#109. Top Tips and Feedback from a Short Story Publisher

To listen to the show, click on a link to your favourite platform over here -->
or listen on the Brainstoryum page.
Transcription follows below:

Show notes: The list of categories for the second round of brainstorms (chosen with a roll of the dice) is: 1) a book or magazine 2) a job or role, taken on reluctantly, 3) a pub or café, 4) a portal or means of travel, 5) a piece of treasure or magical, sought-after object, 6) a monster or creature, 7) an invention, 8) a weapon, 9) a hidden identity or disguise, 10) a scar (physical or psychological), 11) a ghost, or 12) or a cocktail or special tea (which, let’s face it, is likely to be a magic potion or poison).

Hello imaginative people. I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 109 of Brainstoryum.
 
Now, regular listeners will know that, alongside finishing off my next novel, which is with my editor (trying to stay calm—I am calm), towards the end of last month, I also wrote a short story in response to one of the publishing call-outs I shared on the show, because I just loved the idea and could not let that slip by. It was from Zombies Need Brains dot com, who were asking for creative—inventive—stories about were-creatures; anything but a werewolf. They’d even suggested were-squirrels and were-octopuses in their call-out, so they were up for being all-out wacky. Right up my street. However, I am gutted to reveal that my story did not make the cut.
 
I bumped into some other writers on social media who also submitted and did not make the cut, and one of them, who’d submitted right up close to the deadline of 31st May, said his story showed as being 311th in the queue. I also seem to remember that the publisher already had about 8 or so authors already lined up for their stories to be in the new anthology before they did the call-out, so they were probably only looking for, I don’t know, 6 stories—possibly? Their preferred length was 6K words, so you couldn’t have much more than that before you start looking at a serious tome. So I think we both felt a bit reassured by the chances of acceptance being something like less than 2%.
 
But yeah, I’m still gutted. I would’ve loved to be in that anthology, the first book was so good. Even so, I still have a story I wouldn’t otherwise have written and, you never know, there may be another call-out in future that it might be perfectly suited for. And in fact, I may have found this, so if you’re in the same position as I am—if you too wrote a story for Were-2 and got rejected, I may have another call-out that it could potentially fit. Hang in there and I’ll announce this in my usual slot for publishing call-outs towards the end of the show.
 
But in the meantime, part of what I liked about Zombies Need Brains as publishers was: they put out a video on Bluesky a few weeks before the deadline giving feedback—sort of general feedback about the stories they’d received so far, and advice about what works, what doesn’t work… I really liked that, I feel like there’s not enough of this: anything you can get straight from the publishers’ mouths about what they’re really looking for, and especially what doesn’t work, is gold dust, quite frankly. So I’m going to share with you now the main points I jotted down from having listened to their video, because what they said rung true and I think they’ll apply across the board. (It was a conversation between two editors, one of whom is Joshua Palmatier, the owner of Zombies Need Brains LLC—I just love that that’s a company!).
 
OK, so a lot of the stories they’d received were “good for the first third”, then petered out and not a lot happened. I’ve always thought that writing an opening to a story, setting up the suspense, is the easier part which is quicker to learn to do well. It’s developing a story and tying things off in a satisfying yet surprising way that I think takes more time and practice to get to grips with. So I wasn’t really surprised by this. And of course, the more stories we write, the better we get at this—and all aspects of writing.
 
Another thing the editors noticed was a lot of stories that had clearly been written before this call-out, where the writer had obviously tweaked the story for this purpose.
 
One major symptom, if you like, of this, was the arbitrariness of the were-creature—it wasn’t necessary for that story. You could imagine the same story unfolding without need of that were-creature being a part of it. Hm.
 
They received a lot of discovery tales, that is, a character who is discovering that he or she (or it) is a were-creature, and the experience of that, kind of describing that happening and the horror of it. But that alone isn’t a story; it’s not enough. There needs to be a problem that they solve, something they overcome; something that matters and that incites a change, that’s wound into the situation of being a were-creature.
 
