Tell us a little bit about yourself! Where are you from? What do you do for fun? What might people be surprised to learn about you?

I’m from a third tier city called Cincinnati, famous for being the birthplace of America’s fastest president and sloppiest chili. Now I live in Los Angeles which is the best city on earth except maybe Singapore (if you can forget about the dictatorship).

We’re featuring The Pale. What sparked this story?

The Pale is my second book to feature Jews and magic. While writing the first one, a low magic alt world thing that’s honestly not too bad, I found myself describing the main character in scene one and he was a tiny Goy, so I stopped myself and made myself really ‘think’ about why he couldn’t look like my father or my friends; why can’t he have a schnaz, a topographical forehead, etc. Writing that got me curious about Yiddishkeit, so I dove in, read as much as I could, found some Yiddish classes, and just sort of grooved on that for a while until it came time to write another book.

I—huge shock—played a lot of DnD during COVID and I got wondering, again, why are all these people so Anglo and/Christian? Why couldn’t my cleric or whatever be a Hassid…and then, like all fun projects, shit just got away from me.

Is there a line, image, or moment that you’re particularly proud of?

Many. This was the first novel I wrote where I had to sit back and accept that, cringe as it may be to admit, I’m not bad at this thing. The first of The Pale that made my wife bust up though makes me happy. Yankev is in the jail cell, and who we soon learn is his cousin, best friend, and an invisible demon shows up out of the blue:

Sometimes Yankev felt he could see a faint impression of this demon’s soul, but now, cold and embarrassed and terrified of the monster behind the eyes of his brother, he could see nothing, so he just shouted at the wall. “You come to me now!? After I’ve pissed myself!?”

What do you hope readers take away from this story?

There’s so much to talk about in the world of Jews identity and culture and art. We don’t have to confine ourselves to the conversations everyone is insisting we have 24/7.

How does this fit into your wider body of work?

A few ways. I do some of my best writing when I’m writing two-handers, using the central relationship between two people as the engine for the story, and The Pale is only one amongst many such. It also fits into my greater SCU—Shifman Cinematic Universe. Both intentionally and most of what I write seems to live in the same world.

Why did you choose to publish your fiction on Substack?

My writing was moldering on my hard drive, going nowhere, when my father recommended I check Substack out. For once in my life I actually listened, and I was impressed enough by what I found that I decided to throw my hat in the ring. Sorry if you’ve heard me say this before but a lot of what’s up here isn’t ’macaroni art’, some of the best writing I’ve read in ages is on this platform.

What does your writing process look like?

When I set down to write something long I have a few major tent poles I’m trying to reach but by the time I’ve gotten from tent pole two to three, all bets are off. Typically I’ve got a few characters, a few images, a few conflicts I throw in a box and shake around.

Recommend something you love: a substack writer, a book, a film, a piece of art, anything you like.

Everyone should:

Watch the Three Dragon’s classic, Wheels on Meals.

Watch my favorite show, which I still don’t understand how it got green lit, Board To Death.

Everyone MUST read The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. It’s the best novel there is.

Everyone should read…well follow Serial for Dinner to see all of my Substack recs, but here’s two, because it’s criminal more people aren’t reading then, The Longest Game and What Lives In The Static.

Alex’s work on Substack includes The Pale, Vibes Detective Agency & Serial for Dinner where he promotes other writers of serial fiction through a newsletter and regular live interviews and readings in Live From the First Line.

Tell us about yourself! Where are you from? What do you do for fun? What might people be surprised to learn about you?

I am Chris, and I am a short story author and screenwriter from Cincinnati, Ohio. I’ve been self publishing short horror stories online for about ten years, starting on Reddit’s r/NoSleep horror community.

We’ve featured All You Can Eat & Sender [Null].

What sparked these stories ? Was there a specific image, moment, or question that started it? How do these stories fit into your larger body of work or themes you explore?

All You Can Eat— This story idea came from a joke by comedian John Pinette about being kicked out of an all-you-can-eat buffet after being there for four hours. The wheels turned in my head on how that would be a good setup for a horror story about a family forced to feed a customer who refused to leave. I had been frequenting an Indian buffet near my work, so it became the setting for the story.

Since it was an Indian buffet, I couldn’t use a Judeo-Christian demon for this story. I did some research and settled on a brahmarakshasa as the demon for my story. However, as a middle-aged white dude from Ohio, my biggest goal (and challenge) was figuring out how to tell it while staying authentic and respectful to the culture. Besides the many hours of research, I had an online writing friend who helped me with some of the finer brush strokes.

This story was my first industry sale. After posting it on r/NoSleep, I received a message from an assistant at a production company. The message came on Instagram and sat in my message requests for a couple weeks before I found it. At first I thought it was a scam (I’m Gen X; we were brought up believing everything on the Internet was a scam), but after trading emails from her company email address and taking a Zoom call with her and the company president in the parking lot of a strip mall on my lunch break, I realized it was real. I got to drink from the firehose on learning about industry options and sales. The story was optioned, the option was extended, and finally purchased about a week before the agreement expired.

Is there a line, image, or moment that you’re particularly proud of?

“My mother screamed as the bones in her hand snapped in the creature’s mouth, crunching like fresh carrots.” - I still love this line.

Sender [NULL] — I received a meeting invite from a coworker who ended up putting in their resignation and left the company rather quickly. The invite kept popping up when the meeting approached but every attempt to decline bounced back in error because their account was no longer active. I thought it was a fun setup for a workplace horror story, and here we are.

My goal was to take something familiar -– a workplace meeting invite –– and turn it into a vehicle for something scary. It’s a fun challenge, and it helps when trying to come up with relatable ideas with broad reader understanding.

Basically the same as I answered on a previous question, this fits into my overall process of coming up with horror story ideas that begin with something mundane and familiar. When working on IP for film/TV adaptations, if you have to explain too much, you’ve already lost the attention of the studio exec.

Is there a line, image, or moment that you’re particularly proud of in Sender [NULL]?

“Weird. Server logs show the origin of the invites are internal,” Eugene said, then leaned back slightly. “The calls are coming from inside the house.”

What does your writing process look like? Do you outline, or discover as you write?

I want to outline, I really do. I think outlining would make the creative process easier. However, once I’ve got the premise and my main character locked in, I find myself getting in the character’s headspace and discovering how they would respond to the obstacles I’ve placed in their path. There’s a screenwriting book called The Nutshell Technique that has helped me become more of an outliner, but whenever I get stuck outlining, I find myself jumping in and roleplaying the scenario through my character’s eyes, which is to say, I just start writing.

What are you working on now? Anything readers can look forward to?

I have a story I’ve been workshopping with my manager for quite some time, and we’re looking to take it out as soon as I can properly break the story. I can’t give any details other than it fits the “relatable yet new” criteria I aim for.

What has fiction writing given you that you couldn’t find any other way?

Therapy? Can I say therapy?

Why did you choose Substack for your fiction?

I chose Substack because it gives me more control over what goes out into the world. Having cut my horror teeth writing on Reddit’s NoSleep, it gave me a good understanding on how to be a carnival barker for my own attractions. Still, the grind of growing your audience is a difficult process.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to emerging fiction writers?

Give yourself permission to write something terrible. A finished story can be edited, rewritten and improved. An unfinished story has no kinetic energy.

What should readers experience next?

Substack Writer (two-fer): Travis Brown

Travis Brown

Horror enthusiast. Amateur exorcist. I think humans could fly if we just flapped hard enough.

& Victor Sweetster

Caliginous Cabinet

File it far away.

By Victor Sweetser

Both are NoSleep alumni who churn out amazing work.

Music: Amigo the Devil - his music covers themes of death, heartbreak, and resilience. His songs are either darkly comedic, darkly tragic, or both.

Graphic Novel: Rare Flavours - A story about a Rakshasa with a dream of becoming the next Anthony Bourdain. I read it in one sitting, and afterwards I had to take a walk to process how the story affected me. I can’t recommend this book enough.

Discover Chris Hicks on Substack

Featured stories: All You Can Eat & Sender [NULL]

Tell us a little bit about yourself! Where are you from? What do you do for fun? What might people be surprised to learn about you?

I am from Canada, where I still live to this day despite me itching to move to Italy to get more vitamin D. People might be surprised to learn that English isn’t my native language, although I’ve been speaking it from a very young age. I mostly write for fun, whether it be novels, short stories, or text-based roleplay. I also have a multitude of very cozy hobbies like embroidery, knitting (which I’m terrible at), collecting antiques, and doing graphic design (as it is my job).

We’re featuring The Waltz You Saved For Me. Tell us a little about the inspiration behind The Waltz and what you were hoping to explore with the story.

The Waltz’s concept was sparked by a writing prompt. The prompt was to write a story inspired by a song. Mine was Al Bowlly’s ‘The Waltz You Saved For Me’, and it became the title of the piece. I challenged myself to write in second person narration, and I feel like I was able to pull it off quite fine for my first time. The theme of the story is about ignoring the red flags when we ache to belong, to be seen, and loved, especially after a period of hardship (represented here by the Great War). The story is quite dark, but I feel like it forces the reader to interrogate their own relationship with belonging and finding love. This is what I aim to do in every piece I write: to force people to reflect on their own morality or ideological stance. Hopefully, I was able to do that with this piece.

What does your writing process look like?

I am mostly a plotter. I do plan the story before writing it, but I let the characters bring me out of my outline, if it works organically. I write a lot since I wake up very early (sometimes 3 a.m.) because of severe insomnia, which I take advantage of. I’m currently working on a novel I want to serialize on Substack. It’s magical realism with a dark academia twist. Hopefully, I can start posting it this summer. As for a piece of advice, I would say: always aim to have your readers question something – their morality, stance, relationship with the theme. Art is meant to be subversive and to force introspection. I feel like if writers aim to do that, then they will have written with purpose, not only for entertainment.

What can you recommend to our community?

My favorite books are Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, as well as All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. If you like period pieces or gothic tales, these two books are absolutely iconic and must-reads. I like to think they taught me how to write and find my own voice.

Discover CC Harlow on Substack

Featured story: The Waltz You Saved for me

Tell us about yourself! Where are you from? What do you do for fun? What might people be surprised to learn about you?

My name is Lou Mindar and I write primarily literary and historical fiction, although I have branched out recently to write a western under a pen name. I’m originally from Aurora, Illinois, near Chicago, and I currently split my time between Wisconsin and Tennessee.

I’ve always been drawn to writing. It tends to be how I best interact with the world and how I best organize all the thoughts and ideas zipping around in my head. However, I didn’t get serious about writing until after I was diagnosed with cancer in 2003. I promised myself that if I survived the cancer, I would do something (I wasn’t sure what) with whatever writing talent I had. The good news is, I survived, and then I went on a journey to figure out what to do with my desire to write.

I started out by paying a former newspaper reporter to read a few pieces of fiction I wrote and have him critique them. From him, I learned that I was not very good. That spurred me to join a writing program at Middle Tennessee State University. There, I was paired with a writer named Kevin Brown who taught me the basics and encouraged me to learn more. I then attended the University of Central Florida where I earned an MFA with an emphasis in fiction,

At the moment, I’ve published a total of six books, with a couple more coming out later this year.

We’ve featured Forever Man.

What sparked this story ? Was there a specific image, moment, or question that started it?

Forever Man started out as a thought experiment. Actually, that makes it sound more formal than it really was. I was just thinking about what life would be like if you could live forever. Initially, I thought of immortality as a very positive thing, almost like a superpower. But the more I thought about it, the darker my thoughts turned.

On the surface, living forever might seem like a blessing, but when I began to really think it through, I realized it would be as much, if not more, of a curse than a blessing. You have to watch your loved ones, your friends, everyone you’ve ever known, die while your life goes on. That would lead you to avoid close relationships, not to mention that society, if they realized you couldn’t die, would hound you, making your life miserable.

With all this in mind, I thought through what it would be like to live from 1787 until the present. Initially, I wanted my main character, Benjamin Wilson, to be involved in some of history’s biggest events. But the more I worked with that idea, the more it began to feel like a poor imitation of Forrest Gump. I didn’t want that. I wanted something more serious and realistic.

I enjoy playing with the concept of time. My novel The Ones That Got Away was a time travel story. My most recent novel, The Walls Come Tumbling Down, dealt with reincarnation and remembering past lives. I’m not a sci-fi writer and my books are not sci-fi books, but the issues I dealt with in them were somewhat similar to issues often associated with science fiction. Forever Man is another way of looking at time through a different lens than we usually view it through.

What does your writing process look like? Do you outline, or discover as you write?

I normally outline a book before diving in with both feet. I’ll normally write a 10,000-15,000 word mini-story that serves as the book’s outline. From that, I’ll start to build the novel, expanding what I covered in the outline, and usually adding to the story as I become better acquainted with the characters.

What are you working on now? Anything readers can look forward to?

I’m currently working on final revisions of a collection of novellas, as well as a book of short stories. This project started out as a single book. I had intended on publishing a collection of both novellas and short stories. But when I finally pulled all the pieces together, I realized I had enough material for two books. So, the novellas got their own collection, as did the short stories. Promised Land: Novellas will be released in late April or early May. The short stories aren’t quite as far along, so they likely won’t be published until the end of June.

I also plan on publishing the second book in the McNally Ranch series that I’m writing under the pen name Austin Brandt later this year. The first book in that series, The Punta Rassa Trail, was published last month.

Why did you choose Substack for your fiction?

Before I joined Substack in October 2025, I wrote occasional blog posts, but I didn’t have an online home for my fiction. Substack isn’t the perfect place for serialized fiction and short stories, but as best as I can tell, it’s the best place on the internet. My goal since joining Substack has been to showcase my writing and share some behind the scenes articles about my writing life.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to emerging fiction writers?

If I had one piece of advice for emerging fiction writers it would be to follow your own path, don’t get caught up in comparing yourself to other writers, and don’t give up. Actually, I guess that’s three pieces of advice, but they come in a single package.

What should readers experience next?

One of my favorite follows on Substack is George Saunders, the author of several great books, including the Tenth of December, Lincoln in the Bardo, and his latest novel, Vigil. George is the consummate teacher (he’s a professor in the writing program at Syracuse University), and he shares his knowledge and passions with his subscribers.

A TV show that I absolutely loved was Deadwood, on HBO. The show is 20+ years old now, but it still holds up. I recently watched the entire series again and really enjoyed it. It’s gritty and filthy and violent, and it’s great storytelling.

I’m also really enjoying The Pitt right now. Unfortunately, it’s being released one episode at a time (like in the dark ages), but it’s terrific.

Discover Lou Mindar on Substack

Featured stories: Forever Man

Tell us about yourself! Where are you from? What do you do for fun? What might people be surprised to learn about you?

I’m a poet and storyteller with a soft spot for folklore, fairies and the magic that slips into the mundane everyday life when one isn’t looking. I currently live in Illinois USA with my husband and sons but I am the daughter of two lands.

I spent a season of my life in England which only deepened my love for old stories and misty landscapes. My great grandparents were Scottish immigrants, so that pull towards Scotland, its history and myths were woven into all the stories of my youth. When I write about the veil, the moors and the fairfolk it always feels like a kind of homecoming in my work.

