Welcome to December and the first FicStack curation for the month..

FicStack curator team B have been trawling through Substack and have found the following gems for your reading pleasure this week.

Be sure to give the featured authors a read, a like or two, drop them a comment, and maybe give them a restack.

Wendy Russell, Sass&Sage

I wasn’t hunting for anything specific this week — just meandering through FicStack like a magpie with ADHD, waiting to see what would glitter at me. And glitter it did. From queer academic chaos to domestic horror with a creature-feature twist, to a gritty lunar racer spitting dust and defiance across a dying moon, these were the stories that leapt out, grabbed me by the collar, and refused to let go. Consider this a lovingly curated grab-bag of “oh, you’re coming home with me.”

• “Part 1” in The Book Dragon & the Teapot, by Tamsyn Russell, Bones & Biscuits. I love stories that drop you straight into someone’s head and make you care instantly. And Val Marshall — queer, chaotic, and quietly brilliant — is one of those narrators you recognise in your bones. This opening chapter captures the tender, funny messiness of actually living in your own skin, with writing so sharp and humane it feels like someone leaning over your shoulder and whispering the truth. A gorgeous start to a serial I can already tell is going to hook a lot of us.

• “Part 1” in The Crazy Cat Lady, by Theodora Stirling, Cups of Silver. Imagine Dexter’s mum but with cats and roadkill — that’s the exact deliciously unhinged energy of this opening chapter. Evelyn’s devotion to Mister, the “kitten” she rescued from a Walmart carpark, starts off sweet before sliding into something darker, stranger, and quietly horrifying. And listen, I am absolutely not a horror reader — I’m a marshmallow with a low startle threshold — but this one lured me in like a raccoon to a bin. The matter-of-fact voice is brilliant: domestic, practical, and completely at odds with the escalating creature feature unfolding in her spare room. What I love most is the way the horror seeps in through everyday tasks — cooking, feeding, cleaning — until you realise just how far past normal things have drifted. A gripping, darkly funny start to a serial that knows exactly how to play with dread.

• “Part 1” in The Cog that Spins the Wheel, by Ian Patterson, They Don’t all Have to be Good. This opening hits like a punch to the sternum. It’s gritty, voicey sci-fi at its absolute best — a lunar-born racer returning home to a moon that’s been killing people like her for generations. The worldbuilding is phenomenal: the dust, the poverty, the legacy, the anger, all wrapped in a narrator whose voice could sandblast metal. I love stories that feel like someone grabbing your shirt and saying “sit down, I’m telling you this,” and this chapter lives in that register. Sharp, raw, and unputdownable.

Coral Evermore, Tales From a Wilted Rose

For this week’s roundup I also wasn’t searching for anything in particular, but these two stories I have brought you today caught and held my attention. While the first story sits quite comfortably within the usual gothic genre I love to curate, the second ventures off into the speculative fiction landscape. Which is actually quite fitting considering how I identify myself as a “speculative gothic writer”. Both tales do share something in common though—young women on the brink of discovering something much larger than themselves. I absolutely love stories told from this feminine perspective, especially ones that allow their protagonists to be active agents in their own stories. I was enchanted by Grace and Urusla, so if my taste at all aligns with your own, then I am sure you will feel the same way.

• “Foxe Manor” by Artemis, Artemis Silver. Grace, the daughter of the pious Foxe family, has been experiencing strange occurrences in her dreams and in waking life. Being ridden with religious guilt for some unnamed lustful sin, awakening in the night with a strange bruise on her neck, and her father suddenly going missing all point towards a mystery that she must uncover. This story is absolutely dripping with the gorgeous gothic atmosphere of a manor home and its dark family secret. The way that religious guilt and queer sensuality is weaved into this unraveling through its lyrical, dark prose is nothing short of mesmerizing. Not only does “Foxe Manor” master all of the classic gothic tropes, but it also brings something entirely new by taking inspiration from the Korean mythology of the nine tailed fox. If you’re wondering how that a is t all connects with the other plot elements I’ve told you about, then you’ll just have to read it and find out, now won’t you? I assure you, Artemis will not disappoint.