Another kind of story they received and which didn’t really work, was one that just ends with a fight. They emphasised that a fight is not a story conclusion in and of itself, and to be worth reading (or watching), it has to be integral to the story, and to achieve something. The protagonist might simply figure out something or discover a surprising truth that affects their, either during the fight or as a consequence of it. But there has to be an integral reason why things happen in a story, and of course, the risk of a fight if it’s not really needed to resolve or change anything, is that it puts a halt on the actual storyline itself. So your reader will be drumming their fingers, waiting for it to end, if it’s only there for the spectacle.
 
So there you have it. Advice straight from the publisher. I couldn’t find the video on Youtube, but if you go to Bluesky and find Joshua Palmatier, you may have to scroll a little bit to find the video but it is there.
 
**
Up next, I have some amazing short fiction to share from my talented listeners based on prompts from the show.
 
Harold Loomis, who sometimes calls himself H.L., responded to a prompt on episode 107, “The pointed headless horseman was stuck in a portal with the tranquil game developer.”
 
Harold wrote:
 
“The headless horseman’s sword was mid-arc, his horse mid gallop, when a stark white arch appeared directly in front of the headless rider. He pulled hard on the reins, the black as night horse tried not to go but slid on the path through the portal. The blinding whiteness of the room subsided to reveal a small woman, short in stature holding an iPad. Her nose ring jingled and blue hair bounced as she gave a speech she had given many times before. The monotone staleness of the delivery gave away the fact that she didn’t care what was happening.


“Welcome to the Portal, this is a video gaming halfway point between myth, fiction and imagination where we, the game developers, get motivations behind characters to provide a better gaming experience.” The woman gave an exasperated sigh. “Why do you do what you do?”

The headless horseman was overwhelmed. His horse stamped and snorted. He raised his sword and swiped through the neck of the woman hoping to be rid of her and get out of this place. The pixels of the hologram shifted but left the woman more incensed.

“Ugh, I am not really there with you,” she said with contempt.

Her iPad buzzed and emitted a translation taken from the horseman.

“Who dares imprison me?”

The woman was already tired of this. A press of a button and the floor opened to drop the horse and horseman back to where they came.

“As if,” the woman said.”
 
 
I love the weird atmosphere here, and how you've thrown together fairytale imagery with modern technology at the same time. Thank you for sharing your story, Harold.
 
Paul McMillan wrote a story based on the “egotistical fate”:
 
“Most fates worked quietly. The Tragic Fate broke hearts and never took credit. The Twice-Lived Fate gave people second chances and rarely stuck around to see what happened. The Humble Fate spent centuries nudging lives in small directions and seemed perfectly happy being forgotten. The Egotistical Fate, however, was unbearable. Every time something happened, he wanted credit for it. When a fisherman caught a record-breaking trout, "You're welcome." When a king won a war, "Couldn't have done it without me." When a baker finally perfected her pie crust after twenty years, the crust arrived with a tiny note baked inside: "Masterfully arranged by Fate."
 
One day the other fates grew tired of it.
 
"Fine," said the Humble Fate. "If you're so important, take a week off."
 
The Egotistical Fate agreed. He expected civilization to collapse by Tuesday. Instead, everything kept happening. People fell in love, storms rolled in, countries still argued, and children were born. After a week he returned, visibly shaken.
 
"What happened?" he asked. The Tragic Fate shrugged. "The usual."
 
The Egotistical Fate never fully recovered from learning the universe could function without an audience. Though, to be fair, he still claimed responsibility for discovering that.”
 
 
This is so clever, it feels like a lot packed in, and you’ve really got me thinking about the concept of fate. Thank you, Paul.
 
You can find Paul McMillan on Instagram as Bookmarksloveandlore or on X as Bookmarkslandl.
 
