Phantom Whispers: Zine Announcement and Microfiction Collection #1
I'm putting together a team...
The importance of the zine (speculative fiction short-story magazine) in shaping the pop culture entertainment climate for a over a century is drastically underestimated by most modern readers of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. Zines gave us the writing careers Robert E. Howard, HP Lovecraft, and Michael Moorcock. They gave us the characters like Conan the Barbarian, Solomon Kane, The Shadow, and Zorro (without the latter two, we wouldn’t have Batman or the Punisher, and the American superhero landscape would look very different)
The zine format allowed writers who otherwise would have had no chance of getting an audience the opportunity to do so for multiple reasons. Writing is more manageable to balance with other work to pay the bills when it’s done in bite-sized chunks, whether it’s short stories or longer novellas released episodically. The steady release period helped maintain reader excitement, and unknown authors could ‘piggyback’ on the reputation of more known authors who shared a zine volume with them, which could be spun out into their own readership if they were good.
In the modern day, there’s also the potential with such a format for a collection of writers with smaller readerships to pool their audiences together in these collaborative zines and form a truly grassroots fandom of consumers that can support a new underground media scene. A chance to break free of tradpub.
Yet the old-name historical zines that still exist are largely captured territory. Weird Tales had the name rights scooped up by the exact same clique that sterilized and HR-ified tradpub into a shadow of its former self via modern progressive hyper-sensitivity. Behold, the new editorial director, announcing that those old fanciful tales that made the zine popular are way too problematic for the current year:
Clarkesworld is no better, having published some truly appalling on pretty much every level work recently that has caused a visceral negative reaction in every person I’ve read it to. But the easiest way to get a sense of the scope of the problem is to simply do an internet search on fiction zine submissions. A flood of search results touting “diverse,” “queer,” and “LGBT” voices crop up. One would be forgiven for thinking that the sci-fi and fantasy writing genres were an outgrowth of gay subculture, with a bit of contribution from African-Americans and non-Europeans, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, based on how fixated on those groups the modern zine ecosystem is.
Clearly there’s a very large segment of both writers and potential readers who aren’t being catered to by the established genre fiction scene, in tradpub or the zine community. Cirsova and Anvil Magazine are both zines that have aimed to break away from this (the latter of which published a short story of mine in volume 3). However, two options are still pretty paltry in the grand scheme of things, and both have inevitably created their own general tone and gathered their own cliques, neither of which necessarily fit the vibe I’d prefer for my own outlet to publish stories.
So about half a year ago, I decided to throw my own hat into the ring.
Since I didn’t have a lot of capital to spare, and know that many aspiring writers are in the same boat, I decided to set up a zine that would publish with a profit sharing model. Those who contribute to the magazine get a number of shares in the profits made off sales of that issue based on the amount contributed (submissions aren’t limited to one per writer, at least not currently). The genre, like the classic pulps, will blur the line between fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, covering each genre and everything in-between.
I was able to enlist some other indie writers, one of whom also happens to be a talented artist, and with a great deal of editing, volume 1 of Phantom Whispers has taken form.
Volume 1 of the magazine is already complete, and will be available for purchase on Amazon this month (hopefully within a week, if all goes smoothly, I’ve never self-published through Amazon before, so this will be a learning process).
In the meantime, the zine’s Twitter page has been posting daily microfiction threads for authors to contribute to. The challenge is to write a story that’s only a single tweet long (within the 250 character limit, no cheating, blue checkmarks), based around a theme set by our Twitter account runner. Feel free to join in if you want to take a crack at writing yourself with a very low time investment. Winners for an entire month of submissions will also be rewarded with a free digital copy of the zine,
To give you a very light taste of my own prose and creative juices (which you’ll find in much more substantial amounts in Phantom Whispers Volume 1), here are my ten microfiction entries from Twitter this month (no, I’m not calling it X).
***
Theme of the day - THIEF:
With a hideous sucking sound, a thousand tentacles and mouths slipped from the crypt shadows.
"Zarren, do something!" Ratch screamed to his grave robbing companion.
"I am." The wizard smirked. "Repaying you for sleeping with my wife."
He vanished, leaving Ratch behind.
***
Theme of the day - PIRATES:
Captain Lor examined the big metal cylinder they'd captured.
"It ain't spice or supplies. What is it?"
"High yield cobalt bomb," Ed the Tech said, "It's a planet killer."
Lor whistled. "How much heat will this bring?"
"All of it."
"And how much money?"
"All of it."
Lor grinned.
***
Theme of the day - SEDATION:
"What happened?" Dr. Doen asked, looking at the young woman lying cold and lifeless on the hospital bed.
"She had an allergic reaction to the Happyplex medication," the nurse said.
Doen nodded. "Lucky, actually. Get her to surgery. There are patients who need these organs."
***
Theme of the day - SIMULATION THEORY:
The sky over the city went black.
Hundreds of thousands looked up fearfully.
Was it a natural disaster? The apocalypse?
The sky flickered. An infant's face loomed above, impossibly huge.
"DON'T TOUCH THAT!" a voice boomed.
The sky flickered again and returned to normal.
***
Theme of the day - THE DUMB DOWN EFFECT:
"Tim, why did you put this answer?"
His teacher held up his paper. It read: 2+2=23.
He shrugged. "I was gonna put 2+2=22, but I made it one higher to be different."
"And do you feel good about your answer?"
"Sure."
"Good." She wrote 100% on it.
Tim sighed. What a waste of time.
***
Theme of the day - FREELANCER:
"So let me get this straight... you want to pay me to drink my blood?" Karl asked.
Flavia's smirk was barely visible beneath the the giant floppy hat and umbrella giving her two layers of protective shadows.
"Believe me, it's best for everyone."
She slid the contract over.
***
Theme of the day - LAZINESS:
Cleon sighed in exasperation as the VR headset interrupted his game with loud ringing.
"What now?" he muttered, "Relatives bugging me to get a job or go out & meet a girl again?"
It was a call from his doctor's office. His arthritis & heart condition had worsened.
***
Theme of the day - TRANSFORMATION:
"Your body's going through changes, Claire."
"I've got holes opening in my neck and horns and things poking out of my forehead! I don't think this is puberty, Mom!"
"Those are your gills and antenna, dear. Remember when I told you we're from abroad?"
"I thought you meant Europe!"
***
Theme of the day - LITERACY:
Tarka flung books aside as he searched frantically for the tome in his enormous library.
"Encyclopedia of Mortal Curses, Pacts of the Dark Gods, no, no, no!"
Finally, he saw the massive leather-bound volume. "Ah! Yes! Baking for the Eldritch!"
He flipped to the pie section.
***
Theme of the day - THE UNKNOWN:
"Has anything that's gone into a black hole ever been heard from again?"
Ralph took a drag on his cigarette. "Nope."
"So we don't have enough fuel to reach civilization, comms will take years, we either die of thirst or we Hail Mary this?"
"Yep."
I grinned. "Hype. Let's do it."
***
Hope you enjoyed, and if you want to read more, please consider purchasing the zine when it comes out to give us your support, and following the previously linked Twitter account.
Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.