In June, we issued a callout for this year’s Halloween magazine 'Trickster’s Treats #3'. We were looking for flash fiction/short stories based on ONE of the seven deadly sins, which for our purposes are:-
◾Pride
◾Greed (Any kind of greed apart from gluttony – see below)
◾Lust
◾Envy
◾Gluttony (a special kind of greed connected with the consuming of food, etc.)
◾Wrath
◾Sloth

We were after disturbing, delicious stories of darkness, not dismay or depression. We were also hoping for that glimmer of light in the darkness without being sickly optimistic. We wanted our authors to delight and surprise us, and make it memorable - And they certainly did that!

Editing Team:
This year, we were joined by TWO award winning co-editors and SEVEN Submissions editors for Trickster’s Treat 3…

Lee Murray and Marie O’Regan kindly volunteered to steer the Trickster towards this year’s bag of treats!
Marie O’Regan (co-editor):
Marie O’Regan is an award-nominated writer and editor of horror and dark fantasy fiction, and her short fiction has been published in such places as The Alsiso Project, When Darkness Comes, Terror Tales 2, Terror Tales of London, Best British Horror 2014 and Great British Horror #2: Dark, Satanic Mills, among others. (Read more…)

Lee Murray (co-editor):
Lee Murray is an award-winning writer of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. She lives with her family in the Land of the Long White Cloud where she conjures up stories for readers of all ages from her office overlooking a cow paddock.

Submissions Editors:
Our wonderful volunteer submissions editors will each be reading and shortlisting (for their sins!)…
◾Tracie McBride
◾Rebecca Fraser
◾Noel Osualdini
◾William Marchese
◾Steve Dillon and Claire Fitzpatrick
◾Kev Harrison
◾Samson 'Stormcrow' Hayes

We also applied an ‘anonymity process’ (Blind judging) so the submissions editors didn't know whose stories they were reading…

Cover Artist:
Award-winning artist Greg Chapman kindly volunteered to produce the cover art for this year’s Trickster’s Treats! You can find some of Greg’s distinctive art online!

Submission Details:
- Submissions had to be 700 words (maximum, preferably exactly!)
- We asked authors to try to stick to ONE of the above themes, not multiple. We needed to know which category it fits best, and it was only be submitted to one ‘sin’
- We also accepted for a limited time period some longer pieces of 1,400 words, 2,100 words, or 2,800 words, or very close to those numbers.
Things in the Well (and Trickster's Treats) offer NO support for bigotry or prejudice… of any kind. It’s okay if characters are racist, homophobic, sexist, ageist, sizeist, or any other collective noun-ist, but we asked authors to make sure the story (and by implication, the author!) doesn’t support these bigoted, harmful views.
- The deadline for this callout was 7th July.
- Print copies will be available to buy from Amazon in time for Halloween
- All Profits will go to charity: water
- Please help us out by sharing the link to this page and/or posts you see on FaceBook – where charity:water is concerned, every drop counts! Thanks.

– Steve Dillon
Things in the Well series editor.