Over at Uncertain Stories, we’ve just launched something a bit special: the Little Uncertainties. Over the next year, we’re aiming to give away 12,000 of these little books, completely free, to help spread the love of short stories.

Each Little Uncertainty is published in a limited edition of 2,000 copies, and features just a single story; the first two, ‘Chalklands’ by Richard Smyth and ‘Briar Rose’ by Alex Clark, were selected from the Fiction Desk archives.

If you’d like to get your hands on one of these beautiful little things, there are three ways:

1. If you’re in the UK, pop into your local friendly independent bookshop and ask if they have them. Most of the indies in Edinburgh have them on the counter somewhere, along with John Sandoe’s in London, the House of Books and Friends in Manchester, and many more. (If your local bookshop doesn’t have any yet, tell them to get in touch with Uncertain Stories, and we can send some out to them!)
2. If you order a copy of Broken Ground, the first Uncertain Stories anthology, you’ll find a Little Uncertainty in the package.
3. And while stocks last, if you order any of our own anthologies from us here at The Fiction Desk, we’ll pop one in there for you too!

You can find out more about the Little Uncertainties project over at Uncertain Stories.

With the nights drawing in and the shops filling with Halloween chocolate and sweets that definitely don’t taste as good as they used to, it’s time to launch our winter submissions call here at The Fiction Desk.

Here’s what’s happening this winter:

• Our general submission call is open now. The general call is for stories on any of the themes and genres featured in Fiction Desk anthologies. (Grab yourself a copy of the latest, Inside Voices, if you aren’t sure what that means.)
• Just in case you missed the announcement last month, we’re now also reading submissions for our partner publishers Uncertain Stories. This call is for stories set more-or-less here, more-or-less now, with a supernatural or speculative edge. The first Uncertain Stories anthology is out now, and features illustrations throughout by Lucy Scott (who also drew the wintery landscape above). You’ll definitely want to read it: Get yourself a copy of Broken Ground, and then see the Uncertain Stories submission call here. (This call is also open now.)
• Finally, we’ll be relaunching our annual ghost story call at the end of October, with a new look. Check the website then, or keep an eye on our email newsletter.

The deadline for all of the above calls is Friday, 30th January.

As always, don’t forget to read our submission guidelines before submitting. And don’t worry if you aren’t sure which of the above calls best suits your work – when we read submissions, we do so with all open calls in mind.

Salt’s annual anthology of the best of British short story writing is out now, and it’s great to see that it includes Ghostwalks, Ian Critchley’s story that first appeared in our anthology Inside Voices.

This is the third time the series has used a Fiction Desk story, and it’s lovely that these stories are getting to meet a new audience.

The deadline for our summer short story submissions period is midnight (UK time) on Friday, 26th September.

Our submission form has two strands this summer:

• Our general submission call, for stories in all of the styles and genres we feature in The Fiction Desk anthologies. (Check out Inside Voices if you’ve not yet read us.)
• The call for new publishing house Uncertain Stories. These are stories set more-or-less here, more-or-less now, with a supernatural or speculative edge. Find out more about this call here, and pre-order the first Uncertain Stories anthology, Broken Ground here.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure which call to choose: the form allows you to select a preference, but we’ll read everything with both publishers in mind. (If you’d rather we didn’t consider your work for one or other of them for any reason, that’s fine too: just pop a note in the synopsis box of the submission form.)

Today we're delighted to announce the launch of a new publishing house, Uncertain Stories.

Uncertain Stories will be producing regular illustrated anthologies of new short stories with a supernatural or speculative twist.

In some ways it's a continuation of The Fiction Desk's New Ghost Stories series, but it's also very much its own thing. (Don't worry – The Fiction Desk will carry on as before.)

We'll be announcing a whole series of new books and other projects over the next few months. To stay updated on those, you might want to sign up to the dedicated Uncertain Stories newsletter at www.uncertainstories.com/newsletter/.

Submitting work to Uncertain Stories

As The Fiction Desk and Uncertain Stories share an editorial team, we thought there's no point in asking writers to submit their work twice! So from today, you can now submit stories for potential publication to both houses through The Fiction Desk's online submission form. There's no extra cost for this, and you'll still receive a single response. You can find out more about submitting work to Uncertain Stories here.

Our summer reading period is open now, and will run until Friday, 26th September, 2025.

This year, we’ll be running two separate call for submissions:

• Our General Submission Call is our standard call for stories in any of the themes and styles we features in our anthologies.
• We’re also taking submissions for our partner publishing house, Uncertain Stories. Find out more about that here, or on their website www.uncertainstories.com.

The deadline for both calls is midnight on Friday, 26th September, so please make sure to send in your work before then.

As ever, be sure to read our submission guidelines before sending in your work – and why not read one of our anthologies to get up to speed before submitting? Our latest volumes are the general fiction collection Inside Voices, and the supernatural collection New Ghost Stories IV.

More news

Also this summer, we’ll be preparing the next Fiction Desk anthology, and making a special announcement about some new projects.

Although we don’t do a lot of social media here at The Fiction Desk, we are now on Bluesky. You can follow us at @thefictiondesk.com for news of upcoming projects, new books, and submissions opportunities.

One of the fun things about being a small publisher is that we can experiment with ways to find a home for the kinds of stories that are traditionally hard to publish.

Following some feedback from authors regarding the limited market for longer short stories, we’re extending our maximum word count to 15,000 words. This is a great length for fiction, giving plenty of space to develop ideas, without being as long as a full novella.

As ever, you can find full submissions information, including the new word count limits, on our submissions guidelines page.

Today we’re launching our new themed submission call, for short stories about games of all kinds.

The deadline for this one is Friday, 30th May, and you can find out more about it in the submissions section of our website.

Our spring submissions period is open now, and will run until Friday, 30th May 2025.

The submission form is available today if you’d like to send in work for our general fiction call (you can find out more about that here), but we’ll also be announcing a special themed call at the start of March. Both calls will run until the deadline.

In the meantime, we’ll be busy reading your submissions and preparing our next anthology. There will also be some exciting news to share with you in the coming months, so keep an eye out for that.

As ever, be sure to read our submission guidelines before sending in your work – and why not read one of our anthologies to get up to speed before submitting? Our latest volume is called Inside Voices, and it’s out now.