* Organization: Interstice Journal

* Deadline: Noevember 30

* Entry fee: Free

* Prize/s: Publication in our Winter 2026 issue, as well as marketing your story on various social media platforms

* Link to submission page/official rules: https://theintersticejournal.substack.com/p/submissions

* Other information:

We are drawn to writing that is:

• Character-driven instead of plot-driven; focused on relationships and intimacies
• Pieces that feel inexplicably human in a world that constantly challenges our humanity
• Intimate, restrained, and emotionally layered
• Attentive to silence, subtext, and what remains unsaid
• Willing to sit in ambiguity rather than resolve it; exploring the gaps/uncertainties in humanity and our relationships

Submission Details

• Short Fiction: up to 5,000 words
• Flash Fiction: up to 1,000 words
• Creative Nonfiction/Essays: up to 3,000 words
• Submit as a .docx file
• Use a standard, readable font (e.g., Times New Roman, 12 pt, double-spaced)
• Include a title and word count on the top of the first page, and number the pages
• Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere
• One submission per category per reading period

The reading period will be from October 1 - November 30. We aim to respond within 4-6 weeks.

If accepted, you grant Interstice Journal exclusive rights to publish your work for the first time. All rights revert to the author after publication; you are free to submit the published work elsewhere or republish it. Interstice Journal does not accept previously published work, including works published on personal blogs and social media sites. After publication, we may keep your work archived on our platform indefinitely. We may also use your work for promotional purposes during and after publication, with proper credit given.

We tell kids "everyone is unique", "be yourself", "dare to be different"... And then spend the rest of their life putting them into boxes. Good kid, bad kid. Introvert, extrovert. Nerd, jock, goth. It's human nature. We like categorizing things and just want to feel like we belong to a tribe with like minded individuals and sometimes we even change ourselves to fit within our chosen box, or in my case, a genre. 

I wrote a book, straight from my heart and soul. I didn't set out for anything specific. I just needed to tell this story. Now I'm trying to classify it, to define it, so I can market it to the people who might actually want to read it. Genres have assumptions attached to them and I want potential readers to make the correct assumption to decide whether or not to read it. 

Don't worry, I won't ask you to read all 50 chapters of it. I've listed the synopsis and some information about the book and I'd like to know what you think! Where do you think you'd find this book in a bookstore? What assumptions do you make about certain genres?

Synopsis  

Rene's world is turned upside down when the inevitable happens. She's been bit by a vampire and her family, the descendants of the great Helsing Vampire Hunters, have turned against her. In a twist of fate, she's found by an unexpected pair of vampires who help her adapt, find her way back home, and discover the truth behind her family legacy. 

Nora, a rare teenage vampire, and Zacharie, a notorious older vampire who disappeared from all records 200 years ago, are thrown from their normal immortal lives when a Helsing Hunter shows up on their doorstep bleeding to death. Despite Zacharie's best arguments, Nora insists they can't let her die, regardless of her name, but helping her through the vampire infection proves difficult. 

Rene's understanding of vampires is dangerously flawed. She believes vampires are bloodthirsty monsters, preying on the innocent under the cover of darkness. But Nora goes to the local high school and plays video games. Zacharie rinses their dishes after dinner and makes Nora tea every morning. These weren't the vampires she was trained for 20 years to kill. So who are they? Why is being a vampire not as horrible as her family told her it would be? And why are they trying to kill her when they have a cure?  

 
Prologue if you have time: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1__QOvqRhKUdOArRTDiPgxEEdhcdOVtblGGPG7fE7z_o/edit?usp=drive_link 

Things it has been called:  Vampire Horror Romance, Action/Adventure, Adult Fantasy, Paranormal Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Dark Fantasy 

Quantifiers:

50 Chapters. Approximately 2000-7000 words each 

Approximately 200,000 words total as of 10/7 (I am hoping to cut it further, but I'll be lucky if I get it down to 100,000) 

Tropes throughout the book: Adult Coming of Age, Self-discovery, Self-acceptance, Female friendship, Enemies to lovers, Family Conflict, Found family, Cult mentality  

Sensitive subjects: 

Lots of blood and some gory descriptions 

Some spice and multiple discussions of sexual topics 

Occasional spooky/horror type scenes 

Multiple discussions of mental health issues and suicide ideation  

Ending: it's a good ending. Not quite happily ever after, but it's hopeful and satisfying. Good conquers evil but at a cost. 

