Whisper House Press

Notes from the desk of the editor are offered in the interests of personal posterity and transparency for writers and other potential editors who wish to learn from my experience.

the editor

You may have noticed that submissions to WHP are closed, at present. I’m really just trying to catch my breath, so to speak. In September and October, I did all I could to promote the releases of Costs of Living (1 Sept. 2025) and Dread Mondays (25 Oct. 2025), our first two anthologies and the ultimate result of all my efforts since founding the press in April 2024. And I’ve gotta say, those two months felt longer than the 18 months since that founding date. I’m exhausted.

The good news is: I haven’t changed my mind. I love what I’m doing with Whisper House Press, and every conversation I’ve had with other publishers, potential contributing authors, and friends & family.

I’ve gotten a much clearer picture of what it is I’m signing up for, though.

Also: I’m glad to get back to the business of writing, editing, and creating with a cast of contributing authors that grows in number and diversity with every story I work on. (I think I’m up to about 85 authors, in sum? I love it!)

The focus today in terms of stuff I’m producing is the web series of featured shorts from guest authors. I’ve contracted writers for short stories set to publish January through July of 2026.

Related: I’ve received the test copies of Year One, an anthologized collection of 2025’s horror shorts from our featured stories.

Beyond these two notes about featured stories, I’ve got a backlog of submissions from early September on to the end of October to work through. I love reading people’s submissions, and it’s a massive relief to return to the stack. I am grateful for authors’ belief that I’ll treat them with fairness and kindness. It takes a lot for us to send our work to people we don’t know and can’t have any real reason to trust. I try to earn it—post facto in relation to their decision to submit their work to my press—by treating them with the fairness and kindness I hope for when I submit my own material to others.

I’m currently working through drafts, as well, of our first novellas in production at Whisper House Press. We have three signed authors for novella production next fall/winter, and there are other novella submissions to consider, too.

If you’re a person who’s submitted work to the press, thank you for your graciousness and patience. I try to be the fastest responder around, but those two months… did I mention I’ve learned a lot in that time? Yeah. On to that.

So I’ve worked this much out: During a huge push for publicity and lots of events, I need, essentially, to shut down the Whisper House office (my basement) and just focus on that. OR I need to do fewer events.

I’ve decided to put out another call for submissions, but I’ve done a kind of pre-announcement to build a bit of interest (and to give myself time to work through every submission I’ve received since the big push began at the end of August) and won’t be taking any submissions until January or February. Probably February. After Sundance Film Festival. (It’s the last one in Utah, and I plan to make the most of it.) The theme, first announced at Utah’s “Inaugural Horror Day” on 25 October, is social media horror, and the title will be… wait for it… Doom Scroll. Get it? It works two ways.

I’ll also be editing and working with contributors to prep those novellas, promote the Year One anthology (release date: 25 Dec. 2025), and edit the features for 2026. While going through submissions.

Some of you may know I’ve been a teacher for 18 years now, and you may further know that I’m interested in redirecting my career toward full-time publishing. And when I talk to potential publishing employers (I do not kid myself about being able to turn a profit with Whisper House Press anytime soon) about my experience with project management? It’s all WHP. I mean, such conversations might well include the plate-spinning that teaching has always been, but WHP is putting that game to shame, as stellar a plate-spinner as I consider myself to be in that education realm.

The biggest challenge now, I’m finding, is to know how best to spend my time. What time I have, apart from teaching full time (40-50 hours per week), taking care of the family (doing my part, that is), hanging with the dogs, and keeping up with my mental health… with all my other time, I mean: How should I spend these minutes/hours? Should I be responding to emails? Laying out the next book or editing the current one? Reviewing contracts and making payments? Creating that ideal customer profile I keep hearing business people talk about? Sending out the postcards I’ve hand-addressed to fifty bookstores across the country introducing WHP to the world? Reading the novellas submitted to our press? Prep some social media posts? Engage with those who’ve (yay!) commented on stuff I’ve posted? Or even, perhaps, work my own stuff? (I have two manuscripts on submission per publishers’ request—cross those fingers!)

I’ve decided a good first step here is to close submissions for a while and work through the entire backlog and give people what they deserve in terms of time and demonstrated respect.

Next will be prioritizing and predicting commitments across tasks along with evaluating likely benefits and costs (including the metric: time) to see how I should structure my time. Again, I’m feeling like I’m just catching my breath. Soon I can “get back to normal,” I’ve been telling myself.

This has all been a fantastic ride, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to see where it goes.

til next time.

Steve