“Blood Vengeance: Vampyre” Contest Results and Upcoming “She-Clowns”

The voting has closed on the Blood Vengeance: Vampyre issue story contest and the results are tallied:

1st Place: “The End is the Beginning,” by Carrie Clevenger. Carrie’s gritty tale of a Roman military deserter initiated to lead a different kind of legion garnered 32 of the 95 votes. Well done, Carrie!

2nd place: “I AM,” by Helen Howell. Helen took the Vengeance theme to heart with her story, centering around a disgruntled bloodsucker taking revenge against her creator. Helen received 20 votes.

3rd place: “Foreign Soil,” by Andy Goldman. Andy cleverly melded science fiction and horror together in his tale of vampire vs. aliens and readers rewarded him with 15 votes to help him gain 3rd place in the contest.

Congratulations to the winners! I will be in touch with you shortly about how we go about getting your prizes to you.

Thanks to the entrants and readers. If you didn’t win…chin up, we’ll be having another contest at some point in the future. Meanwhile, we have other issues coming up and information on the themes can be found on the Call For Submissions page, while you can find out how to submit your stories by clicking on Submissions Guidelines.

Coming up next we have a bit of a challenge for you.

Probably many of you have read or have at least heard of the horror novel “IT” by Stephen King. If not, you’ve been living under the earth somewhere in Siberia. That book changed the way I looked at clowns. Prior to reading IT, my clown reaction was sort of like “Look. A clown. Meh.” Post-IT and I became “OHMYGOD! A Clown! RUNNNN!!!!” Pennywise struck a fear-chord in me I’ve never gotten over.

What I want the She-Clowns issue to be is that kind of clown fear…but with women as the killer clowns, something I don’t think we’ve ever seen, at least as a full out theme for a magazine.

ARTICLES: If you want to write an article for this issue, email me. I’d love to feature a non-fiction piece or two on clowns and the psychology of fear or how they’ve been portrayed in contemporary speculative fiction.

I’m happy with the number of views the vampire issue received and I hope it bodes well for the future success of this little side-gig o’ mine. I’m working on making it completely legit, with a Duotrope’s listing and all, so you can add your Were-Traveler submissions to your submissions tracker there.

Now… Send in the (she) clowns!

Readers Poll

Need to test this voting mechanism thingamabob before the Blood Vengeance: Vampyre contest. Please vote for what you’d like to see as upcoming Were-Traveler story themes. If you have a suggestion, please comment. I’m always looking for great, fresh ideas.

Thank you!