Hey everyone, I hope the holiday season is treating you well and that you have been able to sleep in as much as you want and rest when you need to. I believe we should all be granted a worldwide hibernation month of sorts, but unfortunately I have little power to enact such sweeping change. My only sphere of influence is in books...and short stories...and apparently newsletters??? (Do you feel influenced by all of these words ending up in your inbox? Hopefully in a good way? Hopefully it has brought you at least a tiny nugget of joy???)
Anyway, I wanted to talk about a New Years tradition I do every year on the 31st. It's pretty simple and is mostly aimed at the writers who read this:
I sit down and I write my hopes/resolutions/prayers to the ancient ones for the coming year...and the specific part of this that I want to talk about is my list of dream journals/lit mags/genre mags I hope to publish in. Most years I list about 15-20 to give myself a wide range of possibilities. Some are huge name places that are notoriously hard to crack like Clarkesworld and The Dark and some are just cool places I have been trying to get in since I was a wee fledgling writer. Before I pick my selection for the new year, I look over what I'd written down for the year before and see how I did. I usually get 1-3, which is pretty great in my opinion. And then I look back at the year before that...and the year before that...and the year before that (I do these lists in the same journal) and see how the list has progressed, what I've achieved, how all the work over years and years piles up. At one point Strange Horizons, Electric Literature, and Fantasy were on this list...and at some point, I got to cross them off, which would be absolutely surreal to 23 year old Corey back when he sent out his first short story submission (by mail nonetheless).
I think this is important. Being a writer can be rough. It's basically a mountain of rejection letters with the occasional glimmer of a YES!!!! thrown in there every once in a while to keep you in the game. This practice always raises my spirits when I look back over the long road of attempts and see how I have hit a few of my goals and that I'm not just eternally trudging through a sea of NOs.
I also do this for bigger writing goals like "get a novel published" "get a collection published" "camp outside of George Saunders' house to surprise him with a blurb request first thing in the morning before he has his defenses up". That last one always eludes me.
I know that practices like this aren't right for everyone, and if it's not your thing, that's totally cool, but for me it has really helped emphasize that I am doing well at what I've chosen to spend my life doing and that No, my year was full of good moments...not just all those NOPEs.
Apply it to whatever you want...workout goals...other creative goals...trips to Taco Bell goals. Whatever floats your boat.
I hope you get what you want in the new year...or at least some of it. That's what I always shoot for. Got to snatch those little joys where you can.
Short Story News:
This has been a good month and a half for me short story wise. I had my story, “For When The Night Is Behind You And The Depths Are Ahead” listed on Alex Brown’s Reactor list of Must Read Speculative Fiction for November 2025. You can check out the article HERE and read the story over on Three Lobed Burning Eye’s site HERE.
Another big lifetime goal publication happened in December! I’ve been trying to get a story in Fantasy Magazine for YEARS…and it finally happened. You can read my post-apocalyptic haunted highway story, “When You Hit The Poison Ivy Thicket, You’ve Gone To Far” over on their sight. I’m very proud of this one.
I also had my story “Dead Wood” come out in the latest issue of Chthonic Matter Quarterly and my story “Same Barn, Same Groom” come out in the wedding horror anthology, “The Joining” edited by Jacob Steven Mohr. Both of those are available in print/ebook versions only, so no links right to the story for me.
Pedro Iniguez's 5 Recs and collections:
This month, I have Pedro Iniguez stopping by to give you some story recommendations and to share a little about his recent short story collections publications. I’ve known Pedro for years and I think it all started back when we had stories published together in Tiny Nightmares, edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto. His story in that one was a banger and you definitely shouldn’t miss it.
Now here’s Pedro’s recs!
Dennis Etchison was a recipient of the HWA’s Lifetime Achievement Bram Stoker Award and a master of phycological horror. He was also my writing mentor and a great friend. He could build dread, atmosphere, and tension like nobody’s business, and this short story is a masterclass in the craft. What starts as a normal, sunny day for a man at a dog park in L.A. turns into something dark and dreadful fast, even if it’s only hinted at or happens off the page. That takes a mastery of the art to accomplish. A truly memorable horror story.
A dark, morbid, and humorous story about a group of friends plotting the hanging of their friend Colby Williams, who crossed a line. His transgressions are never revealed, only that he went overboard one too many times. This is an absurdist tale that straddles horror and dark humor but works so well on every level while subverting traditional story structures.
Set in America’s Old West, this is one of the finest examples of an unreliable narrator I’ve ever come across. Also, the title does a lot of heavy lifting in subverting expectations for the reader. A sad, dark, and powerful tale that packs a wallop.
This bleak, paranoia-inducing post-apocalyptic SF tale has one of the greatest twists/reveals I’ve ever read. This was also my introduction to Phillip K. Dick, and what better way to jump into his work?
I read this in high school and has stayed with me ever since. A staple in SF literature, this short story handles time travel and the Butterfly Effect so well. Ray Bradbury had brilliant concepts and this is no exception.
