AND, I'd just like to plug the Strange Horizons annual crowdfunding campaign is ongoing here at BackerKit! A legendary SFFH publication, Strange Horizons does incredible work and has published so much good fiction, poetry, essays and non-fiction articles in its 25 (!) years so far. Check it out!
Hello, everyone! I'm SO happy to share that [RECORDED] is open to submissions from now until the end of the month (June 30th, 2026) — and already, I have double-digit amounts of stories to read and I am SO EXCITED!!!
Our first stretch goal is at $2000, which will allow me to buy MORE STORIES to make the anthology EVEN CHONKIER 👀 (and, you know, more authors can get paid for their work!)
So with just under two weeks to go, please keep sharing the campaign and telling your friends! 🤩
OMG, we're at the 80% point to funding [RECORDED]!! 🎉 You are all SO awesome! 🤩
Today, I want to spotlight a couple of "found media" stories I especially love...
each thing i show you is a piece of my death by Gemma Files — one of my favorite found footage horror stories, and also one of the first I encountered as a SFFH reader! It's a classic!
Revenge Arc by Cat Voleur(Archive of the Odd) — a horror novella about a comic creator who gets tangled up in a toxic fandom and murder! It's told through multiple emails, forum posts, tweets, letters, and website screenshots and it's phenomenal.
Blame by Warren Bendetto — a horror story told in multiple file formats (transcripts, emails, chats) about a sketchy software company and the ghosts it creates.
Let Me Out by @QueSarahSarah1986 by Catherine Tavares — I adore this story, told in an AO3 format and tags! It's so clever and creepy and *chef kiss* a perfect example of how to play with format as much as substance.
I posted this on Bluesky earlier, and just wanted to entrench it here for everyone!
I was engaged in a private conversation on how unreliable AI "detectors" are and also that publications that utilize them could be infringing on the writer's intellectual property rights by "feeding" an unpublished story into a machine to "check" it. (Please don't do this, fellow editors.)
So for full transparency, when [RECORDED] opens to submissions, I will *NEVER* utilize any "AI detectors" for any reason. Your work will not be run through any detector program or third party software. (I'll be opening submissions in Word, on a computer, and not utilizing the online version of MS Office.)
I ask for no gen-AI written/assisted stories. If you tell me you didn't use it, I believe you. I choose to work from a starting point of trust and good will. I respect your intellectual property.
Rejected stories will be get deleted after they are read; I have set up our Duosuma account to automaitcally purge all rejected submissions after 30 days.
All submissions are *only* going to be read by myself and my wonderful first reader, V. Astor Solomon (@howsweetthewords.bsky.social)—two humans! (Stories may possibly seen by my cats, but they don't actually read, I think we're okay.)
As the editor, I'll be the one sending out all final decisions (acceptance or rejection). That's it.
I thank y'all in advance for trusting us to read your words, and I can't wait to see what kind of wildly unhinged stories you come up with! <3
![[RECORDED] — An Anthology of Found Media Fiction!](https://images.backerkit.com/active_storage/backerkit_production/blob/bt14eo1i83hyz0fid7du7obnsnlf?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&auto=compress%2Cformat&cs=srgb&ar=16%3A9&fit=crop)
