Short Fiction

Security and space travel -- is there really any such thing?

Cody Walzel is an 8th generation Texan raised by a single mother in a rural town with a munitions plant and a biker church. Growing up he pronounced names like Matt with two syllables (Ma-yatt). He’s got a long lost older sister. He watched his truck driving Grandad get in fights on his delivery route, and had a stepdad who lost his leg in a hunting accident and then continued hunting.

Five enterprising eleven-year-olds set up a golf ball scam...

Personal experience and two generations can be a chasm that's hard to cross...

Scott C. Holstad has authored, edited & contributed to 75+ books & 800+ magazines & is a 32-year member of The Authors Guild. He holds degrees from the University of Tennessee, California State University Long Beach, UCLA & Queens University of Charlotte. He’s moved 35+ times, lives in the Gettysburg PA area and loves geopolitics, good vinyl and hockey.

A glimmer of hope in a dark, despairing place...

It started with a good intention...

When things don't add up, you have to check that math...

Marsden Lyonwahl lives in his head. A graduate from the University of Washington, he's been published in 7th-Circle Pyrite and Altered Reality Magazine. This is not the last you've heard from him.

Is another kristallnacht coming?

Shruti Goel is a marketing graduate from the University of Calcutta and a Curtis Brown Creative alum. Beyond the page, Shruti has worked as a restaurant consultant in the food and beverage industry, where campaigns, cuisines, and on-ground conversations shaped the distinct voice she brings to her writing today.

J.A. Shieldsmith is a horror writer near Austin, Texas. He's been a full-time ghostwriter for 14 years, helping companies big and small tell their stories. Now, he's telling his own.

As the world changes, populations move. How will they be met?

There's a payment owed for what you have received...

Writers travel down strange paths at times, to be sure.

A heartbreaking future for a people -- for any people brought up on falsehood and self-aggrandizement.

Justin Webb is a London based author specializing in speculative horror, science fiction and magical realism. Justin takes a postmodernist approach to writing and forever embraces the idiosyncratic.

What sunders, yet brings people together?

Adam is a somewhat-retired math tutor who is avoiding editing his novel by writing short fiction pieces.

Happens all the time...

Shobhita Thakur is an alumna of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, where she completed a three-year course in Film Editing. Her journey in the film industry began with working alongside National Award–winning director Rajan Khosa as a Director’s Assistant, an experience that shaped her understanding of storytelling.

Time is more malleable than you think...

A story about a time lost...

Screams, smoke, and nudity...yep, that will incur parental intervention...

Peggy Gerber is the 2021 winner of The Open Contract Challenge. When she is not busy writing poetry, she likes to indulge her love of speculative fiction by crafting stories of time machines, friendly aliens, creepy glass dolls and other phantasmagoria. In her spare time she enjoys reading, traveling, and all things magical.

Ella Torres is a Brazilian writer and translator and a graduate of Barnard College, where she earned a degree in English and Creative Writing. She writes editorials, fiction, and poetry, and is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at The New School.

A twist on an old legend...

Social media can keep you in touch...

Benjamin Wilson currently lives in central Texas, is a recent college graduate, and may or may not actually exist. He tends to write weird speculative fiction with a focus in horror.

Sascha Goluboff is a writer, mother, and academic with a PhD in Anthropology and an MFA in Writing. She lives in Virginia.