Episodes

  • Inked

    Inked
    Nov 23 2024
    What’s that dark spot on the wall?Inked was written by Akis Linardos and first published in Maul Magazine in September 2022. Sadly, Maul Magazine is defunct. Then I bought the story and reprinted it in my Cursed & Creepy anthology.Check out Cursed & CreepyIn a cove of a Greek island, Akis was born a sane infant but has since then grown to enter the chaotic world of adults--a choice he deeply regrets. His stories delve both into epic worlds and ones of extreme darkness. Find him at Apex, Dread Machine, Flame Tree, and numerous anthologies. https://linktr.ee/akislinardosPete Lead is our voice actor, and you can learn more about this incredible start-up genius here. He’s also writes compelling short stories. I bought one from him as well, called Review of Bondi Beach by Henry the Shark.https://petelead.com/Tuck yourself in and turn the lights down for this short horror story…Akis and I at World Fantasy Con..Akis Linardos is one of my short story writing friends and we’ve been tackling the markets together. Self-labeled “Author, Scientist, 33% Human,” he has a unique approach and has attempted some very cool experiments. I finally met him IRL at World Fantasy Con this October and he was just as intriguing as expected. He has managed to get many miles out of his story Ink. Let’s learn a bit more about this growing concern in the spec world.AF: What was your inspiration for InkAL: There is this game called Bendy and the Ink Machine—a horror of cartoon characters coming alive to haunt their creator. Besides that, I had a leaking ceiling in the toilet at the time of writing this in Barcelona. So Ink must have emerged from the thought: “What if it was leaking because my upstairs neighbors were doing something FUCKED?”AF: I bought this story for my Cursed & Creepy anthology, but I wasn’t your first sale. Tell us about your tales many homes.AL: This one was actually my very first “pro-pay” sale. It was bought by Maul Magazine back in 2022, and since then has also been features in Tales to Terrify podcast.AF: When did you first decide that you wanted to become a writer? Describe your journey to this point.AL: It was in 2019 that I first started writing. Before that I had dabbled with drawing, piano, and guitar, but nothing scratched that itch quite like storytelling did so I followed that much more passionately. It was a lot of self-learning with internet resources, then I found editors within the community that helped me understand the industry better (primarily Alex Woodroe, Avra Margariti, and Rebecca Treasure). What put me on the map initially was my Apex sale at 2022, then my writing momentum picked up wildly with an average of 2.3k words daily in 2023 and a wild number of submissions as well. It was a bit of a manic period following months of major depression, so I guess I turned a dark time into a powerful boost for growth!AF: Who are your influences?AL: A lot of the primary influences are actually not writers but mostly manga artists Junji Ito, Kentaro Miura, Hayao Miyazaki, Hajime Isayama, and video game designers such as Hidetaka Miyazaki. I do have some literary works to mention though, especially dystopian novels such as 1984 and Brave New World, and also the Song of Ice and Fire, and Name of the Wind. Finally, there’s the Greek mythology and ancient Greek writers that I was familiar with from a young age. I think you can see my affinity for mythology in a lot of my work, including Ink.AF: You recently released a Cosmic Horror Chapbook. Tell us about it. How did you market it? Have you made many sales?AL: Yes! Crooked Gods! I pitched it around social media and made a teaser trailer about it with royalty-free images! Not many sales at all!Check out Crooked Gods hereAF: You've found incredible success in the short story world. What are your secrets?AL:* I don’t judge my work.* I don’t rewrite after something is done never mind what personal rejection might say. Better use that time and that feedback to inform my writing of the next.* I keep submitting everything, everywhere, all the time. (and all at once but we don’t talk about that)AF Do you have any advice/tips for writers who wish to make sales to pro-speculative markets?AL: Understand the mathematics of the submission system. 100 rejections are not a reflection of your work, but a statistical inevitability. Which in turn means you have to submit like a damn monster.You don’t have to write every day, but it is definitely a good idea to set at least one period (could be 3 or 6 months) where you do write over 1000 every day. This would show you that you have the capacity to do it, it will improve your confidence as a writer.To make the former possible and to also improve your confidence, you must shut down the critical voice of your brain. Once you stop judging what you write at the moment of writing it, you will write much faster and have more fun with it. You will also be taken down unlikely paths and make ...
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    18 mins
  • 48 Peggy's Hungry Haunted Clown

    48 Peggy's Hungry Haunted Clown
    Nov 11 2024

    Welcome to Episode 48 of Read Me a Nightmare, I’m Angelique Fawns, your host. Today I’m sharing a creepy tale featuring a Haunted Circus and a bloodthirsty clown.

