Short Fiction (print)
2023
Two Thousand Word Terrors, 2023
Featuring “Just Another Apocalypse” by KC Grifant
Free to read: https://roosterrepublicpress.com/just-another-apocalypse-by-kc-grifant/
Monstorm (charity anthology), 2023
Featuring “What Storms Bring” By KC Grifant
From the editor:
Storms are the epitome of nature at her most primal, savage, and untamable. They inspire awe and terror in equal measure. When storms unleash their fury, nothing and no one can stand against them.
Hurricane Ian was such a storm. When Ian ripped into South Florida in the fall of 2022, homes and businesses were reduced to piles of rubble. Cleanup and recovery were slow, and as of the printing of this book, there is still much to be done to get things back to normal for those in the region whose lives were turned upside down.
This book contains 20 stories by seasoned genre veterans as well as fresh voices and represents the horror community’s response to hurricane Ian. There are stories about storms, the devastation they can cause, and what they reveal about the people who live through them, stories of tearing wind, driving rain, blizzards, hurricanes.
New Beginnings (San Diego Writers & Editors Guild), 2023
Featuring “Night Call” by KC Grifant
From the publisher:
New beginnings imply there were previous, possibly failed, attempts—other tries that just didn’t “take.” Some might say “new beginnings” is redundant. After all, aren’t all beginnings new? And when is a new beginning begun? A challenge, indeed, if you are a writer.
Whether a neophyte rower clearly out of your league, a washed up detective looking for that redeeming case, an ex-con questioning ones self-worth, a new bride with second thoughts, or somewhere/anywhere in between, our authors took the theme and spun it around, whipped it up, and turned it into something refreshing, stimulating, soul-wrenching, thought-provoking, or simply fun.
2022
SNAFU: Dead or Alive, 2022
Featuring “The Fall of Denafas Manor” By KC Grifant
From the editor: Follow the stories of the hunter and the hunted, action all the way, as 18 writers unleash their own twisted versions of what can happen when humans enter the realm of legends and monsters, armed with whatever weapons they bring to the battle. Welcome to SNAFU: Dead or Alive. Welcome to Western Hell.
Chromophobia, 2022 (*anthology nominated for a Stoker in 2023)
Featuring “The Color of Friendship” By KC Grifant
From the editor: CHROMOPHOBIA brings together the talents of twenty-five authors, newcomer and veteran writers alike, who explore the role of color in horror and deliver stories that use color in creative, unconventional, and unnerving ways.
Dancing in the Shadows: A Tribute to Anne Rice, 2022
Featuring “Unrest” By KC Grifant
From the editor: Dancing in the Shadows pays tribute to Anne Rice’s legacy with tales from today’s most innovative authors, drawing from the darkness where vampires and witches, mummies and rougarous, spirits and demons move to the music of nightmares.
Queer Weird West Tales, 2022 (*anthology nominated for an Aurealis Award in 2023)
Featuring “Old Habits” By KC Grifant
From the editor: Frontiers have always attracted the Other – where they find that the Other is always already there. These 22 stories explore what happens when queer characters encounter weirdness on the edge of the worlds they know.
Tales of Sley House 2022
Featuring “U Train” by KC Grifant
From the publisher: Welcome to Sley House. Within these walls, secrets long kept will be exposed. Here there be ghosts, monsters, horrors, but also wonders. Things that leave you frozen in awe as well as fear. Enter, knowing that when you leave, you will never be the same. That is the promise from this old edifice. With stories by Michael Gray Baughan, Sharon Cabana, Edna Cartwright, Frank Coffman, Judith Crow, Catherine Fields, Hannah Gilchrist, KC Grifant, Curtis Harrell, JD Keown, Katerini Koraki, Ryan F. Love, Karl Lykken, Erik McHatton, Jen Mierisch, TM Morgan, Justin Moritz, J Rohr, Shelagh Smith, Tiffany Stewart, and Benjamin Thomas.
The British Science Fiction Association (BSFA)’s Fission Magazine, issue #2 volume 1
Featuring “Cynscout” by KC Grifant
Dark Matter magazine, issue 010
Featuring “Odd Colleagues” by KC Grifant
34 Orchard magazine, Autumn 2022 issue
Featuring “All Aboard” by KC Grifant
Dose of Dread
Featuring “Death Felt Fine” by KC Grifant
Musings of the Muse, 2022
Featuring “The Serpent Queen” By KC Grifant
From the editor: Musings of the Muses is an anthology of 65 stories and poems based on Greek myths. The stories and poems, like the myths themselves, cast long shadows of horror, fantasy, love, betrayal, vengeance, and redemption. This anthology revisits those old tales and presents them anew, from her point of view.
