The First Thirteen

Here they are!!


"Herbert" by Dean Cochrane (art by Aidan Leckie-Harre)
"R.D.J." by Sherry Decker (art by Sherry Decker)
"Ten" by K. Eason (art by M.K. Hobson)
"The Cabinet of Dr. Calamari" by Andrew Ferguson (art by Morag Edward)
"Wilted Lily" by Henry Gee (art by Tina Connolly)
"Footprints" by Ann Leckie (art by RJ Sevin)
"One Thumb Up" by Nick Mamatas (art by Mary Madewell)
"One Step at a Time" by Billy O'Callaghan (art by RJ Sevin)
"Satan's Typist" by Hannu Rajaniemi (art by Morag Edward)
"Fitness is Its Own Reward" by John Platt (art by Julia Sevin)
"Dyscrasia" by Gord Sellar (art by Tina Connolly)
"Dickey Size It" by RJ Sevin (art by RJ Sevin)
"Zombies Versus Dinosaurs" by David Snyder

plus a special collector's edition double postcard for "Dark Wine" by Paul Lewthwaite (art by Morag Edward).

These 13 14 stories present a wide range of horror, from the truly horrible to the downright silly and everything in between. There's killers and monsters, angels and devils, zombies and dinosaurs, all manner of weirdness and even a few rather scary children.

A big welcome to the eternal flames to our final*** two authors:

Dean Cochrane lives with the love of his life within shouting distance (if you have a loud voice) of Vancouver, BC, where they read, write, work day jobs, and care for a disorganized tumble of children and pets, all with mixed success. Cochrane maintains that he is not a horror writer (it's too late now - ed). He once sold a story to Subterranean Magazine, which has only encouraged him.

Billy O'Callaghan considers himself damaged Irish goods and likes to wrestle with demons. He also loves to tell lies. Products of his uncertain mind have made their way in the world, or are about to, by way of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, Great Mystery & Suspense, Lunch Hour Stories, Southword, Versal, and others. Stories like "One Step At A Time" hopefully only hint at the dangers to come.

Thanks to all our authors, and to everyone who sent stories to the Lake of Fire. The quality of your submissions exceeded my expectations and I had to turn down a lot of perfectly evil stories.

Please see the Art Order for our current needs.



* My mailbox is empty. If you sent me a story and I never responded, I either never received it or you never received my response.

La Sequía

"La Sequía"

by Tristan S. Davenport

Contrary to promises made in church, death does not give her the use of her legs back. What it gives her is a keening thirst deeper than anything she felt while living, deeper even than what she felt while dying: sprawled next to her wheelchair, croaking her breath out in a prayer for water. This is what death gives her -- a thirst so great it overcomes for the first time the shame of her infirmity. She picks herself up, crawls arm over elbow into the desert.

Read the Rest Here

Art Submissions

These are postcards, but because we're trying to publish fiction here, there isn't much room for art.

Still, we could use some art. What we're mainly interested in are hellish doodles of line art. By doodles, we mean something you scratch on the back of a napkin while knocking back a row of martinis at Kelsey's. Simple, weird, nightmarish, grotesque - these are our tastes.

Or if you prefer, photographs are good as long as they're weird, nightmarish, grotesque and postcard-y. Like this:

We need thirteen pieces for Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen. Send no more than 3 pieces, in jpg format only, 72 dpi. Keep in mind that like all good Zoroastrians, we only publish in black and white, so if your work depends on color for its impact, it's not likely to be accepted.

Ok, so you're all like, yeah dude, but what do you really want? The answer is, we'll tell you when we know. And we'll know as story slots are filled. Whenever you see an announcement of a story being accepted, check it out because it will also include an art order. So if we announce we've accepted Damon Pumpkinhead's story "Night Slithers" and we could use a doodle of a snake hanging out of a tailpipe, and you send us a doodle of a snake hanging out of a tailpipe, then wa-hay! we just might pay you for it.

Send your doodles and photos to editor[dot]fromhell[at]gmail[dot]com. Subject Line - "Art Submission."