    Peggy’s Hungry Haunted Clown first appeared in It Was All A Dream 2: Another Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right, released this August by Hungry Shadow Press.

    This is a gorgeous anthology with custom art for each story and I share the TOC with some phenomenal writing friends of mine, including Yelena Crane and Amanda Cecelia Lang.

    Check out the show notes for the link to check out the book.

    My inspiration for this story was watching the transport trucks carrying rides trundle into the little town of Sunderland for the annual Maple Syrup Festival.

    Kristi Stewart does a fantastic job bringing this Middle-Grade Horror story to life. She’s a professional voice actor and frequent performer for this podcast.

    Prepare to meet a clown just as terrifying as Stephen King’s Pennywise as we all head to the circus.



    Get full access to Angelique’s Substack at angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe
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    23 mins
  • 47 Body Count - Halloween Special

    47 Body Count - Halloween Special
    Oct 27 2024
    This guy tried to pick up the wrong witch…Body Count was written by myself and recently published in DreamForge’s Dark Visions magazine, its annual Halloween treat. You can read the story for free here:https://bit.ly/Body-Count-A-FawnsBody Count is read by Kelly Pidgeon, one of the best voices in the business. No one does a tough guy character like he does. Kelly is also a member of the band, Boats Against the Current. You can listen to their music here:https://boatsagainstthecurrentmusic.bandcamp.com/Jane Noel created the art piece above, and I absolutely love it.Check your shoes for dead mice, and get ready to grin like a dang Cheshire cat.Scot Noel from DreamForgeHow does an author sell to DreamForge? Firstly, I recommend joining the Dreamcasters. https://dreamforgemagazine.com/dreamcasters/This is one of my favourite writing groups and the monthly meetings have helped me hone my craft immensely. Plus I’ve made some wonderful lifelong friends. (Many of whom I met for the first time this October at World Fantasy Con! Including Jane and Scot Noel.)Here are more hints right from Scot Noel pulled from past interviews I’ve done with him:AF: When looking to buy for your magazine, what is your perfect story? SN: That’s easy, the perfect story generates a powerful emotion in me when I read it, and I either end the tale with a big smile or in tears. Tears not necessarily because it is sad, but because something powerful and resonating happened, like an affirmation that the future is not lost, humans are not doomed, and the Human Adventure is Just Beginning. Oh, and don’t: * Start in Medias Res, especially if that means lots of explosions and chaos- don’t care. * Bore me with expositions and explanations that you think are world-building. * Misuse dialog as a way to make your point or an alternative way to exposit, instead of to reveal the mental state of the speaking character. * Use unusual names, words, or ways or speaking that do not make your story more engaging, but do provide a speed bump or road block to smooth reading. * DO keep the reader with the actions of the protagonist and engage us with their challenges and emotions as they face the problems you’ve set before them. AF: Your website says, “Our tales revolve around those individuals and groups who bring meaning and value to the world, whose actions are of consequence, and whose dreams are the vanguard of things to come. Whether you call that Solarpunk, Hopepunk, or just DreamForge stories, you’ll find them here.” What is "Hopepunk"? SN: We were well into the development of DreamForge when I started looking around to see if anyone else was sharing a more hopeful vision of the future. In that search, I found author Alexandra Rowland, author of A Conspiracy of Truths and A Choir of Lies, and whose novel In the End I was reading at the time. As I learned, Alexandra first coined the term Hopepunk in 2017. In a Den of Geek article, she went on to say: “Hopepunk is a subgenre and a philosophy that says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.” It was catching on, and even as we prepared our first issue of DreamForge, I could see that people were using the term in relation to hopeful fiction. At DreamForge, we don’t think of ourselves as a Hopepunk publication, but we do believe we’ve published some Hopepunk stories, as well as Solarpunk (where humanity overcomes present day challenges to achieve sustainability). The two terms often seem to show up together, being part of a growing optimistic radicalism. AF: Any advice for writers submitting to DreamForge? SN: The one piece of advice for writers submitting anything to anywhere is to read the publication! That doesn’t mean you have to go spend a lot of money; if you cast your net wide enough and give it a try, there’s usually someone who can loan you a copy, and many of today’s stories can be found free online. I know writers wonder if they are making a nuisance of themselves or are getting a bad reputation with the editor when they submit story after story that gets rejected. The answer is no. As editor of DreamForge, I’ve sent back a lot of stories to authors who tried again and again, yet I just didn’t have a place for those stories or perhaps they just didn’t quite rise above the others I chose. But I enjoyed the stories and respected the authors. When I did get mildly peeved, it was when it was obvious that the writer knew nothing about us, and we were simply on their “making the rounds list.” I don’t mind being the 5th or 25th publication on your list; that’s practical. What I do mind is when you gave no consideration to what we publish and then get upset about it when we send it back. We’re not here for stories about seduction, revenge, and murder, or to read screenplays, children’s books, and novel ...
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    22 mins
  • 46 The Matron of Hawthorne Hall