Cosmic Horror Monthly magazine, March 2022 issue
Featuring “Crab Man” by KC Grifant
Typehouse Literary Magazine
Featuring “The Circus King” by KC Grifant
2021
Field Notes From a Nightmare, 2021
Featuring “From Sea to Shining Sea” By KC Grifant
From the editor: Pollution. Extinction. Warming. Sea level rise… Mother Nature heard our crimes and found us guilty. Field Notes from a Nightmare is an anthology of ecological horror, containing 18 stories from some of the strongest voices in indie horror, with a foreword from New York Times-Bestselling author Tim Lebbon.
HWA Poetry Showcase Volume 8, 2021
Featuring “A Woman’s Weapon” By KC Grifant
From the editor: Edited by Stephanie M. Wytovich, the Horror Writers Associations presents their eighth annual Poetry Showcase, featuring original dark poetry. With cover artwork by Robert Cabeen and poetry judges Sara Tantlinger and Angela Yuriko Smith, this year features the first Crystal Lake Poetry Contest winner and poems from members of the Horror Writers Association.
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY – Women of Horror Anthology Vol. 3, 2021
Featuring “Minor Malfunction” By KC Grifant
From the editor: In these pages you’ll find tales of unrequited love, blind dates gone wrong, stalkers and their prey, cursed guitars, alien symbiotes, sinister letters, and bitter acts of revenge. Dive into these murky depths and discover what hides inside the minds of women scorned.
Mythaxis Magazine, Spring 2021 issue
Featuring “Comfort Zone” by KC Grifant
2020
Six Guns Straight From Hell 3: Horror & Dark Fantasy From the Weird Weird West, 2020
Featuring “Death’s Horse” by KC Grifant
From the editor: Saddle up for a wild ride through the weird, weird west. As you ride our trails you’ll want to keep one eye on the path ahead and one over your shoulder…
Shadowy Natures: Stories of Psychological Horror, 2020
Featuring “Maternal Bond” by KC Grifant
From the editor: With its twenty-one stories of serial killers and sociopaths, fixations and fetishes, breakdowns and bad decisions crafted by authors as diverse as their writing styles, Shadowy Natures leads fans of psychological horror down dark and treacherous roads to destinations they will be too unsettled to leave. From unique twists on traditional terror tropes to fresh frights found in the most innocuous of places, these tales will surprise and unnerve even the most veteran horror fans.
Featured Anthology
FRIGHT MARE: Women Who Write Horror
DM Publishing
*Anthology nominated for a Bram Stoker Award*
Featuring “What Storms Bring” by KC Grifant
From the editor: Women write horror and have written it since before Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN. This anthology is to highlight the fact women write great horror and to kill the fallacy that they aren’t in some way up to standard. They are. Read here stories by Elizabeth Massie, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lucy Taylor, and a plethora of other great writers as they work on your nerves, get inside your head, and bang out some of the scariest tales written today. I’m proud to present these women for your consideration, as Rod Serling might say, as I ask you to step into FRIGHT MARE. Lock the door and windows, put on a light, and remember, it’s not real. It’s not real. Midnight awaits, monsters scheme to take you away, the strange and weird wait in the shadows, but it’s not real. Is it?
Uchronia: Alternate Histories & Alternate Worlds
2020, AURELIA LEO
Featuring “A Dusty Arrival” By KC Grifant
From the editor: Uchronia: Alternate Histories & Alternate Worlds is a collection of retrofuturistic speculative fiction.
Amongst Friends
2020, Colp
Featuring “Dream Bugs” By KC Grifant
From the editor: All proceeds are donated to Australian bushfire relief charities. Amongst Friends is a collection of stories from some of the great authors that we frequently work with, all of whom kindly donated their time and their words.
Pre-2020 stories
“Wanting” (page 105) and “Turning Tides” (page 107) by KC Grifant appeared in The Sirens Call eZine – Issue #54 (free pdf here).
“A Cup of Holiday Cheer” (page 9) by KC Grifant appeared in The Sirens Call eZine – Issue #52 (free pdf here).
“Vermin” by KC Grifant appeared in Unnerving Magazine issue #10 in July 2019.
“A Dusty Arrival” by KC Grifant was the cover story for the award-winning Australian publication Andromeda Spaceways Magazine (March 2018).
“Night Call” by KC Grifant appears in Colp: Sky’s The Limit (2018 by Gypsum Sound Tales), a collection 12 speculative stories.