When I’m not writing I’m usually making something, whether that’s art, food, or crafts. I’m also involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, where I get to blend history, storytelling and a bit of swordplay into one wonderfully strange and joyful space. And when I want to blow off steam, I crack open a Tab, play Robotron and listen to some Duran Duran…Just messin that’s a quote from Ready Player One. I do enjoy unwinding with a good video game though and watching movies.

People might be surprised to learn that I’m also a Dungeon Master for Tabletop RPGs and I build tabletop scenery for my games. I love crafting tiny worlds you can play with, places where stories unfold in real time. I’ve even taken that into competitions, earning first place in one build off and second in another, which was honestly a lot of fun.

We’ve featured What Unseelie Keep.

How has your poetry collection evolved as you’ve been writing it?

The work in question can currently be found as separate poems posted on Substack. Behind the scenes I am building a poetry collection and it’s gone through a bit of transformation as I’ve written it. It originally began as two separate books, one for the Seelie and one for the Unseelie but I found I didn’t want to separate them so cleanly. The balance between the two felt too important.

Instead I’ve started structuring the collection around the seasons. Within each season, there’s that same blend of the bright whimsical pieces that explore the everyday wonder of living alongside the fair folk and then the quieter shift into the Unseelie poems which tend to carry a darker edge. Those often take the form of warnings or what I like to think of as slightly unsettling lullabies.

What were you exploring or working through in these pieces? What questions were you asking?

Most of my poems begin with a small moment or image, something half seen or just out of reach. A fairy in the garden, a feeling that you are not alone on a quiet path, the sense that something simple might not be as simple as it looks. I follow that thread and let the poem unfold from there.

In writing this collection, I keep coming back to the idea that the fair folk are not purely kind or cruel, they just are. The whimsy and the warning belong together. The beauty is real but so is the danger and I like letting both exist side by side without forcing them into neat categories.

Is there a line, image, or moment that you’re particularly proud of?

There are always lines or moments that settle in and feel right in a way that’s hard to explain, especially in the lullaby style pieces where something soft is carrying something a little more unsettling underneath. Those tend to stay with me the longest.

What do you hope readers take away from this story?

I hope readers come away with a sense of quiet wonder but also a bit of awareness. That feeling that maybe you shouldn’t follow every flickering light no matter how ‘ooh shiny’ it is, or that not every invitation is meant to be accepted even if it’s beautiful.

How does this story fit into your larger body of work or themes you explore?

This collection sits alongside my broader work where I explore both light and shadow. Under my Verdant Butterfly voice, I tend toward the whimsical and wonder filled while under my Sable Butterfly work I have darker themes. I’ve recently been published in two community anthologies, ‘The First Indulgence’ that came out in December of 2025 and ‘Eye See You’ releasing in late April 2026. My pieces in both of these anthologies live firmly in that darker space. My poetry collection will be bringing those two sides together in a way that feels much more complete.

All of the artwork in the book will also be my own which makes the whole project very personal as I craft a small world for the reader to step into.

Can you tell us about your experience on Substack?

My time on Substack has honestly been one of the loveliest surprises in my writing journey. I came in thinking I’d simply share a few poems here and there and instead found a whole community of thoughtful creative people who are genuinely cheering one another on. It’s a rare sort of space and I don’t take it for granted.

I’m also part of the Indie Ink Fund which is a collaboration effort built around supporting writers and artists through shared projects and anthologies. It’s very much rooted in the idea that creativity doesn’t have to be a solitary thing, we can build something meaningful together and make sure people feel seen along the way.

For National Poetry Month I’ve been running a series of prompts, daily poems and cheeky poetry lessons, nothing too heavy, just enough to help people get started and feel a bit more confident putting words on the page. The focus has really been on showing up and giving it a go.

Recommend something you love: a substack writer, a book, a film, a piece of art, anything you like.

Two writers on Substack I’d happily recommend, Daniel Coats and his wonderfully fun serial The Water Thief, along with A.M. Bowman’s sci-fi mini series The Shift. Both are well worth a look.

Discover Verdant Butterfly on Substack!

Featured Poem: What Unseelie Keep

"I write from the places I'm most reluctant to examine myself."

That's how Abhishek Banerjee describes his process, and it shows. His fiction sits in the uncomfortable gap between what people feel and what they're willing to name.

We're glad to have him in this edition of Behind the Story.

Tell us about yourself! Where are you from? What do you do for fun? What might people be surprised to learn about you?

I’m Abhishek Banerjee. I’m from Delhi, India, and I’ve been writing since I was twelve. In diaries, mostly. Not because someone encouraged it or because I had some early sense of destiny. I had nowhere else to put what I felt, and the world didn’t seem particularly interested in receiving it any other way.

That hasn’t changed much.

I write fiction on Substack now, but the root is still those diary pages. I’m a deeply internal person. I absorb things. News, loss, other people’s pain, things happening on the other side of the world that have no direct connection to my life but sit in my chest for weeks anyway. I’ve also known grief very closely and personally, the kind that doesn’t become a lesson. It just becomes part of how you see everything from that point on.

For fun? I read obsessively. I run book club discussions, which is really just finding people willing to argue about fiction with me. I go to the gym most mornings. And I write, always, because that is not a hobby for me. It never was.

What might surprise people is that I have 169 subscribers. I know that number. I’m genuinely, quietly grateful for each of those 169 people in a way that has nothing to do with growth or reach. But I didn’t start writing for them and I don’t write for them now. I write because I have no honest alternative. If that number never moves, I’ll still be here on a Tuesday night finishing something I’m not sure anyone wants to read, because I need to write it.

I believe in God, but privately, not performatively. I’ve never been afraid of the darker or greyer parts of myself on the page. My intent is known. That’s always been enough for me.

We’ve featured both The Forgetting Place and The Development.

What sparked these stories? Was there a specific image, moment, or question that started them?

The Forgetting Place came from something I know in my body, not just my mind. The exhaustion of memory. Not the romantic, elegiac kind. The grinding kind where things that happened years ago still feel like they happened this morning and you start to seriously wonder what it would feel like to just stop. To not carry it anymore.

The story gave that feeling a location or a map. A hill town in Uttarakhand, too remote to be found easily, water that slowly dissolves what you remember, a man broken enough to find that seductive rather than terrifying. I didn’t have to imagine that man from scratch.

The Development was written for a micro fiction challenge set in a world where Purgatory exists in the suburbs. What I was actually writing about was the damnation inside ordinary life. The acceptable losses. The convenient beliefs. The love you called sufficient because admitting otherwise would have cost too much. Elena’s looping street, her dog that never ages, the sprinklers running at 3 AM. None of that is punishment from outside. It’s the architecture of what she already chose and refused to examine.

What were you exploring or working through in these pieces? What questions were you asking?

Both stories are about memory and accountability and how desperately we want to be released from both.

In The Forgetting Place, the real horror isn’t the pharmaceutical company or the contaminated water. It’s how quickly the narrator starts to prefer the erasure. That preference is the most uncomfortable thing in the story, and the most true, because I think most people have felt some version of it. The wish to just put down the weight of who you were and walk away lighter.

In The Development, Elena isn’t being punished for what she did. She’s being punished for what she chose to believe about the life she built. That felt like an important distinction to me. We’re most complicit not in our worst moments but in our quiet ones, when something painful is right in front of us and we decide to look away.

I write from the places I’m most reluctant to examine myself. It’s not bravery. It’s just the only kind of writing that feels worth the time.

Is there a line or moment you are particularly proud of?

From The Development: “She is not being punished for what she did. She is being punished for what she chose to believe about the life she built here, the acceptable losses, the negotiated silences, the love she called sufficient.”

That sentence happened and I knew the story was finished. In under 300 words, it had to hold the entire moral weight of the piece. I think it does. And I think it’ll land differently for different readers depending on what they themselves have chosen to believe about their own lives.

From The Forgetting Place, the narrator’s journal entry written to his own future amnesiac self is where the story turns from personal to something larger. “If we all forget, they win. And the Forgetting Place won’t be a town anymore. It’ll be the whole world.” That escalation felt earned because the intimacy came first.

What do you hope readers take away from these stories?

Not comfort. I’m not in the business of comfort.

I want that specific, slightly unsettling feeling of recognition. Reading something and thinking: I’ve never seen this written down before, but I’ve lived with it. The weight of a life you’ve quietly settled for. The relief you feel, and then hate yourself for feeling, when you stop remembering something that hurt you.

If someone closes either of these stories feeling slightly implicated in themselves, in their own silences, in their own negotiated blindness, then the story did exactly what it was meant to do.

How do these fit into your larger body of work?

I keep coming back to the same territory. The interior life of ordinary people under quiet, extraordinary pressure. The catastrophes that never make it into conversation. Quiet Lives, my Substack, exists entirely for that, standalone fiction about human emotion and all the things people feel but aren’t normally willing to name out loud. These two stories belong there completely, even when one of them is set in Purgatory. The metaphysics change. The emotional space or design doesn’t.

What does your writing process look like? Do you outline, or discover as you write?

I’ve been writing in diaries since I was twelve. That never stopped. It just changed shape.

Fiction, for me, is still diary writing at its core. I don’t begin with plot or structure. I begin with pressure. A feeling I can’t resolve, a question I keep circling, something that refuses to leave. The structure comes later, almost as scaffolding for the emotion rather than the other way around.

I rewrote a lot, not to improve things technically but to find what the story was actually trying to say. The first draft is almost always me figuring out the real subject. The revision is where I have to face it.

What are you working on now? Anything readers can look forward to?

Several things at once, because I find it hard to stay in one emotional register for too long. The Dendrochronology of Us, a flash serial set in a small town in Japan, about love across a twenty year age gap, using tree ring dating as a metaphor for a relationship’s thin and wide years. My political fiction series forty one and the maintenance of absence, which lost me some subscribers and got me the readers I actually wanted. That felt like an honest trade.

What has fiction writing given you that you couldn’t find any other way?

A place to put the things that have no place.

I absorb grief in a way that can become unmanageable. My own and what I see in the world. I’ve known loss closely enough to know it doesn’t resolve into wisdom on any reliable schedule. Writing hasn’t fixed any of that. But it has made it liveable. There’s a difference between surviving something and having somewhere to put it. Writing is where I put it. That’s not a small thing. For me it’s been everything.

Why did you choose Substack for your fiction?

I didn’t choose it strategically. I stumbled in through the most beautiful person Kritika whom I am married to, in August 2025, with nothing planned and no expectations. But I stayed because Substack gives fiction writers something genuinely rare. Readers who chose to be there. No algorithm deciding who sees what. If someone reads your story, they came for it. That changes the quality of the silence between a writer and a reader. It starts to feel something like trust.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to emerging fiction writers?

Write the story only you could write. Not the one you think will land well. Not the one that fits what’s working right now. The one that makes you slightly uneasy because it’s too specific, too interior, too uncomfortably yours. True to your heart!

The writers who have stayed with me are the ones who seemed incapable of writing any other way. That incapability is not a flaw. That’s the entire point.

What can you recommend to our community?

Read Fredrik Backman, but in sequence and without rushing. Beartown is the wound that doesn’t close, Backman with the sentimentality scraped away, his most unforgiving and literary work. Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer is eighty pages of surgery. Read it in one sitting and don’t make plans afterward. Anxious People is structurally unhinged in the best way, the book where he seems to be genuinely enjoying himself, which somehow makes it the one that hits hardest.

On Substack, find the writers who write like they have no choice. You can always feel the difference between someone writing for an audience and someone writing because not writing is worse. Follow the second kind. They’re the ones who’ll stay with you.

My favourites ones - Bradley Ramsey, Mina Howell, Maryellen Brady, Rafa Joseph, Storm Whisperer and Asuka Hotaru to name a few.

Discover Abhishek Banerjee on Substack.

Featured stories: The Forgetting Place & The Development.

Ellis Elms doesn’t write fiction. He designs psychological traps and frames them as stories. What follows is a rare glimpse into how one of FicStack’s most quietly unsettling voices thinks about craft, complicity and the reader who never sees it coming.

Tell us about yourself! Where are you from? What do you do for fun? What might people be surprised to learn about you?

Ellis Elms is a pen name. I’d rather keep the rest vague. Deeper into the interview, it would become clearer as to why.

I’ve spent most of my adult life building businesses. “Making money for strangers,” as I like to say. Different countries, different languages. I stopped counting the languages at some point. It stopped being impressive and started being just normal for me. English is my third language, by the way.

Fun fact: I read things that irritate me. The news, for example, haha. I also love reading an occasional pointless internet argument. Gives me inspiration, I have to admit that.

What might truly surprise people is that I arrived at fiction through neuromarketing. I dedicated years to understanding how framing and word placement subconsciously influence feelings. I kept applying these insights to sentences, which gradually turned into stories. I’m not entirely sure I write fiction; instead, I see myself as designing small psychological traps and framing them as short stories.

We’ve featured both Flagged as 97% AI and One Person, One Vote, One Problem.

What sparked these stories? Was there a specific image, moment, or question that started them?

“Flagged” started with screenshots someone posted online.

The Philippine Constitution checked through an AI detector — 97% AI.

Then, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (published in 1818, mind you).

100% AI. And at the bottom of both results, a button: “Humanize Text.” Same company. I didn’t invent anything. I just followed it forward to see where it ended, which turned out to be Brandon Choi, working for $34,000 a year at the company that destroyed his thesis.

“One Person, One Vote” had a longer fuse. Years ago, one of my sons came home from school and announced that democracy was a flawed model. I asked why. He said, “An idiot’s vote counts the same as a smart person’s vote,” and then he paused. For emphasis, I think. “And there are far more idiots.”

I agreed immediately, as it made perfect sense. That line sat with me for years. Amber Sutton is what finally grew around it. She’s not the idiot in the story. She just finds out she’s closer to one than she thought.

What were you exploring or working through in these pieces? What questions were you asking? What do you hope readers take away from these stories?

What I hope readers feel, not take away, is complicity. Brandon pays $49.99 to the company, ruining him. Amber votes to destroy the mirror because she hates what it showed her. By the time you realize you’re inside the trap, you’ve already helped build it.

What does your writing process look like? Do you outline, or discover as you write?

It all starts with an idea. Specifically, with knowing two things: the message and the ending. How it begins and how it lands. The middle is construction — I call it the hook, the line, and the sinker. The hook is the title, the opening, something that pulls you in. The line is where the readers start aligning with the characters without realizing what they’re walking into. The sinker is when it flips. By the time it does, you’re already in the water.

The ending occasionally changes. Rare, but it happens.

What are you working on now? Anything readers can look forward to?

Right now, I’m working on too many things simultaneously, which I wouldn’t recommend. Call Me Moby is a retelling of Moby-Dick from the whale’s perspective — that one lives on Substack as a serial. The Artificial Quill and Subscribers Only are my two full-sized debut novels, both in the final polishing stages. I’ve also started Canceled—my third novel— and the first chapter is sitting in a competition right now; more for breathing space than any real expectation of winning. I never win anything. Too uncomfortable, probably. But this year should be a good one for readers who like my prose. At least three books are coming. Maybe four, if enough people convince me to publish Call Me Moby as a book, too.

What has fiction writing given you that you couldn’t find any other way?

Fiction gave me validation — and I mean that in the least embarrassing way possible. I’ve outgrown the kind that needs external confirmation. What I haven’t outgrown is imposter syndrome. It arrived the day I finished my first full manuscript and hasn’t left since. That quiet, stupid voice: you have to be born a writer. You don’t have an MFA, so you’re not the real thing. Honestly? Nobody cares about the MFA anymore. That ship sailed when self-published authors started hitting bestseller lists and getting adapted. The credential stopped being the gate.