If your piece is accepted, you will be paid $5. That's all the money we could shake out of the Old Man. He's hated artists ever since Michelangelo made such a mess of the Sistine Chapel.

I am Minion. I have spoken.

Reader Question Answered

Dear Minion,

Why does it cost more for a subscription outside the US?

Timmy in Ontario

Dear Timmy,

Isn't it obvious?

The United States of America is geographically closer to Hell, so the postage costs are lower. Getting a postcard out of hell and all the way to Ontario costs a bit more. If you live in New Zealand, most of your subscription price is going to pay the good old US Postal Service - a division of Limbo.

Which still exists, by the way, no matter what the Holy Father says. He's had it in for Limbo for years.

Your Friend in Torment,

Minion

Up the Chimney

"Up the Chimney"
by Cat Rambo

I should have known better. There we were dozing by the fireside, old Tom and me, and there's a stranger telling some story of funerals and cats. Old Tom, he leaps up, whiskers abristle. Shouting "Then I'm the King of Cats" and disappearing up the chimney!

Read the rest here.

Postcards From... Vol. 1

Postcards from Hell

• La Sequía by Tristan S. Davenport
• All One Wants for Christmas by James S. Dorr
• Old Emmett's Grave by Scott Virtes

Postcards from Uranus

• The Birthday Archipelago by Alasdair Stuart
• Little Marvin's Private Dancer by Simon Cooper
• Lugosi Rock by Scott Virtes
• Our World by Adam Colston
• Nine Minus One by Bruce Golden

Postcards from the Woody End

• Up the Chimney by Cat Rambo

Alpha Mike Foxtrot

The story archives have been deleted. This site will remain active until March 1, 2009.

Our World

"Our World"
by Adam Colston

As soon as I stepped into the terrace bar, I spotted her. She laughed at some joke the young man at her elbow was telling, and her teeth flashed in the candle light.

People milled around; the men were mostly watching her, but I found a spare seat at a table for one near the jazz-pianist. I sipped my Cabernet while I waited.

I’d had only two sips when, like a tiny aviator returning from a perilous mission, I heard the drone of mosquito’s wings. It landed on the back of my hand, its abdomen swollen with her blood. I nudged it towards the mole near my wrist. It seemed drowsy and unresponsive, but it dutifully sank its proboscis through the dark flesh and deposited the blood into the nanoic unit below.

A few seconds ticked past, and I shut my eyes while I waited for the results.

(Read the rest here.)

Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen

So you're wondering what all this is about. Me, too.

It's about stories, maaaaaaan.

Postcard writing is a dying art. Being able to fit everything you need to say within a tiny space forces you to be creative as a correspondent.

Postcards from Hell are postcard-sized stories mailed once a week to your address. The stories are concise, brilliant glimpses of hell, like a door opened and then quickly shut.

Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen is our pilot program. The Old Man has ordered thirteen episodes to measure how the readers respond and whether we can generate enough subscriptions to support our missions work in Borneo and Papua New Guinea.

The first postcard will be mailed to subscribers on August 4, 2007. The last one on the Saturday before Halloween. If this works out, Postcards from Hell will morph into a self-reproducing monster, 52 weeks a year, while spawning other Postcards series, such as Postcards from Uranus (sci-fi) and Postcards from The Woody End (fantasy).

Postcards come in two varieties - Postcards and E-cards. A subscription to Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen costs $6.66. That's a little over 51-cents per story. But if you're such a cheap bastard that you can't cough up this unholy number, you can always subscribe to E-cards from Hell: The First Thirteen for $3.33. That's a little over two-bits each.

So how do you opt-in to Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen? Check out the Subscribe links to the left to order by Paypal.

Or you can mail a check or money order to:

Postcards from Hell
7746 Newfound Gap Rd
Memphis, TN 38125

Be sure to include your address and/or email address, otherwise I'll just have to take your money and not send you anything.

