I subscribe to the Flametree newsletter. For those that don’t know what it is, Flametree is a publishing house that publishes horror fiction, as well as sci-fi, fantasy, crime and even colouring books! But they also have this awesome newsletter. (You can sign up here.)
The newsletter contains 2 x 1000 word flash fiction stories every month, sent in by subscribers. Each newsletter a theme is chosen and then you’re given a few weeks to write something for that and send it in (submission guidelines here) You also get advanced notification of submission windows for future anthologies, books they’ve got coming out, offers and updates. It’s a cool newsletter and I’ve been subscribed to it for ages and even had a story published in it.
But here’s the best bit – if your story is chosen, you GET PAID.
Actual financial recognition for your work, as well as a large list of potential new readers of your work to get your name out there.
Recently, Flametree sent out their newsletter and there was a call for horror fiction with the theme of DEAD MAN’S WISH.
I figured I could do something for that. I had the time, I’d just sent in a load of revisions to my editor and my slate was clean for a few days.
My first thought process for Dead Man’s Wish initially made me think of Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman from Pirates of the Caribbean. I wondered if I could do something like that? But the idea went nowhere and so I tried to think of other things.
I came up with an idea for the town of Deadman, somewhere in the old Wild West and that there’d be a saloon in Deadman called Deadman’s Wish. I played around with the idea that the main residents of this saloon, the proprietress, the barman, the piano guy, would all be demons and how they’d lure souls. I wrote a couple of pages of notes, but couldn’t think of what the end would be, but figured I’d try to write my way into it, so I started writing.
There is a limit of 1000 words (and no less than 700 words) and I wrote exactly 796, before my fingers stopped moving and just hovered over the keyboard, because I still had no idea what the denouement would be. What the twist might be.
I figured I’d come back to it another day. Sleep on it.
But that didn’t work. I kept opening that document and nothing was happening. My brain had shut down and I began to think that maybe that story was a no-goer?
So I did what I always do when I get stuck and I took my dog for a walk and listened to a writing podcast (No Write Way by VE Schwab, if you’re interested.
And something was said in that podcast. An aside, a joke and I felt a lightbulb go off in my head and I knew how to write a Dead Man’s Wish story that had nothing to do with the Wild West, or a saloon, or a secret demon piano player.
This was something different. A body horror story. Where the aside from the podcast merged in my head with a medical fact that I knew and it was like alchemy! I had that Eureka moment! And I came home and without writing any notes (because I’d already plotted out what I wanted to happen in the story during the dogwalk) I began writing.
I wrote. I tweaked. I left it to sit. I tweaked some more until I was happy with it and then I submitted it.
I won’t know for a few weeks if it has placed. It might not get anywhere, but the story is good, I think and if it’s not successful with Flametree, then I will be able to shop it around to other places.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Nic x
Nic Dracas 