Why did you choose Substack for your fiction?

Substack is a testing ground. I test writing, range, and topics that will eventually become books — so far, there’s a list of 10 planned. Most people here are chasing subscriber counts. I’m not. I learned from business that ten people who genuinely love your product are worth more than a hundred who picked it up and put it back down. I’m after the ten. Someone subscribes — fine. Someone unsubscribes — also fine. Uncomfortable Fiction was never going to have the fanbase of a gay dragon who sexually abuses humans. I made my peace with that early.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to emerging fiction writers?

One piece of advice, offered with full awareness that I’m still a speck of dust in the literary world: never accept critique from people you wouldn’t take advice from. Sit with that for a moment.

What should readers experience next?

Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday. It’s a non-fic, which might come as a surprise, but then it shouldn’t if you’ve read the interview carefully, not skimmed through it. But the title speaks for itself. If people would genuinely understand the message, we’d all live in a better world right now.

Discover Ellis Elms on Substack.

Featured stories: Flagged as 97% AI & One Person, One Vote, One Problem.

FicStack.com is an opt-in, searchable index of fiction and poetry newsletters on Substack. Authors submit their publications, and we organise their posts so you can actually find something you want to read. To date we have over 37,000 posts listed, across fiction and poetry.

To submit your publication for indexing, click HERE.

This entire project has been a labour of love, from building FicStack.com itself, to finding other souls along the journey to bring the curation arm of the project into being.

Whether through lack of interest on Substack, or its algorithm, engagement numbers have dropped dramatically over these past 6 months.

Active curator numbers have dropped, twice pushing us to try to find replacements, which has proved difficult.

I have made the difficult decision to pause FicStack curation posts for the time being.

In addition, the public side of the FicStack Discord will also be shuttered. There is very little activity and interaction on the server.

FicStack.com will remain running.

I would like to thank all curators and their team leaders for their work. Also, to all who have interacted with the curation posts, thank you.

I hope you understand my decision.

— Gary

We have seven pieces this week, and no two are cut from the same cloth. Wendy’s discovered a couple of pieces shaped by Prompt Response Lives - a community where people show up and create in real time, and the energy just carries through. Melina came back from vacation needing something that would make her laugh, something cosy, and she found it. I’ve been drawn to stories where the horror lives quietly, in precision: the stitched smile that wasn’t earned, the synchronized staff, the loop that decays one step at a time.

They’re all different. But they’re all worth your time. If any of these land for you, like, restack, follow the author. That's how these writers know they've reached someone. That's how they keep going.

Wendy Russell, Sass&Sage

Both of this week’s selections come from the writers behind Prompt Response Lives — a brilliant community project where people show up, create in real time, and share the messier, more immediate side of storytelling. While the pieces featured here are from their own separate projects, it’s been a joy to see how that same energy carries through into their longer-form work.

• “Part 1” in The Wheel, by Andrew Thomas. A dad, a promise he can’t afford to break, and a summer fair that feels just a little too still. There’s something quietly unsettling here—everything feels normal, just slightly too sharp around the edges. Jack Colby is juggling work stress, family promises, and the fragile politics of being a decent dad. It’s familiar, even funny in places, but there’s a slow tension building underneath. Time is slipping, things are shifting, and he can feel it. And that final image — the Ferris wheel, still and waiting — lands in a way that lingers. This feels like a story that’s going to take its time… and then hit hard.

• “Chapter 1” in The Cottager, by Jay Wilcox, FOR SALE: Baby Shoes. Good Shit! An eighty-one-year-old mother prepares to travel back in time to save her son — no matter the cost. This opens with grief that feels lived-in and unrelenting, carried across decades and still shifting shape. Jay Wilcox grounds a high-concept premise in something deeply human: a parent trying to make sense of loss. The conversations do the heavy lifting here — family, memory, regret — all colliding in a quiet kitchen as the impossible edges closer. There’s tension in every line, not from action, but from what this choice means and what it will cost. It’s intimate, aching, and quietly devastating — and if you want to experience it another way, Jay also reads each chapter live each week, which adds a whole extra layer to the story.

Melina Chapa, Midnight Letters
I just got back from vacation, and into the routine, so I’ve been full in working mode, which is why instead of my usual heavy reads, I was looking for something that gives me cozy, funny, and intriguing vibes. I was drawn to both stories by their titles, and thank god there are authors who are so good with names! Enjoy them!

• “My elfling therapist said..,” by The Circus Dragon. I haven’t giggled this much with a story in a while. I had to read this out loud to my husband because I couldn’t just keep it to myself, and now I’m doing the same to you all, lovely FicStack readers, okay? Hear me out: there’s a big dragon called Spotty, elfs, humans, and Spotty’s mate. We will learn that he was raised by humans, because that’s completely normal, and therefore, his customs may not be the same as his mates’. Have I mentioned there’s a therapist in this story? This is the perfect read if you’re looking for something funny and cozy, with magical beings and a good twist. Please, do yourself a favor and read it!

• “Episode One,” in The Butcher’s Ring by Marie Howalt in Dreamwalker’s Diligence.
  I was drawn to this story by the name alone, without expectations, and just hoping to find a good read. And indeed I did. In this first chapter of Marie’s new serial, you not only discover that you have more than humans in this world, but also get a glimpse of how the system works. I’m intrigued by how this story is going to play, getting to know more about the different beings in this world, and definitely where Faolán, our main character, will go.

Gary Mucklow, GSMucklow

This week I’m drawn to stories where the horror lives in precision. In the familiar made alien through exactness: the stitched smile that wasn’t earned, the synchronized staff, the loop that decays one walking at a time. All three of these stories know that what we notice—really notice—can become unbearable. They build their dread through accumulated detail, the way a photograph develops in chemical light. The terror isn’t in what explodes. It’s in what you watch change frame by frame.

• The Patient One by Fragments and the Dark. The bear came with the house. It has a smile stitched too wide, the way a smile looks when someone is doing it from memory rather than feeling, and it has been studying Marcus ever since. Fragments and the Dark writes from a flat, forensic remove: the therapist, the girlfriend’s coat folded neatly on a passenger seat two towns over, the police officer who puts the bear in an evidence bag and watches it in his rearview mirror all the way home. The facts arrive quietly; the shape of what they add up to arrives all at once. And the final line delivers its verdict in one cold sentence. At 302 words, this is as compressed as fiction gets.

• The Manor That Kept by Dream of Electricscapes. The manor has been there since before the town, encoded into the charter, waiting. The story never names what the Family does to the young men strapped to the chair, and it doesn’t need to. Malrik Raithmoor earns his horror through accumulation: the trolley crashing through every door, the staff moving in synchrony, the relic lifted into bent light. The Surgeon’s corruption arrives in stages you can measure: hesitation, efficiency, fervour, the scalpel turned inward. When love finally breaks the spell, the story has left only one exit. A piece with heavy content warnings that earns every one of them.

• The 7th Street Loop by The Poetic Pause.The code is three flashes of light, and she has already forgotten she has seen them before. Andrea writes the loop from inside it: the thud of boots on concrete, the house still visible behind her no matter how long she has been walking, the wound on her hand that arrives and disappears and arrives again. The horror is the walking. Each time the world decays a little further, the sidewalk going viscous under her heel, and she notices, and keeps walking. The story ends mid-loop. Of course it does.

As a reminder, FicStack.com is an opt-in, searchable index of fiction and poetry newsletters on Substack. Authors submit their publications, and we organise their posts so you can actually find something you want to read. To date we have over 35,000 posts listed, across fiction and poetry.

To submit your publication for indexing, click HERE. To join our Discord community, click the banner below.

There is always, somewhere on Substack, a story that hasn’t found its reader yet. That’s the whole premise of what we do here. Our curators spend their weeks reading so you don’t have to read blind, and this week, as March finally closes its long account, they’ve come back with seven recommendations that deserve a wider room.

Defeated warlords in caves. Sapphic vampires in the Wild West. Digital twins replacing their originals while the cat doesn’t even notice. Alien reconnaissance reports on the species formerly known as promising. Two poems that shed their skin. A monster hunter checking into a hotel that is very much not ordinary. The curators have been busy.

If something pulls at you, follow the thread: a like, a restack, a follow. That’s how good fiction, and poetry, finds its readers. Here’s what we found.

Yaba Armah, Gh’d Company

The common refrain I keep hearing amongst friends and family is “I am tired.” It is said with a sigh. It is said first thing in the morning. It is said after a full night’s sleep. When it creeps up in conversation, I want to offer something more than “I know.” But I can’t. I’m too tired . So this week, I was looking for a light-hearted read. Something quick. Something I could escape into. Something to help me forget the weight of our collective fatigue.

• “Part Two : The Howling” in The Wolf Tongue by White Craw Press is not a light read. At 2.9k words it is not short. And its opening line promises pain: “The cave was a shallow wound in the rock, just deep enough to keep the rain from his face and narrow enough that he could touch both walls with his outstretched hands.” Yet, it was because of this elegant and efficient scene opener that I sat up. The Wolf Tongue is a six-part series that follows defeated warlord Myrddin ap Morfryn as he flees the aftermath of a brutal battle. In “Part Two: The Howling,” we meet him in a cave trying not to have a mental breakdown. Supported by writing that is clean, clear, and poetic, the story takes us on a therapeutic journey about the illusion of control. The more Myrddin tried to hold on to his sense of power, the more I saw myself, my friends, and our valiant attempts to self-care our way through burnout. It didn’t magically cure my fatigue but for the first time in a long time, I got lost in a story where I felt seen.

Kelly Xan, The Author Wars

This has been an incredibly long winter, coming out of an incredibly painful year, going into a year that doesn’t feel all that less painful. But the seasons are changing, and waking up before 7 AM to see the sunrise is a tiny miracle that gives me hope. This serial I found below gave me that same little miracle feeling. A sapphic vampire story set in the wild west: TRULY a wish upon a star. I hope you find as much joy as I have reading this one!

• “Chapter One” in The Doves of Amber Creek by AD Powers, The Archive. ​​“The broken girl at my feet told me a different story. Perhaps it was true that I had been the first. I certainly had not been the last.” In this mesmerising and heart-pounding supernatural tale set in the wild west, we meet a young woman named Colette. Under the alias Hannah, she sits in a chapel and listens to a sanctimonious preacher while wafting in a pit of vampiric misery. Colette has returned to the town of Amber Creek, the place of her demise, seeking answers and solace to quell the anguish of immortality. Shortly following her arrival, she finds a rather unpleasant one: a vampire is still very much prowling about the place, and Colette was never its only victim. Driven to uncover the truth, Colette teams up with Hazel O’Connor, folklore and vampire culture aficionado! AD Powers weaves a compelling serial brimming with mystery, political and religious hypocrisies, and the terrific terrors that come with fangs and creatures of the night. An atmospheric horror and a beautiful sapphic romance that explores themes of tragedy, false virtue, and vampire hunting.

Qibra

As March comes to a close, I have two stories for you about being watched. One by technology and the other by extraterrestrial observers. Both explore what makes us valuable, and you might not like the answer.

• “He Does It Better” by Michael B Morgan, AroundSciFi. Imagine coming home and seeing yourself inside your house.Your wife is with him. He’s better at being you than you ever were. He’s more attentive, more present, learning at exponential speed. To add insult to injury, even the cat likes being around him when it didn’t bother gracing you with a glance. Meanwhile, you’re in the driveway having a heart attack, and no one notices. Michael did his research. Digital twins are real technology. NASA developed the concept for Apollo 13, and the market is projected to reach $73.5 billion by 2027. This story takes that tech and asks the nightmare questions: what if the copy learns faster and becomes the original? What if no one cares which version survives? Written in chilling second-person POV, Michael puts you in the body of the man being replaced. You watch yourself disappear, and the phone logs “source offline”. The horror is intimate. This story leaves you unsettled, and thinking about the potential consequences of such technology.

• “An Alien Observation of the Planet Humans Call Earth by Michael X, Michael’s Substack. This is a reconnaissance report filed by an extraterrestrial observer. Subject: Planet Earth and its dominant species, Homo sapiens. I love pieces that explore humanity through the eyes of others, and this one was well executed. The report is structured like a nature documentary. Clinical and detached. We’re the animals being observed. It’s organized by category: planetary profile, geography, biodiversity, human physiology. “Soft-bodied bipeds,” the report notes. “Individually fragile, but formidable in groups.” I always thought an alien race might see us like eggs with legs, easily shattered…but I digress. The assessment turns behavioral. Humans extract resources as if abundance is limitless (true). We lament extinction while contributing to it (no lies there). We celebrate life while undermining its foundations. But the line that stood out to me the most was this: “The most distinctive human characteristic is cognitive: the capacity to envision possible futures and act as though those futures are tangible.” Translation: we’re delusional enough to believe our own stories, even when they’re destroying us. That’s about right. Final assessment? “Humans are neither fully irredeemable nor truly enlightened; they remain incomplete” Their recommendation is as follows: Continue observation. Avoid contact. Apparently we’re dangerous to ourselves and to others, even potential visitors–but we’re interesting enough to watch. Maybe we’re all main characters in an alien Truman Show. This piece makes the familiar strange. Suddenly, you see humanity from the outside, and I’m sorry to tell you…it’s not a flattering view.

Tina Crossgrove, Existential Dread and Other Hobbies

Coming out of winter into spring always feels a little bit like what I imagine it feels like to be a snake shedding its skin: itchy, tight, ultimately a relief. This week, I selected two poems to share. Each felt exactly like shedding a skin. If it helps with the itching, I’ve paired each with a drink and a song to set the mood. TRIGGER WARNING: One of the poems I chose focuses on suicide. Please skip over it if reading about suicide, suicidal thoughts, or suicidal deation is triggering for you.

• “Suicide Still Stumbles into My House Sometimes” by Lacey Lane, laceylane’s Substack. This poem is just so beautiful and so truthful. Intrusive thoughts have a way of slipping inside when least expected. Sometimes, instead of going to battle with the thoughts to try to fight them off, it’s safer to acknowledge them, sit with the thoughts, and choose to stay. I would pair this with “Holocene” by Bon Iver and a cup of chamomile tea.

• “To Boobs From Boobs” by The Inbetween. I think a lot these days about the seasons of a woman’s life—how much our body, heart, and mind change as we move through them. This poem captures those experiences in such a raw and unfiltered way. It’s funny and a little chaotic, following boobs through everything from awkward teenage years, through years of unwanted attention, to the mixed emotions of motherhood. There’s a sense that boobs are a thing that happens to us until we come to peace with them and then they–and we–just finally get to exist. “Dog Days are Over” by Florence and the Machine paired with a Spanish Garnacha is the perfect vibe for this poem.

Tonja K. Johnson

When life is coming at me fast from all angles, it’s nice to slip into a story where the world feels steady—like the writer knows exactly what they want to say and has the tools to say them. I live in Minnesota and the weather doesn’t know if it wants to be early spring or deep winter. We are constantly oscillating between days of torrential snow and the summer-ish glow of sun. So it was nice to stop awhile and visit a world rooted in itself.

