For audio please go here.
TCF will be open for submissions of short fiction and narrative non-fiction on a rolling basis. If you enjoy the podcast and website please consider supporting the work through our Patreon, which you can do for as little as £1.
The practical stuff
We are looking for fiction and narrative non-fiction stories of up to 3,000 words. However we are open to negotiation if you have a piece of work that is outside those limits but you feel fits all other requirements.
Please send in a Word document, font no smaller than 12pt and Ariel. An accompanying biography of 100-200 words with links to previous work and/or social media is required. A photograph for those that are successful would be nice.
Please submit to truecrimefiction@outlook.com with the subject line Your Name: Short Story: Title.
What we are looking for
If you listen to the podcast and read the blog you will get some idea of what TCF is interested in. We are open to anything inventive, seen through an unusual lens, which plays with and questions the borders of crime, genre bends or tells us something about the human experience. Crime needs to be part of the story, but we believe in a broad interpretation, and whether crime is the centre, the side, in the background or subtext is up to you.
Write a crime story that makes readers ask questions. Write a crime story which is also a ghost story, body horror, fantasy, sci-fi or mashed up with anything else. Write about that thing no one is talking about, look at famous crimes from a different angle, write about two unrelated crimes and find the common thread which opens up something completely new in both of them.
We enjoy the dark and mysterious, and do not want to shy away from the realities of crime. Writing about crime sometimes means writing about attitudes we do not hold. However if a piece is racist, homophobic, sexist, ablest or discriminatory as an overall subtext or as a founding value, or if these attitudes are not addressed within the piece in any way we reserve the right to reject it. This is down to the discretion of the editors.
Reviews
If you are a reviewer, or would like to try your hand at reviewing either podcasts or books please do get in touch to discuss.
Other stuff
Mairi is dyslexic and we welcome entries from disabled and neuro-divergent writers and those who inhabit other communities which often find themselves marginalised in publishing.
