shanmonster: (Default)
I'm gonna share a bunch of my writing resources with you. These are things I check frequently, and have helped me with my publications.

The Submission Grinder: I find this one a little tricky to use, but it's very helpful for looking up magazines by pay rate, genre, etc.

Submittable: Invaluable resource. I track my submissions here. Membership is free, and you can find all sorts of calls for submissions, contests, fellowships, and more. The downside is there is no way to search for paying magazines only, and there are no ways to filter out magazines you don't want to see.

Chill Subs: A lot of people swear by this resource, and the folks running it seem like good people doing this as a passion project. They also have a mailing list which includes special calls for submissions as well as writing workshops.

Authortunities: You can sign up for the mailing list to get a curated list of magazines/anthologies seeking submissions. The free version is all you need. The paid version shows a bit more stuff from the next month, but that will show up in the next free email. Friendly community, too.

Writing & Selling Stories with Angelique Fawns: Various writing resources for novels and short stories. Also includes interviews with authors and a curated monthly list of upcoming calls for submissions--mostly speculative.

Moksha: A list of magazines and anthologies seeking submissions. Primarily speculative fiction/poetry. I've had several pieces published through this.

Query Tracker: A place to track literary agent queries and to find which agents are open to submissions.

The Horror Tree: Not just horror. Covers speculative fiction in general. Has craft essays, calls for submissions, writing prompts, book reviews, and more.

Write, Publish, Shine: Run by the wonderful, super-supportive editor Rachel Thompson, this is a writing community and publishing school. I took her Lit Mag Love course, and it's what really got me organized and turned into a publishing machine.

Community of Literary Magazines and Presses Calls for Submissions: A bit of a pig in a poke, really. I've found a few good things here, but it also includes magazines which charge you money in order for you to submit work, and it doesn't say if this is the case in the listings. A bit of a pain in the arse, in that regard.

Canadian Authors Awards and Competitions: Not just for Canadian authors. Listing is by deadline, and entry fees and prize amounts are shown prominently.

Publishing... and Other Forms of Insanity: Terrific resource with lists of paying markets, free competitions, residencies, and more.

Science Fiction Poetry Association: Lists paying magazines which do not charge you money to submit your speculative poetry.

Literary Outlets for Environmental Writing: Some of the places listed are no longer around, but still is the best (and only) list I've seen for this genre.

Aswiebe's Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Market Listings Online: A spreadsheet of speculative magazines listing word counts, pay rates, etc.

The Short List: Places which publish flash and micro fiction.

Eric J. Guignard: Personal blog which includes calls for submission for dark fiction.

Alex Davis Events: Alex puts together workshops, festivals, and other events which feature excellent authors and scholars on speculative fiction. Specialties include folk horror, body horror, ghost stories, and the uncanny, but there are also courses on science fiction. Good stuff. I've gotten a lot out of these courses over the past few years.

The Fairytale Sessions: An excellent and inexpensive series of generative writing workshops hosted by Saraswathi Sukumar. These focus on fairytales, especially the works of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. I've written many stories based on writing prompts here.

Weird West Fiction: Do you write weird westerns? This is where to find resources for this cross-genre.

Authors Publish: Website and mailing list with lots of upcoming calls. Great for authors, not so hot for publishers, as being on that list results in a lot of authors sending things which don't match up with the submission calls. For example, if someone is publishing only military thrillers, they might be sent high fantasy instead. Always make sure you're sending a publisher the sort of stuff they are looking for.

Weekday Night Bites has a heap of videos about horror writing and the history of horror.

Not writing related, per se, but if you're sick of trying to read a story only to find it's behind a paywall, Paywall Reader will help you get around that.
shanmonster: (Default)
If you want to hear me read some of my new, unpublished work, you'll have an opportunity this Friday. I'm one of the readers for Flights of Foundry. This is a 100% free online speculative fiction convention with writers and readers from all over the world. My reading is on Friday at 1:00 EST.

I'm also on a panel about Indigenous Horror on Sunday at 5:00 with Shane Hawk and Johnnie Jae.

There are all sorts of readings, panels, fan chats, author chats, role playing games, and more all weekend. Sign up for free at Flights of Foundry.

The next anthology I'm in drops in two days, I think. I just got my copy the other day. Moonlit Getaway is publishing their first anthology: Harvest Moon. My flash fiction "Sirens Don't Sing Underwater," about what's going on with the sirens from The Odyssey, is featured within.

Pre-orders are now open for the ebook version Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume Three. My Aurora-finalist poem "Angakkuq" (first published in On Spec is included. I'm pretty chuffed that I've finally snuck my way into this killer anthology series. I'm bookmates on here with some big names. The trade paperback pre-orders haven't begun yet. You can take a look at the table of contents here.