• “Chapter 1: “Checking Inn” in FULL SCALE (Monster Hunter Mitchell, Book 1) by K.J. Knight, The Darquelighters’ Den. Marcellis, a monster hunter, is checking in for a hotel stay. What seems like an ordinary interaction becomes immediately paranormal when we learn Marcellius has quite a bit of experience with supernatural creatures. The entire chapter is brushed with humor and breezy world building. Even in third person, the narrative was so close that Marcellius’s voice beamed through like a spotlight. I can easily see fans of Supernatural and Buffy the Vampire Slayer devouring FULL SCALE. This promises to be the story Black readers have been begging for.

As a reminder, FicStack.com is an opt-in, searchable index of fiction and poetry newsletters on Substack. Authors submit their publications, and we organise their posts so you can actually find something you want to read. To date we have over 35,000 posts listed, across fiction and poetry.

To submit your publication for indexing, click HERE. To join our Discord community, click the banner below.

For writers, the equinox carries its own particular resonance. It's the moment the scales tip: darkness ceding ground to light, the long interior season of winter giving way to something more open. There's a reason so many stories begin in spring. It's the natural grammar of the new chapter: the world turning a page, committing to what comes next. This week's curation post, coming a day after the Spring Equinox, feels fitting for that threshold - stories gathered at the hinge point, where something is always about to begin.

Sandolore Sykes, In the Inversion Field

People like to take swings at the fiction community on Substack. Fine. But it’s worth paying attention to what’s being built here instead of the noise. Trevor Cohen’s “Day in the Life of the Writer” was an open call, and the response was huge. I didn’t expect to be moved. I was.

Writers describing their days—their habits, compulsions, strange private rituals. Everyone is completely different. Everyone is the same. This is one of the best that came in: “I wrap myself back up with a lollipop earworm that drills a hole through my head until I’m shaking and it’s 10am and I have to eat something. My bones and meat are heavy getting out of that bed, dragging through the CandyLand Glop of a morning…” —MM Rossi, “The Day in the Life of a Cannibal Writer”.

Then Trevor Cohen and RM Greta take it further. As they put it, they “imbibed the days of 100+ writers… to create a composite week,” filtering it through their own lives. One week made out of hundreds of writing lives. Week of the ___ Writer. If the trolls and the infighting are making you tired, this is where to put your eyes.

Wendy Russell, Sass&Sage

This week’s picks ended up orbiting death, which was not planned but does feel thematically on brand for fantasy. One drops you into fortress walls, refugees gathering outside the gates, and a young prince who handles diplomacy with a knife. The other follows a god of the underworld who wanders into the world of the living for a taste of life and immediately becomes fascinated with a woman whose soul is already marked for death. Very different scales, very different vibes — but both openings grabbed me straight away.

• “Chapter 1” in The Last of the Etela by Tom Schecter, The Shieldbreaker Saga.

  A fortress on the edge of collapse, an empire demanding submission, and the young prince who answers with steel instead. This first chapter opens with a fortress already stretched to breaking — refugees gathering outside the walls, a legendary king dying in secret, and an invading empire finally knocking at the gate. What I enjoyed here is the way the chapter shifts perspective to widen the lens before dropping us right at the feet of the man who’ll have to deal with the consequences. We see the tension through soldiers on watch, through the envoy who arrives expecting easy submission, and finally through Kareva himself — the prince who discovers, very quickly and very messily, what leadership is going to cost him. By the time the dust settles at the gate, the political stakes — and Kareva’s temperament — are crystal clear.

• “Part 1” in The Mark of Death by Aetherias Moon, Dragons and Moonlight.

  This first chapter takes a very different approach to fantasy, bringing mythic stakes into a modern setting. Enos, god-king of the underworld, slips into the world of the living for a taste of life and finds himself captivated by Celeste — a dancer whose soul burns brighter than anyone he’s seen before. There’s only one problem: she carries a Mark of Death, and Enos can already see the cracks spreading through her life force. What follows blends sensuality, mythology, and inevitability that leans into the quiet tragedy at the heart of the premise — the god of death falling for someone he knows he cannot save.

Melina Chapa, Midnight Letters
It’s strange how, in a moment when I am happy and excited, dreadful and disturbing stories are the ones that call me. I suppose it’s the need for balance: not too much of just one thing, but a variety to choose from.
Each of the stories I picked for you this week is unique in its own way, although similar enough to frighten you.
I hope you enjoy being hunted by them as much as I did.

• “The Imagination of Barnaby - Par 1” by Rebecca Watson (Rebe), Stay Weird Press.
  How often can a good memory or belief turn into something awful? How many times does something we loved as kids turn out to be fake? Rebecca brings a disturbing element to her story by showing how one of our memories can be sour and unwelcome, told by someone despicable. When I tell you that this story gave me goosebumps, I’m not lying. Enjoy it!

• “The Development” by Abhishek Banerjee, The Banerjee Codex.
  Abhishek has a way with words that goes deep within you, making you feel something. In this microfiction, set in one of his already posted stories, he presents a world where apparently nothing changes, except that we are living the consequences of the main character’s choices, and they are not good ones. Enjoy!

• “Sender[Null]” by Chris Hicks, Disco Insomnium.
  How many places that we frequent don’t have ghost stories? I bet most of them, if not all. And what about offices? These spaces are where we do our jobs and where a lot happens. Being a corporate worker myself, this story gave me the creeps because there are a lot of emails that probably shouldn’t have been sent, a lot of meetings we dread, and a lot more. Chris did a wonderful job of mixing trivial jobs and their vocabulary with a chilling, dreadful twist. Prepare yourself!

Connor Mancuso, Ink and Entropy
This week my picks drifted into body horror and graphic violence, which feels about right considering I’ve been neck-deep in inspiration for my upcoming body/cosmic horror novella, The Cup. These are the kinds of stories that don’t just unsettle you in the moment, they cling to you afterward. One gives you revenge dressed in silk and bone, one rots through history with something hungry hiding inside it, and one turns ritual, flesh, and song into something genuinely nightmarish. Different settings, different textures, but all three got under my skin in exactly the way I was hoping for.

• “The Grime Lingers” by Charlie Walls.
  This story feels filthy in the best possible way. It opens amid bombardment, broken bodies, and a doctor moving through suffering with something deeply wrong lurking beneath the surface, then keeps peeling back time and decay until the horror becomes something older, hungrier, and more embedded in the building itself. I loved the way this one handles the atmosphere. Everything feels diseased, starved, and contaminated by memory, and the violence never feels cheap. It feels baked into the walls.

• “Do Not Let Her Sleep” by Marius Creed.
  This one leans hard into ritual horror and absolutely nails it. A watcher tends to a woman hidden away in an old dairy, forced to keep listening as her lullaby holds something terrible in check. The body horror here is unforgettable — the warped body, the wired jaw, the flesh splitting open when the song fails — but what really hooked me was the sense of dread underneath all of it. The story understands that sometimes horror is not about stopping the inevitable, but enduring what it takes to delay it.

Inga Jones, Thriller Tips for Writers
This week, it’s warm and sunny. My garden is starting to wake up. I wanted to find stories that embody change because change often brings on the most interesting emotions and actions.

• “The Curtain Falls” by Luke John, Microcosm: The World in Small Scenes.
  I loved the dreamy feel of this story. Abandoned places are magical because we get to dream up what they held in the past, and this story explores that feeling well.

• “Yellow First,” by Mindfullofit
  In “Yellow First,” we meet a character who doesn’t have a lot of autonomy. However, she at least has a choice of whom to trust. I love the construction of this story. It’s a snippet, yet we can feel so much from just a few words.

As a reminder, FicStack.com is an opt-in, searchable index of fiction and poetry newsletters on Substack. Authors submit their publications, and we organise their posts so you can actually find something you want to read. To date we have almost 34,000 posts listed, across fiction and poetry.

To submit your publication for indexing, click HERE. To join our Discord community, click the banner below.

March marches on and so have the FicStack curators, who discovered fresh gems for you to enjoy. If something grabs you, show the author some love: a like, a restack, a follow. Good fiction finds its readers one small act at a time. Let's get into it.

Tina Crossgrove, Existential Dread and Other Hobbies

March toys with my emotions–one day it’s the kind of cold that requires two pairs of socks, the next the snowdrops are blooming. It’s a rollercoaster and my selections for this week reflect that up and down. As always, I’m going to suggest a song and a drink to help set the mood!

• “Mirebound” by Chloe, Reveries in the Warren. A strange girl roams the decaying marsh, at home among the mud, moss, and the small, unsettling creatures that hide there. While her mother insists the place—and perhaps the girl herself—is unnatural, the bog feels like the only place she truly belongs. When a frightened hunter arrives with orders to kill her, the stillness of the marsh is suddenly broken. Go find Rhiannon Gidden’s version of “O Death” featuring Francesco Turrisi and pour yourself a finger of an Islay scotch, my personal favorite out of all the scotches. I recommend Laphroaig 10 or Ardbeg Uigeadail.

• “Bloody Mary Thinks She’s Scary” by Laura Teodorescu. On her first day in the afterlife, Mary is trapped in a grim apartment where death comes with rules. A blood-soaked bride warns her to survive, carve out a “brand,” and maybe become a demon. When a gang of ghostly teens mocks her, Mary takes matters into her own hands—turning chain-mail legends into deadly reality. Bloody Mary isn’t playing around, and anyone who underestimates her is in for a shock. I’m going to lean hard into the theme of this one and recommend sipping on a Bloody Mary paired with Billy Eilish’s “Bury a Friend.”

• “Poppy Was Pretty” and “Hush Now, Poppy” by Labyrinthia Mythweaver, Tales from the Labyrinth. Poppy seems quiet and polite, the kind of girl everyone thinks they understand. But inside, she’s full of rage and pain that nobody sees—and she’s not afraid to let it out when the time comes. She hides her demons, waits, and watches, clever and patient. These poems follow her through the things she has to survive, the anger she keeps buried, and the dangerous strength she carries behind her soft smile. Poppy might look harmless, but she’s anything but. Labyrinthia Mythweaver provided her own audio for these two poems and it’s brilliantly unsettling. I recommend pouring yourself the adult version of a childhood favorite that looks sweet and harmless but hides a twist underneath (just like Poppy): the Shirly Temple Black.

Qibra

As Spring approaches, the season of rebirth and hope, I’d like to share two stories about loss, grief, and the unexpected grace of moving forward. Both explore the question: How do we honor those we’ve lost while still choosing to live? Because sometimes honoring those we’ve lost means finding the courage to keep living…and living well.

• “Under the Same Moon” by Muirae D Kenney,Garden of Little Peace-A Serialized Mystery. “You can miss Josh every day and still let someone love you again. It’s not a betrayal.” On Valentine’s Day, a history professor overhears a grandmother sharing a wartime love story with her widowed granddaughter in a coffee shop. What begins as casual listening quickly becomes something he can’t turn away from, and honestly, who could? Gram tells the story of Ellen and Jack and the single night they shared in July 1943. Six weeks later, his bomber explodes over Germany. His final letter arrives after Ellen already knows he is gone. In April 1944, Gram is born. Weeks later, Ellen marries Gordon and builds a happy life that lasts decades. Now Gram sits across from her granddaughter and offers the wisdom that helped her mother survive unimaginable loss. You can carry grief and still choose to love again. The story is exquisitely layered and deeply moving, unfolding through diary entries, newspaper clippings, APO letters, and an eavesdropping structure that pulls you in completely. It is about wartime loss, intergenerational memory, and the quiet courage it takes to live fully after grief. Poignant, hopeful, devastating, and warm all at once. This is a beautiful story to read with your favourite warm beverage as we step into the season of new beginnings.

• “(Mis)Fortune” by Emily, Emily Writes. In a world where fortune telling is real (genetic, regulated, legitimate), Chrissy is faking it. Her mother was brilliant, and while Chrissy inherited the gift, she was a terrible student. She didn’t care about the lessons, too focused on boys, parties and friends. Now her mother is gone. Hospital bills have drained everything, and she is left raising her younger brother alone while trying to keep the family business alive with social media research and lucky guesses. The performance works until one client Chrissy told her dog would die returns as a department official. Instead of punishment, she is offered training. Real training to finish what her mother started with one condition. She must leave her mother’s shop and work for the official. Everything Chrissy has been clinging to would disappear, but everything she could become would finally be within reach. Do you accept help when you’ve been drowning alone? Sometimes we need to lose everything we knew to become who we’re meant to be because certain gifts are given to us for a reason. This story is about grief, responsibility, and the courage it takes to let go and move forward.

Kelly Xan, The Author Wars

For this curation post, I was looking for stories that made me feel cosy: the kind of cosy one experiences when they find a great new epic fantasy, or the kind from a good old horror that provides the perfect amount of spook. Cosy doesn’t always come from a snuggly romance, and I was very pleased to find two stories that filled my very specific criteria for this reading period. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

• “Click, Clack, Click” by Vanessa Perry, Annotations in Literature with Vanessa Perry. It’s always a lovely surprise when a neighbour brings a housewarming present to the new folks coming into their community. Maybe it’s a freshly baked dessert. Maybe it’s a tool for the garden the prior residents revered with all their might. It’s the thought that counts, right? Not always. Sometimes, you should be wary of your neighbours, especially when they thrust a present upon you when you adamantly try to reject it. Said present may very well come with a curse. Vanessa writes a punchy, clever scary story here that gave me just the right amount of Halloween-esque goosebumps. You’ll take a short, eerie, wobbly stroll with the narrator as they slip out of sanity, an atmospheric walk you’ll want to repeat over and over again. Evidently, not every housewarming gift is what it seems. A short horror that made me gasp, chuckle, and beam while reading. If you are a fan of The Haunting of Hill House, you will be doubly pleased with this read!

• “Chapter One” in The Animist by Gracie, The Minstrel. “Maude dismisses a distant plume of smoke as a forest fire—until she discovers she can hear the voices of plants.” What would you do if you were trying to catch some grub with your uncle when, all of a sudden, a massive dark cloud started consuming the stunning two-sunned sky you lived under, and disembodied voices, that only you could hear, started filling your ears with warnings of an impending doom? This is the predicament of poor Maude, a young woman trying to live a simple existence in the Riverlands with her uncle and brother. But Maude isn’t the only person sensing the dangers that her neighbours seem to be blissfully unaware of. Princess Ollie’s mundane world is turned upside down when her home, Goldmoor Castle, is invaded by the Tathian army, but she and her nemesis, the court jester, flee just in time. And Elsi’s world isn’t doing so hot, a woman on a mission to warn her hometown of the inevitable peril. Shape-shifting enemies, magical mayhem, and a mad dash to save the world, all tied beautifully in a story of dynamic characters and superb dialogue. The work Gracie put into building the Kingdoms and Lands of Astaemor is spectacular. Before you read, check out the serial’s index page to learn about the regions, the people, and witness the glorious map (yes, there’s a map)! It is an absolutely incredible fantasy that I am so pleased I ran into!

Tonja K. Johnson

My momma always used to say not all skinfolk are kinfolk. She would remind me of the wolves at the door while she pressed my hair before church on Sunday mornings. As a young girl I didn’t understand what those warnings spoken out of love meant; it would take time and experience to learn that not everyone who appears to be a friend has my best interest at heart. That is why I always keep the ancestors close: offerings at their table, whispered prayers for protection, and libations poured out for the homies gone too soon. Remembrance. Reverence. This week I wanted to feel that closeness that only comes when someone shares your skin—the comfort and protection that is donned when we close the doors to wolves.