And remember, the first card goes out August 4, 2007. So send in your order soon, and be sure to buy gift subscriptions for all your weird friends and relatives. And since the profanity is bleeped out, pornography forbidden, and violence and gore held to a reasonable level, it's a great gift for grandkids!

As Alice Cooper sang:
Having a hell of a time my dear
wish you were here.

That's All Folks

Postcards from Hell is done for now. You can still order, and I'll be posting a new deal soon for those who'd like to order the complete set.

But for now, I invite you to post your thoughts here about Postcards from Hell, which stories you liked best, and where you'd like to see the series go in the future.

If you're a reviewer and you'd like a copy of all fourteen stories, let me know.

Adios.

Fiction Guidelines - Postcards from Hell

The Submission Period is Now Closed.
Do not send new stories or they shall be tossed unshriven and unread into the Lake of Fire. Even if you're Anne Rice. Especially if you're Anne Rice.

In hell, we have a pentagram of five rules within which you must abide.

Rule Number One - Space Matters. Hell is full, so there's not much room to tell your story. Do not exceed the maximum word count of 600 words. Fewer words are better. Your target is 500 words. But in truth, word count is an unreliable indicator. What really matters is the number of lines. If you send us 500 words which consist almost entirely of three-word sentences of dialogue, we will be forced to consign your story to the Lake of Fire. However, don't count lines. Your line count and our line count will not be the same. So shoot for around 500 words, and if we like your story, we'll do our dead level best to make it fit into a corset of demon bones and flayed human skin.

Rule Number Two - Content Matters. These are Postcards from Hell, so make your story hellish. No, we're not just interested in stories about demons and devils, or zombies or werewolves or vampires, although all these things are nice. Hell has many layers, each one unique, and several are often mistaken for real life. So hell might be a child's closet or the trunk of a car or the muddy bank of a river in India. But keep in mind that we have a sense of humor around here. The most interesting person in Paradise Lost was The Boss. If we couldn't laugh, this really would be hell. We're not especially looking for funny stories, but if your story makes us chuckle, we won't immediately toss it in the Lake of Fire. Senseless violence and gratuitous gore may be therapeutic, but they do not a story make. Because the postcards will be delivered by the US Postal Service, any profanity you include in your story will be Beetle Bailey'd or asterisked. We're not scared of much, but them Postal Inspectors are some bad m****r f*****s. And for God's sake, no pornography (heh, we love that joke).

Rule Number Three - Genre Matters. If you must assign Postcards from Hell a genre, it is horror, but we editors from hell have a broad interpretation of horror, and we are not easy to frighten. We laughed through most of Peter Straub's Ghost Story. Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House made us all nostalgic for our former existence. If the movie The Ring scared the pants off you, pull your pants up because we fell asleep an hour ago. Don't even talk to us about The Blair Witch Project or we'll consign your story to the Lake of Fire. Your job is to give us the creeps in ~500 words. Do that and you'll earn your pitchfork.

Rule Number Four - Contract Matters. If we accept your story for publication in Postcards from Hell, you will be paid a flat fee of $50 USD. That's around 10 cents per word. For this, your story will be published and mailed or emailed to our subscribers. We ask for both print and electronic publication rights for one year from date of publication. Postcards from Hell - the First Thirteen is an experiment, a pilot program to test the response of readers and their willingness to purchase subscriptions. The main thing is, if we agree to publish your story, it's because we think it deserves to be read and applauded and maybe optioned for a movie. So it will be published, one way or another. In any case, you will be paid a professional rate for it, and after a year, all rights return to you.

Rule Number Five - Format Matters. For your story to be considered for publication in Postcards from Hell, it must first pass our three-headed Golden Retriever - Lucky, Guardian of our Electronic Domain.

• We only accept electronic submissions, so you must send your story to editor[dot]fromhell[at]gmail[dot]com (if this makes no sense to you, ask someone with sense to explain it).


• You must format your email subject thusly: "Submission - story title".


• You must include your name, address, email address and word count.
  