Mark West wrote about the bloodthirsty circle:
 
“The Bloodthirsty Circle lived in a pleasant meadow with the other shapes. Nobody knew why he was bloodthirsty. He had never actually tasted blood. In fact, he fainted during a paper cut.
 
Still, every morning he announced: "Today I shall know violence."
 
The Anxious Triangle immediately began worrying. "Against whom?"
 
"I haven't decided."
 
The Magnanimous Square offered everyone biscuits. The Bureaucratic Rectangle proposed a committee. The Circle spent most of his afternoons making dramatic speeches about conquest before becoming distracted by a deeply mysterious parallelogram. This continued for years. Then one day a drop of blood appeared on a rose bush. The Circle stared at it ~ At last. His destiny. His purpose. His reason for being. He approached slowly. The other shapes gathered around. The Circle touched the blood. Then licked it. Everyone held their breath.
 
"Well?" asked Triangle. The Circle considered.
 
"It's horrible."
 
"And?"
 
"I appear to have built my personality around a misunderstanding."
 
Silence fell. After a long pause, Square offered him a biscuit. The Circle accepted. From then on he became known not as the Bloodthirsty Circle, but as the Circle of Unrealistic Expectations.
 
The Pedantic Hexagon was unbearable about the whole affair. "This sort of thing never happens to numbers," he said.
 
"Can numbers taste blood?," asked Square.
 
"Unlikely," said Hexagon. "They know their limitations."
 
Nobody knew what he meant. Even Hexagon seemed uncertain by the end of the sentence. Still, he looked very pleased with himself and the meadow carried on as before, although nobody ever did quite understand that mysterious Parallelogram.”
 
 
This is very weird: it’s clever humour on the surface, but there’s something darker lurking underneath, it’s slightly disturbing. Imagine if these weren’t literal shapes, and the shapes were nicknames for people.
 
Thank you for your story, Mark. You can find Mark West on X as 2112Westy.
 
Things get darker…
 
Paul Monteith wrote:
 
The Blood-Thirsty Circle and The Broken Wallaby

“Every month, Blood Moon Tavern hosted the Vampire Bite Nite, where costumed Vlads and Devilles, coven deep, drank Bloody Marys served in IV blood bags.

In a corner of the tavern, a broken wallaby, bound in garlic-soaked bandages, sat next to a circle as dark as a crypt.

A Deville approached the wallaby. "That's the darkest circle I've ever seen," she said. "The holy symbols circling the disc are like those used to confine creatures of the night."

"Very observant," replied the wallaby. "They keep the darkness inside the circle."

"Why keep it contained?"

"Come closer."

The vampiress leaned in and heard fluttering. Bats crowded her thoughts. A flock so thick around her face that she gasped for air and felt lightheaded. Behind the fluttering, a chorus of unintelligible growls and eerie howls left her confused and dizzy, and she stumbled toward the black circle.

In the circles' inky gloom, charcoal-colored figures moved. One of the figures stood at the circle's surface. Its red eyes pierced her to the marrow, and where she imagined its mouth to be, were two needle-like fangs.

Prickly fear crept over her scalp, the sensation washed over her face, and tingled down her spine. Without thinking, she bared her neck, enjoying the ecstasy as her skin was pierced.

The wallaby gave the Deville a gentle push, and she disappeared into the circle, a personal blood bag for the circle's thirsty inhabitants.

"That's one dark circle," said a Bite Nite reveller.

"Come closer," said the wallaby.
 
 
See, this is weird—again, there’s a strong flavour of humour but then the darkness spreads like spilled ink. Proof that you can, absolutely, blend humour with horror in an intriguing way.
 
Thank you, Paul. You can find Paul Monteith on Bluesky as Quantum Fairy and his linktree is linktr.ee/MostlyPaul.
 
Right, it is time to find new blends of humour and darkness, and countless other things, through the power of randomness as we reach into the Socks of Destiny.
 
