Now and again, writers ignore the length requirements for the magazine and we get submissions on the shorter side that are painful to reject. Sometimes we publish them anyway.

However, it became clear that we weren’t accommodating a lot of talented authors. In recognition of the abundance of brilliant short-short story writers out there, we’re excited to announce a new project: Shooter Flash. Now, we have a forum exclusively for authors of prose shorter than 1,000 words, with a rolling competition to spotlight one story each month on Shooter’s website. In addition to online publication, winning writers will receive £50, and their work will be included in an annual anthology sent to all of Shooter’s subscribers.

For guidelines and further details, please visit https://shooterlitmag.com/shooter-flash. Feel free to email shooterlitmag@gmail.com with any questions. And poets, no need to feel left out – the 2021 Shooter Poetry Competition is also currently underway.

We can’t wait to read your work – good luck!

Submissions are now open for Shooter’s winter 2022 issue, themed “Dark Arts”.

We’re looking for stories, essays, memoir and poetry to do with enchantment and scheming, in any context. Black magic, witchcraft and wizardry are the obvious subjects, but we welcome wider interpretations of the theme: anything to do with political manipulation, backroom dealings, romantic plotting, duplicitous gamesmanship, or charismatic trickery is sought. As ever, whether rooted in realism or fantasy, supernatural or sci-fi, please ensure writing adheres to a high literary standard.

Writers should send short stories and non-fiction of 2,000-6,000 words and/or up to three poems, adhering to the submission guidelines, by the deadline of November 7th, 2021. Weave your literary magic, make us fall for your poetry, and grip us with your most masterful prose!

During the Covid-19 era, escape has proven more difficult and perhaps, as a result, more craved than in “normal” times.

Given booming book sales since March 2020, evidently many people have achieved escape through imaginary means: armchair tourism of a sort more accessible than plane travel and foreign holidays.

Of course, there has been not just escapism to seek, but suffering to escape from as well. The series of lockdowns has forced unhappy couples to confront insurmountable differences perhaps more successfully ignored in ordinary times, when socialising with friends or disappearing to the golf course were distractions taken for granted. More seriously, rates of domestic violence have risen, with some women and children finding themselves dangerously confined with violent men.

Several contributors to this summer’s Escape issue have directly engaged with consequences of the coronavirus. Heather Holland Wheaton, in her opening story “I Wrote My Name on the Back of the Sky”, imagines a Covid-era opportunity to escape, quite literally, into great works of art. For a non-fiction take on transcending lockdown isolation, Alexandra O’Sullivan explores venturing into virtual reality with her son in her essay “Into the Net”.

Family dynamics and relationship breakdowns connect much of the work, not just in terms of people extricating themselves from marital bonds, but with regard to separation’s effect upon children as well. Jim Toal’s story “The Only Child” charts the experience of a boy sent to stay with his uncle near a remote coast while his parents hash out their divorce elsewhere. In “Saturday Night”, by Angelita Bradney, a rare date night combined with an accident at home pushes one woman to acknowledge the truth about her marriage.

A last-ditch holiday to repair a couple’s relationship following unbearable tragedy proves the final nail in the coffin in Colin Dunne’s “The Human Tower”. The issue’s second non-fiction piece, “Bittersweet” by Jennifer Furner, examines the conflicting tensions of early motherhood and the sense of guilt at needing time away from a young child.

At the more light-hearted end of the spectrum, a hapless holidaymaker finds himself caught up in a marital spat in Anthony Kane Evans’ “Faustine”, while the protagonist of “Meat” is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice in Kate Venables’ vision of the zombie apocalypse.

The Escape issue happens to begin and end with the only two pieces featuring neither family nor romantic relationships. Michael Pacheco wraps up the edition with his prison tale, “The Breakout Artist”, whose inmates find ways out other than over the jailhouse walls.

Throughout this edition’s pages, the poets (James McDermott, John Davis, Amy Malloy, Ann Weil, Sarah O’Connor and Beth McDonough) inject sharp jolts of insight, exhilaration and levity. Last but not least, the 2021 Short Story Competition winner, Lucy Thompson, drips a trail of sticky suspense through her compelling tale, “Honey”.

As it happens, Thompson’s story also fits the Escape theme: a woman trapped by her husband’s coercive control finds a most unusual source of liberation – and revenge. For a truly inventive way to flee an undesirable situation, look no further than this year’s winning tale.

Cover art by C R Resetarits

To order the Escape issue or sign up for a subscription, please visit the Subscriptions page.

The 2021 Poetry Competition is now open to entries, and the theme for the winter 2022 issue will be announced imminently – stay tuned!

“Honey”, a suspenseful tale by Kent-based writer Lucy Thompson, has won the 2021 Shooter Short Story Competition, with Lisa Blackwell’s story “Daddy Longlegs” landing second place.

Thompson’s winning story gripped competition readers with its carefully woven depiction of domestic abuse, leading to a gratifying climax. In an email, Thompson described her inspiration for the story as “too much news”, saying that a radio program about coercive control merged with the sight of beehives at an unusual house to spark the story in her mind.

