Your extraordinary patience means the world to us.
Submissions closed as normal for Volume 2, Issue 3. We began reading. We laughed and we barfed -- you know, all the usual fare for an issue about monsters and goblins. That is until the morning of September 25, just days before we were to make final announcements and publish our Halloween issue.
Unexpectedly, quietly, and peacefully, we lost the godmother of our journal and mother to our poetry editor, Mrs. Carolyn Matthews.
Though we were briefly in a tailspin, we gathered a moment to alert the writers who were awaiting news on their submissions. Emails from us regarding the issue would be late. The issue temporarily suspended. The following issue cancelled altogether. We apologized, we thanked, and we waited, and we grieved.
What we didn't expect were all the responses from the writers. Nearly every person we reached out to with this uncomfortable news about their work hanging in limbo got back to us with words of love, sympathy, and encouragement.
Truly, your kindness mattered more to us than we can say.
We are happy to present the issue to you, at last, filled to the brim with the creepy, the tall tales, the ancient, the novel. It's all here and it's waiting to pounce.
Featured authors and poets for Volume 2, Issue 3: Creature Feature
Fiction
The Reimagined Baba Yaga | Izzy Asuto
Silicone Death Fauna | Caleb Bethea
Research Cycle | Rebecca Cuthbert
The Taste of Iron | Oliver Fosten
Blood Relatives | Benjamin Henry
Murder Most Fowl | Jen Herron
Speaking with Skeletons | Stephanie Holden
Neversink | Shelly Jones
Breakup Scripts for the Unenthralled Thrall | Lauren Kardos
The Invisible Man Receives an Invitation to Join AARP | Kip Knott
RATS! | Kit Lascher
Small Town Hospitality | Rachael Llewellyn
A String of Repeated Notes | Jeffery Ryan Long
Communion | T.T. Madden
Blēka | Jeannie Marschall
Frau Frankenstein | Emily Murman
Foundling | JP Relph
A Filthy Type | Isabelle Ryan
Jukebox From Hell | Richard Sanders
Taking a Torch to Tedium | John Weagly
Nonfiction
On Skin and Scales | Stephanie Holden
Interview with the Monster Within | E.M. Lark
Poetry
DOLLMAKER | Aurynanya
WILLIAM | Aurynanya
Creature Feature: Tanka & Haiku | Jerome Berglund
Verso Recto # 3 | Evelynn Black
superstitious | Grace Bowen
An Afternoon in Maryland | Tinamarie Cox
The Creation | Agnes A. Dairo
Carnival of Delights | Peter Devonald
The Kraken | Peter Devonald
Monsters Under the Bed and Deep Inside | Peter Devonald
Dead Drunk | Nick Dix
Dracula Tastes a Modern Girl | Becca Fang
To My Creature | Annika Gangopadhyay
The Painting I Chose Is MARSH LANDSCAPE By Emil Nolde | Colin James
Autumn is | Bethany Jarmul
Dracula's Lament | Richard LeDue
Unstrange Creatures | Richard LeDue
The White-Clad Girl | Owolusi Lucky
The Lying Game | Marisca Pichette
Behind the Door | Angel Rosen
Motion Sickness | Angel Rosen
Medusa Goes to the Hair Salon | Beatriz Seelaender