Browsing all articles tagged with short stories.
Monthly Short Story Winner: Fire
This month we asked our entrants to write about fire. The beauty of fire is its ambivalence. On the one hand we need it to survive (cooking our food, keeping us warm, protecting us) on the other hand it’s dangerous, maybe even diabolical (arson, battle magic, forest fires, household accidents). A fire—no matter if it’s […]
This Dreaming Isle edited by Dan Coxon – An Anthology by Unsung Stories
This Dreaming Isle by Unsung Stories is a collection of supernatural short stories by different authors inspired by British folklore, British history and the British landscape. Not quite one thing or another, it wanders back and forth across the shadowy borderland between urban fantasy, gothic horror and grown-up fairy-tales. Dreaming is the operative word here, […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Magic and Technology
This month we had our entrants write a story in a world where traditional fantasy with magic and science fictional technology coexist. Or meet. Or clash. Or fight. There are only two books I can think of at the moment that fit this genre. One is a German fantasy saga which was never translated to […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Maiden, Mother, Crone
The depiction of women in fantasy is a controversial, fascinating, and ongoing topic. This month we had our entrants write a story about women. Specifically, we wanted a story with at least two main characters/POVs and those two had to be picked from the aspects of the triple goddess: maiden/virgin, mother, and crone. This didn’t […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Letters
This month we had our entrants try their hand at writing a letter. Sounds boring and not fantasy-ish at all? We hope not! We didn’t want them to just write a random letter. Instead there were four topics to choose from, some funny, some sad, some what they make out of it. First person was […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Writing In A Subgenre You Don’t Like
We chose this topic to achieve two things: First, to acquaint entrants with something new, and second, to help entrants identify what they normally don’t like about their chosen subgenre. We hoped this would force them to write something different, rejuvenating the genre for them. And we are happy to say, the experiment was a […]
Karen Joy Fowler Interview – We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Karen Joy Fowler is a critically acclaimed and multi-award winning author of both literary and speculative fiction. Her work transcends genre boundaries but frequently explores issues around feminism, alienation and what it means to be human. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary (1991), follows a mysterious woman who suddenly appears in the Pacific Northwest of America […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Rebirth/Renewal
This is a broad theme and it doesn’t have to deal with spring, people, or the New Year. After all, what can’t be renewed? What doesn’t have the right to rebirth themselves time and again? Rules: 1. This must be prose or poetry. 2. The overarching theme must be renewal or rebirth of something or […]
Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
With Jagannath, I return to two genres I have visited in earlier reviews: short stories and Scandinavian fiction. One of my very first reviews for this site was a collection of speculative fiction set during the Age of Discovery, dealing with subjects as varied as the invention of a new sort of clock to Darwin’s […]
Monthly Short Stories Winner: Alien or Eldritch Artifact
A massive artifact appears all of a sudden and (violently) disrupts the everyday life (of a tribe, a city, a country, the world). It can either be an alien artifact (science fiction) or an eldritch artifact (fantasy). This month, we wanted our entrants to think big. Something huge happens and humanity (or whoever else) barely […]
Monthly Short Stories Winner: Water
This month we asked for stories, where water of any kind was a key element. It didn’t matter if it was a stormy sea, a misty lake, a polluted river, a frozen waterfall, a terrible flash flood, or a sentient geyser – water is incredibly diverse and we expected the stories to mirror this. And […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Find the Story in the Picture
This month our entrants got three pictures to choose from. Every picture a frozen moment from an unknown story. They convey atmosphere and (part of) a setting. The rest is up to you. Rules: 1. The story/poem must be inspired by one of the pictures. 2. Prose must be 500-1500 words long. 3. Poetry must […]