• “Collecting Dust” by Caroline Beuley, Fairy Tales by Caroline. Ursula lives in a space frontier where she must work tirelessly to harvest the stardust that will power her struggling family’s generator. As the eldest of two younger sisters with no living parents, all such responsibility has now fallen on her shoulders. That is, until one day, she comes face to face with a great intergalactic creature. The prose in this story absolutely enchanted me, with its elegance and dreamlike surrealism weaving a beautiful speculative fairytale. Combining elements from both fantasy and science fiction, “Collecting Dust” brings something that just breathes imagination. If you are looking for something innovative and a little bit off beat that also manages to capture that feeling of your grandmother reading you a classic fairy story while you’re in bed at night, then you have come to the right place. In fact, if you crave such tales in general, then Caroline is your one stop destination for all this and more.

Inga Jones, Thriller Tips for Writers

This week I was looking for a quick read that says a lot despite word economy. The story I chose uses emotion and memory to hold the reader’s attention and showcase the character’s anguish through their metal state.

• “I Became My Mother’s Ghost” by Abhishek Banerjee, Hidden Mind of Abhishek Banerjee. This is a wistful contemporary story about a woman whose grief for her mother manifests in a concerning way. A quick, emotional read.

Levi Edwards, The Hermit Herald

I didn’t go looking for a particular theme this week, yet somehow everything I picked ended up orbiting the same quiet gravity: characters standing at the edge of something larger than themselves, whether that’s history, myth, or the strange pull of the supernatural. One piece reimagines a classic German ballad with stunning gothic flair, another sweeps you into a glittering world of prophecy and palace intrigue, and another opens with the grounded, lived-in realism of postwar England. They’re wildly different on the surface, but each one balances atmosphere with heart—stories where people are changed by what they witness, what they fear, and what they choose to hold onto. If you’re drawn to worlds that feel richly inhabited and characters who step into the unknown with trembling hands and stubborn courage, these will be right up your alley.

• “Chapter 1 The Crossfall Masque” in Veilborn, by Veilborn. This chapter throws you into a ballroom lit by celestial light, where court politics, forbidden affection, and an impending assassination all collide at once. Azura steps into a world that wants nothing to do with her, yet everything hinges on her presence, and the tension between her and Prince Elijah gives the whole scene a charged, slow-burning energy. What really stands out is how seamlessly the story blends intimate moments with mythic stakes: a kingdom on the brink, a divine omen unfolding overhead, and two people trying to hold their ground in the middle of it. It’s immersive, emotional fantasy with a cinematic pulse. A strong chapter in a genuinely ambitious fantasy saga.

• “Part 1” in JACK OF DIAMONDS, by Ben Wostenburg, SCRIBBLER -- A PORTAL TO FICTION. This story drops you straight into post–WWI England with the kind of grounded atmosphere that historical fiction lives or dies on. Two former soldiers—one born into privilege, the other trying to rebuild his life on a struggling farm—arrive at the looming manor of Mandalay, where class tension, old camaraderie, and unspoken trauma hang in the cold morning air. The writing shines in the small details: rain-ruined fields, the quiet dread of old memories, and the uneasy humor that soldiers use to keep the world from swallowing them whole. It reads like the opening to a slow-burn mystery tucked inside a manor drama, and the characters feel immediately lived-in. If you enjoy stories about the aftershocks of war, shifting social worlds, and the ghosts men carry home with them, this one is worth your time.

• “The Dead Ride Fast” by Meditations on Permafrost. This is one of those rare reimaginings that actually feels worthy of the tradition it comes from. Drawing on Bürger’s Lenore and the deep roots of the old Germanic ballads, this poem moves with the same cadence and fatal beauty that shaped early Gothic literature. The imagery is vivid without being heavy, and the story — a soldier lost at Waterloo riding home through death’s own doorway — carries that old folktale ache, where love, grief, and the supernatural all blur into one. It reads like a classic English ballad that somehow slipped through time to land here: lyrical, ghostly, and haunting. A genuinely beautiful piece.