• You must place your story within the body of the email. If you send it as an attachment, your entire email will be consigned to the Lake of Fire unshriven and unread (unless you're really famous - we just love celebrities in hell). We are not interested in reading your biography, no matter how cleverly worded. Just send your story in the body of the email. We like bodies. We like to see what's inside them. We aren't so much interested in what's attached to them.

Axioms to Live By

Postcards from Hell - The First Thirteen is a limited run edition. The submission period is also limited. The doors of hell yawn wide today, but when we have thirteen publishable stories, it closes - hopefully not forever.

The first postcard goes out August 4, 2007. The last one on the Saturday before Halloween. So send your stories now. Time's a-wasting.

Due to the expected volume of submissions, you are not likely to receive a detailed response unless we have suggestions for a rewrite. If we decide not to use your story, you will probably receive an email that says, "Your story has been consigned to the Lake of Fire. Have a nice day." Don't take it personally. We're not nice people or we wouldn't be here.

Do not argue with the editor. He's from hell. He may look like a chihuahua, but he'll eat you for lunch and spit out your bones. If your story is rejected, just walk away.

Reprints are not ok (unless you're really famous, see note above).

Simultaneous submissions are ok, as long as you confess to it beforehand.

Multiple submissions are not ok. Wait until you hear from us before sending another story.

Ok. That's about it. I am Minion. I have spoken. Now start writing, maggots.

Feed the Hunger

I told you the other day what I'm seeing too much of - serial killers. This includes thrill killers and angry strangers, and any murder that happens for no other reason than murder's, like, really scary, Scoob. And cannibalism - seeing lots of cannibalism, a trend I blame on the Food Network.

What I'm not getting are what I expected I'd get too much of. I'm not getting ghost stories, vampire stories, werewolf stories - all the traditional and untraditional beasties and boogums. I've gotten a couple of zombie stories, but they're rather straightforward.

I'm not getting any space/sci-fi horror. Or fantasy horror. None of the cross-genre stuff. I've got a couple of historical horrors, which I appreciate. A handful of detective horrors, which are difficult to pull off in 500 words or less. No "Western" horror.

Sombody write me a vampire gunslinger story!

Most of the stories are set in modern American/European urban/suburban society. I'd like to see more rural stories. I'd like to see more exotic locales. Take us to Jamaica, to Africa, to China. To the moon. To Mars. To the outer rim.

Somebody write me a ghost of the tsunami story!

Take us to 1960, to 1860, to 1060. Take us to 2060 or 3060.

Somebody write me a hippy werewolf story!

That's what I'm hungry for.

Time is Running Out, Submit Today!

Ok, you've waited long enough, I've waited long enough. I've got several good stories still in my file awaiting further consideration. Some time tomorrow I'll be announcing the next story accepted for publication, which leaves just four remaining slots.

So I'm putting a hard deadline on this. The submission period is closing June 6. I won't be accepting any stories after 11:59:59 PM CST June 6, and I'll be picking the last four stories from the survivors of my sometimes brutal editorial process. These will be announced no later than June 13.

So if you have stories that you've been waiting to send, send them now. Or sometime in the next 7 days.

If in the recent past you sent me more than one story at a time because you didn't read the guidelines (you know who you are), please be aware that I deleted your stories unread (because I'm a total asshole) and if you want your stories to be considered for Postcards from Hell, pick the best one and send it and wait for me to reject it before sending the next one and wait for that one to be rejected before sending the next one.

We're Back!

If you want to stop us, you have to aim for the head!

Like many current current ARM mortgage holders, when we published Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen last year, we ended up upside-down on our investment. Even in hell, the credit crunch has everbody's bollocks in a vice. The Boss has agreed to stick a few more bucks into this money pit, but on the condition that we try and save a few trees this time around. The Boss likes trees, you see. You may recall, he made his first appearance in a tree to a trollop named Eve.

So the first change is that we are now publishing stories electronically, at this website. Which means you get to read the stories for free! No more paper postcards, no more expensive subscriptions. Free is good, right? Everbody likes free. And this way, you get addicted to our postcard tales, and that's when we tighten the zip-tie around your... well, all in good time, my dears.

