Submissions for the 61st issue of The Sirens Call, featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry are closed.
Sirens Call Publications would like to thank all of the authors and artists who submitted their work for consideration. We’ll be in touch as soon as we can with our decisions.
If you are looking for Ad space, please contact Nina at Nina@SirensCallPublications.com for details.
Spring is in the air! Or it will be in a few months…but what does that mean for humanity?
This 61st issue of The Sirens Call Zine has a sub-theme of Flora vs. Fauna. If nature decided to go on the attack, what would the average person do to survive, adapt, or overcome? Likewise, if humanity began destroying more of the nature that surrounds us, how would it maintain, thrive, conquer, or succumb? Good and bad are constructs we impose upon reality, so feel free to choose the side you align with, and spin us a juicy tale that would literally make a violet shrink, or your average Joe run from the hills!
Beyond this issue’s sub-theme, we’re always looking for well-constructed tales and poetry that deliver solid horror and dark fiction.
We’ll be accepting short stories, flash fiction, drabbles, and poetry that fit within the horror/dark fiction genre. We welcome reprints as long as you hold the copyright to the piece.
Your piece can be scary, sullen, emotive, freaky, elegant, have a dark satirical edge to it, or rattle us to the core!
The basic rules:
Be creative, be morbid, be vicious, be clever, and, most of all, write something you want the world to read! If your piece fits our criteria, we’ll offer it up to our readership of approximately 35,000.
REPRINTS ARE WELCOME!
Submission Deadline: February 15, 2023
Circulation: Approximately 35,000
Short story word count: 1,000 – 2,500 (limit of one submission per author)
Flash fiction word count: 500 – 999 (limit of one submission per author)
Short flash fiction word count: 101 – 499 (limit of three submissions per author)
Micro fiction word count: 50 – 99 (limit of three submissions per author)
Drabbles: 100 word prose (limit of five submissions per author)
Poem length: 10 – 50 lines (limit of five subs per author)
Reprints are welcome as long as you currently hold the copyright.
All story, flash, and poem submissions MUST be submitted to:
Submissions@SirensCallPublications.com for consideration.
Full page ads are available at $10 per ad.
Please contact Nina@SirensCallPublications.com for advertising information.
Please visit our web site for further details and guidelines: www.SirensCallPub.com
Winter 2022
The 60th issue of The Sirens Call Zine closes out 2022 with 226 pages filled with horror and dark fiction goodness! It offers 164 short stories, flash fiction pieces, and poems celebrating all things horror, with a sub-theme of death! We also feature Mike Lera’s Corridor of Horror that takes a peek into the ins and outs of short filmmaking and why you should go for it! Our Featured Artist for this issue is David Paul Harris who shared 12 of his amazing pieces of art with us; our Featured Project is Strong Women – Strange Worlds with links to their Quick Reads handouts and YouTube videos; and our Featured Author, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, offers us insight on how dark fiction has the ability to heal, along with an excerpt from her novel, Bad Apple.
Please, grab a copy of the Zine for free, and don’t be shy about sharing it around!
Click on the cover for your #FREE download!
Visit the web site to check out the other free issues of The Sirens Call!
www.sirenscallpub.com
Halloween 2022
The 59th issue of The Sirens Call is a massive 287 pages containing 223 pieces of dark fiction and horror in the form of short stories, flash fiction, micro fiction, and dark poetry!
This issue spotlights Robert Bravo, Enter ‘Bravo FX’:A Unique Preservation of Practical Horror and Gore in Mike Lera’s Corridor of Horror. Our featured artist is Tero Porthan who has shared 12 pieces of his artwork (including the cover art for this issue) and an essay titled, ‘Finnish Gods, Creatures, and the Dead’. Our featured project is the on-going Horror Anthology Audio Drama – Victoria’s Lift. And our showcase author, Andrew P. Weston, discusses Keeping Things Real, and also offers us a peek into his Cambion Journals saga with an excerpt from book three, The Siren’s Song.
Please, grab a copy of the Zine for free, and don’t be shy about sharing it around!
Click on the cover for your #FREE download!
Visit the web site to check out the other free issues of The Sirens Call!
www.sirenscallpub.com
Submissions for the 60th issue of The Sirens Call, featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry are closed.