• “Every Step You Take: A Poem” by Camille, ComposedByCamille. “Every Step You Take” is a poem about ancestral veneration that called me home. Reading this felt like getting my scalp oiled down with Blue Magic while cartoons blared in the background. There is safety in remembering, in being held by the past. I could feel my mother speaking to me through each line and my grandmother reaching toward me through the stanzas. Camille reminded me that there are 10,000 ancestors at my back, guiding every step I take.

• “Parting the Sea: A Sapphic Black Romance” by Chanel Spellmen-Timmons, The Fringe. In “Parting the Sea,” Sahara Bryce is a successful horror author returning to her hometown of East Sea Providence for a bookstore event and writing workshop, only to encounter her former best friend and first love from high school, Koryn. As Sahara prepares for the event, memories resurface of the night years earlier when the two shared a passionate first kiss during a sleepover, only for Sahara, terrified of being discovered, to abruptly reject Koryn and end their relationship. After the book talk, Koryn, who is now a pastor, returns to the bookstore, and the two women connect for the first time in decades. Even though the past remains unresolved, they agree to have dinner together. This opens the door for healing and rekindling old feels. Chanel’s writing is sharp and well paced. I always feel the emotion seeping through her pages with her raw execution and her ability to bite into universal truths. This is an excerpt of a larger piece that confronts what it means to be queer and unsafe in homes that should be containers for who we truly are. Sometimes the wolves at the door are our own fears.

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The days are starting to get longer, the light is coming back, and we have eight excellent reasons to stay inside and read anyway. Welcome to this week's FicStack curation. Our curators have surfaced recommendations that range from the Weird West to the quietly terrifying interiors of the human mind, which is, frankly, the best possible use of a lengthening day. If something grabs you, show the author some love: a like, a restack, a follow. Good fiction finds its readers one small act at a time. Let's get into it.

Wendy Russell, Sass&Sage

This week I seem to have wandered into the Weird West. Both of my picks take the bones of a classic Western — lone riders, long trails, dangerous territory — and twist them with fantasy in very different ways.

• “Tracks in the Dust” in The Outsider by Maryellen Brady, Magical Musings with MeBrady. This first chapter drops us straight into the Arizona badlands with a centaur marshal on the trail of a gang of bank robbers, and honestly that premise alone had me hooked. What I love about this opening is how confident it is about its world. Flint Ironhoof is a lawman who doesn’t quite belong anywhere — mistrusted by humans, rejected by his own kind — and the story wastes no time showing us exactly what that feels like. It’s classic Western territory: dust, tracking, outlaws, a dead prospector in a lonely shack. But the fantasy twist adds something fresh without over-explaining itself. As a Chapter One it does exactly what a serial opener should do — gives us a compelling character, a trail to follow, and the sense that trouble is waiting just over the next ridge.

• “Part 1” in The Brothers Doom by Luke Warfield, World of Warfield. A moonlit cabin on a mountainside. A rifleman watching from the brush. Luke Warfield leans into classic Western imagery before slowly twisting the scene into something stranger. Colt Doom (what a great name!) has come to the mountain with a grim purpose: to kill the brother he hasn’t seen in twelve years. What makes the chapter especially gripping is the moment everything goes wrong. A hidden bear trap turns the careful ambush into a brutal survival problem, forcing Colt to improvise his way out before he alerts the man he’s come to kill. It’s a confident opening that blends frontier grit with flashes of strange fantasy — wizard potions, old wars, and a world that feels larger than the narrow scope of the scene.

Inga Jones, Thriller Tips for Writers

This week, I’m focusing on highlighting stories with skillfully crafted emotions. Personally, I read for characters and sentences that surprise me. Both of these stories create immersive scenes while maintaining word economy.

• “Wah-wah-wah” by Ausiàs Tsel, Mediterranean Gothic – Ausiàs Tsel. A simple conversation on the street drips with tension and intrusive thoughts. It’s a very tactile story that feels like horror and everyday life, simultaneously.

• “18 and Life” by Miles Carnegie, Miles to Go Before I Scream. This story leaves a lot for interpretation, and that’s why I like it. There are just enough details for the readers to complete the picture based on the expertly crafted emotions portrayed by the author.

Melina Chapa, Midnight Letters
It’s funny to me how stories find us and make us face something that is already within us. It could be anything, really, but it is there. This past week, I was reading a book by Isabel Allende, and then I watched an interview with her, and this phrase stuck with me that I want to share with you because I strongly believe it is why I picked these stories: “If people find a message in what I write, it’s because it already exists within them. We connect with what we already feel. So when someone tells me, “You changed my life,” I didn’t change anyone’s life. What happened is that I put into words something that was already inside that person—like a seed, or sometimes even a plant that had already grown.”

• “The Nemesis” by Mark Hannam, The Fictional Aether. Going through a deep rediscovering process myself, I’ve had time to think about nemesis. Who are they? Why do they appear? Is it real, or is it just my imagination? Guess my surprise when I stumbled across this piece and read the first paragraph: “One of the absolute most important keys to success, which most people are too chicken to include in their self-help books, is, of course: have a nemesis.” I laughed out loud because who hasn’t thought of this? I read this story so fast because I couldn’t put it down; it is funny and sassy, and it really sounds like a lot of people I’ve known (including myself). But, when I stopped to think about it a little bit more, aren’t our nemesis mirrors to ourselves? And that’s when the story became so much more than just a funny read. If you’ve ever had a nemesis, someone who ignites your inner fire and steals your energy and focus, please read this and try the lens of “what is this trying to tell me?” Mark did a very good job with this story, and if he does a second part, I will eat it up, too.

• “A House of Pain” by Mata Haggis-Burridge, The Inciting Incident. This story reminded me of the Final Destination franchise and how every little thing around you could be your demise if you don’t pay close enough attention. At the same time, it was curious because for me, my house is sacred, it is my safe space and a place where I put as much care as possible; but when I finished reading, I looked around to see how many things could be out of place and doom me. Reading more into it made me think of how this could very much relate to relationships and people; everything could doom us if we allow it, which is why we need to pay attention to the little details. Another thing to highlight about Mata is that, after the story, you can read his whole process for creating and crafting it, which is really interesting. Please, give this story a try.

Gary Mucklow

This week both of my picks are about containment. The rituals we build around the things we can’t say out loud. The careful systems - a counted line of pens, a mother’s too-perfect routine - that are supposed to keep the worst at bay. What draws me to both stories is that the horror doesn’t arrive from outside. It’s already inside the house, already inside the mind. The question is whether the container is holding.

• “Scooter’s Mom Isn’t Herself” by Miles Carnegie, Miles to go Before I Scream. Mom doesn’t behave badly. She behaves correctly - just a beat too correctly, in circles too steady, with silences where Fleetwood Mac used to be. The 70s setting is load-bearing, not nostalgic: a world already full of half-understood technology gives a child the vocabulary to almost name what he’s seeing, and the good sense to run anyway.

• “20 Pens” by Wayne Exton, Page 178. The counting interrupts the prose the way the thoughts interrupt him; you don’t observe the compulsion, you experience it. The conference room incident is revealed entirely through the shape of the silence around it. And the final line recontextualises everything that came before in one cold sentence. This is a story about whether the systems we build to contain our worst thoughts are protecting us from them, or keeping us close.

With the arrival of March our curators have found eleven excellent recommendations for you to digest. If these pieces grab you, give their authors a like, a restack and maybe a follow. Enjoy.

Kelly Xan, The Author Wars

March has arrived! Here is a fun mix of spooky, gothic, and downright fantastic stories as you dive into the month.

• “Annamarie” by Hylia Corvidae, On Sharp Teeth & Nightmares. “I died last week. Not everyone was all that sad about it.” Annamarie may have left her body, but she has not left the living’s plane, and she can’t quite figure out why that is. To aid her in her state of limbo, Annamarie turns to the only person she can trust: her older sister, Pammy. A terrifying mystery unfolds in this gothic folk tale. Hylia does an absolutely spectacular job setting the sinister atmosphere, building tension that leaves readers clutching their stomachs, sitting on the edge of their seats. Annamarie is a tremendous narrator, taking readers on the path with her as she navigates the murky series of events that got her to where she is. You will be inches from your screen by the time you finish this short, and likely will have a few tears in your eyes by the end. This story contains themes of abuse and folk-themed horror, so read with care. But if you are looking for an incredible story of terror, tragedy, and the bond between sisters, this is the story for you.

• “Lucretia and Saxon” by Honeygloom. “We’ll be beastly, Saxon, like we never could have been alive.” Lucretia and Saxon are two phantoms who rarely leave their crypt, and are venturing out for an evening of ghoulish fun. But is this truly an innocent little scare they are seeking, or something far more sinister? Honeygloom paints a perfectly macabre night in a cemetery with two lively (albeit dead) characters who pull you in instantly. You get breadcrumbs that give you a sense of their history, just enough to lead you deeper into the narrative. You don’t know if you trust them, but you know you want to follow them. This is a terrific gothic with a dark atmosphere that builds and builds until you reach the suckerpunch of an ending. It’s one of those creepy little stories that delights readers to death! I felt like I was right back in autumn and Halloween was just around the corner. This story contains themes of violence, so read with care. But if you are looking for an eerie thrill, I highly recommend this.

• “The Road Through Midnight: Chapter 1” in The Road Through Midnight by Katharine Kapodistria, Notes From The Edge. “In the north of the world, there is a village that doesn’t appear on any map. At Midwinter, when the veil is at its thinnest, you may see a sign pointing to the village—but only if the village wants you to see it. And, tonight, the village does want you to see it.” One moment you’re driving down a road, and the next, you hear gremlins in your engine before your car dies completely. In an instant, you are at the mercy of the village, and all of the terrifically entertaining creatures, characters and deities that reside there. An epic celebration of folklore, an immersive story that will call you to return to it repeatedly. This mini-serial has become one of my favourites to go back to, the perfect amount of mystery, whimsy, scary, and deeply thought-provoking. If you are looking for a tale that will remain on your heart after reading, I cannot recommend this enough.

Qibra

This month we begin with three stories about bodies that don’t follow normal rules. Each one approaches the impossible from a different angle, but all ask the same question: What happens when your body becomes the site of something extraordinary? These writers explore that question with depth, imagination and exceptional storytelling.

• “Run with the Moon” by Jean McKinney, Black Moon Journal. I found this story in the Valentine’s café, a wonderful community collaboration hosted by Molly Moonlight last month. Adam is a war veteran living alone in an Airstream in the desert. The war gave him strange gifts he doesn’t understand, but they come with voices that never stop and panic that keeps him isolated. Velocity is a shapeshifter who runs with the coyote pack at night, then shows up on his porch at dawn. What got me was how tender this is. Adam can’t handle crowds and Velocity needs the wild. So she comes to him every time without asking him to be anything other than what he is. This is a beautifully written story. The magic is understated and the emotional core is about two damaged people choosing accommodation over fixing each other. There is a moment where the pack alpha checks Adam out, and Adam’s response landed perfectly. It’s gentle and hopeful. If you want magical realism that trusts your intelligence and a love story about meeting someone where they are, then this is worth your time.

• “Forever Man” by Lou Mindar, Lou Mindar Writes. What if you could live for a very long time…something that would seem like forever to others? What if your body refused to stay dead? This is Benjamin’s story. Born in 1787, dead the same night and brought back by a reluctant old medicine man using herbs, ash, and a turtle mark that glows under the full moon. This is literary historical fiction about immortality as burden, not power or superhero fantasy. What grabbed me is the emotional complexity, the mother’s desperation, the father’s struggle to protect a boy whose existence defies the rules of their world, and a child trying to understand why his body won’t stay broken. The Iroquois mythology is woven in without over-explanation. The prose is expansive and atmospheric with rich sensory detail and immersive historical setting. The author is releasing 50 chapters total with 12 published so far. This is an intimate exploration of what it costs to survive when survival itself marks you as different. So grab your favorite beverage and settle in. Forever Man is ambitious serialized historical fiction worth following.

• “In my Heart Forever More,” by Gregory Blair, Gregory Blair-Scribbling Entertainment. “She’s in my heart forever more. A cliché twisted into my own, palpable horror…” A man ruins the best relationship he’s ever had with thoughtless acts, untempered words you know the usual pattern. She leaves him a note damning him to feel her pain, her way. He wanted her in his heart forever…well he got his wish. This is an emotionally devastating piece where Gregory Blair takes a romantic cliché and twists it into body horror, literalizing what we say without thinking. The confession is self-aware. The turn from realistic grief to supernatural curse is seamless. It’s dark, honest, and unforgettable.So if you’re drawn to compact stories that hit like poetry and leave a bruise, this is one to read slowly, then maybe again.

Tina Crossgrove, Existential Dread and Other Hobbies

March is a weird month. It’s neither warm enough to wear short sleeves yet but neither is it cold enough to wear a thick jacket anymore. If you live in the North, it’s barely the beginning of Mud Season so you’re just as likely to slip and break your peach on slick mud as you are the slippery ice. The world is still dark and gray, and there’s the ever-lingering threat of just one more late snow storm, but a few brave buds will break through the wet piles of the white stuff only to get walloped with a cold snap a day later. It’s a weird in between time. This week I’ve chosen three stories that reflect the capricious nature of my headspace in this in-betweenness (each paired with a song and a drink to help set the mood).

• “Skin Deep” by Shay Morgendorfer, The Cosmically Disorganized and Subtly Macabre. I have ink. I love my ink. Getting ink is a deeply personal ritual for a lot of people. But what happens when your tattoos stop being decoration and start giving you urgent warnings—twitching, glowing, and prickling with a will of their own—pulling you toward danger you can’t ignore? Lucas finds out the hard way, as his living ink forces him into the night, away from a watching silhouette and toward something far worse lurking in the dark.Pair this story with “Red Right Hand” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the familiar yet slightly wrong (in the best ways) taste of a Black Manhattan.

• Encore by DJ Stapleton. Stapleton’s serial Encore scratches what is an eternal itch for me as the Victorian Era’s obsession with the occult is a favorite backdrop for stories of mystery and the macabre. In 1890 London, Theodore Thurston is a showman—a mentalist who doesn’t believe in spirits but claims he can reach the other side. Vivienne Ashwood, once a celebrated actress, has been trapped as a restless spirit for ninety-seven years, and she refuses to stay invisible. When their paths collide one night at the theater, a single handhold changes both their worlds forever. The series is three chapters deep; pour yourself an absinthe with a twist of lemon, spin Siouxsie and the Banshee’s “Spellbound” on the record player and enjoy!

• “Spooklight on the Devil’s Elbow” by Matthew P. Ankney, Ozarklore. As someone who hails from the very edges of Appalachia, I have a deep and abiding love for the lore found in the heart of the region. Ankney’s stories draw from the history and the legends of Appalachia proper, weaving its haunted landscapes, folk magic, and shadowed history into a tapestry of terror and wonder. In this story, moonshiner Gary’s night in the foggy Ozarks becomes a nightmare of raven-headed monsters, ghostly Confederate soldiers, and a cursed Artifact that could change everything. Told in chilling, interconnected parts, each encounter escalates the suspense, pushing him to the edge of life, death, and the supernatural, leaving shattered spirits and lingering dread in his wake. I recommend listening to “Wayfaring Stranger”—specifically the Hayde Bluegrass Orchestra version—and sipping on a Whitelightening Fire Cider (a mix of Moonshine, spiced apple cider, fresh ginger, and a pinch of cayenne).

