The Galvanic Potter’s Field Mid-Feb Acceptance

The start of the call was intriguing enough. Hiraeth Publishing is looking for stories and illustrations for POTTER’S FIELD 7, a print anthology of tales from the graveyard. This volume will be the seventh in the POTTER’S FIELD series. This anthology is scheduled to be published on 1 August 2021 in trade paperback format with a color cover, and black and white interior illustrations. Potter’s Field 7 is edited by Tyree Campbell. Please note that horror fiction written in the third person stands the best chance for acceptance.

And then it continued: A potter’s field is the burial place for the indigent and the unidentified. Just about every city has one. . . . Obviously, we’re looking for works that are themed to graveyards in some way. However, it does not have to be a conventional graveyard. Let me give you one example: back during the days of the Black Death, bodies were crammed — yes, literally crammed — into mass graves underneath churches. Even today, in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, you can take a walking tour deep under the church and see walls of skeletons and dirt. Such a place would also qualify as a graveyard for the indigent.

How could I resist? I sent a story in early December, a reprint first published in LORE in Autumn 1997 called “The Galvanic” (see December 8 2011, et al.), a tale of medical students and corpses that make the journey from churchyard to lecture hall. Maybe not a “final” resting place, not precisely, but for this one body. . . .

So — long story short — yesterday evening brought an email from Editor Campbell: I’m accepting Galvanic for POTTER’S FIELD 7, and you’ll receive payment with your contributor’s copy. Pasted below is the contract for your story. More on which will be here as it becomes known.