Charles “Chuck” Leek hosts The Late Night Leak – AM radio’s home for conspiracy theorists, monster hunters, spirit mediums, aliens, demons, angels, black-eyed children, shadow people, lizard people, time travelers, and anyone else who may go bump in the very darkest hour of the night. Tonight, Chuck is hosting an open lines show, and he wants his listeners to call in and tell him about their strangest, most terrifying, unexplainable experiences. Broadcasting from WORN 1600 AM in Orion, deep inside the haunted Ohio valley, Chuck wants to hear from YOU!

Turn to Ash is seeking short fiction for its second volume, Turn to Ash: Open Lines. Open Lines will have a frame story concerning Chuck’s… unusual night at WORN, written by Jonathan Raab (The Hillbilly Moonshine Massacre, Flight of the Blue Falcon, thee-mad-genius-in-chief at Muzzleland Press), but a substantial portion of the volume will consist of the calls Chuck receives from his listeners.

Let’s cut to The Chase. What are the guidelines? Original Short stories, as short as you please or as long as 3K words (as always, I’m a little flexible on max word count, but shorter is better here), written as a caller to a paranormal talk radio show. <—- THIS IS IMPORTANT. —-> Your story must be written in the first person, as recounted by the caller. If you find it necessary to write any dialog between your caller and Chuck, please keep it brief and know that those sections will need to be edited to keep Chuck’s voice consistent throughout the volume. I will provide a bio for Chuck Leek and some information on his show in a PDF file linked below so that you can get a better sense of who and what your caller is calling.

Pay for accepted submissions will be 1 cent per word. Multiple submissions are encouraged, as long they are written as different callers. Only one call per caller per show, as per Chuck’s rules. Send submissions to turntoashmedia at gmail.com, and please put OPEN LINES SUBMISSION in the subject line. DOC files are preferred, but RTF is tolerated. Shunn manuscript format, please. Obviously, reprints won’t really work for this issue, so please save them for next time around. Unless you want to rewrite something you’ve already written in this format. But, then it’s not really a reprint anymore, is it? OR IS IT? It’s not. Submissions will be open until August 8^th. I have a lot of irons in a lot of fires right now, so I probably won’t be accepting or rejecting any submissions until after the August 8^th deadline. However, I will send out a response to confirm that I have received your sub within 48 hours of receiving it. If you haven’t heard from me within 48 hours of subbing, feel free to query.

I am a huge fan of the 90’s Coast to Coast AM shows, and am obviously taking a cue from them (the “Ghost to Ghost” Halloween specials, in particular) for the setting of this volume of Turn to Ash. If you’ve never listened to any, I’d encourage you to poke around YouTube and give them a listen. They are highly entertaining. Included below are links to a couple of long compilations of shows, and there are many more to find where they came from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCNsicpZvRI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyuA5wG1RJE

I am, of course, always on the lookout for interviews and essays that fall into the realm of horror/the weird/dark fiction. They don’t have to relate to the subject of the volume’s fiction at all, but that might be neat if they did.

I’m set for artwork for this volume. Interior artwork will be handled by the same entity that drew the image of Ol’ Chuck that accompanies this post; the illimitable being that is perceived by our rudimentary senses in this parlor show slice of “reality” in which we toil as Julian Dassai.

If you want to take a pass on submitting to this volume, but want to gear up for future releases, Vol. 3 will be another general horror release, and I think Vol. 4 will be a body horror special – hopefully out in time for Valentine’s Day 2017. Please hold off on subbing to those at the moment. I’ll open up for those volumes in September.

Cheers,

Ben

Chuck Leek/WORN/Orion Info PDF – https://turntoash.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/turn-to-ash-open-lines1.pdf