ash vale

White text that says "FIRST READER APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN!" on a blurred purple image of our website banner.

OTHERSIDE is looking for 1-2 first readers! We got SO many amazing submissions that it's time to expand our team!

Interested? This is a great opportunity to learn about the editorial process 👀 We offer an honorarium and first readers can still submit to us!

📝Apply here: forms.gle/QcYLzXFn6AEn...

A pink and blue image. At the top it says "awards eligibility (short stories) for Ash Vale". The stories are: “Dread and Faith” Blood Lust (Black Hare Press), February 2025 (horror, 800 words). “Hope Carried on An ANcient, Isolated Back” Dreamforge Anvil, March 2025 (Fantasy, 2,700 words). “Fireweed, ferns, and Moss” Choices: An anthology of reproductive horror, Sept 2025 (cli-fi/horror, 2,700 words). “Results of Groundwater formaldehyde reduction...” DIe laughing, October 2025 (Horror/comedy, 1,200 words). “Lanugo” Uncharted, December 2025 (Horror, 2,400 words).

A pink and blue photo. The top reads "awards eligibility (poetry) for Ash Vale". Underneath is one poem listed: “Live” Moist poetry journal, June 2025

I finally did it, I'm so brave—an awards eligibility post! I've had a few short stories and one poem published this year, and I'd be grateful as always if you nominated any of them for any kind of awards, or if you just read them.

Links to all of them are available here: ash-vale.ca/stories.html

Change your gender, become a poet, catapult yourself into the sun. There are no rules. You can do anything you want.

my flash piece is in this episode, narrated beautifully by Amy H. Sturgis!

you can read the text of it or take a listen at the link ⬇️

A Thimbleful of Need Need, I decided, tasted of honey and salt. I didn’t like it. Still, I knew to test the tincture before paying for it and so I touched a single drop to my lips. The cloying sweetness clung to my ton…

My first story of 2026! It feels great to be writing and publishing again. I started out writing flash and micros, so having this piece in @flashfictiononline.bsky.social is particularly satisfying.

www.flashfictiononline.com/article/a-th...

A human skeleton from the rib cage up, either made of or covered in dripping, gooey pink stuff. Its mouth is open and its eye sockets are heart-shaped and its nose hole the inversion of that. Squiggly pink tendrils ending in bright pink heart shapes are growing out of the skull and clavicle. The skeleton’s hands are held out in front of it toward the viewer making a heart-shaped space within the fingers which is filled with more drippy, runny, sticky, pink goo.

vallantimes

my flash piece is in this episode, narrated beautifully by Amy H. Sturgis!

you can read the text of it or take a listen at the link ⬇️

This is the second deadliest school shooting in Canada's history and I do not think we have seen a school shooting with more than two deaths since La Loche in 2016, if you are wondering why the Canadians are in some shock today.

Gore Poetics by Samir Sirk Morató - Review Copy | BookSirens Join the review team for Gore Poetics. Read it for free before the rest of the world does. Share your honest review. Discover hundreds of other books in your favorite genres.

Psst, you can request a digital review copy of GORE POETICS on Booksirens. Recommended for fans of strange, erotic, transgressive literary horror.
booksirens.com/book/XKKD0LK...

TELL EM ABOUT THE POWER GRID BENITO

Well unfortunately I left with 2 items so... not so far!

Alright. As is now tradition, here are my 10 favorite African SFF stories from 2025 📖 📚

Featuring tales from: @fiyahlitmag.bsky.social @clarkesworldmagazine.com @omenanamag.bsky.social @giganotosaurus.bsky.social @zamashort.com @khoreo.bsky.social @willthisbeaproblem.bsky.social + more!

going to ikea for exactly 1 item. pray for me

drawing frogs on a tree branch drinking mate. tropical vegetation in the background, plus a moon & stars

new frogs

WE SURVIVED TOO: A CELEBRATION OF BLACK AND BROWN FINAL GIRLS Final Girls darker than a paper bag, surviving a genre that never planned for them to make it out alive.

