WHO WANTS TO READ SOME SPOOKY GODDAMN STORIES?

Ghoulish Tales Publishes Issue 1, Opens for Issue 2

Ghouls,

It is with great pleasure that I announce issue one of Ghoulish Tales is finally available to read. We have also re-opened for submissions for issue two. So, if you’re a writer, make sure you read this newsletter ’til the end otherwise you’ll miss the guidelines.

But first, before we get too invested in the magazine, I must announce a couple upcoming events we’re hosting at the bookstore.

Going forward, our writing club nights and our movie nights will now be weekly instead of monthly. If you’d like to participate in our Ghoulish Writing Club, stop by the Ghoulish Books bookshop every Thursday at 7pm. The event page for this week’s meet-up can be found HERE.

Our movie nights, otherwise known as Saturday Night Spookies, will start occurring every Saturday night.

Every Saturday night we will screen a horror movie at our bookstore. Pre-show begins at 7:30pm and showtime's at 8pm. We charge a $5 ticket fee which can be used as a credit for drinks and snacks in our lobby (or, if you prefer, toward a book in our store). The title of the movie will always be a surprise until showtime, but we may post hints on social media leading up to the week's screening. It's a safe bet to assume the movies will not be kid-friendly unless otherwise stated.

Tickets for Saturday, July 22 and Saturday, July 29 can be found HERE. Each screening is limited to 20 seats.

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Dead End Follies just dropped this excellent review of Scott Adlerberg’s The Screaming Child. Read it HERE. Buy the novel HERE.

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Okay, now onto Ghoulish Tales Issue #1…

First, Betty Rocksteady’s incredible cover art, followed by the introduction I wrote for this issue:

WHO WANTS TO READ SOME SPOOKY GODDAMN STORIES?

Every time I’m interviewed, I get the same question. Why horror? This is especially true for outlets who aren’t already dedicated to horror coverage. Local newspapers, generic pop culture websites, etc. They’re always fascinated why I’ve chosen to dedicate my life to horror. It’s hard for them to wrap their head around the idea. The question comes up a lot at popup events or at our horror-themed bookstore, too. Especially when it’s nowhere near October. When it’s October, they definitely get it. They think we’re taking advantage of Halloween. But when they find out our annual horror fest—the Ghoulish Book Festival—is held in the spring, that only further baffles them. Why would anyone like horror outside of “the spooky month”?

The truth is, I can’t remember a time in my life that wasn’t surrounded by the horror genre. I grew up with much older siblings who had slashers playing on television nonstop. Plus I had an aunt—my mom’s best friend—who was just as obsessed, and as I got slightly older she would burn pirated underground horror movies onto blank discs and let me borrow them whenever we visited. My earliest movie memory is the OG Evil Dead trilogy. I watched them nonstop, mesmerized. At this point, it’s safe to say they’ve found a way into my DNA, and they are here to stay.

There was no moment where I decided, “I now love horror.” I emerged from the womb with a Freddy Krueger glove. Loving horror comes just as naturally to me as breathing oxygen.

All of this is to say that it was a no-brainer that we would eventually launch Ghoulish Tales, a magazine dedicated to celebrating everything spooky. Everything I love and cherish.

I am writing this introduction near the end of June 2023. When we initially announced this new magazine, our intention had been to publish the inaugural issue back in April to coincide with our second-ever Ghoulish Book Festival in San Antonio. As you can probably surmise, things did not happen according to plan. Rather than publish the first issue of the magazine on time, this is what we did instead: hosted a book festival, opened the only horror-themed bookstore in the San Antonio area, and got married. April was an insane month, to put it lightly, and it has taken both myself and Lori Michelle (Booth!) several months to recover from the consequential burnout.

But here we are. No more excuses, right? You aren’t here for that.

