Top 10 stories of 2024
Chosen by you, actually.
As we come to the end of 2024 (can you believe it? Where does time go?) I thought I’d look back at the 10 most popular stories of this year, I started my fiction Substack in February, and have posted a lot of fiction since then!—it’s actually about 110 newsletters if you count the 30 serialised chapters of Oceanus. Over the last 10 months, these are the stories that ended up on my most popular section of my site. These are the ones that people commented on, or liked, or shared the most.
There are now over 680 of you subscribed to this newsletter. Firstly, that’s amazing, thank you so much! Secondly, there weren’t that many when I started, so I thought I’d highlight the most popular stories! Here you’ll find a range of genres explored through micro fiction, short stories and serial novels.
Click on the title of each story to open it.
Ten horror stories in under 300 words.
I had so much fun with this one. I was setting up my Goodreads author page and one of the questions I could answer was ‘tell us a horror story in two sentences’ or something like that. I ended up with ten!
The Switchboard- A Twilight Zone Special.
This one was a challenge! I loved it, though. To celebrate the 66th anniversary of The Twilight Zone,
and put this project together and there ended up being 31 of us publishing on the same day! I really enjoyed being a part of this project, and it was wonderful to be able to read the other stories and see how unique each one was.
This was originally written for a short story contest that didn’t end up happening in the end, but I put it to good use by publishing it here. I did warn everyone that it was horrible, but most of you enjoyed it anyway. I wanted to put a spin on the Greek myth where a misogynist wishes for the perfect woman.
This is another one that I really enjoyed writing. I’m noticing a correlation here with stuff I really enjoyed writing and stuff that my readers enjoyed. I scared myself a little bit, and if you’ve ever had a dog when on holiday—you may be able to relate.
One year, our dog bolted down the high street of Westward Ho! late at night after I’d let her out of our chalet for a wee. I remember crying my eyes out running through the street, asking anyone if they’d seen a big white and fawn akita. Nobody had. I returned to the chalet, just about to tell my sister to get off her arse and help when I saw the dog was sitting there on her bed as though nothing had happened. I love dogs.
5. The Island.
This one was mad.
challenged her subscribers to write a stacked story— 6 words, then 50 words, then 100 words. I ended up with this bonkers tale that people enjoyed. The bear has all the rocks.This story was about a killer who idolised Ted Bundy. Don’t worry—nothing bad happens to anyone but him. It’s a fun story. I enjoyed it.
This came from one of those ideas that just strike you like lightning and you have to write it. I was visiting the world museum in our city centre and stopped at a little display of shabtis. That was it! This one is historical horror.
In July I announced that I was working on a new novel and I published the first four chapters as one post so that a. you’d see that I was dedicated to writing it and b. so you’d know if you liked this kind of story. It was a pleasure sharing it with you. The Spider (I’m sure you already know this) will be available worldwide as of 10th January 2025. Paperbacks are available now, with hardback and e-book coming next month.
Ten more two sentence horror stories.
I did it again! I wrote some more. Not only was this an enjoyable writing exercise but I thought it was a good challenge. I bloody love two sentence horror stories. I might write some more, who knows…
I’ve been writing microfition…
This was one of the first newsletters I sent out where I’d collated some micro fiction I’d written from
prompts. Again, lots of fun and I’m glad to see that you enjoyed them, too.If none of these are your favourite, let me know which one is!
A story I wish more people had seen.
A while ago, I posted on notes that I like to write out a list of goblin names to cheer myself up. It seems quite a lot of people do! I have a fantasy WIP sitting on the back burner (or maybe the slow cooker) and goblins are a big feature of this series. I wrote this story about Bodgel Underwart of Spink and I’ll be honest, I was really nervous about sharing it. Fantasy isn’t something I’ve written a lot of this year, as I prioritised a sci-fi novel and a horror novel. Anyway, I published it and it didn’t really do as well as I hoped it would. I then thought, wait, is this book going to pan? but I’ve given my head a wobble since then and I’ll still be writing it, because I enjoy it.
This is a great idea. I might have to steal it...🤔
An excellent list! Love the idea of doing this kind of thing. Inspired me to think about doing something similar.