💀🎄 OBSIDIAN SKULL PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT🎄💀

Gather 'round the flickering, blood-red fairy lights, you twisted little elves!

We're thrilled (i.e., mildly disturbed) to announce our FIRST EVER Tinsel and Terror Fiction Contest!

From hilariously disturbing to seriously unsettling, Obsidian Skull Press is craving your darkest, most fucked-up Christmas tales that reflect the real terrors lurking beneath the tinsel.

📖 Submissions open NOW!
📆 Deadline: December 15, 2025
💰 Prizes: Cold hard cash, publication on the Obsidian Skull Press Website, and eternal glory (or bragging rights that you offed Jolly 'ol Saint Nick).

Ho-ho-HOLY SHIT, writers! Santa’s sleigh is full of coal this year, and we’re dumping it straight into your cursed stockings. If the thought of forced holiday cheer makes your teeth itch, you’re our kind of fucked-up. Forget the eggnog—we’re here for the bitter resentment and systemic dread hiding under a pile of synthetic pine needles.

Obsidian Skull Press is tired of the sweet, sanitized snow globes of holiday fiction. We know what Christmas really is: a pressure cooker of forced smiles, historical resentments, seasonal affective disorder, and the soul-crushing realization that the family unit is, perhaps, the most effective terror cell ever devised.

We're looking for your darkest, most unsettling, and profoundly insightful horror fiction stories that twist the festive season into something truly monstrous. Because beneath the tinsel and twinkling lights, Obsidian Skull Press knows the truth: Christmas can be terrifying—the crushing expectation, the consumerist frenzy, the generational trauma wrapped in cheap tinsel, the eggnog that is never spiked enough!

We aren’t looking for quaint tales of saving Christmas. We are looking for the horror that stems from the cost of Christmas. The cultural, spiritual, and financial, and societal costs. The stories that make people question, squirm, maybe even laugh nervously, pissing themselves before reaching for another spiked eggnog. Make us rethink everything we thought we knew about the "most wonderful time of the year."

🎄 FORGET MERRY. GET MALIGNANT. 💀

We want stories that make the Hallmark Channel lock itself within a titanium-reinforced Safe-Room attempting to soothe its anxieties by binge-watching legally mandated scenes of protagonists falling in love over artisanal gingerbread.

The true horror of the holidays isn't some quaint, misunderstood demon kidnapping bad kids; it’s the stomach-churning, Magical Realism detailing a single mother’s spreadsheet—written in actual blood—figuring out how to pay her rent while simultaneously generating enough festive abundance to convince her children (and the terrifyingly judgmental neighbor) that the family is, in fact, sponsored by Williams Sonoma. It's the Fantasy detailing the corporate overlords who weaponize seasonal depression, launching mandatory Zoom parties powered by the pure, distilled misery of entry-level employees. Show us the demonic intern who collects the emotional despair under the guise of "team building." Forget the quaint small-town bakery romance. Give us the Horror of the small town bakery proprietor who is facing crippling supply chain issues and has resorted to genuine, blood-soaked folk magic just to keep the sourdough starter alive.

We desire stories that use the frameworks of the holiday—whether hilariously bleak or deadly serious—to excavate and confront pressing societal issues:

• The Spectral Colonialism of Santa’s globe-spanning, non-consensual surveillance state, and the shocking economic impact of a global distribution network operating exclusively via unpaid elf labor.

• The Horrifying, Generational Toxicity of a family dinner where passive aggression is literally a Bio-Weapon, and the only way to survive the fruitcake is to invoke a protective curse.

• The Sheer, Soul-Crushing Terror of mandatory cheer—the kind of forced happiness that makes even the most cynical elf consider early retirement via chimney accident.

What We're Craving

Genre Focus: Speculative Fiction (Magical Realism, Horror, Dark Fantasy, Historical, Sci-Fi, LGBTQIA+, Supernatural, Straight-Up Unhinged) centered on the darkest, most culturally irresponsible corners of cultural Christmas traditions. Prove that the only thing holding the world together is a thin layer of glitter and crippling denial. Give us the stories that actively require a therapist on set—and ruin Christmas for everyone.

🎅 Theme: Christmas-themed CULTURAL HORROR

• We want stories that dig deep into the anxieties, hypocrisies, traditions gone wrong, and unspoken horrors deeply embedded in our holiday celebrations and wider society—poverty, labor rights, nationalism, family pressure, and toxic gender roles.

• Submissions should be centered around the Christmas/Navidad/Yule season anywhere in the world.

💀 Vibes:

• From hilariously bleak to profoundly disturbing, we crave your darkest, most fucked-up Navidad tales.

• Give us the unsettling dread, the existential despair, the social satire with a razor's edge.

• Whether it’s a gonzo comedy about enslaved elves of a rare Inut bloodline being freed and then forming a union and drowning Santa in spoiled eggnog, to John McClain-esque Gremlins on ayahuasca, if your story makes us laugh, scream, or question all our life choices—PERFECT.

The Guts:

• Your story MUST address societal issues.

• Explore consumerism run rampant, the loneliness of forced cheer, historical shadows, overlooked injustices, the crushing weight of familial expectation, the exploitation inherent in "giving."

• Diverse cultural expressions of the winter holidays.

• Show us the terrifying side of La Posada, the monstrous implications of the Tió de Nadal, or the existential dread that accompanies an extra-long parranda. Give us the Nochebuena dinner where the ghosts of failed dreams finally eat the living.

• Make us see the reflection of our world in your festive nightmares.

LOGISTICS (BORING BUT NECESSARY):

• Word Count: 2000–5000 words. (Stop padding your story with descriptions of snow, we are not Yeti, and we have deadlines.)

• Deadline: December 15, 2025.

• Submissions via our email. Do not stuff your story into a fruitcake and drop it on our front porch - fruitcake is pure EVIL!

• Compensation: 1st Place $100, Publication on the Obsidian Skull Press Fiction Page with Author Bio, and Consideration to be featured in our bi-annual print compilation. 2nd Place $50, Honorable mention on the Obsidian Skull Press Fiction Page with Author Bio, and Consideration to be featured in our bi-annual print compilation. 3rd Place $25 Honorable mention on the Obsidian Skull Press Fiction Page with Author Bio, Consideration to be featured in our bi-annual print compilation.

• Winners will be announced on Christmas Eve on the Obsidian Skull Press Blog, Ink & Shadows, and our social media.

Submissions are handled exclusively through our website email portal. Do not send us your draft written on the back of a holiday receipt.

🧝🔪 SACRIFICE YOUR DISOBEDIENT ELVES HERE: submissions@obsidianskullpress.com

#ObsidianSkullPress #TinselAndTerrorContest #LiteraryTreason #OpenForSubmissions #SeasonalDread #NavidadNightmares #HorrorForTheHolidays #BadSantaEnergy

Don't just deck the halls – deck them with dread. Let's make this a Navidad nobody forgets!

Go forth. Be dark. Make us question why we bother putting up lights.

(P.S. The only thing on our naughty list is not submitting.) 😈

What We Do Not Want:

• Pulp Krampus: If the monster is just a horned brute chasing naughty children, it’s been done. Give us new mythology.

• Sentimental Hauntings: No heartwarming spectral visits intended to teach a life lesson. If the ghost shows up, it should be stripping paint off the walls with its agony.

• Simple Slashers: The holiday backdrop must be integral to the horror, not just a set dressing.