Ship of the Dead

I recently re-edited a rather long short story, "Ship of the Dead", that has been languishing in my unpublished manuscripts file for a few years.

It was first conceived for an invitation-only, ship-themed horror anthology before some sort of issue between the editor and publisher led to a change of publishers. Ultimately, I missed the deadline and had to finish the story on my own, anyway. As far as I know, the intended anthology was never published (though I may be wrong about that). 

There aren't many markets for a story in the 8,935 word range, so I decided to submit Ship of the Dead to an online magazine that accepts serials (provided the individual chapters are less than 3,000 words in length). I divided it into four chapters, finding the most interesting breaking points available in the necessary ranges.

Below is a scene directly from the story, rendered by the CoPilot AI in two versions: Film Noir and Vintage Poster. (From numerous available styles, these two seemed period appropriate and I couldn't resist seeing both options.)

 As of this moment, I haven't heard back from the publication about whether they have even received the story, much less whether they intend to publish it. Once i do, I'll update this post.

 

 As a side-note, there's a greater than zero chance that I may refine this story still further, if it's not published before I have the chance.