Sirens Call Publications would like to thank all of the authors and artists who submitted their work for consideration. We’ll be in touch as soon as we can with our decisions.
If you are looking for Ad space, please contact Nina at Nina@SirensCallPublications.com for details.
And yet the passing of another year, sad as it may be, but for us horror types, plenty of fodder on offer to creep it up!
For the sixtieth issue of The Sirens Call Zine, we’re looking for horrifying and well-constructed tales of horror and dark fiction. And as it is the death of the year, we are, as always, celebrating with the sub-theme of death. That means stories containing a vile or supernatural death within them.
We’ll be accepting short stories, flash fiction, drabbles, and poetry that fit within the horror/dark fiction genre. We welcome reprints as long as you hold the copyright to the piece.
Your piece can be scary, sullen, emotive, freaky, elegant, have a dark satirical edge to it, or rattle us to the core!
The basic rules:
Be creative, be morbid, be vicious, be clever, and, most of all, write something you want the world to read! If your piece fits our criteria, we’ll offer it up to our readership of approximately 35,000.
REPRINTS ARE WELCOME!
Submission Deadline: October 15, 2022
Circulation: Approximately 35,000
Short story word count: 1,000 – 2,500 (limit of one submission per author)
Flash fiction word count: 500 – 999 (limit of one submission per author)
Short flash fiction word count: 101 – 499 (limit of three submissions per author)
Micro fiction word count: 50 – 99 (limit of three submissions per author)
Drabbles: 100 word prose (limit of five submissions per author)
Poem length: 10 – 50 lines (limit of five subs per author)
Reprints are welcome as long as you currently hold the copyright.
All story, flash, and poem submissions MUST be submitted to:
Submissions@SirensCallPublications.com for consideration.
Full page ads are available at $10 per ad.
Please contact Nina@SirensCallPublications.com for advertising information.
Please visit our web site for further details and guidelines: www.SirensCallPub.com
Submissions for the 59th issue of The Sirens Call, featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry are closed.
Sirens Call Publications would like to thank all of the authors and artists who submitted their work for consideration. We’ll be in touch as soon as we can with our decisions.
If you are looking for Ad space, please contact Nina at Nina@SirensCallPublications.com for details.
by Mary Parker
As a lifelong horror fan, I’m used to seeing all kinds of horrors, be it monsters, violence, or otherworldly. Even psychological horrors run amuck (one of my personal favorites). I also find horror therapeutic. After watching a horror film or reading a horror book or story, I feel a sense of release. When I went into recovery for postpartum depression and anxiety, I looked for horror films and fiction that identified with that pain. There weren’t many to be found.
Sure, there’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” But that was written in the late 1800s. I couldn’t find anything more modern. There are lots of horror films that feature mothers in peril or evil babies, or evil/murderous mothers, but that wasn’t quite was I was looking for either. I wanted something that identified the horrors of a new mother’s own mind and showed her triumphant. It seemed that there was an unspoken horror in the genre – and culture at large.
Postpartum depression is not widely talked about, despite being one of the most common birth complications. Recent studies show that between 15-20% of mothers will experience postpartum depression. If left untreated, the condition can worsen, leading to postpartum psychosis. This is, unfortunately, where most media about postpartum depression can be found: true crime. The effects of the illness can be devastating. Research has suggested that there is approximately a 5% suicide rate and a 4% infanticide rate associated with the illness.
As a young mother, I knew plenty of women around my age who had children. I was, seemingly, the only one who had these feelings. So, I set out to write down my story. I would embellish the more horrific moments, of course, but the heart of the story is my truth. The heart of the story is my experience with postpartum depression. We need truth in our fiction. I wanted to show how the best, most rewarding experience of your life can also be the most challenging. I wanted to show the very real, dark thoughts a mother can have. I wanted readers to experience how deeply depraved a mother’s brain can get. I also wanted to show the depths she can bring herself up from. I wanted to show that a mother’s love can conquer all.
We need to speak about these things; we need to break the stigma around them so women can have better access to help and resources.
I have more friends and acquaintances that are mothers than I can count. Yet only one of them was open with her struggles with postpartum depression. When I finished writing The Endless Hallway, I asked her to read the draft. She told me that she was making her husband read it because the story exemplified all the horrible things she felt – and how she rallied against them to stay alive for her family.
