Demonic Tale From America’s Coal Country Takes First Honors In The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition

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Kurt Newton, of Woodstock Valley, Connecticut, is the winner of the 2018 Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition and the contest’s $300 cash prize for his sudden fiction piece, “The Coal Mape.”

Honorable Mention and a $100 cash award went to Robert Perchan, an American living in Pusan, South Korea, for his piece, “Compression: A Very Short Story.”

Second Honorable Mention, with a $50 prize, was taken by Carie Juettner, of Austin, Texas, for “Hindsight.”

All three 2018 Screw Turn stories will be included in the paperbound anthology, 21st Century Ghost Stories—Volume I, scheduled for publication in August by Wyrd Harvest Press (Durham, U.K.).

The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition is for supernatural stories of 1,000 or fewer words. Our next fiction contest is The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award, for which we begin accepting submissions on February 15, 2018. Prizes are $1,000, $250, and $100 for full-length short stories of between 1.500 and 10,000 words. Good luck!

Our Paperbound Anthology Is Now Available

The Ghost Story is proud to announce the publication of an illustrated paperbound anthology containing 29 stories that have won or received honorable mentions in either The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award or The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition. The book anthologizes every winning and honorable mention story recognized with one of our awards and published on The Ghost Story website between 2015 and early 2018.

You can order a copy now!

The anthology, entitled 21st Century Ghost Stories, is a project of TGS and Wyrd Harvest Press, of Durham, U.K. Volume II of 21st Century Ghost Stories—Volume II, which will include winners and honorable mentions in our current Supernatural Fiction Award competition, is scheduled for publication in 2021!

All proceeds from the sale of 21st Century Ghost Stories will be donated to projects of Britain’s Wildlife Trusts.

The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition

It’s now time for another Ghost Story Awards contest. The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition is now open for submissions. Short-short stories of between 250 and 1,000 words will be eligible for cash prizes of $300, $100, and $50, as well as Valentine’s Day publication on The Ghost Story Website.

You might remember that last year’s winner was Mindy McGinnis, who also won a 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Award for her novel, A Madness So Discreet. You can read Mindy’s story, “Solitude,” as well as the two stories that won honorable mentions in our flash-fiction contest, right here.

And you can click right here for guidelines to our 2018 contest. Good luck!

Illustration by Andy Paciorek

Our Fall Short Story Competition

It’s Halloween, which means that it’s time to announce (and publish) the Winner and two Honorable Mentions in the fall 2017 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest. The winner received a $1,000 cash award, and the Honorable Mention and Second Honorable Mention received $250 and $100 respectively. All three were custom illustrated by British artist Andy Paciorek, and all are now available for your reading pleasure.

We will begin accepting submissions to our spring 2018 competition in mid February. But don’t forget that The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition—for short-short stories of under a thousand words—begins in mid December. We’ll post an announcement on our home page in a few weeks. Meanwhile, click here for complete guidelines.

This time around, we received a record number of submissions—almost 200 in all. If you entered, regardless of whether you won, or didn’t win, thank you for your submission, and you’ll be hearing from us soon.

For A Signed Copy . . .

My new haunted novel, American Ghost, is available in most of the usual online places—and even, perhaps, in your local bookstore. For a good description of the book combined with a professional, objective review, check out what Sam Reader at Barnes & Noble thought about American Ghost. And Keep scrolling through this post for my publisher’s “official” description as well as some comments from other writers.

A few Ghost Story readers have asked about signed copies (thank you!), so I’ve set up an easy way to order one. Step one is to click on the Paypal button below to pay for it. It’s a quick process with a credit card, and $20 covers the cost of the hardcover book, plus shipping to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. (Sorry, overseas friends—postage for you folks is prohibitive. But Amazon will work for an unsigned copy. . . .)

Step two is to shoot me a quick e-mail at Editor@TheGhostStory.com and tell me how you’d like me to inscribe your book: Your name, or your friend’s, perhaps a brief message . . . If you just want my signature, however, then you can skip the e-mail part. I’ll just sign, and send.

As for the publisher’s description, which you’ll also find on the book jacket:

“An inventive metafictional novel, in which a drug-dealing biker must solve his own murder from beyond the grave. [Read more…] about THE EDITOR’S GHOST STORY

The Fall 2017 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award Competition Is Currently Open For Submissions

As always, our fall contest for full-length short stories features cash awards of $1,000, $250, and $100, as well as publication on Halloween for the winner and two Honorable Mentions. In addition, all three stories will be custom-illustrated by British artist and Folk Horror Revival founder Andy Paciorek.

If you’re thinking of entering a story or two in the contest, you’ll want to read our complete guidelines. And of course you’ll also want to have a look at the previous winners to get an idea of what we’re looking for, and to get a gauge of the competition.

Have fun, and good luck!

New: Custom Illustrations For the Winning Stories!

We will begin accepting submissions to The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition in just a few days, on August 7. You’ll find our complete contest guidelines and submission instructions on the contest page. You might also want to read our previous winners.

Once again, we’re offering a cash award of $1,000 to the author of the winning story, and additional cash awards of $250 and $100 for Honorable mention and Second Honorable Mention, respectively. We’ll also publish all three stories on Halloween, right here on The Ghost Story Website.

But that’s not all. While wonderful illustrations have accompanied the work of our previous winning and honorable mention writers, the art was always selected from artists’ portfolios, and not inspired specifically by the individual stories. However, starting with the fall 2017 competition, we’re making an exciting change. [Read more…] about OUR STORY CONTEST ILLUSTRATOR

An Interview With The Ghost Story

Duotrope, a website that lists literary publications and competitions that are open to submissions, just published an interview with TGS. If you’re thinking of entering our Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition, which opens on February 15, 2018 and offers the winner publication on Midsummer’s Eve and a cash award of $1,000, the interview will tell you a lot about what we look for, and how we make our decisions. Here’s a link.

Thoughtful, Poignant—And No Jump Scares

Sure, it’s scary—it’s a ghost story, after all. But if early reviews are accurate, A Ghost Story deals with the serious themes of mortality and the passage of time. A thinking person’s supernatural tale, in other words—and just the sort of thing we like to read or watch. Plus, it stars 2017 Academy Award winner for Actor in a Leading Role Casey Affleck. . .

This is one we’re planning to see in a theater rather than on the living room flat-screen. . . .

BTW, would you like to know why ghost typically are depicted as being dressed in sheets?