**
SOCKS OF DESTINY ORGAN JINGLE
 
This part of the show is un-transpose-able! There's much giggling and rustling of paper as I pull words at random from the Socks of Destiny to create three unique sentences according to the rules of Exquisite Corpse, going: “Describing word—noun—action—describing word—noun.” Today’s resulting sentences are:
 
1. The sheepish mosaic snatched the moist artefact.
2. The weird lollipop woman typed a manuscript for the mangled ‘black shuck’ (ghostly black dog that haunts the coastline of East Anglia).
3. The neat snake oil salesman cuddled with the sploshing swamp monster.
**
 
Hm. Looking over the 3 Exquisite Corpses that have come up today—we have artefacts shifting around in a museum, including part of a fountain that still drips; that last one, with the snake oil salesman stepping from rural suburbs into an infested swamp; but the middle one, the one about the weird lollipop woman who typed a manuscript for the mangled ‘black shuck’, a ghost dog, seems to have the most potential to me.
 
It does feel like it could be a “who done it”. But then, if this lollipop woman is to become an unintentional investigator… Because she is not a professional, and because her life will be in danger if she investigates this murder—then I think this would fall under the genre of thriller. Supernatural thriller. Not something I would feel confident writing as a book, because I don’t tend to read thrillers so I’m not aware of all the expectations a reader would have, all the tropes they’d be looking for. But this is again, the beauty of exploring something as a short story. You can shrug off the usual expectations, and take something into a very different place.
 
Which is what I’ll do now, using the 12-sided dice (check the show notes if you’d like to see the full list of categories)…
 
(Rolls dice.) 11. A ghost.
 
What? But we already know that! The lollipop lady becomes a ghost writer for a ghost, writing down its grisly story… So what could this mean?
 
That there’s a threat of her becoming a ghost? That, while she becomes fascinated by the sensation that takes over her, this terrifying yet thrilling feeling of this dog’s mind and memories entering her own mind… So that every night, she almost begins to crave opening up her laptop and just typing, writing out the images that come to her, of the joy of running through fields, jumping for a ball or a stick, chasing a squirrel, guzzling a treat… She begins to realise, over time, that her body, her human body, is fading. The more time she spends indulging in these dog memories—which, every now and then, show her a flash of horrific imagery, of a knife raised against his owner, his alpha; of digging his teeth into the intruder’s leg, of the pain that screamed through his muscles as he was then attacked… The more time and thought-space the woman gives the spirit of this brave dog, the more her own life fades away. How long before she turns into a ghost herself? Or can she find a way to stop it? If she can just “see” the murderer’s face through the dog’s memory, if she can push him to that point of the memory—the part he always avoids, the recalled scene shutting down before they reach that bit—then she’ll know who it is, and maybe she can stop. Maybe the ghost dog can be at rest, knowing that someone else has heard, or watched, his story.
 
But then what? Who would believe her? If she went to the police with this information—it would not be treated as information, but as hallucination. And she might be forever haunted by this knowledge; but maybe that’s better than being forever haunted by this dog, and losing her own realness in the process.
 
Another possibility that the category of “ghost” could suggest: What if there’s another ghost in the story? What if she sees the murderer’s face in the dog’s memory—and she recognises him as her next door neighbour who died several years ago, before the dog’s (and his owner’s) death? What could that mean? This could turn into a very paranormal-driven story. Can a ghost kill you? What does it mean? I like the idea of starting out with something that seems utterly impossible, that you can’t put together: this is such a discovery-writer thing. If you start writing something that is mysterious to you, then this will come through in the tone of your writing. Plus, it’s more fun that way.
 
A final possibility I’m thinking of with “ghost” is the ultimate twist: that the lollipop woman is in fact a ghost herself, and she didn’t even know it. Major twist at the end. In fact, imagine how she’s been turning up to her job every day, stepping out into the road with her lollipop sign and only children acknowledging her, looking at her strangely; the parents not even glancing up, treating her like she doesn’t exist… because they can’t see her. Then, right near the end, she goes back out to do her job for the after-school run, and she finally notices what she’s ignored all along, with the power of denial: the walk/ don’t walk lights that the children and parents have been using anyway.
 