That’s all I really want for The Endless Hallway. I want the novella to be a light and a safe space for mothers who live in the darkness. I want mothers who have overcome their demons to see themselves truthfully represented in horror fiction. But most of all, I want the world at large to experience the very real horrors life has to offer.
The Endless Hallway, by Mary Parker
Molly has it all: a good job, a handsome husband, and a beautiful new baby. Her life is everything she once hoped it would be. But something sinister lurks within the walls of her tiny townhouse.
A strange voice echoes from the darkness as Molly rocks her infant to sleep. Lights that were left on suddenly turn off. In the middle of the night, a thin, pale arm reaches over the rails of the crib to grasp for the baby with fierce, jagged claws.
Are the visions that haunt Molly a subconscious warning or something far more vicious?
The Endless Hallway is currently available on:
Amazon: US | UK | Germany | France | Spain | Italy | The Netherlands | Japan | Canada | Australia
ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Mary Parker is a horror author and journalist from Southern Illinois. She has worked for examiner.com and horrornews.net. A collection of short stories, Predilection, was published in 2009. Her work can also be found in the anthologies Vampires Aren’t Pretty and Slaughter House: The Serial Killer Edition, Vol. 2. Her story, Sweet Nightmares, placed in the top 100 of Wattpad’s Horror Contest sponsored by TNT. She is a proud contributor to, supporter of, ans past ambassador of Women in Horror Month. Visit her Amazon Author Page at: Mary Parker.
by Mary Parker
The Endless Hallway is a novella about a young mother’s struggles with postpartum depression and anxiety (PPDA). It is my story.
Well, a fictionalized version of my reality.
While in therapy to recover from PPDA, I spoke with my therapist about the story I was writing. I tend to start everything as a short story – that keeps the pressure off. I was dealing with so much internal pressure already; I didn’t want to add lofty ambitions like novella or novel. We brainstormed and troubleshot the ideas I had. I was stuck on the ending – or, rather, I didn’t know where the story should go. At the time, I wanted Molly to conquer the monster because I desperately needed to conquer my own mental illnesses.
“What would be the benefits of having this monster captive?” my therapist asked me.
I had no answer. I was wrapped up in putting my life on the page, to purge the darkness from my psyche. I desperately wanted life to imitate the art I was creating. But that’s not how life works. I got stuck. Writer’s block for months. My PPDA relapsed.
As I started back up the mountain of recovery, the ending of The Endless Hallway revealed itself to me. I decided to document the two weeks of my life over holiday break in my notes app. I would make little observations of what happened each day and weave the monster into those days.
It was not difficult to toe the line between reality and fiction. In a lot of ways, I am Molly, but not totally. For example, I never felt the urge to harm my daughter. My husband is not Cory (he is much more active in my life than the character is in the story – this is because Molly feels completely isolated). I tried to keep the most intimate details of our life private, but the darkness of PPDA stains the pages of my life and the novella.
In all, I was in recovery for nine months, from the time my daughter was six months old. I wrote the novella during that time, over my lunch breaks at work. I poured my heart into this book. Every dark thought, every depraved dream, I bled onto the page. I also let my love and devotion for my husband and daughter flood the pages. They are, without a doubt, the best things that ever happened to me. They are my everything.
I think that writers put a piece of themselves into everything they write. I think you must to be able to create – there is a truthful base for everything. But for this novella, there was no other way than to put my life, my thoughts, my sickness, into words. Thankfully, my husband approved everything I wrote. It helped him understand what I was going through, like I hope this novella will help the public better understand PPDA. We can create our own destinies, like I created the perfect world to house my monsters.
Molly has it all: a good job, a handsome husband, and a beautiful new baby. Her life is everything she once hoped it would be. But something sinister lurks within the walls of her tiny townhouse.
A strange voice echoes from the darkness as Molly rocks her infant to sleep. Lights that were left on suddenly turn off. In the middle of the night, a thin, pale arm reaches over the rails of the crib to grasp for the baby with fierce, jagged claws.
Are the visions that haunt Molly a subconscious warning or something far more vicious?