An examination of Final Girls, darker than a paper bag, tracing how Black and Brown women survive a genre that rarely imagines them at the end. #NightTideMag #BlackHorror 👻📽️
nighttidemag.com/2026/02/03/s...

my daughter is almost 3 (he is 5) she loves frozen (does he like frozen?) she likes our cats (does he have pets?) she loves her grandparents (will he see his again?) is he scared? (she would be so scared) does he miss his mom? (she cries at daycare drop-off sometimes) he's wearing a bunny hat (she sleeps with a stuffed pig) he is 5 (what are we doing) she is almost 3 (what the fuck are we doing)

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” -James Baldwin

So we said we'd have our newsletter up today, but we in fact got distracted by making final decisions on Issue 1 stories! If you haven't heard from us by now, please query.

Newsletter will be up tomorrow—and we can't wait to announce our full Issue 1 table of contents soon 👀

Research Highlight: Deep-Sea Churro Finds its Evolutionary Home Churros, the delicious snacks covered with cinnamon sugar and served with hot chocolate, have a doppelganger in the deep sea. The deep-sea worm named after the deep-fried sticks of dough was recently ...

With all the madness going on, a one-holed worm thing with a no brain or any identifiable organs is quietly crawling somewhere on the ocean floor--and it is named after a churro. #xenoturbella_churro

scripps.ucsd.edu/news/researc...

When you see those announcements in Publisher's Marketplace that says a book was acquired in a "nice" deal, it means they got 69 dollars

Moira rose from schitt’s creek saying “never let the bsdtardd get you down” im so sad

De toute façon, je l'ai fini ! Portrait d'Edmontosaure, c'était un grand hadrosaure qui avait vécu auprès du T-Rex au crétacé supérieur !

Partagez et donnez pour soutenir la famille d'El Hacen Diarra, qui a été assassiné par la police : app.lacagnottedesproches.fr/cagnotte/del...

#paleoart #sciart

i've been watching the coyote on Alcatraz's progress with great interest. a week-ish ago, a coyote SWAM to Alcatraz for the first time and looked fuckin rough after the dangerous swim. but the coyote is doing fine now, gorging itself on unprepared birds & rats who are dealing with a sort of Godzilla

Okay I learned this just earlier today and actually kind of screamed LOL what strange worlds colliding!

Some Queer Short SFF - December 2025 | Charles Payseur Get more from Charles Payseur on Patreon

🏳️‍🌈SOME QUEER SHORT SFF - DECEMBER 2025🏳️‍🌈
I round up over 40 stories by @mruthrobinson.bsky.social @ashvalewrites.bsky.social @elijah.mea.rs @rj-sterling.bsky.social @sylvie-althoff.bsky.social @jamesbennett.bsky.social @ellisnyeland.bsky.social & MORE!!!
www.patreon.com/posts/149417...

are you and my cats colluding????

it'll remain a mystery forever i guess!!

so interesting that there are tiny sharp tooth marks in my butter. soooooo interesting

Ilhan Omar about to punch a slime bucket of a man, just an absolute potato sack looking motherfucker.

nice argument, unfortunately I have already depicted myself as a squared-up Ilhan Omar and you as a collapsing sewer ogre

cover for an ebook titled BY YOU, HOPE STANDS; it shows two wolves (one golden, one black) howling underneath an arch with the phases of the moon above, and a starry sky in the background; the text is white with the subtitle "stories of hope and resistance"

hi friends, i've put together a short collection of SFF stories and set it free—i hope it can give you some encouragement, a smile, or even just a pause in the doomscrolling. art is resistance. <3 🐺 📚

ko-fi.com/s/f0da603a0d <— support/PWYW (free!)
tiny.cc/2q7y001 <— direct download

This book is now a British Science Fiction Association awards longlister! Get it while it's hot! (it's always hot)