FicStack Curation #4

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Welcome to the second curation post for November.

FicStack curators have been trawling through Substack and have found the following gems for your reading pleasure this week.

Be sure to give the featured authors a read, a like or two, drop them a comment, and maybe give them a restack.

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Wendy Russell, Sass&Sage

I’ve always had a soft spot for YA—especially the kind told in serial form. Maybe it’s nostalgia, or maybe it’s that feeling of being on the edge of everything and not quite knowing who you are yet. Either way, even though I’m objectively a grown-up, these stories still hit home. YA often gets dismissed as something we outgrow, but the best of it holds a kind of raw honesty that adult fiction sometimes forgets. This week, I’ve picked three YA serials that capture that spirit in very different ways: one grounded in the messy sweetness of real life, one steeped in myth and fire, and one that takes us into a dazzling futuristic academy where brilliance and belonging collide.

• “1. In which things happen at me, as I have no agency of my own” by Lee, Life of Lucky. In the hopeful haze of the early 2010s, an introverted teen who’s fine being the “side character” realises growing up means finally stepping into the frame. Told with a sharp, funny, and deeply relatable voice, Lucky captures the awkward optimism of adolescence with the pacing and charm of a great indie series. The dialogue feels so natural you can almost hear the car doors slam—I felt like I was in the backseat with Lucky and Linx, eavesdropping on their world. Smart, self-aware, and full of charm — perfect for readers who love grounded YA with a nostalgic kick.

• “Chapter 1” in Free Minds by Zainab Mustapha. If Hogwarts had Wi-Fi, holographic tour guides, and a robotics club that could wipe the floor with everyone at Worlds, you’d get Free Minds. Told through the sharp, funny voice of Beth—a new scholarship student stepping into a world of privilege and tech-wizardry—this serial nails that mix of wonder, awkwardness, and “please-let-the-floor-swallow-me” teen energy. What I love most here is the voice—authentic, warm, and instantly likeable—and the relationship with her mum, which feels real in all the best ways. A smart, futuristic coming-of-age story with heart, humour, and a perspective we don’t see enough of in YA spaces.

• “Part 1: Arcadia” in Underworld by Katherine Kapodistria, Notes from the Edge. In a reimagined Greece ruled by monsters and gods, a warrior goddess named Persephone must fight to protect mortals—and confront the darkness that calls her below. The prose is cinematic and tactile—sun, sweat, and myth intertwined—grounding epic stakes in intimate, physical detail. It’s a mythic fantasy that feels utterly alive on the page. This lush, vividly cinematic retelling that drops you straight into ancient Greece’s wild heart. With prose that crackles like sunlight through pine branches, this opening chapter reimagines Persephone not as a victim, but as a hunter and warrior—powerful, patient, and utterly magnetic.

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Connor Mancuso, Connor Mancuso Writes
Halloween and the subsequent season of terror and scares might have ended, however horror lives on each and every day regardless of season. This is a primary driving force behind my curation choices for this week. To show each and everyone, that horror is not bound to the confines of time or place. It lives everywhere, not just in the cracks and crevices that we hide and try to forget about. My choices for this week also highlight largely the horror of the incomprehensible. The fear of how truly insignificant we actually are in the grand scheme of this vast universe.

• “The Red Sun” by John Dayshower, The Fold. A colossal being of unknowable origin emerges after a storm, its arrival halting time and bending the laws of nature. The world watches as gravity, matter, and life itself are woven into an eerie stillness beneath the creature’s crimson gaze. Its silent proclamation—both divine and alien—promises deliverance but delivers dissolution instead. One by one, reality folds into perfect stillness and vanishes, leaving behind only the faint pulse of something beyond comprehension. In the end, silence itself becomes creation’s final echo. A perfect culmination of the realization we have no power here.

• “Crescent Convergence” by Maryellen Brady, Magical Musings with MeBrady. A biologist joins a corporate expedition to study mysterious Precambrian “pods” unearthed off the Washington coast—only to discover they’re not fossils, but seeds awakening after half a billion years. As the team’s minds merge through an invisible network, individuality erodes and the entire town of Crescent City becomes part of a vast, ancient intelligence. Trapped within this growing collective, Neal struggles to hold onto his identity while realizing the transformation is not an infection, but an awakening long embedded in humanity itself. Corporate containment comes too late—the convergence has already begun, and evolution has come full circle. The fear in this story is deep, a fear against one’s own being and the understanding of how little we know ourselves.

• “Sunny California” by J.A. Evans, J.A. Evans Speculates. A man living a peaceful suburban life begins seeing a shifting shadow in his home—a presence that fills him with inexplicable dread. One night, after hearing it speak, he wakes to find himself trapped in a decaying cabin surrounded by endless snow and screaming wind. Meals appear from nowhere, his belongings shift and vanish, and time dissolves into a blur of isolation and fear. The entity that torments him insists this frozen prison is his true home, erasing all trace of the life he once knew. In the end, he accepts the awful truth: escape is impossible, and the shadow was never in his house—it was leading him here all along.

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Inga Jones, Thriller Tips For Writers

When reading, I always gravitate to a strong voice and high stakes. That’s why thrillers are my favorite genre. This week, I wanted to find stories that are a quick read, but still pack a punch.