“What Storms Bring” (reprint) by KC Grifant appeared in Horror Bites Magazine’s inaugural issue (October 2017).
What Storms Bring by KC Grifant is an intelligent horror story that reads like a parable for mental illness and homelessness…This story will leave you with a cloying sense of fragility that is hard to shake. Truly a great short story.
An excerpt of a review from Signal Horizon
![Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000443_00050]](https://scifiwridotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/issue34-webcover-rev3-2.jpg?w=239)
The Lovecraft eZine, a collection of cosmic horror, featured “Better Halves” and “What Storms Bring” by KC Grifant (2015). Select comments:
K.C.’s tale could have been the basis for an episode of Rod Serling’s classic, “Twilight Zone.”
This story has a real bite to it…As Stephen King said, the artistic value of the work of horror lies in “its ability to form a liaison between our fantasy fears and our real fears,” and by that measure, you have succeeded very well.
It is always refreshing to read a new take on a horror story.
We Shall Be Monsters
2018 by Renaissance Press
Featuring “Wanting” By KC Grifant
From the editor: We Shall Be Monsters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Two Centuries On features a broad range of fiction stories by authors from around the world, ranging from direct interactions with Shelley’s texts to explorations of the stitched, assembled body and narrative experiments in monstrous creations.
Beyond the Infinite: Tales from the Outer Reaches
2018, Things in the Well
Featuring “The Peerlings” by KC Grifant
From the editor: Within these pages are stories of terror; stories of hope; stories of aliens invading our space; and of us invading theirs. There are hightech tales and human interest stories, weird fiction and wild fantasies, and I hope they do the job we intended: to lift you out of your comfort zone; to teleport you where no one has gone before, to somewhere beyond the infinite and into the outer reaches of the imagination where there are endless stories to be told, limitless opportunities to learn, and an infinite number of reasons to hope… Enjoy!
Trembling with Fear
2018, Trembling with Fear
Featuring “Turning Tides” by KC Grifant
From the editor: This Trembling With Fear anthology is a compilation of all the drabbles, flash fiction stories and dark poetry published during 2017 at HorrorTree.com. Here, the dead walk and murders abound, demons and ghosts torment the living whilst vampires and wolves compete for space with internet and aliens.
X-MAS Lites IX (2019)
Featuring “A Cup of Holiday Cheer” by KC Grifant
From the editor: Thirty-six stories to give you your holiday fix. Thirty-six times to get a Christmas chill or a warm, fuzzy feeling. This group of authors have come together for the 9th year in a row to help support the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. In the coldest of times, the warmth of the heart can bring hope to many who are in need this time of year.
California Screamin’
2017, Barking Deer Press
Featuring “Feast of the Goddesses” by KC Grifant
From the editor: California. Close your eyes and say it: California. Images of perpetual sunshine, swaying palm trees, and blue waters lapping at sandy beaches…But the beaches are only a sliver of this vast land. Beyond it lie expanses of deserts, mountains, and rugged coastline cutting it off from reality. Isolated, California reveals a dark side—wraithlike fog of the northern coast, dense shadows in ancient forests, and hellish heat of vast deserts..
This is the reality of nightmares…
This is California Screamin’.
See Through My Eyes: A Ghost Mystery Anthology
2017, Fantasia Divinity Magazine
Featuring “Better Halves” by KC Grifant
From the editor: A scream slashes through the quiet night, a chill pierces your skin. The shimmering image of a woman forms in the mist, singing a haunting lullaby. She beckons. Will you go? Featuring 25 haunting stories, See Through My Eyes is certain to chill you to the bone and make you wonder who is real and who is not.
Into Darkness Peering
2017, Alban Lake Publishing
Featuring “Better Halves” by KC Grifant
Description: Scary stories inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” – “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing; Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before…”
Hydrophobia
2017, Stitched Smile Publications
Featuring “What the Storm Brings” by KC Grifant
From the editor: When Houston was devastated by Hurricane Harvey, a group of authors pooled their talent together and donated their stories for you to dive into your worst water phobias, and to benefit those who lost everything to the power of one of Mother Nature’s most destructive forces.
What has Two Heads, Ten Eyes, and Terrifying Table Manners?
2014, Dark Park Publishing
Featuring “Out to Pasture” by KC Grifant
From the editor: What Has Two Heads, Ten Eyes, and Terrifying Table Manners? features more than a dozen never-before-published short stories that combine horror and science fiction elements. These original tales, written by some of the best new genre authors, range from the horrifying to the humorous, the thought-provoking to the thought-twisting. All are diabolically entertaining.
KC Grifant 