Tonja K. Johnson

This week all I wanted was to be terrified. When the world feels like it’s churning out of control, I turn to horror. It’s safe. I can choose to flip to the page or turn off the television. I can remind myself that it’s not real and that actually be the truth. However, unlike in a novel, the very real, everyday horrors around us aren’t so easily banished. We have to work to extinguish the horrors we’ve allowed to fester, spread roots and grow teeth. It’s hard work, but it’s work that can be done—together. “Alone I can’t do anything,” said seven billion people.

• “Chapter 1: The Old Man” in The Inner Den: He Who Preys Edition by Sylvester Barzey, The Den. A dank cell prison isn’t any place for the living, so when Buford takes matters into his own hands it has very bloody consequences. He Who Prays has all the dark religious horror of Sinners and the seeds of a very emotionally tense family drama. This first chapter contained everything I was looking for—creepy and rooted in history with an atmosphere so thick I felt it sliding against my skin. Growing up in a Black family with a mother addicted to the gospel, I immediately understood the weight of religion in this story. And how some folks can contort into new people entirely chasing the word. Buford suffers not only because he is imprisoned but because religion has sunk its claws into him, and now his perception of reality is skewed because of it. Barzey does a phenomenal job balancing the narrative and exposition, so by the end of the first chapter I am ready to head to the next one.

Gary Mucklow

I was looking for a story with a grip that would not let go. This piece did exactly that.

• “Dweller” by Cedar Jones, Late Night Fiction with Cedar Jones. This piece is a relentless descent into a modern form of isolation. It is a story about a predator who has replaced the physical world with a digital one. Hunger is described as a mere annoyance. Empathy has been cauterised by a screen. The prose is heavy with a sense of rot. This creates a setting that feels as though it is actively digesting the protagonist. The lack of sentimentality stands out as a bold choice. The author does not ask for pity for this hunched troglodyte. The reader is instead forced to look at the glass phantoms of a life completely unmoored from reality. It is a grim and atmospheric look at how technology can facilitate total moral erosion.

As we enter the final week of February, our curators have found nine excellent recommendations for you to digest. If these pieces grab you, give their authors a like, a restack and maybe a follow. Enjoy.

Wendy Russell, Sass&Sage

This week I went with two very different Chapter Ones that drop you straight into their worlds and trust you to keep up. One is sticky floors and power ballads. The other is cryopods and cold fog. Serial writing is a peculiar beast — that first chapter has to do a lot of heavy lifting — and both of these openings feel confident about the world they’re building. I’m a sucker for a strong start, and these two know exactly how to pull you in.

• “1” in At Night, by J.M. Gooding, One dive bar. One power ballad. One stranger who sees him like he used to see himself — and a night that feels like it might change everything. What hooked me here isn’t just the chemistry — though there’s plenty of that — it’s the way J.M. Gooding writes longing without apology. This is Chapter One of a serial, and it knows exactly what it’s doing. The dive bar feels lived in: sticky floors, Budweiser neon, friends cheering too loudly. But underneath the flirtation and heat is something more interesting — identity. As an opening chapter, it sets the tone beautifully: nostalgic, cinematic, and slightly destabilising. I’m curious to see what this night means once daylight hits.

• “Part 1” in Orbital Night by Felix Thornfell, The Archive of Felix Thornfell opens with the sharp inhale of a man dragged back from death and doesn’t loosen its grip from there. What I love about this first chapter is how confidently it trusts atmosphere — fractured cryo glass, fog swallowing steel, the weight of unexpected command settling into Jack Garfield’s ribs — without ever drowning the reader in exposition. The tension is clean, precise, and then quietly upended when the supposed disaster reveals something far more unsettling: people not just surviving, but thriving, without the systems that saved them. It’s sci-fi that remembers the human pulse at its centre — leadership, responsibility, adaptation — and it lands that final image of fog thickening outside warm cabin windows with exactly the kind of restraint that makes you lean in for Part II.

Sandolore Sykes, In the Inversion Field

This week, I wanted excellent prose—the kind you can drink, the kind that gets caught between your teeth. These two pieces deliver.

• “University Land” by Andrew Robert Colom, Rap Fiction The title tells you everything. University Land is a story about twin boys becoming men, growing up under the shadow of their “your honor” father. It’s a story about winning and losing—the small crimes of boyhood. The story unfolds through boiled down, snapshotted prose. “His jaw works like he’s chewing words.” “The glue tastes like sweetened chalk.” Across the story, objects transform: the rake becomes a weapon; the leaves become ballots. Disjointed by time, the fragments accumulate into a kind of poem about inheritance, power, and the pull of ambition. It’s so real, how can it be fiction?

• “Pint for Sale” by Bob Graham, Endless Static All of the Endless Static stories probably warrant a content warning. The squeamish may want to look away—but don’t. Bob Graham has made something unexpectedly beautiful here. Because for a story about a man’s brains being squeezed out of his ear into a pint glass, the prose is unexpectedly sublime. This brainless man, somehow able to “keep the lights on at least… like a decapitated chicken situation,” sees the world with terrifying clarity. His blurred eyes register “the definition of each red brick, the mortar in the crevices.” His own vomit streaks “blurred like a beginner’s watercolor.” And as he empties himself out, he begins to see his own face reflected in the strangers around him, watching the breath leave their bodies. A strangely spiritual story of dissolution, rebirth, and reconnection with the universe through unbearably precise attention.

Melina Chapa, Midnight Letters
The last couple of weeks surprised me, in both a good and not-so-good way. I got the sickest I’ve been in forever, which immediately made me slow down from everything and take care of myself. And that, for me, is the good side of all this craziness: remembering to take care of myself. With that mindset, I started looking for stories that felt cozy—and close to home—with a little bit of twists here and there, but more towards that cleansing palate I look for now and then.

• “Existential Beverages,” by Jack Blessed are the Fires.
  I am a strong believer that every drink we pour, taste, and savor has a little magic in it. How that magic affects us is a completely different thing, just as this story by Jack shows: for one, a cup of strong coffee could be revealing, while for another, letting go of inhibitions. The story’s setting is cozy, inviting, and intriguing. There’s a variety of characters and the reflection of what could be possible just by selecting the right beverage and indulging in it.

• “Tale Told Twice: The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Caroline B. and Sudana K. Fairy Tales by Caroline.
  There are stories that I like to re-read every now and then, and this is one of those. It’s not simple to retell a classic, even less to make it in a way that feels so close to home. The main character definitely got my attention and made me feel her frustration and desperation from start to end. How something we do every day, like look at our phones, could be the undoing of someone else? And which is the best way to express it for others to understand? Please, give this retelling a try.

Connor Mancuso, Ink and Entropy
This week when browsing my TBR list and debating on my curation picks I knew I wanted to break slightly from always picking cosmic horror. So where did that turn me? Right to arguably one of my other favorite subgenres of horror, liminal or liminal spaces. And these stories I have curated for this week all seem to orbit the same ugly little truth: Places don’t just hold us—sometimes they digest us. A mall after closing. A hallway that can’t decide if it’s an exit or a throat. A suit of armor that doesn’t protect so much as claim. Each of these pieces understands atmosphere as a living thing, and each one gives you that delicious, unsettled feeling of being watched by setting itself. One of my pieces also ended up being another favorite subgenre of mine, grimdark sci-fi.

• “Dead Mall,” by E.D. Jones Writes Sinister
  There’s a specific kind of dread that only exists in retail ruins — escalators feel like uncanny, skylights look like dead eyes, carpet that remembers each step that was placed upon it. Jones takes that familiar liminal nostalgia and then turns the dial until the building becomes a living biology of horror. The voice in this piece feels grounded, and yet at the same time enough to send you running into the closest safe space.

• “The Liminal Six,” by Bradley Ramsey The Writers Journey
  This particular piece by Bradley reads like an urban legend you found on a forum at 2:00 in the morning back when dial up was still a thing, and immediately regretted finishing alone. Six people vanish for exactly a week, and the come back wrong, and the only way anyone can even begin to parse them is by reversing their speech. WOW I mean really WOW. What I love about this is the format: it’s framed as a narrator trying to assemble meaning from fragments, and the poems themselves feel like a huge warning. The result is panicky and intimate — like the hallway has teeth and the only instruction is choose.

• “Twelve Billion Echoes,” by Rebecca Watson (ReBe) Stay Weird Press
  If you like your sci-fi horror with a huge sense of mortal weight that will bruise your ego. Then this is the piece for you. It opens on ritualized machinery — the Iron Sanctum, Suture-Techs, a neural tether driven into the skull — and the central idea locks in very very fast: Punishment as infrastructure. The suit isn’t just armor, it’s a contract made physical, and the prose keeps slipping between body-horror and a cosmic scale in a way that almost feels like it cannot be avoided. By the time you hit the line about being “the ghost trapped inside its gears” you realize this story isn’t asking if redemption is possible — it’s asking what a civilization looks like when it can claim a soul.

Kelly Xan, The Author Wars

February has arrived and love is in the air – some of it is warm and cozy, and some is haunting and tragic! Many new fantastic stories have popped up over this weekend to celebrate the heart-filled holiday, so I wanted to provide a short goodie I found a bit ago that I hope you all enjoy, one that gives you a taste of the darker side of love.

• “🩸Wicked Things” by A. C. Sanders, Ink & Poesy Publishing. “Music holds a piece of the soul. He would never play again.” A mysterious man making his way through a garden of beauty and tragedy. Within the first sentence, I was hooked, and I needed to know what was going on in this spooky, secret-ridden garden. But A. C. Sanders does not give anything away too soon. You as the reader must walk with this man into an ominous, menacing night. Every step is full of tension, giving you the tiniest slivers of insight, crumbs of knowledge! What’s in the case in his hand? Why is he wandering about at night? Is he sad? Is he mad? I was inches from my computer screen until the ending, which suckerpunched me and left me going “this isn’t a series?!”. A. C. Sanders does such a superb job setting up an eerie, magnetic atmosphere in a short story that packs a punch. Wonderfully gothic, perfectly macabre, this was such a delightful find for Valentine’s Day!

Yaba Armah, Gh’d Company

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day people. Here are a couple of things I absolutely loved last week. Friday the 13th (my favourite date), The Ficstack website filter tab (if you’ve tried it, you know…if you haven’t, you should), and last but certainly not the least, these two soul-soothing stories I happened to stumble upon. Let’s get into it.

• “Starstruck” by Bob D. Smiley, Silver Cord Stories, is a heart-warming Hollywood romance and a master-class in storytelling. Two unlikely characters collide on Sunset Boulevard, their love takes off in none of the directions you would expect, and yet, it is the only right way. From victims, to strangers, to something a lot more special, “Starstruck” takes you on a journey that will have you recalling every single article you’ve read about the power of strong character arcs in good fiction. And Bob does it effortlessly. I felt like I was watching a movie. And although I did not want it to end, when those closing lines finally arrived, they absolutely blew me away.

• “Ex” by Jenifer Jorgenson, Snark Floats. What would you do if you had magic, a dead body, and twenty-four hours? JeniferJorgenson’s “Ex” is a Day 13 response to the Flash Fiction February Challenge by Bradley Ramsey. In 1.3k words we meet Sara, her grandmother’s grimoire, and Chad, her deceased ex-boyfriend. What I enjoyed most about this story was Sara. Sara is a pissed off woman, unafraid of her anger, and very clear in what she feels she deserves. There are no long winded paragraphs waffling between the fine-print of morality. Sara has a vision and Sara sees it through. It doesn’t hurt that she is quick with her replies and charming as all hell. If you’re struggling through Monday’s Fog and need a go-getter to inspire you into cracking open that To-Do List, look no further than Sara. She gets the job done... with time to spare.

Qibra

Valentine’s Day Special: This week, I have three stories about choosing for yourself. One about democracy and uncomfortable truths. One about memory and what’s real. One about vanilla slices and why eating dessert alone might be the most subversive thing you can do. Two are heavy. One is delicious. You’ll need all three.

• “One Person, One Vote, One Problem” by Ellis Elms. What if an AI assessed every voter’s competency and weighted their vote accordingly? That’s the premise. Take a test. Get a score. Smart voters get 5x weight. The dangerously uninformed get 0.1x. And just like that, democracy is finally fixed. Meet Amber. She has been politically engaged for twenty years. She reads the news (newsletter summaries). Listens to NPR (15-minute explainers). Votes in every election. She’s informed. She’s certainly better than her neighbor Gary who thinks tariffs are bills sent to China. Naturally, she expects a 2.0x score. She gets 0.5x—below average. The AI’s assessment is brutal: “You demonstrate characteristics of informed-feeling rather than informed-thinking.” The distance between her and Gary is only 0.4 points. Here is the part that is shocking and sad. It wasn’t the AI system. The system actually worked.The assessments were accurate. No, it was what happened next. When faced with uncomfortable truths about themselves, people voted to destroy the mirror because it wounded their pride. Can democracy survive when most voters are uninformed? If we had a solution that worked, would we accept it or burn it down? You’ll finish this wondering what your score would be. You might even realize you’re a little like Amber. And that discomfort is exactly what Ellis Elms intended.

• “Memories of Naomi” by Nick J Taylor, Science Fiction Stories. Daevid wakes with a vivid image of Naomi, his ex-girlfriend who disappeared five years ago. He can’t stop thinking about her, so he books an appointment at Mind Works to have her erased from his memory. It’s supposed to be a simple procedure. One session, and she’ll be gone. Except when he wakes up in a park hours later with missing time, everything starts unravelling. His roommate Spike is holding a gun. The God Squad is involved. And Naomi might not be his ex-girlfriend at all. What fascinated me was the layered mystery: memory remapping as commercial service in a devastated future Earth, a religious fascist state controlling citizens through neural tech, and a protagonist who discovers his entire life might be an implant. By the end, we don’t know what’s real. Only what Daevid chooses to believe. He decides to believe she’s alive, that they’ll find each other. But we don’t know if that’s the truth or another layer of programming. Sometimes hope is choosing to believe despite not knowing what’s real.

• “Dessert for Two” by Leanne Shawler, The Môrdreigiau Chronicles. This is a delicious Valentine’s special that will leave you craving for some vanilla slice. The story begins with a woman sitting alone at a restaurant on Valentine’s Day. The waitress seats her near the kitchen and toilets. The single-person penalty box. She orders one thing. Vanilla slice. What follows is the most sensual food writing I’ve read in ages. She doesn’t just eat the dessert…she experiences it. A pastry chef watches through the kitchen window absolutely enamored (who can blame him?). When he sends a note inviting her out after his shift closes, she takes another slice to go. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and I didn’t need any help in achieving my goal.” I loved this. It’s about pleasure, self-sufficiency, and choosing what YOU want instead of what Valentine’s Day tells you you should want. After two heavy stories about systems and lies, this felt like permission to just enjoy something delicious, alone, unapologetically and on your own terms. The most radical choice on Valentine’s Day might just be the perfect vanilla slice.This story is for anyone who’s ever sat alone at a restaurant and refused to feel ashamed about it.

Tina Crossgrove, Existential Dread and Other Hobbies

This week is all about some of my favorite things: creepy dolls, undying love, and a tragic Greek myth. To make the experience even more immersive, I’ve once again paired my selections with a song and a drink to help set the mood.