• “An Invite to Dinner” by Izzibella Beau, Izzibella’s Substack. A call to a stranger leads to an unsettling conversation. This micro thriller I found via FicStack grips the reader in a vice and manages to create fear in just a few words. This piece will leave you wanting more.

• “Smotherhood” by Bob D. Smiley, Silver Cord Stories. An anxious mother attempts to help her daughter adjust to college life in this contemporary piece. This is an excellent short story that uses a monologue to say a lot about one woman’s approach to motherhood. I love how the character and the reader have vastly different interpretations of the events taking place in this story.

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Coral Evermore, Tales From a Wilted Rose

For me, true horror comes through a carefully built atmosphere that bleeds dread rather than cheap jumpscares. As the dead leaves of burnt orange continue to fall, this gothic soul holds onto this season of decay with clasped hands. The tales I bring you today stem from the horror genre, and although they may have different flavors, they both take you for a journey to bear “Witness” to the “Menagerie” (see what I did there?)

• “Witness” by Josh Sutphin, Horror × Hope. The reader is taken through the doors of a cursed house covered in yellow police tape in order to explore every room and uncover a writer’s sacrifice to an ancient god. Moving towards its demonic source, an unfathomable horror unravels as we are made to bear witness. I absolutely loved how the prose takes you on a journey towards its revelation, focusing on atmosphere and context clues for the true terror to seep in. After reading this, you will feel the strange need to recite some prayers and get your hands on some holy water to ward off Shegorah. Josh Sutphin is clearly a hidden gem that deserves much more eyes on his work.

• “Menagerie” by Makenna Grace, I’m Not Crazy, I Promise.... A young woman becomes utterly enchanted by a mysterious man who leads her through a forest and into a circus tent full of wonders. Though beguiling he may be, this showman of the menagerie possesses the hint of a sinister smile beneath his charm. I was immediately pulled into the beautiful atmosphere because it reminded me of The Night Circus, until it became something else entirely and made me forget what genre I was actually reading. All I will say is, don’t be fooled by its captivating allure. Makenna Grace has easily become one of my favorite romance authors on this platform who, incidentally, also writes amazing horror.

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Sandolore Sykes, In the Inversion Field

Oh, I see you. The moment I say experimental fiction, your eyelids start drooping and you’re ready for a nap. But these two stories are audacious—and they’re going to grab you by your eyelashes and yank the blinds wide open. Believe me, you need a break from the same old tropes and recycled narratives. You need two page-turningly engaging, whiplash-giving, downright fun pieces. Experimental, yes—but I dare you to read these.

• “Neon God” by Keith Long, Loser’s Fiction. Keith has us climbing up the luscious thighs of a neon goddess on a Las Vegas strip-club sign, his character hanging onto her libidinous form as she flickers through three racy poses. This is where he slips into a full-bodied mystical transfiguration—“knees gripped tight as clamps on the back of her two-dimensional head, like a tick that sucks neon, not blood,” as she “hums dopamine into my bones” and “burns a jubilee through my veins, translating secret knowledge of the cosmos.” Written from Edith Bow’s stream-of-consciousness prompt event, this piece uses nearly thirty word prompts and turns them into a neon hallucination: “I will not fall. I will calcify here, solder myself to her pheromone form, solidify ...” Read more of Keith Long, too—every story has tremendous heart alongside its brazen variety.

• “The Thieving Coat Rack” by Elizabeth Lamont. How dare readers say this story didn’t make sense. This story makes its own sense, and all you have to do is lean into its fever dream and let it carry you. There’s an entire forgotten lifetime in this piece, and it is hilarious—gutsy, bonkers—but believe me, it makes sense. This is the story of a young woman who wakes up in the body of an old one, lost in delirium, her entire life erased, while Kevin, an antagonistic nurse robot, tries to translate her existence using AI-generated images. It’s experimental and fully multimedia in a way that’s rarely successful, pushing toward the restoration of an entire lifetime through its lunatic reconstruction of self. Let the fervor steer you; it knows exactly where it’s going.

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Darkly Dreaming Klar Nett, Terms of Engagement

Curation, as it now transpires, is a tricky business. I initially assumed that as I casually wandered around Substack, I’d stumble upon great work and recommend it to you. Easy peasy. And there is a lot of great work on Substack—many writers I follow and give nods to. But here I want to curate the serials that genuinely shake something within me, that stick in my memory until I’m inevitably compelled to devour the next chapter (and the next, and the next). This time it’s work that spoke to the little imp in me who craves the DRAMA, the stakes, the complexity, and occasionally (okay, more than occasionally) the delicious cliff edge of immorality that characters awkwardly balance on.

• Taken by the Highway Man by Moll Moonlight is a twisted historical romance at its finest, which looks like Bridgerton on the surface, but quickly devolves into Dangerous Liaisons. The cast are all darkly distinct: George, Elizabeth, Anthony, the highwayman himself. I started off rooting for the clear villain George (as is my custom), and he delivered spectacularly on the promise of being as morally corrupt as they come. But then! Turns out even Anthony is a bit of a scoundrel, his past rejection of Elizabeth haunting him as he plots to make her a widow and then, hopefully, marry her himself (clever lad!) If you’re tired of sanitised period dramas and want to see what happens when a woman’s body becomes a commodity for her husband to barter, when desire collides with desperation, and the only path to freedom might just run straight through scandal—this is your story.

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