Through the Grinder, Darkly, the best of the 2024, 2K Terrors competition Now Available!
Through the Grinder, Darkly: The Best of the TL;DR Press 2K Terrors short story Horror Competition Winners is a collection of horrifying, harrowing, and heart wrenching tales to benefit Scares That Care, a 501(c)(3) charity that has raised and donated over $300,000 to organizations and families with a child affected by illness, burns or women fighting breast cancer.
Through the Grinder, Darkly is our 16th charity collection to date, is now available in print and ebook. Buy your copy now for 24 winning stories to help fund this amazing charity.
Buy your copy on Amazon via the links below, or search “TL;DR press 2K Terrors” on your country’s Amazon site!
- Official US link to the collection:
- Official Canada link to the collection:
- Official UK link to the collection:
Thank you to our contributing winners of this collection:
In 1st place is Necromancy, and Other Fun Games You Can Play at Home by Bryan Arneson
In 2nd place is Form Of by Kat Veldt
In 3rd place is The Vast Enormity of the Sea by MM Schreier
4th: Jammed by Lisa Short
5th: Deli Meat by Michael Boulerice
6th: Hej, Eina! by Rory Clark
7th: Those Useless Things by Josephine Queen
8th: Gifts from Above by Peter Neilsen
9th: The Love Theatre by Mason Yeater
10th: The Vault by Jonathan Wolf
11th: The Translation of Nina by Aggie Novak
12th: The Dog in the Glass Jar by Sean Fallon
13th: Into the Gray by Nicole Lovell
14th: For When You Want Something Special by Clive Wallis
15th: The Friends We Keep by Ana Nelson
16th: What Did They Do To You? by Victoria Higgins
17th: Out of Mind by Nicoletta Giuseffi
18th: In the Dark, Nothing Flowers by David Cotton
19th: Unchained by Madeleine Pelletier
20th: Ozymandias by Thomas Farr
21st: Money, Beauty, and Brains by Linda Bayley
22st: The last picture by Ash Egan
23rd: The Final Course by Heather Scott
24th: Her Best Life by Frances Howard-Snyder
25th: How Fast They Run by Charlie Rogers
How we got here
We began in September with a call to writers to enter our short story competition: the TL;DR Press 2K Terrors short story horror Competition. We chose a competition to help fund our next anthology call and allow us to pay writers for the first time, showcase some wonderful writers, and to help fund our charity of choice, Scares That Care. Plus, participants always seem to have a great time taking part in the 1K Word Herd competition, and we loved making it happen!
This year we had our returning panel of six 1KWHC judges selected from TL;DR Press’s founders and editors, as well as the all-powerful Unholy Overseer to manage contact with our entrants and the dark lord, assign all of the stories, and generally make sure everything ran smoothly.
We were utterly blown away by the quality of the submissions to the competition! To say that it was incredibly difficult to narrow down our top 25 favourites would be an understatement. Had we the budget, we could easily have made a great collection with twice the amount of winners. So many of the entrants delivered wonderful and innovative ideas from across the genres and styles, and built on their prompts in ways that we couldn’t have imagined. It was an inspirational month and a half of judging, and we couldn’t be more grateful to all the writers who competed!
Our judges read all of the stories that we received, wrote detailed feedback to every entry, and compiled our shortlist of 25 stories. All stories were kept anonymous to the judges until after we locked in the winning stories.
Making sure that everyone who entered the competition got useful, detailed feedback was incredibly important to us.!
We were extremely pleased to announce Bryan Arneson’s story, Necromancy, and Other Fun Games You Can Play at Home, as our winner in January.
We want to thank the wonderful #tldrwriters and #tldrterrors communities for your stories and support while we read your work and selected our winners. This collection is the work of hundreds of hours, and we’re so pleased to share with the world!
Thank you to everyone who entered the competition for your wonderful stories. We sincerely hope you enjoyed being a part of this project.
Thank you to our judges!
Hannah Hulbert, Mia Moss, Jenna Harvie, Joe Butler, Penfold, and Callum Colback.
Thank you to our Overseer and Head of Production!
Alex Laurel Lanz
Thank you to our Cover Illustrator!
Joe Butler
How to support our release:
- Buy our collection in eBook and physical! US | Canada | UK
- Retweet our big news and tag @TLDRpress!
- Share with your friends, family, and followers in person or online.
- Rate and review our collection on Amazon.
Watch out for more news about our next call for submissions, as well as workshops, resources, and more! Want to stay in the loop? Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, subscribe to our newsletter, and join our Slack writing group.