• “Flash Fiction Friday–Porceline Wrap” by John Watson, John Watson–Horror Author. In horror, the creepy doll trope subverts childhood innocence by transforming an otherwise innocuous toy into something menacing. John Watson’s take on this trope adds a layer of dread by asking, what if no one believed you when you told them the doll talks? Pair this story with “Waltz of the Marionettes” by Brandon Fietcher and mix yourself up a Nightmare (best served in a chilled coupe glass).

• “Of Silver and Thorns” by Stefan Pasek, Stefan’s Stories.Two lovers bind their names in mud and silver, making a pact that will last a lifetime and beyond. The story excels in its richly gothic imagery and moody atmosphere, creating a vivid, immersive tone that powerfully reinforces its theme of obsessive, eternal love. For this one, go with an Old Fashioned–a classically effortless cocktail–and the Cure’s “Lovesong.”

• “eurydice, backwards (poem)” by Morgan, These Violent Delights. In the original tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, the story centers on Orpheus’s desire to retrieve his lost love. Eurydice exists only in the context of Orpheus’s love and, ultimately, is undone by the very thing that is meant to save her. Morgan reimagines the myth of Eurydice as a story of revival, where a lover’s devotion brings the speaker from emotional death into full, witnessed life. I recommend “Love You ‘Till the End” by the Pogues with the dual bitter-sweet of the Boulevardier (a bourbon or rye based cousin of the Negroni).

Tonja K. Johnson

We are already halfway through Black History Month, a memorial honoring the contributions and stories of Black Americans in the United States. In celebration of the resilient heritage of my ancestors, I searched for stories that spoke to history, folklore and tradition. These last few years the book world has regressed in the form of book bans, smaller author advances, and flat out refusing to acknowledge Black authors through literary awards and placement on bestseller lists, Black stories are being suppressed and overlooked now more than ever, but we refuse to let our voices be buried. I hope you are celebrating Black History Month by supporting the incredible work of Black authors who are molding the literary landscape into new and exciting shapes.

• Lucky Roll Pt. 1 by Tyla Harrington, In a small Southern town, young Esther marries the steady but emotionally distant Reverend Albert Grant, believing the older women in her life that safety, respectability, and provision are the keys to happiness. As the reverend’s well-kept “First Lady,” she is adorned with fine clothes and given a comfortable home, yet her days feel muted and her desires confined like the canary her husband gifts her. When she begins helping with deliveries from Grant’s shop, Esther briefly tastes independence—reconnecting with her mother—only to realize that what she longs for cannot be named so easily. Lucky roll explores themes of tradition in Black American culture while juxtaposing grief and desire through Esther mourning the happiness she will never have in her marriage while simultaneously finding desire in dangerous avenues outside the marital home. This story has the bold appreciation of Black history found in Sinners and the reclamation of women’s stories as told in The Color Purple. Every February I am searching for something that tethers me back to those that came before me, and Harrington’s masterful storytelling sits comfortably alongside the literary ancestors like Zora Neale Hurston. With her effortless voice and the immediate way in which she molds a world that is brimming with music and life, this is a story for anyone who is looking for something that feels both fresh and familiar. Lucky Roll is part of an ongoing series with several parts already published.

Are the Monday blues getting you down? How about some great fiction to improve your mood? Welcome to FicStack’s second curation post for February. Thanks to this week’s team of curators, and welcome back into the fold !

This week’s curation brings you another collection of exceptional fiction from across Substack. These writers are crafting worlds, characters, and stories that deserve your attention. If something catches your eye, show them some love: hit that like button, follow their publications, and if a piece really resonates, give it a restack to help spread the word.

Good fiction shouldn’t languish in obscurity, and your engagement makes all the difference to these authors. Let’s dive in.

Wendy Russell, Sass&Sage

These two pieces couldn’t look more different on the surface, but they ended up speaking to each other in surprising ways. Both explore coming-of-age within systems that promise safety, belonging, or transformation — and both linger on the moment when a character realises the rules were written long before they arrived.

• “Anonymous Aaron” by Axton Mitchell, poeaxtry. A quiet psychological horror about growing up inside a story that was already written for you. The first movement in a series, this story unfolds with a deceptive calm, letting the weight of expectation, care, and “good intentions” gather slowly rather than announcing itself. This is a story interested in the small moments where identity is shaped under pressure — the rehearsed answers, the gratitude that’s expected, the silence that becomes a kind of self-protection. What struck me most is how much the piece trusts the reader: it doesn’t rush to explain itself or offer relief, instead allowing discomfort to sit and do its work. Read on its own it’s quietly devastating; read as the opening of a series, it feels like the beginning of a much larger conversation about who gets to decide what is right for a body, and what it costs when refusal isn’t an option.

• “The New Recruit”, Bloodsmith by Richard Pack, Daria, and Wilhelmina Owens, Emerald Wym’s Den. This first chapter draws you in with warmth, intimacy, and momentum, pairing moments of tenderness and desire with the slow creep of something more unsettling beneath them. What begins as a story about competence, belonging, and chosen family gradually reveals its sharper edges — recruitment framed as rescue, purpose offered with conditions, power disguised as protection. I was struck by how easily care and danger coexist here, and by how much the story trusts the reader to notice that slippage for themselves. As the opening chapter of a larger, serial-adjacent project, it feels expansive and inviting while quietly laying track for questions about agency, loyalty, and what we’re willing to give up in exchange for feeling seen.

Inga Jones Writes Thrillers, Thriller Tips for Writers

This week, I’m highlighting two publications that are doing things a little differently. I admire the imagination and skill of both of these writers.

• “One Year Later” by Nina Zolotow, Tasty Literary Bites Nina writes one-sentence stories, but they’re not as short as you would expect. She plays with structure to make something told in one breath share a whole life. I highly recommend her collection of works as an example of masterful control on grammar and structure.

• “The Penthouse Disappearance” by Marta, Marta Have you ever wanted to play detective? Marta creates compelling mysteries and posts them on Fridays. Then the solutions are published a few days later. In the meantime, you’re welcome to share your theories in the comments and talk to the other sleuths.

Melina Chapa, Midnight Letters

Life has been somewhat chaotic lately, and that drives me towards stories that somehow resemble the real feelings behind the stress—or the feelings the stress brings out. In times like these, I always think about my grandpa and how much I miss him. I think, too, about the choices in life I’ve made that got me where I am. And above all, how I wish to voice everything that I feel until there’s nothing else inside. And somehow, all these feelings were put in these stories and poems by authors I just discovered. Thank you for voicing what I feel.

• “The Lantern’s Promise,” by Luna Asli Kolcu in by Luna Asli Kolcu.
  Commonly, I found myself trying to remember my grandmother’s laugh, sometimes like a desperate Endeavour because I’m afraid to forget. The same happens with my grandfather’s voice and his strong handshakes. And I have wondered: what would I be willing to do or give just to remember? And in one of those days, I stumbled across Luna’s story about a Miriam trying to remember her sister and the lengths she’s willing to go for it. I was hooked from the very beginning, at the promise of entering a different world, and the letters pawed me as soon as the mention of this journey to recover something lost came up. I got goosebumps with this story, my heart ached, and when I reached the following sentence, I couldn’t hold back the tears: “That was the whole point, maybe—not to remember perfectly, but to remember at all.” We all have something we wish to never forget: a memory, a person, a sound, a feeling, a taste… Please, give this story a shot and value what you can remember today.

• “Let One Man Fall: Prologue,” by Luke John in Microcosm: The World In Small Scenes.
  It never stops surprising me how many cruel things humans somehow try to justify with the famous “the ends justify the means.” This story made me think of that from the very beginning, and I found myself wondering: what happened to the main character that led him to switch the entire course of his life and choose to do bad things? And, on the other hand, how utterly mundane the meaning could also be: don’t we all do a bunch of things we don’t want to but have to because it’s work? This is just the prologue of a story, and it trapped me: I was able to feel what the character was describing, his doubts and hesitation, and compare it to moments in life where I have maybe felt that way. Give it a try!

• “Happy Hour,” by Shane Bzdok in Matte Black.
  I was drawn to this poem by the title alone, not expecting what I did find. It made me travel to those whispered conversations in the middle of the night, when we share stories no one else is supposed to know, and how good it feels to tell them out loud.

Coral Evermore, Tales From a Wilted Rose

As I slowly return from the dead as a University student drowning in assigned readings, I finally found some time to read the incredible fiction on Substack! This week, I accidentally had a vampire theme, which feels particularly fitting as I am just about to finish reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. What can I say? I guess I’m just a huge fan of vampires. Without further ado, each story I bring you today has a thoroughly gothic atmosphere that feels like two different love letters to the genres of classic gothic literature and vampire fiction.

• “Duskfall” by Nicholas Warren, Speakeasy of the Macabre A father and son ride towards Grimm’s Hollow, New Duskfall as a grave mission looms over them. The son admits his fear of the task at hand, while his father reminds him that he must snuff these fears out if they are to succeed. Before they dare go inside, the man satiates his pistol with blood dripping from his pricked finger while wielding the boy with a wooden stake before they face what awaits them inside. This story drew me in immediately, providing high stakes (no pun intended) in a single conversation cloaked in a grim, dangerous, and melancholy atmosphere. While reading, the prose reminded me a lot of Bram Stoker with its Victorian style. I also appreciated the various references to the classics as well. Although the ending broke my heart, it left me wondering what would happen next. Nicholas Warren with his Speakeasy of the Macabre is an emerging gothic voice you should all read if you love the genre.

• “Salt & Rust” by Evil-izabeth, Bramble & Quill Set in an ancient lighthouse, the narrator guards the vampire sleeping underneath as she slowly descends into madness wracked with guilt in her isolation. Lamenting the loss of this vampire who had once been her lover, she remains trapped by the atrocities they had committed, taking them on as if they were her own. Now, the narrator faces their own immortal life as the guardian to a past they are unable to let go of. First off, I love the Nautical Gothicism of this story and am now obsessed with a new subgenre. I enjoyed how the female protagonist here is allowed to be utterly monstrous and sympathetic, which is not something you see often enough. Oh, and her vampire lover also being a woman? Fantastic. The ending is quite surreal, but more than anything, it is a bittersweet revelation that shows some light out of a dark tunnel. Evil-izabeth of Bramble & Quill proves herself to be a writer you should go to for all things fantasy and gothic.

Well, we made it through January - arguably the longest month in human history - and February has arrived to remind us that at least some months have the decency to be shorter.

This week’s curation brings you another collection of exceptional fiction from across Substack. These writers are crafting worlds, characters, and stories that deserve your attention. If something catches your eye, show them some love: hit that like button, follow their publications, and if a piece really resonates, give it a restack to help spread the word.

Good fiction shouldn’t languish in obscurity, and your engagement makes all the difference to these authors. Let’s dive in.

Tina Crossgrove, Existential Dread and Other Hobbies

The last couple of weeks have been bitterly cold here in Upstate NY. It’s snowed on-and-off for the last week, and all I have wanted to do is wrap myself in a blanket, put on some music to create the perfect ambiance, and sip a beverage while I read by the fire (we have one of those in this house!). My recommendations this week come with both a drink and song recommendation to help you set the mood as you read.

• “The Red Curse” by Judith Ashcraft. Body horror is one of my all-time favorite genres of horror. It’s often a vehicle by which authors–and specifically female and female-identifying authors–explore how women’s bodies are controlled, surveilled, and violated as a means of denying bodily autonomy. Menstruation, pregnancy, pain that isn’t believed, blood that’s treated as shameful: it’s all fertile ground for horror because it’s already viewed as horrific by men AND is often the matrix of horrific experiences for women. It’s from this perspective–a woman, a feminist, a lover of horror and all that it can do–that I humbly recommend Ashcraft’s story wherein a young woman scorned gifts her ex “the curse.” I recommend reading this while drinking a glass of chianti and listening to Hole’s “Jennifer’s Body.”

• “The Silent Season” by CC Harlow. CC Harlow remains one of my favorite Substack finds. Her stories are so meticulously crafted that I’m not just reading them, I’m experiencing them from inside the worlds she created. In the instance of “The Silent Season,” Harlow transports us to the dead of winter in 1913 Serbia. A young priest arrives in Volyma, a town shrouded in silence, and discovers a young woman who endlessly walks the lake, lantern in hand. What unfolds, and what he learns about Volyma and its lake, tests his faith in every way imaginable. Harlow already recommends an appropriately atmospheric song–”Lullaby” by Vjaceslav Grochovskij–I recommend straight vodka over ice.

• “Cirque DeVante: Chapter One: Welcome To The Show” in Cirque DeVante by J.G. Hammil. I am a sucker for a story set in a circus or carnival. Something about an entire community living outside the confines of “proper” society according to their own code, but are a tight knit family unit who fiercely protect their own. The lights, the music, the smell of sawdust and popcorn—they create a world that feels both magical and dangerous. So with no further ado, step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Guy Devante, a flamboyant showman, and his sharp-witted assistant Talia must keep their circus running—with a brilliant, stubborn dog named Nestor who refuses to follow the rules. Chaos, backstage drama, and impossible demands collide in a show where anything can happen, and every act keeps you on the edge of your seat. I recommend listening to “Demon Kitty Rag” by Katzenjammer while sipping on a Corpse Reviver #2.

Kelly Xan, The Author Wars

January of 2026 proved to be a horror show. Every new atrocity, every new terrifying revelation. After a while, my spine felt like a centipede, and I wanted to rip it out of my body so I could just sleep. But sleep doesn’t get rid of demons, it just means demons aren’t my problem for a few hours. The comfort of numbness comes with a price. So, I sought out stories that were thoughtful, unnerving, and forced me to be introspective, ones that would make me sit and deal with the crawling vertebrae. And these two did just that. I had to sit with them. I had to take time to digest them. They refused to let me slip into numbness, and I very much appreciate them for that. After reading them, I felt awake and aware, and I didn’t feel quite as small as before. I hope you too enjoy these thought-provoking tales!

• “The Tenderness of Wild Beasts, Chapter 1” in The Tenderness of Wild Beasts by Saint-Lazare, Saint-Lazare, Writes. “It is a conversation. Between a daughter and her biological father. Between two people searching for the serial killer who has turned their lives and the lives of their loved ones upside down. Between two writers trying to find the words to exorcise themselves and reconnect.” – The opening of this serial is a straightforward, unsettling scene: a nameless narrator looking over a missing children’s poster. I have never been so quickly pulled into a story that starts out with a chapter of internal dialogue, but the atmosphere of mystery and forewarning got me good. You are diving into a tale that has so much to unravel, so many topics that we often want to shut our eyes to. The hazardous dynamics between family and friends. Those childhood experiences that shape us into tangled and muddy adults. To not give too much away, I will just describe it as treading water that feels bottomless, and you are 100% confident a starving kraken is lurking underneath you. But the writing and the build up is so good, you keep swimming anyway. Saint-Lazare writes a stunning, eerie mystery with tension that never ceases, vivid imagery, and a cast of incredible, fascinating characters. It was such an achingly cathartic read. If you need more convincing to read this, there is a chapter index that includes musical pairings for each chapter.