    46 The Matron of Hawthorne Hall
    Oct 3 2024
    A ghost story at an all-girls boarding school just in time for Halloween…The Matron of Hawthorne Hall was written by myself, and inspired by my time working at an exclusive boarding school in the countryside outside of London England. The story is read by Kristi Stewart, a professional voice actor and frequent performer for this podcast. The Matron of Hawthorne Hall is published in the current issue of Max Blood’s Mausoleum HERE.Max Blood’s Mausoleum: A Home for the Weird and TerrifyingMax Blood’s Mausoleum launched on March 1st with a new home for horror. The editor, Max Blood, says, “We’ve read it all before and will read it all again, so send us something that will really set us back on our heels. Terrify us. Make us squirm. Send us the best of your worst.”Max Blood’s Mausoleum is a paying market, offering $30 per piece, and has three issues out in the world. He recently published my Halloween ghost story, “The Matron of Hawthorne Hall” and I thought this was a good time to check in with his experiences so far. AF: How has the reception to Max Blood’s Mausoleum been?MB: Reception has been fantastic! I’ve had many great authors submit stories to our publication, and this has been really exciting for me. I worried when I started this that I would have a difficult time discovering enough great stories. That was a pessimistic view of the future. In reality, I had too many great ones. There are a ton of exciting, engaging authors out there whom I’d never heard of, and it excites me every time I discover another great one. The hardest part is choosing which stories to accept and which to pass on. I’ve had to pass on some pretty good ones.On the reader front, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to receive multiple emails from readers praising our stories, and I’ve passed those praises onto the respective authors. It brings me tremendous joy to get to do that.And then there is the continuing success of our authors. Several of the stories we picked up have since been picked up to be republished in other publications. And one story (we can’t reveal which at this time) has been picked up by a production company to be made into a short film! AF: Do you have any numbers as to your downloads and submission stats?MB: Well, we just published our third issue, so we’re still pretty small. That said, our numbers are not bad at all. In September, we had nearly 400 unique visitors to our site, about half of which were authors viewing our submission guidelines. So, it’s a good place for authors, for sure. That said, I’d say it’s a great place for readers. That’s 200 readers for our latest issue. Your story, “The Matron of Hawthorne Hall,” had a fantastic 32 readers get into it. And these are stories that the authors poured their blood into. They have each brought something special to our site. I certainly plan on increasing those numbers as we continue to publish such brilliant horror stories, but this is not a bad start at all.AF: What types of stories are you buying/what kind is most likely to be successful?MB: The ideal story for me is that which I wish I had written. Honestly, it’s that simple. If I read a piece and think, “Why didn’t I think of that?,” that’s a great sign. This often comes in the form of a story that pushes the limits of comfortability. Read “The Blood Horse,” by Kurt Newton, published in Issue 3, and you’ll see what I mean in action. That story even pushed my limits, made me uncomfortable. “Pavement Spatula,” by David Vonderheide, is another great example of this. It is psychologically terrifying. I wish I’d written that!That said, it doesn’t always have to push limits in these ways. I love horror that touches on other genres. Especially Science Fiction. It has to still be definitively Horror, but touching on another genre offers complexity that is often missing in mainstream Horror.AF: What did you like about The Matron of Hawthorne Hall and why did you send me a revise and resubmit?MB: There are times when a piece doesn’t touch on the above, but when it comes to actually reading the piece, I simply enjoy it. It’s difficult to qualify a reason behind it, so let’s just call it Magic. Some stories just have a bit of Magic. A bit of Charm. Your story was just such a story. I seriously enjoyed it. That said, it was initially pretty far from what we publish at Max Blood’s Mausoleum. In many cases, no matter how great a story is, this is a hard pass for me, but when that Magic is particularly strong for me, I will sometimes offer a chance for revision to bring the story at least a little closer to what we are looking for. It’s important to me that the story remains THAT AUTHOR’s story. I don’t want to get rid of what makes the story unique to them. So, I try to structure some remarks around where I think we can meet halfway. Compared to stories like “The Blood Horse” and “Pavement Spatula”, your story was a bit...
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    23 mins
  • 45 The Shadow Men & Interview with Mark Leslie

