Right Man OKed for Monster Within, Contract Signed and Returned

The call was more for crime than horror, but with a psychological horror tilt. The publisher, also — Zombie Works Publications — suggested at least a little darkness.

We at Zombie Works Publications are currently accepting twenty short story submissions. They will go into our THE MONSTER WITHIN: TALES OF A TORTURED MIND ANTHOLOGY. We are looking for short-stories that involve human killers and murderers. The depravity of the human mind can be worse than any mythical creature. . . .

We are asking for each story to be between 2000 to 3000 words in length and content must be between a Rated “PG-13” to Rated “R”. Please no NC-17 (Rated X) stories, they will be rejected as our contract with the printer does not allow us to produce that sort of content.

They didn’t say whether reprints would be accepted but, as it happened, I’d just been thinking of a story originally published in FEDORA III (Wildside Press, 2004) that I thought might be perfect. Well, one with a little twist toward the end, but. . .

But the thing is, sometimes when they don’t actually say “no” it can mean a publisher will at least look at reprints, that is if they’re good, so it seemed worth the chance. And sure enough, yesterday the word came from the anthology editor, Stephanie J. Bardy: Congratulations on making this year’s Zombie Works Anthology THE MONSTER WITHIN. The book will be released on October 31st. Contracts will be forthcoming before then.

And that would be that, but an October 31 release date means things would have to go extremely fast — and so, sure enough, the contract arrived after only about a half day. But . . . well, the hurry that short deadlines bring may cause mistakes too. Or in brief, a couple of silly glitches on either side caused an initial delay in signing, but, today and a new contract supplied, it was back to the “zombie works” early this afternoon.