Back Cover Text:
From the fluorescent-lit boardroom to the desolate isolation of a lonely spacecraft, Dread Mondays collects stories transforming the abstraction of mundane repetition into tangible nightmares. Featuring Bram Stoker Award winners, ‘best of’ authors, and fresh voices from around the globe, this anthology, in three parts, exposes the horrors we working stiffs confront in pursuit of a paycheck. “Retail Hell” highlights some of the awful truths of customer service and its forced smiles. “Institutional Terror” explores the discomfort lurking in structured environments like libraries and schools. “Meet Work in the Future” suggests that we might not have much hope for work changing for the better. And “Corporate Nightmare” finds ambition, technology, and alienation birthing a perfect storm of horrific speculation—because sometimes, the quarterly reports are the least of your worries.
This international collection offers a chilling and darkly humorous exploration of workplaces, where the ordinary mutates grotesquely and each profession’s unique set of horrors is well-lit and impossible to ignore. Forget monsters under the bed: the real ones await you at your desk.
Below the next cover image are the thirty-seven (!) contributing authors whose work appears in our 10/25/2025 release, Dread Mondays. If you’ve been following our behind-the-scenes blog, you know what work they’ve put in as I’ve probably asked more of them than most editors of their contributors. I am thrilled to introduce to you a diverse cast of contributors! Read their bios, visit their pages, and connect with them online. (Interviews will be posted on our YouTube channel as they’re edited, just as we continue to do for Costs of Living.)
Contributing Authors for Dread Mondays: A Whisper House Press Horror Anthology
Xochilt Avila (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, and multiracial author who currently resides on the East Coast of the USA. Their experience living outside of binary labels has fostered their appreciation for the uncomfortable, the uneasily defined, and the unloved. Outside of horror, they love playing video games and tabletop RPGs, getting lost in the woods, and fulfilling the whims of their cats. Follow them on Instagram @xochiltavilawrites and Bluesky @xavilawrites.
Robert Bagnall was born in Bedford, England, in 1970, and stood for parliament for the Green Party in 2024. He has written for the BBC, national newspapers, and government ministers. Five of his stories have been selected for the annual Best of British Science Fiction anthologies. He is the author of sci-fi thriller 2084 – The Meschera Bandwidth and two anthologies, each of which collects twenty-four of his ninety-odd published stories. He can be contacted via his blog at meschera.blogspot.com.
Tim Boiteau is a Writers of the Future winner and author of The Nilwere (Grendel Press). His fiction has appeared in venues such as Deep Magic, Daily Science Fiction, Kaleidotrope, and The NoSleep Podcast. His microfiction, “Cherry Blossom,” was awarded 2022’s Story of the Year at 50-Word Stories.
Samantha Bryant (HWA, WFWA) writes superhero and horror stories—which one depends on whether she wants to save the world today or burn it down. She is best known for her Menopausal Superhero series of novels through Falstaff Books, winner of a Jacquis Award for feminist writing. (Well, that and her banana bread—the secret is sour cream).
P.W. Interrobang (Virgo, entrepreneur, mysterious mortal) has collaborated on several poems, short stories, and novellas with their peers. An avid horror enthusiast and fantasy worldbuilding fanatic, P.W. can often be found on their back porch, rereading their favorite Clive Barker paperbacks.
Barry Charman is a writer living in North London. He has been published in various magazines, sites and anthologies, including Ambit, Griffith Review, The Ghastling and Popshot Quarterly. Doom Warnings, his self-published collection of strange and speculative short stories is available in paperback on Amazon and as a PDF at https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/12079076.
Camsyn Clair (they) is a Black, queer therapist, artist, and horse lover from Maryland whose stories have been published by Elegant Literature and Globe Soup. When not writing, Cam can be found bonding with their Mustang horse, Zen, drawing, or causing chaos in tabletop role-playing games.
Ron J. Cruz breathes and pens fiction in the haunting shadows of the Sierra Mountains in the foothills of California. He teaches English Composition at Folsom Lake College, takes pictures of things that amuse him, and competitively throws darts erratically at a board.
Madeline Daniel writes marketing copy, horror fiction, and a lot of other things in between. Her work has appeared on the podcast Thirteen, and she is perpetually at work on a novel. When she’s not writing, Madeline enjoys dancing, petting dogs, and using books as a coping mechanism. She lives in Ohio.
