Well, we made it through January - arguably the longest month in human history - and February has arrived to remind us that at least some months have the decency to be shorter.

This week’s curation brings you another collection of exceptional fiction from across Substack. These writers are crafting worlds, characters, and stories that deserve your attention. If something catches your eye, show them some love: hit that like button, follow their publications, and if a piece really resonates, give it a restack to help spread the word.

Good fiction shouldn’t languish in obscurity, and your engagement makes all the difference to these authors. Let’s dive in.

Tina Crossgrove, Existential Dread and Other Hobbies

The last couple of weeks have been bitterly cold here in Upstate NY. It’s snowed on-and-off for the last week, and all I have wanted to do is wrap myself in a blanket, put on some music to create the perfect ambiance, and sip a beverage while I read by the fire (we have one of those in this house!). My recommendations this week come with both a drink and song recommendation to help you set the mood as you read.

• “The Red Curse” by Judith Ashcraft. Body horror is one of my all-time favorite genres of horror. It’s often a vehicle by which authors–and specifically female and female-identifying authors–explore how women’s bodies are controlled, surveilled, and violated as a means of denying bodily autonomy. Menstruation, pregnancy, pain that isn’t believed, blood that’s treated as shameful: it’s all fertile ground for horror because it’s already viewed as horrific by men AND is often the matrix of horrific experiences for women. It’s from this perspective–a woman, a feminist, a lover of horror and all that it can do–that I humbly recommend Ashcraft’s story wherein a young woman scorned gifts her ex “the curse.” I recommend reading this while drinking a glass of chianti and listening to Hole’s “Jennifer’s Body.”

• “The Silent Season” by CC Harlow. CC Harlow remains one of my favorite Substack finds. Her stories are so meticulously crafted that I’m not just reading them, I’m experiencing them from inside the worlds she created. In the instance of “The Silent Season,” Harlow transports us to the dead of winter in 1913 Serbia. A young priest arrives in Volyma, a town shrouded in silence, and discovers a young woman who endlessly walks the lake, lantern in hand. What unfolds, and what he learns about Volyma and its lake, tests his faith in every way imaginable. Harlow already recommends an appropriately atmospheric song–”Lullaby” by Vjaceslav Grochovskij–I recommend straight vodka over ice.

• “Cirque DeVante: Chapter One: Welcome To The Show” in Cirque DeVante by J.G. Hammil. I am a sucker for a story set in a circus or carnival. Something about an entire community living outside the confines of “proper” society according to their own code, but are a tight knit family unit who fiercely protect their own. The lights, the music, the smell of sawdust and popcorn—they create a world that feels both magical and dangerous. So with no further ado, step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Guy Devante, a flamboyant showman, and his sharp-witted assistant Talia must keep their circus running—with a brilliant, stubborn dog named Nestor who refuses to follow the rules. Chaos, backstage drama, and impossible demands collide in a show where anything can happen, and every act keeps you on the edge of your seat. I recommend listening to “Demon Kitty Rag” by Katzenjammer while sipping on a Corpse Reviver #2.

Kelly Xan, The Author Wars

January of 2026 proved to be a horror show. Every new atrocity, every new terrifying revelation. After a while, my spine felt like a centipede, and I wanted to rip it out of my body so I could just sleep. But sleep doesn’t get rid of demons, it just means demons aren’t my problem for a few hours. The comfort of numbness comes with a price. So, I sought out stories that were thoughtful, unnerving, and forced me to be introspective, ones that would make me sit and deal with the crawling vertebrae. And these two did just that. I had to sit with them. I had to take time to digest them. They refused to let me slip into numbness, and I very much appreciate them for that. After reading them, I felt awake and aware, and I didn’t feel quite as small as before. I hope you too enjoy these thought-provoking tales!

• “The Tenderness of Wild Beasts, Chapter 1” in The Tenderness of Wild Beasts by Saint-Lazare, Saint-Lazare, Writes. “It is a conversation. Between a daughter and her biological father. Between two people searching for the serial killer who has turned their lives and the lives of their loved ones upside down. Between two writers trying to find the words to exorcise themselves and reconnect.” – The opening of this serial is a straightforward, unsettling scene: a nameless narrator looking over a missing children’s poster. I have never been so quickly pulled into a story that starts out with a chapter of internal dialogue, but the atmosphere of mystery and forewarning got me good. You are diving into a tale that has so much to unravel, so many topics that we often want to shut our eyes to. The hazardous dynamics between family and friends. Those childhood experiences that shape us into tangled and muddy adults. To not give too much away, I will just describe it as treading water that feels bottomless, and you are 100% confident a starving kraken is lurking underneath you. But the writing and the build up is so good, you keep swimming anyway. Saint-Lazare writes a stunning, eerie mystery with tension that never ceases, vivid imagery, and a cast of incredible, fascinating characters. It was such an achingly cathartic read. If you need more convincing to read this, there is a chapter index that includes musical pairings for each chapter.

• “Sol Invictus” by Didrik, Grime Light. “And those bastards, out there, will call to you for your entire life. You must never yield. Not even for a second.” – A slice of life story featuring vampires and two old gentlemen learning how to aid their town that is being plagued by creatures of the night. You get horror. You get dark humour. After a blip about the atrocity that is humanity, Didrik would throw in a simple line that would have me laughing. You get a story about two characters that are so, so unbelievably human who end up being extraordinary. And I absolutely adored this portrayal of vampires, the monstrous marrying the sensual, that constant push and pull between vampire entities and their prey. I never anticipated walking away from this story feeling sincerely inspired. It gave me hope in a uniquely gritty way and reminded me to never “give in”. And Didrik’s writing is so honest. It’s not epic epiphanies or applause or massive fight scenes. It’s humans making hard choices quietly. You’ve met these characters at some point in your life. You may have felt like these characters, slightly numb and disconnected from the world. But I hope others read this and get a similar sense of hope. “Good old Sol.”

