Welcome to MicroHorror, the premier free online archive for short-short horror fiction! I'm your horror host, founder and editor
. Here you can enjoy an ever-growing collection of terrifying tales, each no longer than 666 words. Why not read
? If you're a writer and would like to contribute to MicroHorror, you'll want to read
. Enjoy, kiddies!
! I've hand-picked a selection of books and DVDs for your entertainment and edification. Treat yourself and help support MicroHorror at the same time.
Good evening, kiddies. I haven’t got anything important to say, but I just wanted to reassure you that I’m still alive (well, close enough at any rate). Things are obscenely busy and stressful around here, and I know I’ve fallen far behind on submissions, but I’m slowly catching up. Thanks for your support and your patience.
Evening, kiddies! I’ve got a little crowd-sourcing job for you all, if you’d care to help me out. All I want to know is this: What are your favorite stories out of the 1300+ in the MicroHorror library? Call it an informal community poll. Just post your picks in the comments here, and name as many or as few as you’d like. If you want to keep your opinion secret for any reason, just send me an e-mail. It’s all good. Thanks very much, and I look forward to hearing your picks!
Thanks, everybody, for your fine entries into the Night Falls On Everyone mini-contest. You wrote great stories to answer the question “What happens when night falls?”, and it wasn’t easy to pick the winner, but pick one I have. The winner of a free copy of the new collection Night Falls On Everyone is…
Sanford Allen, for his story On This Night!
Congratulations, Sanford, and thanks again to all contributors. Special thanks, of course, to editor Casey Quinn, for donating the prize. Good night, everyone!
Sarah has completed her illustrations based on the winning stories in 2008’s creatures contest. They are beautiful. Follow the jump to see them.
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I just finished reading Night Falls On Everyone, a collection of nine short horror stories edited by MicroHorror contributor Casey Quinn. It’s a slim volume at only 110 pages, but the stories are good and are accompanied by some genuinely creepy illustrations. I recommend it. You can buy a copy at the newly revamped MicroHorror shop.
Don’t want to spend the money? Well, I just happen to have an extra copy here, and I’d like to give it to some deserving MicroHorror devotee, so I’m officially announcing a mini-contest! In keeping with the title of the book, I’d like to see some stories answering the question “What happens when night falls?” In keeping with the page count, you’re limited to 110 words or shorter. How’s that for thematically appropriate?
Only newly written stories are eligible. I’ll judge the entries, and the author of the story that best incorporates the theme will receive a copy of Night Falls On Everyone. Send all your entries to microhorror@gmail.com and indicate that it’s a contest entry in the subject of the e-mail. All stories submitted for the contest will also be considered as regular submissions to MicroHorror, and will be published if acceptable.
The contest ends at 11:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 1. You’ve got less than a week. Go!
Happy new year, kiddies! It looks like we’ve made it another twelve months, so a new link for Stories of 2009 has been added to the old sidebar.
My dear friend and too-rare MicroHorror contributor Tom Blunt has just launched a new contest on his blog, Hermitosis. The fellow is a fiend for interviews, you see, so he wants you to go out there on the street and find somebody with something interesting to say. The best interviews will be posted, and there are prizes to be had as well. Tom has granted me the honor of serving as a guest judge, and I can’t wait to see what comes in. You have until the end of January to enter. Read all about it here!
And as long as you’re there, make sure to check out Tom’s weekly MicroHorror picks as well as Seen Between Fingers, a regular feature in which wimp and horror non-enthusiast Chris Kelly subjects himself to classic horror films and reports his reactions. Enjoy!
Gentle readers and not-so-gentle readers:
I’m still running about a week behind on submissions, and I apologize. What I need is a new machine to replace this antique laptop. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.
Speaking of patience and understanding, or rather lack of same, I’d like to lay bare some of the ugliness I’ve encountered as an editor, just so you folks can know what things are like on this side of the desk and know how grateful I am that the vast majority of you are smart, sensible, rational people. Follow the jump below, and read this exchange of e-mails from the past couple of days. Identifying information has been deleted, but otherwise all quoted text is verbatim.
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Now that the contest is over, I can finally unveil my other secret project: the MicroHorror Shop on Amazon.com. Every item there bears my personal seal of approval, and I want to share them with you. You’ll find horror fiction, non-fiction and DVDs, and every purchase you make will help support MicroHorror. Check it out! I’ve added a shop link to the top of the sidebar as well.
MicroHorror writers: I want to promote your books, too! If your work appears in Amazon’s catalog, tell me, and I’ll add your items to the store. Everybody wins!
Ladies and gentlemen, it has taken far too long for me to make this announcement. In my defense, I attribute the delay to the time it took to sort through these truly excellent stories and select the three winners. Sarah and I both had to make some very, very difficult decisions to narrow down the field, and many worthy stories did not receive awards this year. That’s just the burden a contest judge has to bear, I suppose. Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you to everyone who contributed, and a most hearty congratulations to the three victors whose stories will be illustrated. And now, without further ado, I ask you all to follow the jump, where the lovely and talented (a cliché, perhaps, but true) Sarah Clarke will announce the winners in her own words.
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Finally, all accepted entries for the 2008 Halloween story contest have been posted! Great gobbling goblins, there’s 92 97 of them. Now Sarah and I get the fun of going through and picking out the three winners. I’ll make the big announcement… uh… soon. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Soon!
UPDATE: It appears that I accidentally overlooked a handful of submissions. My deepest apologies to the authors. The stories have been posted.