    45 The Shadow Men & Interview with Mark Leslie
    Sep 6 2024

    What are those dark shadows in the trees? You may never camp again…PLUS - Building a career with short stories.This episode features a short horror story by Mark Leslie called The Shadow Men, read by himself.

    Would you love a print version of this tale and other creepy offerings? Mark Leslie is in the last days of a Kickstarter for his updated and illustrated anniversary collection ONE HAND SCREAMING.

    Don’t miss out! KICKSTARTER

    Mark Leslie has published more than 25 books. He has a comedy horror series featuring a Canadian Werewolf, several standalone thrillers and horror novels, a set of paranormal non-fiction books, and guides that help authors navigate publishing. You can find him at markleslie.ca After the reading, Mark Leslie and I chat about the author life and how to make money with short stories. We Mention:

    Mark's Books

    Mark's PodcastThe Canadian Mounted

    Cursed & Creepy Audiobook

    The Horror Lite Anthologies

    Frightmares in The Falls

    Grab your sleeping bag, a flashlight, and let's go camping.



    Get full access to Angelique’s Substack at angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe
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    32 mins
  • 44 Treats by Robert Stahl

    44 Treats by Robert Stahl
    Aug 9 2024

    Episode 44 - Treats and an Interview with Robert Stahl

    Sticky Pumpkin Guts and Unlikely Ghouls…

    Read Me a Nightmare presents “Treats”, written and read by Robert Stahl. Stay tuned after this short horror romp for an interview with the author where we talk about the writing process, life as a horror writer, rescue dogs, and the pros and cons of writing long.

    Treats was first published in Oct 2019 in Rigor Morbid: Lest Ye Become, and reprinted in Cursed & Creepy in Nov 2023.

    Learn more about Robert at www.robertestahl.com.

    Grab some stale Halloween candy, lock your doors, and enjoy this taste of Halloween in August.



    Get full access to Angelique’s Substack at angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe
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    51 mins
  • 43 Remember the Gallscream

    43 Remember the Gallscream
    Jun 24 2024

    Even Scarecrows love a carnival…

    Our episode today features Christopher Henckel and his short story "Remember the Gallscream."

    I bought this tale for Book #1 of the HorrorLite Anthologies

    CURSED AND CREEPY.

    Born in the backwoods of West Virginia, Christopher Henckel is a country boy down to his molecular structure. He now lives in New Zealand with his lovely partner, Annaliese, and two equally lovely daughters, Avery and Coco. His stories can be found in Galaxy’s Edge magazines and various anthologies. When he’s not writing, Henckel works as a Senior Procurement Specialist for the NZ Government.

    The Gallscream is a hero or a devil. It all depends what car of the Ferris wheel you’re swinging from…



    Get full access to Angelique’s Substack at angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe
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    49 mins
  • 42 Memo from the Jolly Overlords & R.J.K. Lee

    42 Memo from the Jolly Overlords & R.J.K. Lee
    Mar 19 2024

    Jingle, Jingle. Any time of year is a good time for Christmas Horror.

    R.J.K. Lee not only reads his own story, "Memo From the Jolly Overlords", but also sticks around for a candid interview. Are you addicted to short stories? Desperately trying to figure out how to make money writing? Yup. Hang out for the chat afterwards.

    Memo From the Jolly Overlords was first broadcast on the Weird Christmas Podcast in December of 2020 and then published in Book #1 of the HorrorLite Anthologies
    CURSED AND CREEPY.

    R.J.K. Lee immigrated to Japan in 2005 from Oregon. He's puttered along train tracks to meet quotas for the overlords ever since, currently as a teacher, proof reader, and voice narrator, while churning out fiction.

    Ryland and I have shared a few Table of Contents, including DreamForge, Parsec's Triangulation anthology, The Seven Day Weekend, and Space & Time Magazine.

    Grab a bag of sugar plums. Oh. And make sure to meet your quota...



    Get full access to Angelique’s Substack at angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe
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    28 mins