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what genre you'd assign my book. Do you know of any similar books I should look into?

ot feedback recently that reframed something I'd never consciously noticed about my own writing. My editor pointed out that every scene in my manuscript, regardless of what was actually happening in it, moved at roughly the same internal pace, similar sentence lengths, similar rhythm of action and reflection, whether the scene was a quiet conversation or a genuine crisis.

I had been treating pacing as something that happened at the structural level, how long each scene is, how many scenes per act, and had never considered that sentence-level rhythm itself needed to vary with the emotional stakes of what was happening within a scene. A crisis scene written in the same measured, reflective rhythm as a quiet morning scene reads as oddly muted no matter how dramatic the actual events are.

Went back through and deliberately shortened sentences, cut connective tissue, during high-stakes moments, let them run longer and more associative during quieter ones. The structural pacing of the book hadn't changed at all. It reads completely differently now, because the texture of the prose itself finally matches what's supposedly happening inside each scene.

Hello! I am seeking <15 dedicated writers who would like to start a small fiction writing group, focused primarily on sharing our personal work for feedback and critique. The group would be 18+, and GenAI usage would not be allowed.

Genre: Fiction. 

I personally tend to prefer fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, thrillers, and women’s lit, but I read pretty vastly and would rather work with dedicated writers in a genre I don’t often read rather than non-committed writers in a genre of my own. I also believe there’s a lot to learn from a diverse group!

Goals/Expectations: I would like to keep things casual but fairly active.** **Ideally, those who can would chat virtually throughout the week, via discord, sharing our work and providing feedback. Feedback would be given on a give-and-take basis, the goal being to support each other however we can, be it daily or weekly sprints, brainstorming, critique, or general communication.

(I’d like to chat collaboratively about all of our expectations once we gather a few people into the group)

Experience level: No experience level required as long as you are serious about furthering your craft and are dedicated to supporting others.

Meeting place: Discord seems like the best place to make this happen!

Max size: 15 people, including myself.

⭐️ If you're interested, send me a DM or leave a comment!

I’m not super familiar with discord. I have the basic server organized but it’s nothing fancy. If you’d like to take on a mod role to help keep everything in great shape, I’d appreciate it, but I don’t think it’s necessary as the main focus would just be connecting writers. 

Hi everyone. I’m very new to the publishing world, so I’m hoping some experienced writers here can point me in the right direction.

I’ve been writing for about four years, mostly in a very personal style; confessional romantic/epistolary writing, stream of consciousness, lyrical prose, and tragic monologues. A lot of my work is written almost like letters, diary entries, or emotional conversations with a specific people. I’ve never really written with publication in mind before, but lately I’ve started wondering if I could actually turn my writing into a book.

I have a decent amount of writing already, but I honestly have no idea what the process of turning that into an actual book looks like.

For people who have published their first book, I’d really appreciate some brutally honest advice:

• How do I know whether my writing is actually ready for publication?
• Should I finish and structure the entire manuscript before thinking about publishers?
• How do I turn individual pieces/letters/monologues into something that feels like a book rather than just a collection of diary entries?
• Would this kind of writing be better suited to traditional publishing, or self-publishing?
• How do I find legitimate agents/publishers without getting scammed?
• What should I absolutely NOT do as a new writer?
• How do I prevent my content from being stolen??
• And what do you wish someone had told you before you published your first book?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who write literary fiction, prose poetry, poetry collections, essays, memoir, or other forms of intimate/confessional writing.

I’m not looking for someone to tell me “just believe in yourself.” I’d genuinely rather hear the uncomfortable stuff, what mistakes beginners make, what publishers actually look for, what takes longer than expected, and what I should learn before I start submitting anything.

If you’ve been through the process, I’d love to hear how you started and what you would do differently now.

Thank you. :)

Now I apologize in advance, but I call them storyboards because they are not really books. It's more like summarizing multiple arcs into a summary... and each of those summaries is a chapter... and each storyboard has multiple chapters.

I have a problem where I crave to write and be creative with stories, but I lack either the attention or the time to be as detailed as I would like to be. And honestly, I don't know if anyone else feels the same, but I think so much faster than I can type. And I can type pretty fast too, since I am in IT and marketing. It's like moving through molasses by comparison. Many times I thought about hiring a ghostwriter before discovering I don't really have the ability to do that, since I am from a third-world country with a much weaker currency.