Second, we're expanding our genre list to include science fiction and fantasy as well as horror. But really, we're open to pretty much any genre as long as it has some element of horror, science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, or surrealism. See the revised guidelines for more. In the future we'll begin publishing Postcards from Hell, Postcards from The Woody End, and Postcards from Uranus.

Third, we've lowered how much we pay to 5-cents per word. That's still a professional rate, so stop bitching.

But here's the deal. If you like the stories you read here and you want to see them continue, we need you to chip in. The Boss is only going to put so much money into this thing before he consigns us all to the Lake of Fire. Our goal here is to publish at least one story a week. He gave us enough money to get us through the first few months, but the rest is up to you.

There are three ways you can help:

First, you can donate. Donating is easy. There's a new Donate button over on the left. Click it. Make a donation. Anything you can spare. Guess what. Your donation is tax-deductible. No, seriously. The Boss managed to finagle 501(c)(3) status from the IRS. Hell, we're up to our ears in lawyers and former IRS agents around here and most of them have absolutely nothing to do, so they called in a few favors for us. We're officially a charitable non-profit. Go figure. So any money you donate to the cause you can write off your taxes. Sweet!

Second, you can purchase Postcards products. Pretty soon there'll be an anthology of the stories from Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen available. Buy a copy for your mother or sweetheart. They'll hate you for it.

Third, you can click. This is the easiest and cheapest way to keep us publishing. Every time you click one of our advertisers' links, we get a few pennies. If everybody who visits this site would click one link, we'd be pretty close to on our way.

There's a status block on the left that lets you know our current financial crisis. It's always a crisis around here, but sometimes it's desperate and sometimes it merely sucks. Keep an eye on it and when things look dire, don't be a scrooge or we'll have to close our doors.

Small Press Month

March is Small Press Month (or so I've been told). So why not help out an old altar boy and make a tax deductible donation today, hmmm?

Lost in Transit

Rene S of Durham, your special bonus postcard was returned marked "Insufficient Address" and my email to you bounced.

If you want your subscription delivered, please email me and let me know where to send it.

Arguments are Down the Hall, This is Abuse

Nick Mamatas, editor of Clarkesworld magazine, has a policy of banning authors who argue with his rejections. Me, I just throw them in the Lake of Fire. But Nick posts some correspondence from said sitting ducks/barrel fish here, here and here.

And they call me the editor from hell. How to pass a drug test for a job,
you can read here

I have but one thing to say to the shambling horde, when you send a story to Clarkesworld, or Postcards, or anywhere else, remember that it isn't called a submission for nothing. M'kay?

Meanwhile, go read this story for a lesson in how to match a submission to a market.

And then there were 10

I'm pleased to welcome two new residents to the black pit of despair.

Sherry Decker introduces us to an upstairs neighbor in "R.D.J". Sherry won First Place in the North Texas Professional Writers Assn. fiction contest, Honorable Mention in Writers of the Future, Finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference fiction contest, and is the author of “Hook House & Other Horrors” (Silver Lake Pub.) her first collection. Her short stories have been published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Cemetery Dance, Black Gate, City Slab, Dark Wisdom, Black October and Space & Time. Like almost everyone else, she is writing a novel.

Nick Mamatas takes us for a ride in "One Thumb Up." Nick is the author of the novel of neighborhood nuclear proliferation for children, Under My Roof, which the San Diego Union-Tribune recently declared a contender for the title of "the great American suburban novel." His early work includes the Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground, which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards, and was recently made available online under a Creative Commons license at http://www.moveunderground.org/ . He lives near, but not in, Boston MA and has an underdeveloped website at www.mamatas.com.

That leaves 10 slots on the menu. The pitiless iron doors of hell still yawn wide.


Art Order:

A bag of body parts. Duffel bag, grocery bag - you decide.
A popcorn tub from hell.

Feel My Pain

Being an editor is never easy, alas. Weep for me. I just rejected a bunch of good stories that have been lingering in my "Read Again" file for a while. Many of these are stories that, if I had more than 13 slots to fill, I'd gladly have published.

