Thank you to JEFF WOOD for being on the Denver Horror Collective Steering Committee and hosting the virtual short fiction critique all these years! Your service has been much appreciated!
Thanks For Your Service JEFF WOOD!
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Denver Horror Collective Craves Fresh Blood
Denver Horror Collective is almost ten years old, and like a vampiric child of that age we’re getting into way too much mischief.
DHC’s monthly in-person and virtual critique groups can’t stop churning out dark fiction, getting people published, and haunting the minds of readers across Colorado, the nation, and the world.
DHC’s events, such as our upcoming “Bloody Valentine” reading on Saturday, January 31 at Standley Lake Library in Arvada, continue to disturb—and delight!—anyone brave enough to attend.
DHC’s public outreach at local schools (yup!), conferences, and even holiday markets are polluting the minds of the innocent, unsuspecting townsfolk and drawing them into our literary cult.
DHC’s small press refuses to stop printing books, such as last year’s FRONTIERS OF FRIGHT southwestern horror edited by A.E. Santana and our upcoming sci-fi Horror anthology edited by Sara Martinez (submissions open in January at DenverHorror.com).
And, of course, DHC’s members keep selling stories, novels, or even songs (see “Dark Lit Market” for some 2025 publications).
Plus, now would be the perfect time to thank longtime steering committee member and virtual critique host, Jeff Wood, for his years of service.
Which means we’re now on the hunt for an every-other-month host for our virtual critique—switching things off with the bloodcurdling Joy Yehle. So, if you’ve ever wanted to help shepherd other horror writers across dim pastures (with an eye out for wolves), now’s your big chance!
Speaking of which, a reminder that no matter how glutted DHC gets on human flesh, we’re always craving fresh blood for membership or to launch your own project under our ghastly banner.
Because DHC is independent, grassroots, and truly inclusive of all backgrounds and experience, we can do whatever the hell we want. So, whether you’ve been a part of DHC for years or are new to the scene, if you’ve got a throat to offer, we’ve got the fangs!
Dark Lit Market – 2025 Member Publications
Here are a few 2025 publications (poems, short stories, collections, novellas, and novels) from some DHC members you might want to pick up as a holiday gift for yourself, your family, best friends, or worst enemies!
A TALE OF THREE CITIES by Elana Gomel
“Aqua Tofana” In BEAUTIFUL TRAGEDIES 4 by Sara Martinez
RABBITFACE AND FURTHER AWFUL ENCOUNTERS by Thomas C. Mavroudis
“It Goes On All Fours” in HORROR ON THE RANGE by Michael Picco
WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE SHOWN (now in audiobook!) by Josh Schlossberg
DODGING ROCKS by Jeff Wood
“All Are Welcome Here” by George Woodruff
“Doll Parts” in ROBOTS PAST & FUTURE SHORT STORIES by Marissa Yarrow
TERROR TUESDAY: THE OBLIVION CYCLE SERIES by ROWAN TAYLOR
Archivist Mara accepts a quiet contract to catalog the crumbling Dumont estate. She expects solitude and routine; instead she finds a house steeped in silence, where the walls listen and the mirrors shift when no one is looking. The longer she stays, the more her own reflection falters. Her memories bend, her thoughts blur, and the line between herself and the presence within the house begins to dissolve. Somewhere in its history, a woman named Isabelle Dumont was erased—and Mara senses that same fate closing in.
What haunts the estate isn’t a ghost. It’s a patient predator, practiced in the art of rewriting lives, and it has set its sights on her.
The Memory Keeper is a gothic psychological horror about coercion, haunting, and the violence of being forgotten. It’s the first novel in Rowan Taylor’s chilling new series The Oblivion Cycle— standalone horror novels united not by character or plot, but by a single devouring idea: what if identity is not a fixed truth, but prey?
Each book opens a different doorway into oblivion, revealing how the self can be stolen, rewritten, hollowed out, or willingly surrendered.
Welcome to the quiet horror of Rowan Taylor — where memories linger, love unravels, and the line between presence and absence is never quite clear. These are stories that don’t scream — they whisper, weep, and wait in the silence.
Here, hauntings are intimate. Familiar faces become unfamiliar. Rooms remember. And some doors never close.
Rowan Taylor writes unsettling fiction that blends psychological dread with the supernatural, exploring what it means to forget—and to be forgotten. She is also known as Tracy Fobes, author of eight award-winning paranormal romances published by Simon & Schuster and Leisure LoveSpell. Fobes has also independently published numerous romantic suspense stories, including Hard Charger and Billionaire’s Hidden Heart.
As Fobes, she wrote of witches, grimalkins, haunted seas, and dangerous love. As Rowan, she steps fully into the dark.
She lives near Philadelphia, owns too many books and too few flashlights, and believes the scariest monsters are the ones who know your name.
TERROR TUESDAY: SHADES OF NIGHT by FLOY OWENS
When a successful bookstore owner is abducted by a meticulous serial killer, she finds herself in a sterile cage designed for torture. But as the captor attempts to break his victim, the roles of predator and prey begin to blur. In a deadly psychological game where survival means becoming the greater monster, she must confront her own dark history to not only escape, but to take everything from the man who trapped her.
Available in paperback and ebook.
Floy Owens writes about the predators we fear, and the ones we become. Owens crafts stories where monsters wear familiar faces and victims learn to bite back. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found with her senior dog, a cup of tea, and a stack of true crime books, researching what drives people past their breaking point.
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