Samhain, 2017
Double, double toil and trouble… Imagine, if you will, a twofold challenge: uncap your mental pen and send us words both meta- and horror (or horror-esque). Many an author tried; the Riddled with Arrows October inbox is full of bones of worthy tales rejected, essays eschewed, poems sliced and slushed. Writing is a brutal business.
And yet! Here you will find survivors—bruised and broken, perhaps, but alive, staggering across the virtual page to share with you their stories. Pull up a chair, edge closer to the light, and listen—or, rather, read. Face the monsters that writers know best. Learn their spellcraft. Envision ominous literary futures, revisit tragic poetic pasts. Let their little many-legged black-letter creatures crawl into your eyeballs and fester in your brain. Feel the special stab of the wordsmith’s self-doubt; dance with it in all its many masks.
There is power in writing, after all. Consider: a person can turn their thoughts, their passions, their agonies and fears into symbols, pin them down and, in so doing, let these parts of themselves live on, even after the body is long gone—and you, dear reader, can find them, absorb them, feel them as fresh and as true as if they were crafted that very moment. What magic! What alchemy! What wonder!
This is what we give you, friends. This hallowed act, this bloodletting, this witchcraft—this writing. This is what we live for.
Happy Halloween.
–> Shannon Connor Winward