Nathaniel J. Darkish, is a horror writer and the co-host of the podcast Scream Kings. He has a degree in creative writing from Utah State University and works as a high school English and creative writing teacher. He lives in northern Utah with his wife and two children. He loves board games, ska music, and reading hundreds of books each year.
Eóin Dooley (he/him) is a writer from central Ireland. Having completed a master’s degree in cognitive science and philosophy, he turned to creative fiction, primarily to stave off a PhD. This appears to be working. His previous work can be found in Orion’s Belt, Red Futures, Solar Press, and elsewhere. His debut novella is No Sympathy, a literary urban fantasy published by Android Press. Find him on Bluesky: @eoindooley.bsky.social.
Allan Dyen-Shapiro is a Ph.D. biochemist currently working as an educator. He has sold short fiction to venues including Flash Fiction Online (where he is now a First Reader), Dark Matter Magazine, and Small Wonders. He also co-edited an anthology of science fiction, fantasy, and horror set in the Middle East. He is an active member of SFWA and Codex.
Neil A. Edwards attended film school at Bournemouth and Farnham in the UK, before earning his Master’s degree in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media from London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Since 2014, he has been an Associate Artist for Shooting Fish Theatre Company, for whom he has written twenty productions, including: The Murderess (2019), Cuttlefish (2022) and Newtopia (2024). His latest play, The Spy Network, about Mary, Queen of Scots, and the failed plot that led to her execution, opened in Gainsborough in May 2025.
Emily Flynn-Jones (she/they) is an award-winning multimedia storyteller. Equipped with a PhD on death, Emily draws together horror, magical realism, romance, and science fiction as she peers into the darker recesses of our cultural landscape. She is known for her critically lauded game, CURSES, a semi-autobiographical tale of witchcraft and womanhood and the dark short story collection, Is It Enough Yet?, featuring twisted tales inspired by millennial music. Her work has most recently appeared in the feminine rage charity anthology, Your Body, My Rage. Proudly Welsh, she is a settler in Canada where she lives with a terrible cat.
N.J. Gallegos is an ER doctor by day, horror author by night, and co-hosts the Scream Kings podcast. She’s written two novels: The Broken Heart and The Fatal Mind. Her novellas include It’s Me, Hi, I’m the Zombie, It’s Me; Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires; and Just Desserts; the latter which won an American Legacy Book Award in the Psychological Horror category. N.J. lives with her wife and three cats, enjoys craft beer, reality TV, running, and EDM.
Mallory Glass is an author who likes to create worlds within worlds for her characters to explore. She writes for those who love to embrace a little escape from reality. She spends her time planning her next big adventure and contemplating the vast cosmos. When she’s not writing, Mallory loves stargazing and reading. Her first novella, Stone Heart, will be released April 2025 by Sloth & Envy Press. Her work has appeared in Toad Shade Zine and Humour Me Magazine UK under a pen name. Find her on Bluesky @mglaz.bsky.social.
Cat Isidore lives in Toronto with two roommates and an orange cat. Her work has appeared in On Spec Magazine. She is currently taking courses towards a Certificate in Creative Writing at the U of T[oronto] School of Continuing Studies.
M. Kelleher is a speculative fiction writer and theater artist currently living in New Orleans, LA. She has over fifteen years of experience helping to tell stories as a Stage Manager and Lighting Designer in New York (where she’s from) and New Orleans (where she lives with her wife.) Her work has been published in Cosmic Horror Monthly, and she is a board member and Director of Events for the non-profit writing collective Third Lantern Lit.
Jordan King-Lacroix is a Jewish writer from the Blue Mountains, just outside Sydney, Australia. His first book, the non-fiction Ugly: A Bikie’s Life, was published by Penguin-Random House in 2021, and his short story, “The Last Chosen”, in the Jewish Futures anthology (Fantastic Books, 2023), was well-received by critics. When not writing, he can be seen gigging around Sydney in his punk band, The Limited.
Bénédicte Kusendila (MPhil) lives with music and her children in the Flemish countryside. Her haiku, poems and short stories have appeared in various publications such as the Asahi Shimbun, Presence, Extract(s), Gambling The Aisle, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Adanna, The Bangalore Review, Beyond Words, Maintenant, Aji Magazine, and more. In 2023, she was Artist In Residence at the Olympic National Park. Apart from having read and performed in the United States and in South Africa, she has toured Europe in the K(no)wHate collective and as part of Maintenant’s Peacefire campaign. Bénédicte was shortlisted for the Steel Toe Books 2024 Poetry Award and for the 2024 Bridport Prize for Poetry.