The Endless Hallway is currently available on:
Amazon: US | UK | Germany | France | Spain | Italy | The Netherlands | Japan | Canada | Australia
ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Mary Parker is a horror author and journalist from Southern Illinois. She has worked for examiner.com and horrornews.net. A collection of short stories, Predilection, was published in 2009. Her work can also be found in the anthologies Vampires Aren’t Pretty and Slaughter House: The Serial Killer Edition, Vol. 2. Her story, Sweet Nightmares, placed in the top 100 of Wattpad’s Horror Contest sponsored by TNT. She is a proud contributor to, supporter of, ans past ambassador of Women in Horror Month. Visit her Amazon Author Page at: Mary Parker.
Reblogged from Lee Andrew Forman:
A Monstrous Evolution
by Mary Parker
The Endless Hallway features a creature that has haunted me since I was a teenager. This vile thing, with disgusting claws, rows of teeth, and black, void-like eyes, has featured in my writings for two decades. As the years go by, its appearance gets worse and worse: a monstrous evolution that personifies my mental illnesses.
My senior year of high school, I went with my parents to spend the weekend at my grandparents’ house. They lived in a small town about 75 minutes away from us. On the drive down, I listened to music, daydreaming as I watched miles of hills and highway pass by. Suddenly it appeared to me: an emaciated human-like creature, completely bald with shiny, slimy skin, no nose, two gaping voids for eyes, mangled claws, and vicious teeth. I imagined the creature standing in front of me, opening its mouth to inhuman levels, and swallowing my head. I didn’t know if this was my depression consuming me or setting me free.
This image stuck with me, and I immediately wrote about it in the composition notebook I always carried with me. Over the next several months I wrote a story featuring this creature, but more in link with a vampire – think of a play on Nosferatu. In this iteration, the monster’s main features were rows of fangs and knotted, gnarly hands with claws, along with the bald head and void-like eyes. Later, I wrote a short story featuring the creature that was a meditation on how depression shapes a person’s growth from adolescence to adulthood. In both stories, the ending was more finite: in the first, the monster is burned to death; in the latter, it swallows the protagonist.
A decade on, I got married and had my daughter. Postpartum depression and anxiety hit me hard. Again, I imagined the creature looming over me, ready to strike. This time it was more disgusting and vicious: now its teeth dripped black ooze and its mangled, jagged claws were ready to take everything from me. As I rocked my daughter to sleep, I vowed I would not let it.
Instead, I wrote it all down. I owned the monster and made it do my bidding. On the page, it couldn’t hurt me. The depression could threaten us, it could lurk around every corner of the life I always wanted, but it would never touch us.
Yet, as I finished The Endless Hallway, I found the ending was more ambiguous. Age had taught me that the depression never really goes away. Instead, we would live with it, like a haunting; deal with it whenever it decided to show its monstrous face. There’s a comfort in that, a comfort in knowing that while we can’t always defeat our demons, we can always overcome them.
Even if we still check the baby monitor for claws creeping through the bars of the crib, and double-check the corners of the baby’s room for dark figures.
by Mary Parker
Molly has it all – a good job, a handsome husband, a beautiful new baby, and a supportive family. Her life is everything she once prayed it would be. But something sinister is lurking within the walls of her tiny townhouse. A strange voice comes from the darkness as Molly rocks her infant to sleep. Lights that were left on are suddenly turned off. Molly has nightmares in which her husband’s throat is slit. In the middle of the night, a thin, pale arm reaches over the rails of the crib and lunges for the baby with fierce, jagged claws. The voice in the darkness soon seems to be coming from inside Molly’s head.
Are the visions Molly has been haunted by a subconscious warning or something more vicious?
Paperback and Kindle available on Amazon:
US | UK | Germany | France | Spain | Italy | The Netherlands | Japan | Canada | Australia
About the Author:
Mary Parker is a horror author and journalist from Southern Illinois. She has worked for examiner.com and horrornews.net. A collection of short stories, Predilection, was published in 2009. Her work can also be found in the anthologies “Vampires Aren’t Pretty” and “Slaughter House: The Serial Killer Edition, Vol. 2.” Her story “Sweet Nightmares” placed in the Top 100 of Wattpad’s Horror Contest sponsored by TNT. She is a proud contributor to, supporter of, and past ambassador of Women in Horror Month.
Visit Mary’s Amazon Author Page at: Mary Parker
The Sirens Song 