I recently placed a flash fiction with another anthology series. I won't say the name yet until I get all the details, but my story is "The Bird Husband." It's been shortlisted and longlisted for a few contests, but never made it to print. I'm glad it's finally getting its moment. What makes it particularly interesting to me is that not two minutes before getting an acceptance for it, it had received yet another rejection.

Taste is subjective.

My story The Snow Hath No Queen was rejected from many places but went on to win two awards, and my poem "Angakkuq" was rejected by several before it became an Aurora finalist. Go figure.

I recently completed a new short story called "The Old Woman Who Became a Bear." It is a retelling of Papik, Who Killed His Wife's Brother collected by Knud Rasmussen about a hundred years ago. I'm currently shopping that around.

Also working on another short story tentatively called "We All Fall Down." This one is a tale of puberty horror, and is pretty funny so far. It may end up a novelette, that most difficult of story lengths to home.

In other news, a week ago, I went to DreadCon. It was my first horror convention, and, over all, I had a good time. I ended up buying a whole wack of books to add to my stupendously-large To Be Read pile. I spoke with a bunch of authors, and also with a few editors. One of those editors has just requested the full manuscript for my novella The Temperance Ridge Runaways. I sure hope she likes it, because I would love to have my book debut with her.

Here are the short stories I've been reading:

Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson
The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu
shanmonster: (Zombie ShanMonster)
It's official! I'm one of the winners of the best new weird horror of 2024. My story "The Snow Hath No Queen" will be published along with a bunch of other weirdos in Brave New Weird: Volume 3. You can order now for a June 24, 2025 release.

While applying for another residency (this one in a Scottish castle), I started tallying up my publications for this year and realized my work will be in seven different anthologies this year. Holy shit. How did that happen?
shanmonster: (Tiger claw)
So here I am at the first Banff Horror Writing Residency. It's absolutely gorgeous here and reminds me of when I lived in Valemount, BC as a kid. The big difference is that I lived in a travel trailer then, in campgrounds or squatting in someone's woodlot. Now I'm staying in a nice hotel room and hanging out with incredible writers from all over Turtle Island. My mentor is Jessica Johns.

My first day was a whirlwind. While I was getting a tour of the library, a fellow writer by the name of Rebecca asked me if I was the Shantell with a shortlisted story in Brave New Weird.

"Uh, I don't think so?" I remembered submitting something to Brave New Weird about a year ago, but it was rejected.

But then I looked it up, and yes, my story The Snow Hath No Queen is indeed on the Brave New Weird shortlist.

Cool!

Later on that day, I received another email notifying me that I'd been shortlisted for another prize. I'm not allowed to say which one (for now), but I'll announce it as soon as I can.

I had a difficult time sleeping that night.

Yesterday, my poem Pyrocene went live on Emerge Literary Journal. This is my fourth publication for the year.

So far at my residency, I've worked on my novella "The Development." I hope to finish the first draft here. I'm so close.

But I'm also working on other projects, so who knows? I put together a weird western called "He'll Be Coming Around the Mountain When He Comes." It comes from my novel "The Everwhen."

There are a lot of folks here writing about cannibals, and they inspired me to write another short story about man-eaters. I started work on that this afternoon. It features a group of wine moms. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

In other news, I was recently part of a women of horror panel. Here's The Villain Edition, Feminine Rage and Beyond, and Real-Life Horrors and Beyond.

And today, my poem "Stillborn" was accepted by Nightmare Magazine for publication.
shanmonster: (Default)
My personal essay The Ghosts of Forests Past has been reprinted in ALOCASIA.

My poem Nuliajuk and the Birds has been published by Strange Horizons.

My flash fiction "The Qalupalik" will soon be viewable at Flash Fiction Online. You can purchase a copy of the magazine here.

My short story "All That Came From Our Lips Were Lilies" has been accepted by Hedone Books and will be published in the Silk and Foxglove - A BIPOC Erotic Eco-Horror Anthology edited by Z. K. Abraham. I'm unsure of the publication date.
shanmonster: (Liothu'a)
My poem "Exile of Nuliajuk" has been published in the Heredity issue of NonBinary Review. You can get a digital copy of the whole magazine for five bucks!

I recently did a workshop on writing violence in horror and had fun with one of the writing exercises. We were to choose a classic monster (I chose a vampire), and then write the same attack from three separate perspectives. I'll share my results with you. We were given 7 minutes to write each bit, so if stuff looks like it could use an editing, it's because it was written very quickly.