Now for the real torture. I still have 13 stories in my Read Again file that I have read again and again. But there are only nine slots remaining. All of these 13 stories are powerful stories, kick you in the butt and the gut stories, wake you up in the middle of the night stories, make you laugh your scorched ass off stories. And I'm going to have to reject some of them. And while I'm deliberating, I'm sure more really good stories are going to come in.

What these means for you, dear writer, is that time is getting short. I'm going to pick one of these thirteen stories today, which means that there will only be eight story slots left. If you have a story that you've been hanging onto, waiting for whatever, you'd better go ahead and send it now. The window of opportunity is closing.

What this means for you, dear reader, is that the quality of the stories in Postcards from Hell: The First Thirteen is going to be beyond what you could reasonably expect to receive for the tiny sum of $6.66. They are already beyond what I expected to receive. So be sure to purchase a subscription, because you really, really don't want to miss these stories. I expect this brief run to become a legendary event in the annals of genre publishing.

I shit you not.

And what this means for your dear editor is that he has the torturous pleasure of having to sift through some really first rate stories to choose the best of the best of the best. He couldn't be happier. An editor's dream come true.

Update:

As promised, the fifth story in the series has now been accepted for publication - "The Cabinet of Dr. Calamari." German expressionism as performed by the Batley Townswomen's Guild.

We are pleased to welcome its author, Andrew Ferguson, to our little corner of the nether regions. Andrew lives with his wife and daughter in Fife, Scotland, a backwoodsy kind of place where the coal dust in the water means the folks don't think so straight any more. He has published a variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry in various places in the UK and US, most recently in On Our Way to Battle (Carnyx Press) and The Shantytown Anomaly. Further details about him can be found in the 'Comrades' section at www.writers-bloc.org.uk.

Postcards from Hell

What kind of stories do we want for Postcards from Hell?

These are Postcards from Hell, so make your story hellish. No, we're not just interested in stories about demons and devils, or zombies or werewolves or vampires, although all these things are nice. Hell has many layers, each one unique, and several are often mistaken for real life. So hell might be a child's closet or the trunk of a car or the muddy bank of a river in India. But keep in mind that we have a sense of humor around here. The most interesting person in Paradise Lost was The Boss. If we couldn't laugh, this really would be hell. We're not especially looking for funny stories, but if your story makes us chuckle, we won't immediately toss it in the Lake of Fire. Senseless violence and gratuitous gore may be therapeutic, but they do not a story make.

Postcards from Hell is horror fiction, but we editors from hell have a broad interpretation of horror, and we are not easy to frighten. We laughed through most of Peter Straub's Ghost Story. Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House made us all nostalgic for our former existence. If the movie The Ring scared the pants off you, pull your pants up because we fell asleep an hour ago. Don't even talk to us about The Blair Witch Project or we'll consign your story to the Lake of Fire. Your job is to give us the creeps in ~500 words. Do that and you'll earn your pitchfork.

Subscription Drive from Hell

Yeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrrg!

Thanks to everyone who has subscribed so far. We are 1/4 of the way to Postcards from Hell: The First 13 paying for itself.

Now, it's on to Iowa!

Communication is the Key to a Successful Relationship

If you are a subscriber and you did not receive a postcard with the story Dark Wine, please let me know as soon as possible.

Vol.3 - Better Nate than Lever

Some people say we have a bad attitude. Those people are stupid. We're just going through our blue-green period.

You know the hell of moving day? Imagine that day every day and you'll know why we're a bit behind. If you've sent us a story and haven't heard back, it's because we haven't read it. Never fear, we'll get to it.


Eventually.


Meanwhile, we have four excellent new stories for your reading pleasure, a mix of bizarre fantasy, science-fiction, and horror (with tentacles):


Leviathan's Last Show by Joshua Starr
Submerged by Tirumal Mundargi
Redemption by Fred Warren
Boom Bloom by Colin Meldrum