Horror Garage is the black sheep roadie uncle of the horror ezine world: boisterous, a little rumples, and a helluva lot of fun, especially when you have a beer in hand and some death metal on deck. They pay $30 for original, unpublished short fiction up to 1,200 words.
No reprints. Don’t even ask.
It’s crazy important for you to check out their submissions guidelines before sending in your work — more than for most ‘zines, even. It’s also important to note that, except for a confirmation of receipt, they don’t contact authors except when accepting a story for publication. This means that if they didn’t like your story, you won’t have any form letters to parse or to add to your No One Recognizes My Incredible Genius manifesto.
Their Dark Fiction page has a great overview of the sort of thing they like; based on the quality of most of the stories on that page, they like some damn good stuff. Even their Tales From the Crypt-esque dark revenge fantasy pieces are fairly well-written, and it takes quite a bit of work for me to not roll my eyes at that sort of thing.
Check ’em out, grab your most demonic keyboard, and get to typing. Work fast enough and you just might get something in there before I do.
