AF: How did you first discover horror?

S.A. B: I like to call that moment the “First Kiss” with horror. It’s that moment when a horror movie makes such an impression that you’ll either never watch another one or you’re hooked for life. It usually happens when we sneak in to see a movie we shouldn’t have watched when we were too young to be watching it in the first place.

My “First Kiss” was Nicolas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW (1974) when I was 8 years old. I was left unattended, and Home Box Office was playing on the television. That surreal opening sequence with the drowning girl put me in a state of shock. I had nightmares for three nights and I refused to tell my father what gave me them. It was my secret. The movie scared me, but I needed to see that opening scene again. Once I did, I felt much better.

I think breaking the rules and seeing something forbidden is a rite of passage that horror gives us. We take the dare, and the world doesn’t end, and we come out a little braver.

AF: Do you have a day job or is being “the champion of horror” a full-time pursuit?

S.A. B: It’s become a full-time obsession. I worked as a technical recruiter for start-up software companies in Silicon Valley for a decade. It was intense and fast-paced work that paid well, but it also took over my life. One day I realized that I spent all my time using my communication skills to voice other people’s passions, and I decided it was time to give voice to my own.

AF: You host a podcast called “Hellbent for Horror”, can you talk to me about that and how it found its audience?

S.A. B: “Hellbent for Horror” is a podcast devoted to all things horror, where I talk about movies, books, music, and historical events that shaped me and also shaped the culture. I have essay-driven episodes where I take a theme, like obsessions or phobias, and discuss three or four horror films that deal with that theme. Other episodes are interview-based, where I have guests on to discuss a theme and films of interest. I started in 2016, and the first dozen episodes were essay-driven shows I promoted on Facebook and Twitter. Folks found the podcast on iTunes and other outlets, and I started getting emails from folks who really connected with what I had to say. Many of them were really smart and knowledgeable horror fans, so I started asking some of them if they wanted to be guests on the show. Little by little, folks started to share my show with friends. Somewhere along the way, I started getting a small but rabidly dedicated following. I just kept talking, and folks found me.

AF: You are one of the most articulate and polished public speakers I’ve ever met. How did you learn/perfect this skill? Any secrets?

S.A. B: I have a very weird background and upbringing.

I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian cult which had me preaching and evangelizing at a very young age.

Almost every day was immersion and church services. The church leaders taught me how to speak in public with authority at the ripe old age of 8 and how to use gestures and pauses effectively to draw in folks. And they used to grade me on this stuff. They would have me do 5-minute pulpit sermons on specific bible verses, and I’d get a report card after church. They also inadvertently taught me the art of debating because I went to a public school where I’d have to defend my family’s beliefs to the other kids. This was an aggressive, in-your-face religion, and the irony is that the debate skills they gave me were the tools that made me rebel against the cult. It didn’t hold up to scrutiny. By my teens, all my debate and oration skills were used to voice strong opinions around my love of heavy metal, punk, and, most of all, horror. As you can tell here, I’m a natural talker, but I’m also an avid reader, and I do believe that reading helps your speaking voice. You can learn rhythms and flow of dialogue from both fiction and non-fiction books. That natural voice helped me through many jobs, including technical recruiting.

The biggest skill is to be passionate. I can be at a convention and talk about horror for 6 hours straight because I LOVE THE SUBJECT. To me, the main reason to do any of this is to share my love and passion with others. When I was recruiting, I was passionate about bringing smart folks together for a common cause. I also needed to believe in the company, and I needed to love what they wanted to make or do.

Horror fans are hungry for knowledge and a new movie to fall in love with, and we all love to share what we know and what excites us. Half of the joy is sharing the love with someone else.

AF: How does your background in the U.S. Airforce and as a firefighter influence your understanding/love of horror?

S.A. B: Interesting question, one I’ve never been asked before. I guess if there’s anything that being in the military did for my understanding of horror was that it introduced me to a much broader and more diverse world than I knew in my hometown in the Pennsylvania Coal Country. I met people from all types of backgrounds and heard how different regions have different boogeymen. One big thing that being a firefighter in the USAF brought to the table was a fascination with death and gore. Death or disfigurement was always a possibility in that line of work, and we were living on a base with nuclear missiles on it, so we leaned into it with “gallows humor.” We loved trying to gross each other out or playing scary pranks on each other. We tried to be “Born Again Hard” to pretend we were unshockable. I was tasked with bringing the goriest, nastiest horror films into the station. The over-the-top gore and crazy monsters gave us an outlet to laugh and groan away the real-life tension we had, and it helped give us one more thing to bond over.

AF: Tell us about your book Screaming for Pleasure. How was it received? Do you have another book in the works?

S.A. B: “Screaming for Pleasure: How Horror Makes You Happy and Healthy” is a love letter to all things that go bump in the night, and how horror not only reinvents itself to reflect each generation’s anxieties but can also be healing as well as thrilling. It shows how our culture informs our horror movies, and how our horror movies inform our culture. The book opened to mostly positive reviews and slowly built a word-of-mouth readership that grew beyond the podcast reach. Three years later, the book still gets discovered by readers and book critics alike and has been included in “best of” lists and won a few readers’ choice awards.

AF: You have a unique take on horror and how it serves a purpose in society. Can you touch on that?

S.A. B: Sure. The horror movie is tailor-made to use allegory and metaphor to discuss uncomfortable real-life subjects safely by giving us emotional distance from the darkness.

When we use a monster as a stand-in boogeyman for the real monsters out there, we get to release some of the anxiety that the modern world builds up inside all of us.

I tell people there’s no way I would watch a movie about the January 6^th Insurgency, but I probably would watch a movie where werewolves attacked Congress. We’d still know what those werewolves represented. Allegories allow us to feel emotions without needing to get into philosophical debates. You can still have those debates, but it’s not compulsory at the moment. Yet, I find that horror always comments on the sore spots in society, whether we are ready to accept it or not.

AF: You also have an opinion on Horror and Happiness. Can you explain?

S.A. B: Horror works on the shadow self, the Jungian shadow, that every person has inside them. Jung states that we need to acknowledge the shadow within us, and I see horror as a safe handshake with that dark side. Horror works like music does. You feel music before you intellectualize it. You go back to the music afterward to think about why it affected you, but the first brush with it is totally visceral. One note of music can change your mood, and horror works the same way. Art doesn’t need to be logical to be emotionally powerful, but art can’t exist without an emotional connection. The same goes for horror movies. They let us confront and accept the dark parts of ourselves, they also give us a sense of play, and they help us find our clan of folks who revel in it as much as we do!

If you want to learn more…

S.A. Bradley: Podcaster/Writer/Speaker -Hellbent for Horror

https://hellbentforhorror.com/book

https://www.facebook.com/hellbentforhorror/
https://twitter.com/hellbenthorror
www.hellbentforhorror.com

I’ll end this long post on a Saturday with a plug for my own Horror (lite) books!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMM44YPZ