  1. I used a crowbar to pry the plywood off the basement window and cut my hand open in the process. I dropped the crowbar and took off my shirt, wrapping it around my dripping hand. It hurt, but I had to get in there before the thing noticed. I edged myself past the broken glass, and just as my feet should have touched the floor, they were yanked out from under me. My head smashed into concrete and I saw nothing but scintillating spots of nothingness. I awoke in mid scream. Needles plunged into my thigh over and over again and I tried to struggle, tried to tear myself free, but only tore my skin further on those needles. Teeth, I realized in horror. They weren’t needles, but teeth.

  2. Darcy took a prybar to the basement window, and with a few deft movements, the plywood came loose with the squeal of nails being pulled free. Darcy lifted the wood out of the way, gashing his hand open on a shard of glass. He swore under his breath and peeled off his shirt. He wrapped it around his hand before sliding in through the open window.

    Something waited for him within. Something fast. It grabbed Darcy by the feet, smashing his head into the cement floor. It dragged Darcy further into the darkness before it began to feed.

  3. Nails squeak and wood cracks, and then a shard of light slashes into my basement. I edge closer to the wall, away from the light, but close to whoever is breaking into my home. I can taste the fear rolling off him. Acrid sweat in his armpits, full notes of testosterone and adrenaline. I feel something awake in my belly. And then the sharp tang of blood as he slices his hand open on the window and my fangs drop.

    He edges himself in through the window, and I seize this gift. I sweep him off his feet. Let the concrete kiss his head, and then I’m drinking from his femoral artery.


Which do you think works best?
shanmonster: (Zombie ShanMonster)
More publishing news! I've sold two more stories: "Scarred" (about intergenerational war trauma) and "If You Listen" (a cautionary tale about colonization and Inuit cosmology).

I've also had a couple of poems published by Eavesdrop Magazine. You can even listen to me read them there. "Saved" (about how I got baptized before I was born) and "Wrassling's Object Lesson" (about my childhood favourite wrestler: The Cuban Assassin). Check out my dulcet tones.

I'm getting closer to the next step for revising my novel, "The Everwhen." I finished the first draft in January, and I've been letting it sit for a while so I can revisit it with a fresh brain. I think my first task is to go through the entire thing and write a chapter-by-chapter outline.

Every week I meet with a horror critique group, and we've been going through my novella about the runaway girls. I love how invested in the story the other folks are--I must be doing something right. I look forward to them reading the next bit. I get great feedback from them, and it helps me make my writing even stronger.
shanmonster: (Liothu'a)
My play "A Time for Dolls" will be published in the Native Voices Anthology this summer. My play is a coming of age story about a young Inuk and her mother. The collection is now available for pre-order.

A few weeks ago, I saw a listing for a play competition in honour of a playwright I was once "mentored" by. This person was specifically awful to me in the early 90s. I was an English drama major in university and spent a lot of time in the theatre community. I reviewed plays for the student paper, the English department newsletter, and on radio. I was a theatre sound tech, and also an assistant stage manager, playwright, actor, costumer, etc. I even got married in a theatre. I studied classical Greek theatre, too. I wore a lot of theatre hats, and for a while, I thought I might make my career in theatre. But working with this particular playwright shriveled up that desire. They took an active dislike to me. They ordered me to change things in my plays without even asking me what I meant by them. They made no secret of their dislike of me, yet because I had no one else to work with, I continued working with them for two or three years. And the last time I worked with them, they intentionally displayed my work in the worst possible way to an audience.

Professional actors did a reading of a section of my play before a packed audience. Under my mentor's direction, the part of my play performed was a tiny section immediately before and after a scene change. There was no context, and the ~2-minute excerpt made no sense whatsoever because of it. Whereas other playwrights had entire ~10-minute scenes performed and appreciated, the incomprehensible snippet of mine made the audience all go "HUH?" audibly. I was mortified and fled the theatre.

That was the last play I wrote for about twenty years.

"A Time for Dolls" is the first play I wrote after being treated so abyssmally by my mentor. I didn't realize until seeing the listing for the play competition that the reason I hadn't written another play until recently was because of the trauma they had inflicted upon me.

Maybe I'll write more plays again some day, in spite of that nasty person.

To this day I don't know why this playwright was so awful to me. I don't know what I could ever have done to inspire such mistreatment. But it has taught me a lesson. Be kind to upcoming writers. Be kind to baby writers. It's easy to kill a seed, but more fulfilling to nurture it.

Being mean is easy. Being kind is worth the effort.

In other news, my ghost story "The Last Trench" is to be published in the flora/fungi horror anthology "Bitter Become the Fields." A kickstarter is planned for it. I think this is a really cool concept for an anthology, and I'm looking forward to it.

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