C.R. Langille spent many a Saturday afternoon watching monster movies with her mom. It wasn’t long before she started crafting nightmares to share with her readers. She is a retired, disabled veteran with a deep love for weird and creepy tales. This prompted her to form Timber Ghost Press in January of 2021. She is an award-winning author, affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association, the DEI Chair for the League of Utah Writers, earned her MFA: Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University in 2014, and was named Editor of the Year by the League of Utah Writers in 2024.
Andrew Lenoir is a former speechwriter turned bookseller based in New York. With the help of his lovely and talented wife Charlotte Anderson, he owns and operates Ellipsis Rare Books. His nonfiction writing has appeared in outlets like The Brown Journal of History, Fine Books and Collections Magazine, America Magazine, Atlas Obscura, All That’s Interesting, Mental Floss, and The Revealer.
John Mahoney is an aspiring author, mediocre sketch artist and recently released convict, determined to blight society with writing instead of misdeeds. He is a graduate of the Institute For Writers. Three of his short stories were published by The Yard: Crime Blog. Another was published by Pinky Thinker Press, and another in a horror anthology titled That Is SO Wrong! Two more short stories of his were published by Etched Onyx Magazine. His first publication was in Highlights Magazine, which saw fit to print a joke John wrote before he knew Santa Claus wasn’t real. It counts!
David McLachlan is a disabled veteran, neurodivergent writer who lives and works in Northern California. His stories and poems have been published or are forthcoming with Timber Ghost Press and in Witch House Magazine, among others. You can connect with him at DavidMcLachlanWriter.com or on Bluesky: @davidmclachlan.bsky.social.
Lyra Meurer is a sentient muscle spasm with a restless hunger for writing. They live in Colorado with their husband, board games, and ever-growing stacks of journals and books. Their short fiction can be found in Trollbreath Magazine, Heartlines Spec, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and several anthologies. Lyra’s contemplations on international music, early 2000s television, worldbuilding, and other bizarre phenomena, along with pictures of their doodles, can be found at https://lyrameurer.blogspot.com/.
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, and prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She is the author of four novels and 200 short stories and is a world-class Halloween and paranormal expert. Her recent releases include the novella Placerita (co-authored with John Palisano), Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances and the Rondo Hatton Award-winning The Art of the Zombie Movie. Recent short stories appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2020, Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles, and Classic Monsters Unleashed. She has appeared on such popular shows and podcasts as Shock Docs, Coast to Coast AM, NPR’s Throughline, CNN’S Margins of Error, and Chinwag with Paul Giamatti and Stephen Asma; she is also the host of the weekly Ghost Report podcast. A six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, Lisa lives in Los Angeles and online at http://www.lisamorton.com.
Chiya Parvizpur is a Kurdish writer and translator from Sanandaj, Kurdistan, who writes novels and short stories in Kurdish and English. His debut novel, The Smell of Wet Bricks, was published in English by Transnational Press London and later in Kurdish. His second novel, Twenty-four Seconds of Shehin’s Life, written in Kurdish, won the prestigious Kal Literary Prize in Kurdistan. He writes against colonialism in Kurdistan, using words to preserve memory. His fiction is inspired by Kurdish music, and he plays the Tembur, a unifying force for Kurds. Parvizpur has also translated influential Kurdish novels into English by renowned Kurdish authors. Four of his translations are scheduled for publication in 2025 and 2026, further solidifying his role in bridging Kurdish literature with global audiences.
Gevera Bert Piedmont is a neurodivergent cyborg swamp witch living on the edge of a frog pond in Connecticut with her spouse, cats, and an impressive collection of rubber lizards. An author and editor; her books include: The Maw and Other Time-Traveling Lizard Tales, the Mickey Crow paranormal series, Necronomi-RomCom Cthulhu Mythos duology, Horror Over the Handlebars (anthology of Connecticut horror), Atlas of Deep Ones, and Fat Monster (Nightmare Press). Her story “Toad in the Hole” (Wicked Sick) has been recommended by Ellen Datlow. Bert has an MFA in creative writing and belongs to HWA and New England Horror Writers. Connect at https://linktr.ee/bybertabird
Andrew [Pixton] of Salt Lake is the author of several acclaimed dark fantasy and horror novels—Fables From Nevermore is his latest release. Known for exploring unusual worlds and unconventional philosophies, he’s now branching into new genres. When he’s not crafting tales of the surreal and sinister, Andrew sustains a career in social work and enjoys traveling, practicing martial arts, and indulging his love for ice cream.