Ghoulish Tales Issue #1 is finally in your disgusting little hands, and I couldn’t be more excited. It is no longer the Spring Issue but the Summer Issue now. In this magazine you will encounter 8 short stories and 2 essays. Going through the slush was an incredibly exhausting process. For issue 1, we received 1,195 submissions to consider, which we somehow narrowed down to the 10 you are about to read. Many of the authors we accepted were names I was not familiar with at the time, but now I consider myself a fan for life. It is my hope that, after you finish this issue, you will feel the same way.

I will not waste any more page space here. You came for some spooky goddamn stories, and some spooky goddamn stories are what you’re going to get.

Enjoy the ride, ghouls.

—Max Booth III

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Here is the complete table of contents:

• Introduction

• “Who Brings a Baby?” by Clay McLeod Chapman

• “Life in the Demon’s Gizzard” by Betty Rocksteady

• “John List Would Like to Cancel His Subscription to Omaha Steaks” by Rae Knowles

• “The Ins and Outs of Shunting” by Lor Gislason

• “Tonight’s Guest Is!” by Robert Nazar Arjoyan

• “Legerdemain” by Barbara Castro-Rojas 

• “The Koji Show” by Angela Liu

• “Heartbeat” by Chloé Harper Gold  

• “The Werewolf’s Guide to New York Criminal Law” by Nicholas A. Battaglia 

• “Saturn Devouring His Son” by Nina Maar

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HOW TO ORDER GHOULISH TALES ISSUE #1…

Webstore (single issue) | Webstore (subscription) | B&N | Amazon

Paperbacks will also be available at our physical bookstore beginning tomorrow (Wednesday).

Please buy this magazine, if you can afford it. We’ve tried our best to make the magazine relatively affordable. More importantly, please read it. Share it with your friends. Talk about it. Scream about it. Make tiktoks. Write reviews. Graffiti police stations. Whatever you wanna do to spread the word.

Horror magazines are not exactly the most…uh, in demand form of literature, but goddammit I sure do love them, and Ghoulish Tales is something I’m quite proud of publishing. I hope to publish many more issues for years to come, but of course that is only possible with a readership. So…please read this! I promise you it is a ghoulishly good time.

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WRITE FOR GHOULISH TALES

And, if you’d like to write for Ghoulish Tales, we have officially re-opened for issue two. Betty Rocksteady has even finished the cover art already, which I’m happy to share below in all its beauty:

In case you aren’t familiar, this is a parody of an infamous National Lampoon cover from their “Death” issue in 1973.

The dog’s name was Mr. Cheeseface and wasn’t he just the most precious boy? You can read about his life and enraging, tragic death HERE.

But anyway, back to the cover for Ghoulish Tales Issue #2…we are blown away, and we can’t wait to fill it with a bunch of gnarly stories. That’s where you come in.

What we are after: short stories that fit our personal definition of the word GHOULISH, which is “fun horror that aims to celebrate all things spooky.”

Note that we said fun, not funny. Comedic stories are definitely allowed, but it’s not all we’re looking to receive. We want stories that remind us why we love the horror genre. We want to have a perverted little smile across our face while reading. Make us slobber like idiots. Turn us into the Sickos.jpeg meme.

We are also interested in non-fiction about the horror genre.

Obviously the best way to get an idea of what we hope to publish is to read the stories we have already published in issue one.

GUIDELINES:

Deadline: August 31, 2023 (11:59 PM CST)

Word count: 5,000 max (short stories); 3,000 max (non-fiction)

Payment: 10c per word

Simultaneous Submissions: Yes

Multiple Submissions: No (Please only submit one story per open call. If we reject you, do not resubmit until we reopen for the next issue.)

Reprints: No

AI Submissions: No. Please note if you are caught sending us an AI story, you will be blacklisted from ever publishing with us in the future. Don’t do it.

How to submit: Send all stories & essays to ghoulishsubmissions @ gmail dot com with [TITLE] – [ LAST NAME] – [STORY/ESSAY] in the subject line. Please do not copy/paste the story in the body of the email. We prefer Word doc attachments if possible. All inquiries can also be directed to the same address.

As you wait, feel free to come hang out in the GHOULISH discord.

Thank you and good luck, ghouls!