In honor of our favorite month, we’re holding a contest for the best short story that embodies the hair-raising, spine-chilling, disturbing, and scary nature of October. Whether your writing invokes Mary Shelley, Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Karen Russell, or Edgar Allen Poe we want to read it. We’re open to all styles and ideas, but your story must be well-constructed. We will show a particular interest in those pieces with some literary merit; stories that push themselves beyond the strangeness of their premise. Lucky (or unlucky) number $13 earns you a shot at our $500 prize and publication on The Masters Review. The winning story will publish on Halloween Day.
Guidelines (Deadline October 15,2014):
To put it simply, creep us out. Make our palms sweat. Scare us with the unsettling, the horrible, the surprising, and the terrible. Make the hair on the back of our necks stand up. We want to think twice before turning out the lights.
– Up to 5,000 words
– Previously unpublished work only
– Simultaneous submissions okay but please inform us if your story is picked up elsewhere
– $13 to enter
– Wow us. Scare us.
