Beginning in January 1, 2017, this will be the location of a new on-line quarterly magazine for short stories, poetry, and other short works of the horror genre. You can find the guidelines for submissions on my current Submissions and Announcements page, which will remain the same, with the only exception being that the word limit for submissions for “The Chamber” will increase from 1,000 to 2,000 words.
I am creating this magazine primarily because it is not fair to my contributors to submit a work for publication, when that work will be at the top of my blog posts for only a day, and then that author and his readers will have to wade through a morass of unrelated blogs to find that one post. To remedy this, I will create a separate page on my blog for my new magazine, “The Chamber”, where each quarter’s selections will appear on a separate page for eternity (or until WordPress folds, or until I give it all up and wander off to buy a bar in Key West or etc.) Issue 1 will appear on January 1st. Cut-off date for submissions will be November 30 (I don’t want to work over Christmas). Selections will probably be made by December 15. Send submissions per the Submissions and Announcements guidelines, but specify Submission for “The Chamber” in the subject line, if you want your work published in The Chamber, or Submission for The Blog, if you want to be published in the regular blog. I will continue to publish submissions in my regular blog until December 31.
Why call it “The Chamber”? The word chamber has numerous sinister and macabre connotations: a chamber of horrors, a torture chamber, one chambers a round into a rifle, etc. A chamber can also be where a sorcerer, an alchemist, or a member of the Inquisition stores his library. It is with this last connotation in mind that I am developing my Chamber for the storage of my selection of sinister and macabre works from the best up and coming authors that seek to contribute to my blog.
So, start editing your best, most powerful material and see where this new venture takes us! I want powerful, hard-hitting material that leaves its readers gasping and awe-struck at the end.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 