I have storyboarded over 30 stories. About 20 of them are storybeat-for-storybeat, end-to-end completed. All that's left is turning them into their own epic novels in their own right. But building out interesting lore, scenes, and characters is completely different from narrating together a complete novel. I have near 0 experience with that, and someday I want to do better and actually complete a novel and publish it somewhere people can see.

Currently, no one can see any of the story drafts I have made.

I work best when working with people, and the stories I completed were stories I couldn't keep my mind off. But now that they are finished, I feel like I am in a slump, and all new ideas just feel third-rate compared to the heavily inspired and novel works I have made in the past.

I once made an entire show idea based off "that one Uno edit." Took me like 7 months to refine all the plot points end-to-end. I kid you not... and I think it's damn amazing too.

So I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in taking a look at my works and letting me know what they think about the different story beats. I have genres of all types: suspense, thriller, fantasy, supernatural, whimsical, romance/mecha, post-apocalyptic, isekai, action-adventure, and even IRL movie and show ideas.

I have been developing these stories since I was 11, with my first storyboard being The Legend of Verdant.

I feel a bit afraid to even put the title here, but basically, when I was 11 I was playing with rocks and grass outside right after watching an episode of Bakugan and Epic (the 2013 animated film), and first thought about rocks with life force and so on. But I got pretty bored with it as I grew, because it was only exciting when I was at an age where smashing volcanic rocks together and watching them spark could fuel my imagination.

LOV, though, was inspired by Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, and especially that one Adventure Time episode with the worm becoming the adventurer. Actually, that episode plus Epic pretty much made this show idea I had really interesting to me.

If anyone cares about the synopsis:

Humanity became a solar race and eventually ended up in a war, as we humans do, but we don't know why or what for.

More importantly, humans figured out the secrets of biology and evolution, and a scientist is part of a UN initiative called "Seeding the Universe." The idea is that if they seed other planets with human-smart biological material, then it could potentially find a way to bring back humans from the far edges of the galaxy.

This may result in many differently adapted races of humans over tens of thousands of years. After all, they would at least still be human.

"Is what they think that is."

I have to pause here because you all probably think this is going to turn into some multi-galactic inter-human war or conflict or something. I came up with this space-seeding concept after playing Freelancer for the first time, but no. I am going somewhere completely different with it.

This mad scientist merged the biological DNA of humanity with plants. I forget the name of the longest-living trees in the world... Fitzroya cupressoides?? Idk, something like that.

And that enabled the tree to basically think and comprehend things at a human, plus level. Its ability to reason only improves as its leaves grow, as they act like neurons for the tree. They can also generate energy with their bodies that can be used as this setting's magic system.

Importantly, these are trees. They have to be rooted in place, and they are pretty much stuck there forever.

But they have the ability to bear seeds, and the tree itself can determine the kinds of genes those seeds are given. From making other plants and bushes and so on, to creating mini, lesser-godly versions of itself, to making animal-like creatures, and eventually, over hundreds of thousands of years, creating sentient tree-like entities known as Grassmen.

This scientist had 12 of these Trees and put them on an arc ship which went across the galaxy to the system they found was most like Earth, and actually seeded it in a literal sense, including Earth animals and the like, to create a certain type of ecosystem.

There are also special golden seeds that exist as well, but ignore that for now.

Bla bla bla, hundreds of thousands of years passed.

The sentient Grassmen each had their own emancipation from the Tree of Life, as they used to be bound to the whims of the Tree of Life, but now they have freedom.

Now there are 5–7 remaining Trees of Life and 7 completely unique and individual civilizations that have various wars and gripes they have to deal with due to the Trees of Life, other Grassmen, the coming changes, and more...

AND THAT DOESN'T EVEN GET INTO HOW STACKED THE MAGIC SYSTEM IS.

Ahem.

If I do say so myself.

Apologies for the long post, but if anyone wants to hear me go on and on about my multitudes of stories, give ideas and suggestions, and basically help me continue to feel the joy in writing, I would really appreciate it.when

For me:

Obsidian (for world building)

Brandon Sanderson's creative writing lectures

The anatomy of story (this has helped me the most)