Pedro’s 2025 Publications
Fever Dreams of a Parasite
Iniguez weaves haunting tales that traverse worlds both familiar and alien in Fever Dreams of a Parasite. Paying homage to Lovecraft, Ligotti, and Langan, these cosmic horror, weird fiction, and folk-inspired stories explore tales of outsiders, killers, and tormented souls as they struggle to survive the lurking terrors of a cold and cruel universe. With symbolism and metaphor pulled from his Latino roots, Iniguez cuts deep into the political undercurrent to expose an America rarely presented in fiction. Whether it’s the desperation of poverty, the fear of deportation or the countless daily slights endured by immigrants, every story is precisely rendered, often with a twist that allows us to see the mundane with fresh eyes.
"A strong collection both for horror fans who want to explore cosmic horror or weird fiction from the perspective of characters from marginalized backgrounds, or for fans of shows such as The Outer Limits. Readers of books by Victor LaValle and Gabino Iglesias as well as short stories by Clive Barker, Thomas Ligotti, and John Langan will want to seek out more of Iniguez’s work."-Library Journal (Starred Review)
Echoes and Embers: Speculative Stories
From Bram Stoker Award winner Pedro Iniguez, Echoes and Embers: Speculative Stories weaves fantasy and science fiction, Latinx themes, and traditional pulp stylings. This book collects 21 tales of outsiders, explorers, renegades, and dreamers as they navigate the mysteries and perils of the vast sandbox that is the universe.
Some of the stories you'll read: A boy and his grandmother witness the spectacle of a magical lucha libre match; amidst the Robot Apocalypse, an expectant mother's only hope for survival may just be a robot; a convict finds himself torn asunder and reassembled into a facsimile as he is teleported to a distant battlefield; plagued by ghosts, a young girl finds the source of her hauntings may be tied to time travel; after the Earth is destroyed, three astronauts stranded on Mars may hold the key to humanity's future.
From magical realism to military science fiction, Lovecraftian cyberpunk yarns to swashbuckling tales in space, this collection spans the frontiers of the imagination and the vastness of the cosmos.
“Pedro Iniguez is a treasure to the writing community. This is one book you will want to own in your own personal library.” --Hellnotes
Corey’s Story
And here’s my story for the month…I was originally going to share this vampire story I’ve been messing around with, but instead here’s a funny little one about pheasants and conservation :)
Why Pheasant?
Ring-necked pheasants aren’t native to Massachusetts. They were introduced to New England in the eighteen hundreds from Asia. Each year, the birds are released in the woods around Cape Cod for a six week hunting season. If the birds survive those six weeks, winter usually gets them, their feathers unable to ward off temperature drops or shelter them from wet Nor’easter snow.
Our elderly neighbor, Claude, has a small hutch behind his barn, camouflaged with downed birch limbs and Virginia creeper. The game wardens would be pissed if they knew what he kept inside:
Propane heaters
Circulating water dishes
Troughs of mealworms
A dozen Ring-necked Pheasants
Claude pays for his yearly hunting license, so in some sense what he does is legal. Maybe.
I’ve watched Claude do it, sneaking through the forest with a potato sack slung over his shoulder. The man is near silent, no twig snap to mark his path.
Pheasants aren’t smart birds.
Claude is fast.
He’ll round the edge of a pine and drop the bag over their heads, cinching the burlap neck, leaving the bird to squawk and shiver inside until it wears itself out. Five minutes of trauma is worth a lifetime in the pheasant utopia Claude has created.
Claude runs our local birdwatching group. That’s how I came to know him, came to observe his peaceful hunt. I follow from a distance as he traces their footprints through snow and mud, lifting iridescent red and tan feathers from the leaf litter. He puts a hand to his mouth and coughs a two note crow, their call easily imitated.
Sometimes they practically walk into the bag. Sometimes they get away, unaware of what Claude truly offers.
“Why pheasants?” I ask as we sit on a bench at the edge of the Herring Run wildlife preserve.
“Well, pessimists like to say we’re born to die, but wow, these pheasants are really born to die. If it’s not a bullet, then it’s an ice storm or insufficient ground cover during a blizzard,” Claude replies.
“But that doesn’t answer why pheasants? They’re at least a hundred different birds on endangered species lists around here.”
“Have you tried to catch a Mourning Warbler with a potato sack? How about a tern or one of those Short-eared Owls?”
“I can’t say I have,” I reply.
“It’s impossible, trust me, I’ve tried. But a Ring-necked Pheasant. Now that’s doable. They’re painfully dim creatures.”
Claude laughs.
“At my age, you save what you can. Maybe you’ll figure out a way to help those warblers, but that’s a younger man’s game, and the pheasants need someone in their corner,” Claude says, rising from the bench and heading towards the woods, potato sack slung over his shoulder, a bird call on his lips.
What is Corey Doing for Events:
NOTHING!!!!! Remember that week of Hibernation I am campaigning on? Well, this is the closest I'm getting to that. Also, I got the stomach flu last week, so that sort of forced me to chill out for a while…not that it was particularly relaxing, but it made sure I got nothing done for a few days…
Before I go, I of course have to share a link to The Writhing, Verdant End which came out last month and has my novelette in it, The Final Sight. I’m also very proud of this one. It’s a weird blend of Princess Mononoke and True Grit in a body horror heavy post-apocalyptic desert. People are saying nice things about it online :)
Anywho, that's it for me this month. Good luck with whatever you're pursuing in your life at the moment, creative or otherwise. Thanks for spending some time with my words. I always appreciate it :)
Be well,
Corey