Tonja K. Johnson

It is only the first month of 2026 and it already feels like five hundred years have passed. Living in an ICE occupied Minnesota has made connecting with creativity extremely difficult. I often find it pointless to pursue my own artistic endeavors. When faced with violence we are still called to perform, to work, to continue our lives as if the communities we helped build crumble around us. Last week, I watched a woman get tackled in the snow by a gang of six masked men. They shoved her face into the slurry, buried their knees in her spine, and asked her for her papers. She couldn’t talk because she’d taken a mouthful of slush. People crowded around—phones out, demanding they let her go. They didn’t let her go. And all the while, I felt powerless to change the world around me. Why do terrible things continue to happen? Why don’t more of us rise up to stop the tide of hatred sweeping through our nations? So the stories I was drawn to this month are stories born of liberation, people fighting back against corrupt systems that want us to govern us—to make us mistakenly believe we are too small to effect change. Dear Reader, I hope these tales sink into your bones the way they have mine.

• “In This House the Dead Don’t Rest” by Margeaux West, Haintland. Molly is trapped in an abusive marriage to a dead man who has come back to life determined to make sure she knows her place is still in the kitchen. What a powerful piece about the struggle for personal liberation. Molly was forced to enact the role of perfect house wife under the thumb of her cheating, violent, husband and so she seeks the only thing that she can in this nightmare: deliverance. To every person who has ever broken free from the shackles of a toxic marriage, I applaud you. You deserve to live a life that is dictated by no one other than yourself. As a survivor of domestic violence, stories like this hit especially hard, but they need to be told. We need to hold a mirror up to our baser selves in order to change.

• “Sun Kings” by Thaddeus Howze, Omniverse. An impending cosmic event will cause the extinction of nearly all life on Earth in less than a decade to which an alien offers to upload all of human consciousness in their hive mind. For a chance at life humanity must choose either to leave their mortal bodies behind, and join the aliens among the stars or die. This story forces us to grapple with a very intense “what if” question. What if the only way to save humanity was to no longer be human, could we do it? This is a liberation, of the mind, of the body and of the pressures of living an individualistic life that runs on capitalism and overconsumption. I love that this challenged my mind to consider what freedom would like outside of our physical forms. Thaddeus wove a story that was equal parts science and heart. By the very end I was leaning forward to see what humanity would choose, because the answer was something I saw reflected in myself. That is when you know a piece of fiction is truly effective—someting inside you, is unearthed during the read.

Yaba Armah,Gh’d Company

Happy Monday everybody! Now let’s get into this week’s banger.

• “Cinder,” by Matt, Mind of Matt. “The heat death of the universe began on a blindingly bright Thursday…” – Mind of Matt. If ever there was a physical list of reasons to join a writing group, this piece from Mind of Matt would be at the top. According to the author, “Cinder” was born from an inside joke turned class assignment. And let me tell you, homework never looked so good. Within 500 words, Matt tells a snug tale about Gwen and her disagreeable car heater as they inch through heavy traffic in the thick of winter. What I loved about this story is how deftly Matt flits between humour and horror, reality and fantasy. His sentences are light, even as they wield heavy material. His pacing is brisk, and yet you know where you are at every point. You can taste the cold, the discomfort, and Gwen’s comical frustration. This is a wickedly dark serving of cackles, best enjoyed on your too-early commute or any time you just need a break.

Qibra, Qibra

We begin February with two stories about knowledge we’re not allowed to access. In one, algorithms know our future. In the other, our past has been erased.

• “Targeted Ads” by Drew Morris, Drew Morris Writes. Have you ever joked that your phone is listening to you? You mention Arby’s then boom! Arby’s Ad. It’s funny until it’s not. That’s where this story starts. Targeted Ads that feel a little too targeted. Hair loss commercials where the models look exactly like you. Music that matches your taste. Products you were just thinking about buying. I love how Drew takes something we all experience (the creepy feeling when an ad or video knows too much) and pushes it just past comfortable. The protagonist starts following the ads’ suggestions. Starts simple enough: a new phone, hair treatment, a water heater replacement. Each prediction comes true with eerie precision. Then the ads change. Lottery tickets, mansions, private islands. He’s convinced he’s about to win big. The final ad was the most disturbing one. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say the ads know something he doesn’t know about what’s coming. What terrified me most is the ambiguity. Are the ads genuinely predicting the future or manifesting it? Or has surveillance capitalism just gotten that good at reading us? The story never tells you, and that uncertainty is what makes it linger.

• “First Contact” by J.Michael Thomas. “No big heads. No black eyes. No gray skin. No reptilian scales.” What if first contact isn’t with aliens, but with advanced humans returning home? When a spacecraft lands at Stonehenge, the world expects the aliens we saw in the movies. Instead, two beings emerge who look completely human…because they are. That got my attention and scratched an itch in my brain in the best way. They left Earth 15 years ago (200,000 years Earth-time, thanks to time dilation) on an exploration mission. They expected protocols passed down through generations. They expected a successor waiting with the knowledge to greet them. However, they find we’ve forgotten everything. Stonehenge, their carefully constructed wayfinder, is just an ancient monument now. The “wow signal” from 1977 was their return message. We just didn’t understand. J. Michael Thomas’ explores a fascinating premise. What if humanity was already travelling the stars 200,000 years ago? What happened to that civilization? Why did we forget? And when those advanced ancestors return, what if the people in power decide we’re not ready to know the truth? The ideas are compelling. It made me rethink ancient megaliths and what our ancestors knew that we’ve lost. I’m curious if the author plans to explore the lost civilization angle further. There’s so much potential in that thread.