Victorian Houses, or, Now It Can Be Told: The “Mystery” At Last Unmasked!

Let us recall entries for April 10, “The Mystery Thickens: Unnamed Proof Returned for (Secret Title) Premiere,” and January 30, “New ‘Mystery’ Acceptance on 27th,” the latter celebrating my first acceptance for 2022. But I couldn’t give details, except it was for a proposed new magazine, slated to be released in May.

As of yesterday, Monday, the time has arrived!

The publisher/editor is Tom English who we’ve met before (cf. January 1, et many al.), with, this time, an initial announcement January 23: I’m working on a new dark fantasy/literary (“light”) horror magazine, NIGHTMARE ABBEY — a companion to BLACK INFINITY — and thought you might like to send something. I hope to publish the first issue by May. Until then, please keep the title a secret.

Guidelines: I’m looking for creepy tales that rely on atmosphere, suspense, and/or building a sense of dread; with minimal or no violence and gore, no on-stage sex, and no F-bombs. (Stories “rated” PG-13 or better, if you will.) I need 2000- to 8000- word “light” (or literary) horror, weird tales, traditional ghost stories (Jamesian or other), dark fantasy (preferably with a surprise- or twist-ending), or gothic fiction. No current politics or problems; nothing disparaging of any political, religious, racial, ethnic, or social groups. . . .

And so I sent back a story I thought might do, “Victorians,” originally published in GOTHIC GHOSTS (Tor, 1997), about an old Queen Anne home, perhaps haunted by memories of the past. Always the secrets, but spooky ones this time. The story in fact was inspired by photos I’d received of an actual house in, as I recall, Iowa, augmented by reading of my own on domestic architecture, and went through a number of rejections before finally selling just about twenty-five years ago — and, on a per-word basis, still one of the best paid sales I’ve had.

But is it still spooky? To see for yourself you can check out NIGHTMARE ABBEY 1 here.