FINAL DEADLINE JUNE 1, 2025!
Call for stories for the Lizzie Borden House Anthology
Everyone knows the legend of Lizzie Borden, especially the dark
nursery rhyme...
Lizzie Borden took an axe
Gave her mother 40 whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
Gave her father 41
Riverdale Avenue Books has teamed up with the Historical Lizzie
Borden house to put together an anthology of stories, under the direction of
award-winning horror author Sèphera Girón,
who has visited the house multiple times over the past few decades.
The “Official” Story of the Lizzie Borden
House
· Lizzie
Borden was born in 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Since her mother had died
when she was young, she had been at odds with her stepmother, Abby, who she and
her older sister, Emily, believed married her father for his wealth. Their
father, Andrew, was a prominent developer in Fall River.
· Lizzie grew
up an upstanding member of her community, being heavily involved in the church
and performing services for the poor. As Lizzie grew older, the tension between
the parents and the daughters grew. Lizzie and Emily remained unmarried,
bringing negative attention to the family from their peers and the sisters were
critical of the way their father was distributing his wealth to their
stepmother’s family..
· The story
says that Lizzie, blind with rage, hacked her father and stepmother to death in
the house. The trial that followed became one of the most sensationalized
courtroom cases in American history, attracting hundreds of tourists to Fall
River. Lizzie was acquitted due to lack of evidence and reasonable doubt
although the fact that she destroyed the clothes she wore have convinced some
of her guilt. She lived the rest of her life in relative anonymity, but her
legacy still lives on to this day.
· Download
visual assets of the Lizzie Borden House via Google Drive.
And what we are looking for:
Short stories in this anthology can spread
across many genres and we’re very interested in new and unique takes on the
legends and realities of the Lizzie Borden story. We’d love to see time travel,
science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, romance, erotica, mysteries, etc.
Stories can be reflective of the many
possibilities of the house from the rumored theatre parties at Maplecroft, the
mysterious disappearance of the maid Bridget Sullivan, people who came and went
from the house on the murder day, the ghost cats that greet the current guests
of the bed and breakfast, what happened to Michael the caretaker, and the
mysterious death of the estranged Borden sisters mere days apart. Maybe
discover what happened during the making of the movies and TV shows about the unsolved
murder or various ghost-hunting escapades that had taken place in the house. Let’s
also be mindful of the times these murders took place where only men were
jurors, we can highlight Women’s Suffrage and Prohibition. Take us on a journey
of intrigue, mystery, and fantasy in a
reimaging of the Lizzie Borden story.
We will be publishing the anthology, in
hardcover, trade paperback and ebooks, and it will be available in book stores
and online wherever books are sold.
We are looking for short stories of 1,000
to 5,000 words in all genres and categories.
Authors will be paid a $10 fee, and receive a copy of each edition of
the book.
If you would like to send us your stories,
please send them to LizzieBordenHouse@yahoo.com and submissions@riverdaleavebooks.com
or lori@riverdaleavebooks.com with the subject “LizzieBorden.” After which,
we will send you confirmation that we received your submission. If you do not
receive a confirmation from either of those three emails, you may follow up
with an email requesting confirmation.
Submissions will be open from now until
June 1, 2025. After June 1, 2025, we will begin sending out acceptance or
rejection emails for your submitted short stories. Please, do not follow up on
whether your story has been accepted.
About the editor: Sèphera
Girón is the author of 20 traditionally published books under various names.
Her main love is horror and most of her work embraces themes of occult,
metaphysical, erotica, and suspense.
As a freelance editor for over 10 years, Sèphera has helped
hundreds of authors put their best words forward. She feels lucky that she not
only can write for a living but she can help others write for a living as well.
In recent years, Sèphera has enjoyed paranormal
investigations from as near as Casa Loma in Toronto to the Lizzie Borden House
in Fall River and a haunted mansion in California. Her most recent trip took
her to the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, the place that inspired The Overlook in
The Shining by Stephen King. Some of her adventures inspired a few of her own
books and stories.
Sèphera lives in Toronto.
Riverdale Avenue Books is an award-winning, New York-based boutique
publisher with 15 imprints: Afraid, a horror imprint; The Binge Watchers Guides examining TV and film; Circlet, the latest incarnation of the
classic sci-fi and fantasy erotica imprint; Desire, an erotica/erotic romance imprint; Magnus, the award-winning nonfiction imprint of LGBTQ titles; Magnus Lit, our LGBTQ fiction imprint; Pop featuring pop culture titles; Quest, a science fiction fantasy line;
Truth, an erotic memoir line; Dagger, a mystery thriller imprint; Sports and Gaming featuring sports and gaming titles; Verve featuring lifestyle titles; Hera, featuring both the true and fictional lives and loves of
women aged 35 and up and 120 Days, a
reprint imprint for LGB classics. Started in 2012 by industry veteran Lori
Perkins, visit us at www.RiverdaleAveBooks.com.
