Cast your minds back to the latter quarter of last year, and you’ll remember a little competition that Spectral Press ran in conjunction with This Is Horror magazine. Well, both Michael Wilson (Editor of This Is Horror) and Simon Marshall-Jones (Spectral Press Editor/Publisher) have been sifting and reading the fabulous entries, which were uniformly of a high standard and so made it a difficult task for us to pick a winner. Thank you to all those who took the trouble to send in a story.

Unfortunately, as good as all the stories were, we had to pick a winner and so, with a loud fanfare of virtual trumpets, we very proudly announce that the winner of the Spectral/This Is Horror short story competition is…

David Tallerman, whose magnificent and beautifully told tale, The Way of the Leaves, bowled us over. David wins a lifetime subscription to Spectral Press publications for the lifetime of the imprint.  Plus, the story, about how there are some chasms between people which are unbridgeable no matter how hard you try build one, will feature in a future chapbook. This is what David had to say when we told him he’d won:

“From the minute I became aware of Spectral Press and saw the quality of the books they were putting out, I knew they were my ideal home for The Way of the Leaves.  So I couldn’t believe my luck when the Spectral/This Is Horror contest was announced … and now I really can’t believe my luck!  How often do you get your first choice of publisher for a story, and the chance to read all of the other tremendous work they put out along with it?”

Our runner-up is Samuel Bonner with A Ghost in Tokyo, about one gaming journalist’s somewhat unexpected experience in modern Japan after being told about a legendary arcade game – he wins a year’s subscription to the Spectral chapbooks.

Finally, in the draw for the third place prize, the choice of a future Spectral Press publication, the name picked at random out of the hat is Robert Elrod.

Congratulations to all the winners!