Haunted Words Press publishes short stories of 1,000-5,000 words, flash fiction of no more than 1000 words, poetry, and visual art. Any and all genres are considered. Issues are themed. The audience is young adults and middle grade readers. Read the complete guidelines here.
SQF: Why did you start this magazine?
Halle Merrick: Haunted Words Press was started, amusingly, to procrastinate. Well, amongst other things, but it started as I was mid-dissertation season for my undergraduate degree, writing a middle grade novel about witches. To take a break from it, I started Haunted Words Press, the idea for which came earlier in the year. Whilst looking at the possible dissemination and publishing routes for my projects, it was difficult to find the kind of small press publisher that would publish the strange and peculiar stories for young adults and middle grade (9-12 year old) readers that I wrote and wanted to see on the shelves. So I started it!
SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?
HM: We’ve started getting a lot of submissions for recent issues, which is fantastic, but it means there’s a lot to read and a lot to shortlist and go through and respond to. So when I first read through a submission, I like to look for characters that are going to stay with me after I’ve read the piece. Characters from our first issue still exist in my head because they were so well written and felt real to me, and I wanted to read more about them.
I want a plot that will grab me, something I’ll remember and be able to recall when I go back to the second read-through of submissions. Can I see the submission email and title and know what the story was - has it made an impression that I can pick it out and know that it should go onto the shortlist? Good endings are also key - the scope of the story needs to be right for its length. It should be a fully contained story in its length when it’s submitted, not an extract from a novel or the first few stanzas in an epic.
Also, in much less academic and professional terms, the vibe of the piece. Does it fit with the issue that it’s been submitted for? I get a lot of really great pieces but they just aren’t the right fit for that issue, or they don’t fit the dark and strange and witchy atmosphere that I try to create across the pieces in each issue.
SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?
HM: A piece that doesn’t know the audience it’s for. We publish for both young adult and middle grade audiences and I need to be able to categorise the pieces so that I know which part of the issue they’ll fall into. A piece that knows which audience it’s catering for, and can do that well, is great. If it’s a middle grade story, how old are the characters? What are their lives like? Is this something a 9-12 year old with a penchant for darkness and the ghostly side of life would read and enjoy? The same goes for a young adult piece - are the characters in this fully grown adults, and does that fit the audience it’s being published for? What are the concerns of a teenager or young adult and how are these made tense and dramatic without feeling like a melodrama? What’s the dialogue like? Do teenagers really speak like this?
SQF: What do you look for in the opening paragraph(s)/stanza(s) of a submission?
HM: A hook, especially in the opening paragraph of a story/flash piece. I think short stories need to be able to hook their reader in, in a different way to novels, which have a lot longer to be able to set out their characters and settings. It needs to be believable too - it’s a story likely with some form of the ghostly or supernatural or occult, but I like for it to still be grounded somehow in what people can relate to.
SQF: Why did you decide on a target audience of young adult and middle grade readers?
HM: Quite selfishly, because I write about witches and ghosts for young adult and middle grade, and I wanted to find others that did too to build up that community.
SQF: What one question on this topic do you wish I’d asked that I didn’t? And how would you answer it?
HM: I’m not entirely sure, actually. Maybe something about what plans Haunted Words has for the future? I’d love to be able to move more into print and physical spaces, and to publish novels and single-author short story or poetry collections, whilst still keeping our themed digital issues so that we still have our free-to-read, free-to-submit model that I think is really important, because people should be able to read about the gothic and the dark and the things that go bump in the night even if they don’t have the money to order a physical copy. I’d really like to do some more middle-grade work with schools eventually, which is a project I’m working on at the moment.
Thank you, Halle. We all appreciate your taking time from your busy schedule to participate in this project.
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