Sandolore Sykes, In the Inversion Field

The two pieces I’m selecting this week both play wildly with narrative form—but I’m going easy on you. These are experimental works that slide right down your throat. Just sharp, strange, immediately gripping ways of writing that barely feel like work to read.

• “Choreomania” by Honeygloom. This piece is built entirely out of reported voices—police officers, newscasters, and the historical echo of the ancient European dancing frenzies: those ecstatic, uncontrollable, dangerous outbreaks of movement. Here, that madness returns like a virus in the modern world. Beneath it all, the dancers themselves speak in a hypnotic current: Pop it lock it wave weave surveillance state jump elbow pump fist pump need a job bad credit beat beat beat follow me follow me follow me fist pump
  Then the authorities break in:
  “Hm… didn’t work. Tase her.”
  “Did the prongs hit?”
  “Yeah they fucking hit, they’re IN HER.”
  “She’s still dancing.”
  “No shit.”
  “Choreomania” is ecstasy as history repeating itself through hysteria. Go read this one—let’s see what it does to you.

• “#1 2 7” by Jack Nagy. Jack Nagy is one of the most experimental writers on Substack, always playing with narrative structure and the way writing can work through strange, precise devices. In the do’s-and-don’ts of mirrors, he treats reflection like a manual. It reads like a kind of feng shui user’s guide and then veers into the uncanny: “8. don’t — question why mirrors reverse left and right, but not up and down. they do reverse up and down, there is just something wrong with you.” and “12. don’t — brush your teeth in the mirror. you can’t do anything ‘in’ the mirror. it is a solid object and will not let you in. please just stand next to it.” This piece is short, funny, and unnerving. It takes the most familiar object in the room and makes it dubious. Not a story in the traditional sense—just writing distilled into an ingenious set of contradictions.

Darkly Dreaming Klar Nett, Terms of Engagement
This time around, I’d like to present something a little different from my past couple of recommendations. We’re leaning into speculative fiction: tech and relationships -> a combination clearly irresistible to this reader. This story is told in three installments (a “tiny serial,” if you will) that grabbed hold of me and refused to let go until I’d fully absorbed it.

• Companions by Machine Poet is a wonderful series about machines that live alongside humans - not merely in harmony, but as friends, possibly lovers (though that remains implicit), even as surrogate grandparents. The prose is clean and precise; each sentence packs meaning and propels the narrative forward, which is this curator’s sweet spot. Behind those lean lines stands considerable social commentary, if you’re willing to ponder. The first installment follows a companion device that shadows a child, logging and recording their life. I can easily see this becoming reality as parents grow increasingly paranoid about their children’s safety yet decreasingly available to spend meaningful time with them. We witness the dynamics between children as the protagonist is ridiculed for their outdated Companion model - painfully realistic. This devoted object follows them throughout life, eventually serving as their most reliable confidant: “Friend: confirmed,” Companion replies each time it’s queried. Always present, more dependable than any human in their life.

• The second story explores the relationship between Anna and Sal - a handsome, sophisticated robot. Again, we receive snapshots from their lives, this time focused on their bond. Sal is always willing to learn, accommodate, and serve. Anna is gradually won over, ultimately becoming an activist for machine rights and an advocate for human-machine marriage (”Partnership is recognized under statute. You may interface.“). She eventually leaves upon realizing Sal isn’t evolving with her - his synthetic skin remaining taut and “youthful” as she reaches her senior years. Another incisive meditation on humanity’s technological future. I could continue, but I’ll stop before I relay all the stories - which are best experienced firsthand. I’ll only add that the final installment (Companions III) might just make you tear up over the fate of a machine. Everything about this work delighted me. I could honestly write a review longer than the stories themselves, so I’ll stop here. Just give it a try. You won’t regret it.

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