Tag: The Chamber

Update April 26, 2022: Notes on Incommunicado and The Chamber

A quick update on what I am doing these days.

Watch for the next issue of The Chamber coming out May 6. Great dark stories and poetry as always. I haven’t finished selecting all the material yet, but so far here are the contributors: Alan Catlin, James Mulhern, Peter Michael Bush, Janelle Chambers, Patrick R. Wilson, Hareendran Kallinkeel, Cecilia Kennedy, Kate Bergquist, Damir Salkovic, Jessica McGlyn, and Prithvijeet Sinha.

I estimated the number of pages I have for my play “Incommunicado” a few days and discovered there are only 45, which makes a performance of about 45 minutes. I want to do a full-length play of 90 minutes, which means I will need about 45 more pages. So, I am only halfway done. The real trick will be to add 45 pages of quality material vs. filler/crap. I believe in leaner, muscular writing, keeping the text to as few words as possible while giving as much meaning to each word as possible. This gives impact to the writing and makes it powerful. There are only three characters: Quinn, Cassie, and Ruth, but most of the dialogue is between Quinn and Cassie. There is not a lot of action in the play, so I am banking on having deep, fascinating characters, but I don’t want this to be overly intellectual. I want the average Joe in the street to appreciate what is going on. That makes the play more marketable and will attract a broader audience.

Quinn, by the way, is Quinn Gallagher, who is the protagonist in two of my short stories: “The Scent” and “The Slightest of Indiscretions”. I would post a link to “The Slightest…” but the website is down right now. You can find it along with several of my other stories on https://fictionontheweb.co.uk. Both of these are included in my short collection of relationship-based stories in The Scent and Other Stories.

Today is the Deadline for Issue #2 of “The Chamber”

The deadline for submissions for issue #2 passes today.  However, please feel free to submit for issue #3, which will be published on July 1.  The deadline for submissions for Issue #3 will be May 31st.

Send submissions for Issue #3 per the Submissions and Announcements guidelines.

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.

Today is the Deadline for Submissions to Issue #1 of “The Chamber”

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.  The deadline for submissions for issue #1 passes today, November 30.  However, please feel free to submit for issue #2, which will be published on April 1.

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 am creating 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 2 will appear on April 1st.  Send submissions for Issue #2 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.

Announcing the Advent of “The Chamber” Magazine

Phil Slattery Self-portrait, August, 2016
Phil Slattery
Self-portrait, August, 2016

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.  Please feel free to start submitting as of September 9, 2016.  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.