We are live! What's new?

Welcome to Dark Fiction Magazine’s first blog post. We’re almost two weeks in from launch and what a busy time it’s been. The site saw over 1,000 unique visitors in its first week, proving that genre fans are most definitely hungry for online short fiction. Even before the first episode went live, production of the second episode was under way and we are currently finalising the line up for the third episode.

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As you know, each month’s main episode has a theme. We launched on Halloween and so we called our first episode The Darkness Descends. Our second episode, Dystopian Desires (Dystopian Pasts and Futures), will go live on December 1st and features stories from Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Kim Lakin-Smith, Gareth L Powell and Jennifer Williams.

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The third episode, A Brave New World (Future Worlds, Alternative Histories – Here and There), goes out on January 1st and our line up for that month includes Cory Doctorow, Lauren Beukes, Ian Whates and Stephen Volk.

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One of the most enjoyable *tasks* (hardly a task, we had great fun coming up with these) since the launch has been working on the monthly themes, which we’d like to share with you now. If you’re thinking of submitting a story over the coming weeks and months, this may be of special interest to you. If you do submit with a particular theme in mind, please be sure to mark the theme somewhere in the email you send to us, and don’t forget to check out the Submissions Page for those all-important details.

EPISODE FOUR – Bold as Love (Love and Desire, Lust and Longing) – 01/02/11

EPISODE FIVE – Beware the Ides (War and Betrayal) – 01/03/11

EPISODE SIX – The Waste Land (Death, Living Death and Moral Decay) – 01/04/11

EPISODE SEVEN – Sacred Fire (Ancient Beliefs and Future Religions) – 01/05/11

EPISODE EIGHT – Persistence of Time (Time Travel, Distortion and Wormholes, though we prefer to call it Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey) – 01/06/11

EPISODE NINE – Readers Choice! (details to follow soon) – 01/07/11

EPISODE TEN – Mad Dogs (Tales of Beastly Terror and Inhuman Madness) – 01/08/11

EPISODE ELEVEN – The FCon Episode – 01/09/11

EPISODE TWELVE – Is There Anybody There? (When you shout into the abyss, what do you do when someone shouts back?) – 01/10/11

EPISODE THIRTEEN – Revolution (“Better to die standing, than to live on your knees.”) – 01/11/11

We’re also working on a selection of Special Episodes: there’ll be more details of these episodes in future blogs, along with each month’s featured stories and authors.

So, what else have we been getting up to? Ninja story recording! At BristolCon last weekend, Del met up with Gareth L Powell to record his story for the Brave New World episode. Watch out for more of ninja recordings in 2011: Dark Fiction Magazine intends to have a strong presence at genre conventions and book signings, catching and recording authors in their (un)natural habitat.

Fancy getting involved with Dark Fiction Magazine? We are on the lookout for story narrators (excellent speaking voice required) and artists. We’re also interested in hearing from people who would like to be involved in reading the *slush* pile. You’ll need lots of enthusiasm for this and a keen eye for a cracking piece of genre fiction. You can reach us through the contact form on the website. If you’d like to be a narrator, try to include a link to somewhere we can listen in on you talking: artists, a link to your website or gallery space would be great: potential slush readers, a blog link would be perfect.

Thanks to everyone who has been listening to the stories, for the great launch and all the positive feedback we’ve been receiving. Don’t forget, to keep in touch with all the site updates and news, we have RSS and Twitter feeds and, of course, a Facebook page.