And that’s how this dog, the black shuck, has been able to enter her mind: because she, too, has been a ghost for some time.
 
Weird! Kinda spooky. I’ll roll the dice again, but there’s a lot going on here, so maybe this second roll can be just for a detail. Just throw in a little detail there to enrich the story world or the character:
 
6. A monster or creature? What’s that about?
 
What is going on…? I feel like the dice keeps pointing back to the elements or themes that are already there—as if to suggest we should focus on those elements and make more of them. Hm. Well, maybe that’s a good idea with this particular story, as it already has quite a lot going on in it that works with urban paranormal thriller-type stuff.
 
But if we take this less as a “general nudge” to keep going along monstrous lines of thought, this suggestion of monster or creature makes me think of the murderer. Who is he? What if the quiet neighbour who supposedly died several years ago and before this grisly murder of a man and his dog—what if he isn’t dead? What if he disappeared and was presumed dead (as the lollipop woman discovers when she starts digging into the newspaper articles about him online, trying to piece together the facts with the apparently impossible); and what if, when she tracks him down, he turns out to be a kind of monster?
 
That’s quite a lot of paranormal elements to chuck into the cooking pot of this story…
 
And, whether you decide to take on the same themes or ideas the dice has suggested, I would still very much like to hear what you make of the black shuck or ghost dog, and why “The weird lollipop woman typed a manuscript for the mangled ‘black shuck’”;
Or you might prefer to explore how the “neat snake oil salesman cuddled with the sploshing swamp monster.”
 
You know what to do: hit the ‘submit’ button at annatizard.com with a max 250 word story, scene or poem. Remember, to be included in the next show I’ll need your submission by end of day Friday, one week after the release of this show. Send something in later, and I will just include it in the show after that.
**
But how about some publishing opportunities while we’re at it: because once you get writing, it might inspire you to expand and develop what you’ve begun.
 
Exquisite Undead are looking for stories about vampires, whether that’s traditional blood-drinking vampires, undead horrors, or even psychic vampires, and they are open to any genre as well as genre-blending.
 
They accept short stories up to 7000 words, as well as poetry, and flash fiction. (I realise I’ve been sharing quite a lot of call-outs lately that tend to focus on longer stories, so here’s one for the flash fiction fiends!).
 
They pay 65 USD for short stories and $30 for poetry or flash fiction (which for them is anything up to 1500 words). They are open to submissions until 1st September and you can find out more at exquisite-undead.carrd.co
 
Now, the call-out I mentioned in the intro as being a potential for those (like me) who have a were-creature story going spare, is from Filidh Publishing for their Monstrously Misguided anthology.
 
The deadline is tight, people: 1st July. But they are looking for stories from 1500 words up to a max. of 6K. (My were-story is nearly 7K so I’m going to have to do some cutting back.) They’re looking for “original stories that reinvent, subvert, or completely upend traditional ideas of monsters. Think unexpected behaviour, strange evolutionary paths, or creatures trying poorly to adapt to modern life”.
 
I’m not completely sure this would being a perfect fit for a were-creature story, but it could be. If you’ve written one, have think about the themes it addresses and what happens in it. And if you haven’t, maybe try writing one based on a mangled black shuck or a sploshing swamp monster. For more information go to filidhbooks.com.
 
As usual, I don’t have any personal experience of these publishers; I’ve just come across the details I’ve shared with you now in the wilds of the internet. Whoever you choose to submit to, always run a check on Google for reviews and comments, and read the terms and conditions of publication to ensure they suit you.
 
And don’t forget to let me know the moment you have an Exquisite Corpse-inspired story or poem published anywhere, so I can share this on Brainstoryum Emporium and give you an extra shout-out so other listeners and folks online can find and your story online.
 
Until next time, go forth and be inspired!