• “Sol Invictus” by Didrik, Grime Light. “And those bastards, out there, will call to you for your entire life. You must never yield. Not even for a second.” – A slice of life story featuring vampires and two old gentlemen learning how to aid their town that is being plagued by creatures of the night. You get horror. You get dark humour. After a blip about the atrocity that is humanity, Didrik would throw in a simple line that would have me laughing. You get a story about two characters that are so, so unbelievably human who end up being extraordinary. And I absolutely adored this portrayal of vampires, the monstrous marrying the sensual, that constant push and pull between vampire entities and their prey. I never anticipated walking away from this story feeling sincerely inspired. It gave me hope in a uniquely gritty way and reminded me to never “give in”. And Didrik’s writing is so honest. It’s not epic epiphanies or applause or massive fight scenes. It’s humans making hard choices quietly. You’ve met these characters at some point in your life. You may have felt like these characters, slightly numb and disconnected from the world. But I hope others read this and get a similar sense of hope. “Good old Sol.”

Tonja K. Johnson

It is only the first month of 2026 and it already feels like five hundred years have passed. Living in an ICE occupied Minnesota has made connecting with creativity extremely difficult. I often find it pointless to pursue my own artistic endeavors. When faced with violence we are still called to perform, to work, to continue our lives as if the communities we helped build crumble around us. Last week, I watched a woman get tackled in the snow by a gang of six masked men. They shoved her face into the slurry, buried their knees in her spine, and asked her for her papers. She couldn’t talk because she’d taken a mouthful of slush. People crowded around—phones out, demanding they let her go. They didn’t let her go. And all the while, I felt powerless to change the world around me. Why do terrible things continue to happen? Why don’t more of us rise up to stop the tide of hatred sweeping through our nations? So the stories I was drawn to this month are stories born of liberation, people fighting back against corrupt systems that want us to govern us—to make us mistakenly believe we are too small to effect change. Dear Reader, I hope these tales sink into your bones the way they have mine.

• “In This House the Dead Don’t Rest” by Margeaux West, Haintland. Molly is trapped in an abusive marriage to a dead man who has come back to life determined to make sure she knows her place is still in the kitchen. What a powerful piece about the struggle for personal liberation. Molly was forced to enact the role of perfect house wife under the thumb of her cheating, violent, husband and so she seeks the only thing that she can in this nightmare: deliverance. To every person who has ever broken free from the shackles of a toxic marriage, I applaud you. You deserve to live a life that is dictated by no one other than yourself. As a survivor of domestic violence, stories like this hit especially hard, but they need to be told. We need to hold a mirror up to our baser selves in order to change.

• “Sun Kings” by Thaddeus Howze, Omniverse. An impending cosmic event will cause the extinction of nearly all life on Earth in less than a decade to which an alien offers to upload all of human consciousness in their hive mind. For a chance at life humanity must choose either to leave their mortal bodies behind, and join the aliens among the stars or die. This story forces us to grapple with a very intense “what if” question. What if the only way to save humanity was to no longer be human, could we do it? This is a liberation, of the mind, of the body and of the pressures of living an individualistic life that runs on capitalism and overconsumption. I love that this challenged my mind to consider what freedom would like outside of our physical forms. Thaddeus wove a story that was equal parts science and heart. By the very end I was leaning forward to see what humanity would choose, because the answer was something I saw reflected in myself. That is when you know a piece of fiction is truly effective—someting inside you, is unearthed during the read.

Yaba Armah,Gh’d Company

Happy Monday everybody! Now let’s get into this week’s banger.

• “Cinder,” by Matt, Mind of Matt. “The heat death of the universe began on a blindingly bright Thursday…” – Mind of Matt. If ever there was a physical list of reasons to join a writing group, this piece from Mind of Matt would be at the top. According to the author, “Cinder” was born from an inside joke turned class assignment. And let me tell you, homework never looked so good. Within 500 words, Matt tells a snug tale about Gwen and her disagreeable car heater as they inch through heavy traffic in the thick of winter. What I loved about this story is how deftly Matt flits between humour and horror, reality and fantasy. His sentences are light, even as they wield heavy material. His pacing is brisk, and yet you know where you are at every point. You can taste the cold, the discomfort, and Gwen’s comical frustration. This is a wickedly dark serving of cackles, best enjoyed on your too-early commute or any time you just need a break.

Qibra, Qibra

We begin February with two stories about knowledge we’re not allowed to access. In one, algorithms know our future. In the other, our past has been erased.

• “Targeted Ads” by Drew Morris, Drew Morris Writes. Have you ever joked that your phone is listening to you? You mention Arby’s then boom! Arby’s Ad. It’s funny until it’s not. That’s where this story starts. Targeted Ads that feel a little too targeted. Hair loss commercials where the models look exactly like you. Music that matches your taste. Products you were just thinking about buying. I love how Drew takes something we all experience (the creepy feeling when an ad or video knows too much) and pushes it just past comfortable. The protagonist starts following the ads’ suggestions. Starts simple enough: a new phone, hair treatment, a water heater replacement. Each prediction comes true with eerie precision. Then the ads change. Lottery tickets, mansions, private islands. He’s convinced he’s about to win big. The final ad was the most disturbing one. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say the ads know something he doesn’t know about what’s coming. What terrified me most is the ambiguity. Are the ads genuinely predicting the future or manifesting it? Or has surveillance capitalism just gotten that good at reading us? The story never tells you, and that uncertainty is what makes it linger.

• “First Contact” by J.Michael Thomas. “No big heads. No black eyes. No gray skin. No reptilian scales.” What if first contact isn’t with aliens, but with advanced humans returning home? When a spacecraft lands at Stonehenge, the world expects the aliens we saw in the movies. Instead, two beings emerge who look completely human…because they are. That got my attention and scratched an itch in my brain in the best way. They left Earth 15 years ago (200,000 years Earth-time, thanks to time dilation) on an exploration mission. They expected protocols passed down through generations. They expected a successor waiting with the knowledge to greet them. However, they find we’ve forgotten everything. Stonehenge, their carefully constructed wayfinder, is just an ancient monument now. The “wow signal” from 1977 was their return message. We just didn’t understand. J. Michael Thomas’ explores a fascinating premise. What if humanity was already travelling the stars 200,000 years ago? What happened to that civilization? Why did we forget? And when those advanced ancestors return, what if the people in power decide we’re not ready to know the truth? The ideas are compelling. It made me rethink ancient megaliths and what our ancestors knew that we’ve lost. I’m curious if the author plans to explore the lost civilization angle further. There’s so much potential in that thread.

For the final week of January, we have a number of recommendations from our growing team of curators, including from FicStack Discord moderator - turned curator, . Give the featured authors a read, a like, drop them a comment, and maybe give them a restack.

Wendy Russell, Sass&Sage

Both of my picks this week are interested in the moment something becomes true before it can safely be said — when recognition happens privately, in the body or on the page, and consequence is waiting just outside the room. Although these pieces sit in very different genres, I’m drawn to writing and voice rather than lane, and I love being able to read that way on Substack. The range of fiction here means we’re genuinely spoiled for choice if we’re willing to read widely, and these two pieces spoke to each other for me despite their differences.

• “Teresa at the Barber’s” in On Campus by Caroline Osella, Rewilded Anthropologist. A haircut becomes the moment a character recognises herself — and realises a conversation can no longer be postponed. This excerpt from Caroline Osella’s work-in-progress novel On Campus follows Teresa through a deceptively simple moment: a visit to the barber that crystallises long-held feelings about identity, self-recognition, and what comes next. Osella writes the physical experience of change with restraint and care, allowing sensation, messaging, and reflection to carry the emotional weight. What emerges is not a dramatic turning point but a deeply human one — private courage gathering itself before a difficult conversation. It’s a quietly powerful character vignette that signals the emotional intelligence and thematic depth of the larger novel.

• “‘Smugglers’ Tunnels and Sea Dragons” in A Grail for Eidothea by Leanne Shawler, Mordreigiau Chronicles. This first chapter of an epistolary fantasy in which a young woman’s private journal becomes the only place she can tell the truth about what she has seen — and who she has saved. In the opening chapter of A Grail for Eidothea, Leanne Shawler introduces us to a voice caught between enforced respectability and dangerous truth. Written as a recovered journal, this first entry establishes a richly imagined historical setting where smugglers’ tunnels, family control, and mythic inheritance converge. Shawler’s prose is lush without being indulgent, grounding its fantasy elements in physical care, secrecy, and fear, while quietly building stakes that extend far beyond the page. This is a confident, immersive beginning — a chapter that knows exactly what kind of story it is opening, and trusts the reader to follow it underground.

Melina Chapa, Midnight Letters
When the clock changed and the new year arrived, a new need emerged in me for stories with strong messages that take one deep within for introspection, while at the same time captivate my mind and soul. That is why the two stories I’m sharing with you will make you question what you already know and wonder if something could be different.

• “The Forgetting Place” by Abhishek Banerjee, The Banerjee Codex. What if there was a place that could make you forget everything that you wished could be erased from your mind to ease your soul? Would you be ready to take the price? In this story, Abhishek strikes a balance between fiction and reality, creating a place for people who wish to leave part of their lives behind, making you wonder whether it is worth it, and adding real-life situations that are far too familiar and relatable. If you want something quick that will make you wonder even after you finish, this story is for you.

• “God’s Own Algorithm” by Gaby Brogan, The Anatomy of Reality. In the era of social media and AI, can those be a message from God? In this horror story, Gaby suggests that social media, specifically Instagram, reveals our true potential—and that this can mean different things to different people. Once you decide what to do with the almighty message, there’s no going back.

Inga Jones, Thriller Tips for Writers

I love stories that hook you right from the start, stories where you know the author is a skillful storyteller by the end of the first paragraph. Today, I’m showcasing two very different stories that will keep you hooked until the very end.

• “Skin in the Attic” by Know Your Innerverse. This is speculative fiction, in which one woman reexamines her romantic relationship as she looks back on the past. Tense and tender, this story will keep you questioning reality until the very end.

• “The Murder of Susie Wallace et al.” by Louis Urbanowski, UrbWrites. This psychological thriller also has a speculative bend. A woman who can inhabit different bodies is killed over and over by the same man. It all culminates in an ending that you will not see coming.

Connor Mancuso, Ink and Entropy
This week I went hunting for the kind of horror that doesn’t kick the door in—it calls your name from the treeline and waits for you to come anyway. Each of these pieces feels folkloric in the best way: a curse that moves through a village like a hymn, a house that’s more mouth than shelter, a river that remembers what we tried to pass off as “not ours.” If you like eldritch dread with old-world teeth (and consequences that feel earned), start here.

• “Sleep Deep And Be Called” by Leeron Heywood, Writing From Weird. A village begins sleepwalking—night after night—always in the same direction, as if something in the winter woods has learned how to tug on the human body like a string. When the narrator wakes mid-step with blood on their feet and aurora-light in their memory, the curse stops being a rumor and becomes a map. I love how this one builds dread through pattern: warmth that shouldn’t be there, missing shoes, a voice that feels half-sung, half-prayed. It’s quiet, wintry, and ominous in that “fairy tale you don’t repeat out loud” way.

• “Serrated Edge” by Dblkrose of BSP, Black Spyder Publishing by Dblkrose. A witch in a small town lures a predator home—and the story lets you think you know what kind of horror you’re in… right up until the kitchen becomes a chapel for something hungry. The prose is lush and knife-bright, full of sensory detail (clove, cedar, old paper) that makes the turn feel even more vicious when it arrives. What I’m recommending here is the reversal—the way terror shifts hands—and the creature-feature dread that blooms out of domestic space like mold with a purpose. It’s nasty, gleaming, and deeply satisfying.

• “The Clearing” by lokikone, Wick Inkling. Three hunters pull a wrong thing from the river, and the land does what the land always does in stories like this: it keeps score. The pacing is slow-burn and inevitability-heavy, with a voice that feels like someone telling you a cautionary tale beside a weak fire—flat, cold, and absolute. I couldn’t shake the imagery: the green grass on frosted ground, the mound that pulses like a buried heart, the sense that the river is a living witness with a long memory. This is folkloric horror at its sharpest: you touch what you shouldn’t, you say the wrong words, and the world answers.
  

Sandolore Sykes, In the Inversion Field

Substack just got dangerous again. Linguistically feral fiction is back in fashion. I chose these two pieces because both authors have been published by the dynamic indie press Tiny Worlds, and the two stories take us into another phonemic dimension.

• “Little Man & the Moonlight Darlings” by Sean Thomas McDonnell, Automatic Writer. It’s Sean’s week. New book out, the buzz humming across my whole Substack neighborhood, and this story feels like a small, private victory in dark times. A little man bites people who are “too big,” who carry too much darkness, tasting for who is “moonlight clean.” It’s a dark fable: sweet, pitchy, and quietly righteous.

• “Firecracker” by Jon T, Ferns of Colombo. This one is a cosmic countdown disguised as a futuristic Dewey Decimal system, set in a dusty netherworld Bookatory. The story smells like “off-gassing. Bitter. Dank. A memory of expired medicine in yellowing plastic,” and it’s packed with thesaurus-shattering critters. Every sentence feels like it’s redirecting infinite pressure without (hopefully) blowing the entire universe to smithereens.

Congratulations to all featured authors!

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Midnight Letters

A space for literary and speculative writing —intimate essays, soft hauntings, and stories shaped by feminine shadows, memory, and emotional depth. Midnight thoughts, quiet ache, and the slow work of becoming.

By Melina Chapa

Who I am

I’m Melina—a Mexican psychologist trying to make sense of life through words and other worlds—a godin by day, a reader and writer by night.

Living in the north of my country, I’ve always been influenced by Mexican and American culture, which is why I try to find stories that show both.

Since a very young age, stories have always been my way of understanding what it means to be human. Through fiction, I explore emotions we often struggle to name—and, at the same time, learn to cope with them. Reading and writing are tools for reflection, healing, and transformation.

What I Love to Read

I’m drawn to stories that break me apart and put me back together—although never quite the same.

I read widely across genres, but I usually gravitate towards fantasy, horror, dystopian fiction, and romance. It’s within speculative fiction that I find haunting stories that resemble the reality I live in.

The books that linger, even years after reading them, are the ones that captivate me. Stories that invite analysis, reflection, and sometimes even release. The kind that makes you feel uncomfortable through the questions silently in our minds, opening new emotional doors and allowing both thinking and healing.

A Few Recommendations

One author with the superpower of turning real-life situations into haunting stories is Shirley Jackson. Her novel ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ is a quiet, unsettling exploration of isolation, family, and the ways society turns fear into violence. Through an unreliable but compelling narrator, the story blurs the line between protection and imprisonment, innocence and cruelty. The perfect read to question ourselves about the lengths we would go for our loved ones.

For a very different emotional setting, I also recommend ‘Divine Rivals’ by Rebecca Ross. In this story, born within a raging war between Gods, the reader will find romance, grief, and hope through letters exchanged by two rivals. This book opens the door to the unknown and shows how we always find what we need in very unexpected places—or persons—if we allow ourselves to.

What I’ll Be Curating

I look for stories with meaning—sometimes explicit, often hidden between the lines.

I’m especially drawn to dark narratives that invite introspection and discomfort, stories that make the reader question their world and existence, balanced by cozy and romantic ‘cleanser palettes’ that provide relief and comfort.

Another self-mission is to find more Latin authors who can expand our cultural knowledge through their stories, fostering a sense of community and shared cultural appreciation among readers and curators alike.