C’ Tales for Grownups: Isis’ Lead Story to Reprint Next Year

CREEPY CAMPFIRE STORIES (FOR GROWNUPS) began as a stand-alone anthology, launched on May 13, 2015.  The response from horror writers across the globe was phenomenal.  In less than four months, we received over 220 submissions from all over the globe, from the UK, including London, Ireland, Scotland & Wales; Italy; Belgrade, Serbia; Germany; Poland; Australia; New Zealand; Western Cape, South Africa; The United States; and Canada!  The quality of the stories streaming in was so exceptional that we were able to fill a full, 65,000 word anthology with absolutely amazing and high quality horror stories in less than two months!  In fact, we had to close our submissions early, moving our end date back from September 13, to July 13!

Closing our anthology’s submissions so much earlier than originally planned, however, left many authors shut out.  It soon became clear to us here at EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) Publishing, that there were just far too many quality horror writers out there to fit into one single anthology.  We next landed upon making the CREEPY CAMPFIRE STORIES (FOR GROWNUPS) brand an annual publication, every Fall/October, but as submissions to our original anthology continued to stream in, and the quality of the stories continued to astound us, we quickly realized that even an annual publication still wouldn’t fully accommodate the high number of amazingly talented authors of horror/extreme horror that exist today. . . . 

So began the guidelines, and thus was born “The Creepy Campfire Quarterly Publication (CCQ),” a.k.a. CREEPY CAMPFIRE QUARTERLY, to come out on the twentieth day of January, April, July, and October each year.  Billed not as a magazine but a “quarterly horror anthology,” each appearance will contain thirteen stories — no more, no less — for a total of 50,000-65,000 words, some of which are, yes, promised to be extreme.  No readers under 17 years old invited.

And slated now for the July 20 2017 number (that is, a year and a month away), is a tale by . . . me.

The email came lateish Saturday night from Senior Editor Jennifer Word.  As for the story, it is a reprint originally published in 69 FLAVORS OF PARANOIA in March-April 1999, about what happens to a body in which the mind remains that’s been left in the ocean to decompose — and which might slowly be coming around to thoughts of revenge.  The title is “In the Octopus’s Garden” and, for those who might want a preview of sorts, it’s also the leadoff story in my collection THE TEARS OF ISIS, of which, for readers 16 and under, I’d have to at least warn you read at your own risk.