A former marketing executive, Thompson balances writing with the demands of her two teenage children, partner, and Labradoodle Maisie. Her work has appeared in Black Static, Dawntreader, Firewords and elsewhere, and she is currently working on her first novel. 

The competition’s second-place story, “Daddy Longlegs”, struck readers with its insightful, poignant suggestion of the cycle of violence and its effect on a young boy. Blackwell, a copy-editor living in London, has published fiction in the Bath Short Story Award Anthology 2019, MIR Online, TSS, Reflex Press, and elsewhere, and has also written poetry and plays. She is currently studying for a master’s degree in creative writing from Oxford University.

Both stories are available to read online, and “Honey” will also appear in Shooter’s forthcoming Escape issue. Huge congrats to this year’s winning writers!

Shooter has reopened to submissions for its upcoming winter issue, themed Animal Love, as well as the 2020 Poetry Competition.

We’re open to short fiction, non-fiction and poetry to do with all creatures great and small, wonderful and wild, exotic and beloved. Meaningful, offbeat and/or humorous writing on pets, exotic species, encounters in the wild, veterinarians, equestrian sports, animal shelters, or anything that revolves around humans in relation to other species is welcome.

We’d especially like to see work that concerns animals other than dogs and cats, as those are likely to figure prominently. However, the quality of the writing and storytelling is, as always, the paramount consideration, and the theme is open to wide interpretation. Deadline: October 18th. Please visit the Submissions page for further guidelines.

The 2020 Poetry Competition is also open to entries, with no restriction on subject or style. Poems can be up to 100 lines long and multiple entries are allowed. The winning poet will receive £150 and publication both in the winter issue of Shooter and online, while the runner-up wins £50 and online publication. All entrants receive an e-copy of the winter magazine, featuring the winning poem. For guidelines on how to enter (deadline November 1st), please visit the Competition page.

Writers who are familiar with the type of work that we publish are often more successful; past and current issues of Shooter are available to order via the Subscriptions page. We look forward to reading your work – good luck!

HP Lovecraft, one of the early-twentieth-century masters of supernatural literature, wrote that “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” From Edgar Allan Poe to Shirley Jackson to Stephen King, the best of eerie storytelling draws upon this fundamental idea. Good literary horror mines strange and disturbing phenomena without trying to explain it away; it conjures unnerving scenarios, whether paranormal or psychological, without relying on overt shock tactics of blood and gore.

With this in mind, we gathered the spookiest and most darkly delightful tales and poetry we could find for Shooter’s Supernatural issue. Bodily transformations – some welcome, some less so – proved a popular theme, also reflected in cover artist James D Mabe’s take on the Daphne myth. Sophie Panzer’s “The Tribute” opens the issue with a magic mirror that, like the mirror in Snow White but with enhanced powers, makes its heroine the fairest of them all. Employing a similar tone of twisted urban fairytale, Lauren Friedlander explores what happens when her protagonist grows an inconvenient appendage in “Tail”. In the issue’s finale, “Big” by Sean Marciniak, an underdog gains immense strength along with his burgeoning size, with earth-shattering consequences.

Classic supernatural figures like ghosts and the trope of haunting arise in tales like Suzi Bamblett’s “The Girl on the Swing” (with the added fear factors of disturbed or dead children) and in poems like Anastasia Stelse’s “Façade”, about a possessed, and possessing, ruin. A witch, another classic type, lurks at the heart of Jennifer Moore’s “All Ye Who Enter Here”. Strange death prognostications combine suspense with dark comedy in “Winter”, Erik Wennermark’s tale of doom. And in our one non-fiction piece of the issue, Lania Knight investigates different mystical techniques to excavate past trauma in “I Find My Three Girls”.

Witnessing a suicide and its subsequent apparition ruins an adulterous affair in Joe L Murr’s “The Long Drop”, while the dead adjust to the afterlife in David Rogers’ “Exile”. Although not strictly supernatural, Katy Darby’s “Duct tape, milk, shilling, towels” imagines Sylvia Plath’s preparations for her own demise, and the poem’s haunting evocation of the famous poet’s end earned it first prize in the 2019 Shooter Poetry Competition. (In addition to appearing in the magazine, the poem can also be read on the website, along with runner-up Nikki Robson’s owl poem “Strix aluco”.) Other poems by Jen Huang, Tom Daley, Sal Drennan, Avra Margariti, and R Bratten Weiss punctuate the issue with metaphysical disquiet, Gothic creepiness, and, in not one but two cases, visceral placentas.

“Fear of the unknown” seems particularly timely during these cold months, as British citizens contemplate the post-Brexit era, Americans evaluate their next (and current) president, and Australians reel from unprecedented, raging bush fires (to mention just the countries that form the base of Shooter’s readership). As Aristotle theorised in his Poetics, the purpose of fictional terror (back then, in Greek plays) is to effect catharsis of emotions like fear in real life. So perhaps the best we can do to prepare for mortality, climate change, tyrannical leaders and global annihilation, is to read some quality supernatural fare. Shooter is, as always, at your service.

To order a copy of the Supernatural issue or an annual subscription to Shooter, please visit the Subscriptions page.