Writing Short Horror

I believe that writing short stories in sci-fi, fantasy, horror, post-apocalyptic, and related genres represents a great way to get into indie publishing and finding your ideal audience. Here's my take on why this is so fun, often rewarding, and really exciting.

"How to Write a Short Horror Story: A Comprehensive Guide to Turning Nightmares into Narratives" delves into the shadowy realms of storytelling. This comprehensive guidebook walks both beginning and experienced writers through the process of writing short Horror stories that will chill readers to the bone. Discover the secrets to creating unforgettable antagonists, designing eerie settings, and delivering jaw-dropping plot twists. Understand how to use psychology to elicit fear, as well as how to revise, polish, and publish your work effectively. This book takes you from the germ of a ...

In this book, we are going to explore the specific challenges of writing genre flash fiction and short fiction, where you only have 500 to 1,000 words to tell a story. To do this well, you need to master three specific skills of genre writing. You need to understand the reader's expectations of the genre—the voice, the story arc, and the satisfying outcomes. More often than not, you will need to use familiar locations or settings; after all, you don't have many words to create a whole new world. The real skill lies in the twist—after drawing the reader in with familiar genre storylines ...

Struggling writer Elijah stumbles on an antique fountain pen buried in a forgotten desk. The words flow like never before—vivid, raw, unstoppable. But something isn’t right. The stories feel too real. Too alive. As fiction bleeds into reality, Elijah must uncover the pen’s secret before it finishes his story for him. Dark, elegant, and addictive, The Ink Thief is a gothic short story that grips from the first line and doesn’t let go.

Collected here are the stories, poems, and religious writings that preceded and helped form the science fiction and fantasy genres. The collection explores the key imaginative roots and their later literary permutations. The author list alone reads like a literary who’s who and includes many writers not primarily known for their forays into the fantastic. Organized by topic rather than simple chronology, this volume allows the listener to trace the history of robots, aliens, and apocalypses up to some of their most recent manifestations.

There are stories — and there are the stories behind the stories. This may look like any short story collection. And on the surface, it is, albeit a strange one. Writer and book editor Dave Pasquantonio presents twenty short stories that dip their toes in, and often dive deep into, the weird end of the pool. Newspaper articles about a house for sale and a local diner give us inside information that no paper would ever print. A housefly takes on chanting spiders, an overly chatty dragonfly, and a car window in a nod to 1940s pulp novels as she chases down a sugary treat. A woman’s ...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR From the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House, a spectacular volume of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, essays, and other writings. Features “Family Treasures,” nominated for the Edgar Award for...

Words of a Feather is a stunning collection of Short Stories, Poems and Sketches from author, Robert E. Kearns. There's something inside for every taste, and Words of a Feather comes packed with hours of reading pleasure. Replete with entertainment, there is sure to be laughs, tears, spills and thrills. Satisfying pleasures of the mind, Words of a Feather is a book you'll want to read again and again.

William has recently lost his wife and shows signs of becoming severely depressed. His friends talk him into going to a medium with the special ability to talk to the dead...not through her, but through a rotary-dial phone she has possessed for many years. Apprehensive and hopeful, William visits the medium and is thrown into a supernatural world beyond anything he could ever comprehend.

After a woman dies, she watches over her son as he struggles with life’s challenges. When he dies, too, he comes to her for help, but she has different plans in store for him.

When Nick O'Reilly is invited to Sherlock Lake by his friend Danny, he is more than apprehensive. Nick is familiar with the ghost story that surrounds that place, and he is not one to meddle with situations like that. However, after Danny pushes him into it, criticizing his confidence, Nick feels like he has no choice. The two wander down to the lake to explore the legend that surrounds it, and when they do, they get more than they bargained for. The Mystery at Sherlock Lake is a short story that will thrill you with its mysterious twists and turns and leave you wondering what will happen ...

What's supposed to be an upcoming authors dream would turn into a night of hell and become a curse to any one that happened to glance upon the last writings of author Richard Valance from the unfinished horror novel titled A Blast from Hell. Richard's publisher said in angry voice, if you don't finish that book tonight you're a dead man, and just to make sure, I'm coming over until you finish the last pen stroke. I've got too much money invested for this novel to die from someone that made a promise to me and not deliver.