Jonathan Reddoch is co-owner of Collective Tales Publishing. He is a father, writer, editor, and publisher. He writes sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and especially horror. He’s a prolific flash fiction author, but also writes poetry and short stories. He’s from southern California but lives in Salt Lake City.
Adam [Rotstein] has been writing TV, or whatever we call the multi-headed beast that is TV today, for a long while. It’s where he found people were willing to pay him, but it was never his first love. He’s wanted to write stories and books ever since he could hold a crayon without putting it up his nose. A few of his stories have made it out into the world in publications like First Line and the Rappahannock Review. He is a member of the Writer’s Guild of Canada.
Richard Shifman is an author and a market research contractor who worked for a dozen years at a Fortune 50 company, so he is intimately familiar with the horrors of corporate life. He lives with his wife near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. His weird fiction, corporate horror story, “Mayo Monday,” headlined the October 2023 issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly. His ghost-adjacent, YA historical fiction novel, Paper Airplane, Broken Bones, was published in March 2025. Richard is an affiliate member of the HWA.
Rose Skye lives on an island in British Columbia and writes speculative fiction while sipping tea with a cat on her lap. Some of her other short stories can be found in the Nonbinary Review, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and the anthology We Are All Thieves Of Somebody’s Future. She also writes tabletop roleplaying games, which can be found at vorpalcoil.itch.io.
Elizabeth Suggs is the co-owner of the indie publisher Collective Tales Publishing, owner of Editing Mee, and is the author of a growing number of award-winning published stories, one of which titled—Into the Dark—part of the Collective Darkness anthology, was Amazon Bestseller. Another (“Technicolor Tears”) was selected for second place in the Quills Short Story Contest. She is also a book reviewer (EditingMee.com), popular bookstagrammer, and cosplayer (@ElizabethSuggsAuthor). When she’s not writing or reading, she’s traveling the world or practicing yoga.
Ray Van Horn, Jr. is the author of Behind the Shadows, Revolution Calling and Coming of Rage. Ray spent sixteen years covering music and film for Blabbermouth, AMP, Pit, Dee Snider’s House of Hair, HorrorNews.net, Fangoria, Musick, Hails & Horns, Metal Maniacs, Noisecreep, and many others. Ray was a runner-up finalist in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine’s “Mysterious Photograph” contest. His work has appeared in Rue Morgue, Eternal Haunted Summer, Punk Noir, Atomic Flyswatter, Horror Tree, Cyber Age Adventures, The Rubbertop Review, and New Noise, plus the anthologies Horror A-Z: X, Axes of Evil, and Axes of Evil II.
Novelist, editor and poet, Ruth E. Walker’s prize-winning fiction and poetry can be found in Canadian, U.S. and U.K. journals and magazines. Raised on fairy tales and fables, her broad literary appetite introduced her to Shakespeare, Isaac Asimov, and Margaret Atwood, among many others. Ruth’s fiction and poetry appeared in Science Creative Quarterly, On Spec, Eccentric Orbits Vol. 3, Utne Reader, Geist, Event, and Prairie Fire, among others. She occasionally blogs at writescape.ca and her novels are represented by Ali McDonald at 5 Otter Literary. Contact: walkwrite@sympatico.ca
B. Zelkovich (she/they) writes Speculative Fiction, anything from dragon hunting and space whales to demon-dealing and ghost tales. She likes to explore human emotions in very inhuman situations. When she isn’t escaping through her imagination, she escapes into the wonders of the Pacific Northwest with her spouse and their four-legged son, Simon. Their fiction is in the anthologies Beyond & Within: Folk Horror Short Stories, Saltwater Sorrows, and Life Beyond Us, as well as Wyldblood Flash and Luna Station Quarterly. She is a recent graduate of the Viable Paradise Workshop. Connect with her online at bzelkovich.com.
Editor: Founder of Whisper House Press, whose Costs of Living and Dread Mondays horror anthologies are due in September and October 2025, Steve Capone Jr. is an HWA affiliate member and award-winning Utah-based prose author/screenwriter hailing from the Rust Belt. Find his short fiction in This Isn’t the Place (Timber Ghost Press, 2024) and beyond. Prefers dogs to humans most of the time.
Whisper House Press 