This Week in Speculative Fiction with The Horror Tree for 10/31/2025

In this Newsletter, you'll find...

• 🌟 Intro

• 🌟 Newsletter sponsor

• 🌟 Horror Tree / Trembling With Fear Updates

• 🌟 Newsletter sponsor

• 🌟 Articles

• 🌟 Free Fiction Roundup

• 🌟 Writing Prompt

• 🌟 Newsletter sponsor

• 🌟 Weekly Post Roundup

🌟 Newsletter sponsor

Read Project Threshold

🌟 Horror Tree / Trembling With Fear Updates

Hi all.
Happy Halloween! I sent this week’s newsletter out a little early in case you’re planning to be out trick ‘r treating, partying, passing out candy, or taking the kiddos out.

I’ve got some personal stuff going on that is going to keep me extremely lax on major updates for a couple of weeks. I’m still working to get our new layout in place, and Lauren is trying to pick up my slack and kick off the next round of physical edition edits over the next week. (She deserves an award for picking this up while I’m so behind!) More to come!

Now, for the standards:

- Thank you so much to everyone who has become a Patreon for Horror Tree. We honestly couldn't make it without you all!
- Be sure to order a copy of Shadowed Realms on Amazon, and we'd love for you to check it out and leave a review!
- Please be sure to follow us on both BlueSky and Threads
- Offhand, if you've ordered Trembling With Fear Volume 6, we'd appreciate a review!

And now, I will return you to your regularly scheduled newsletter!

🌟 Newsletter sponsor

Read InhuMANities today!

“Dark, visceral, poetic and devastatingly honest, Robertsons writing lives at the intersection of unabashed hunger, desire, beauty and repulsion. These tales strike at the heart of the queer, gothic soul. They are beautifully painful and darkly necessary. A must read for all those who love unflinching art.”
-Suzan Palumbo Author of Countess and Skin Thief.

🌟 Articles

This week’s articles!

This week I’m sharing articles from General, Business, and Craft. Firstly, Writer Unboxed has author Barbara O'Neal share her ritual after she’s finished writing a book. This is a good mental health ritual that may not have occurred to some writers how important it is once they’ve achieved their goal. What I will take away from this article is to reflect on the whole process and write it down so I don’t forget. In business, Author Marketing Experts reveal how to craft a great elevator pitch to hook readers, publishers, agents, and even journalists. The art of an elevator pitch can be complex and most writers overthink it or give too much away. Author Marketing Experts give practical advice on how you can deliver this technique in the correct way. Lastly, Fiction University explores how the advice to ‘start with action’ can be the wrong advice to give. Like ‘show, don’t tell’ it is great advice until you realise you’re not sure on how to achieve it. The advice is too vague and when people say action, we usually think of the action we see in films, so writers try to write in this way. Fiction University shares advice on what type of action is actually meant for the opening page. 

General:

Writer Unboxed: “The Art of Finishing”

Business:

Author Marketing Experts: “How to Create an Elevator Pitch That Hooks Readers Instantly”

Craft:

Fiction University: “Why "Start With the Action" Messes Up So Many Writers”

From Horror Tree:

Blood In the Bricks - Book Review

Movies, Mystery, and Murder! An Interview With James Hicks

The Barre Incidents by Lauren Bolger - Book Review

Rediscovering What was Lost By Seth Voorhees

Pretend You Don’t See Her - Book Review

We Are Always Tender With Our Dead by Eric LaRocca - Book Review

🌟 Free Fiction Roundup

This week’s free fiction wanders through the dark fungi-infested woods, entices strangers to grandmother’s house in a fairytale stupor, and scrolls through an online forum about a mysterious Lego curse. Firstly, “Amanita Season” is a dark poem about the mushroom season. There’s repeated imagery of death and you get the sense of how alive and how sinister the mushrooms are. Next, “The Heart of the Forest” is a translated short story from Hungarian (which is also published too). It is a Red Riding Hood fairytale retelling with more emphasis on witchcraft. It is a haunting story with a plot that flows naturally. Lastly, “Doctors HATE her!! Local Woman Is NOT Cursed” is a range of online posts by a woman who develops a strange infliction of coughing up lego bricks. It explores this illness like a chronic illness and explores people’s attitudes towards her even when she is trying the best she can which sadly sounds all too familiar. However the ending had me chuckling. Enjoy reading!

“Amanita Season” by Belle Biscotti at Psychopomp’s The Deadlands.

“The Heart of the Forest” by Ágnes Gaura and translated by Vivien Urban at Strange Horizon’s Samovar.

“Doctors HATE Her!! Local Woman Is NOT Cursed” by Bree Wernicke at The Bourbon Penn.

🌟 Writing Prompt

Halloween is over, and your protagonist sinks into a chair with a beer and shares how the trick or treating went with the other parents from the neighborhood.

Some parents continue to wear their costumes, but the protagonist had taken theirs off long ago due to itchiness. The conversation is full of laughter and slurring words from exhaustion, until your protagonist has had enough.

Then they receive an unknown phone call. The voice on the other end whispers, “Halloween isn’t over yet.”

What happens next is up to you…Let your imagination run wild!

🌟 Newsletter sponsor

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🌟 Weekly Post Roundup