Thirteen Magazine Interview

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WriteWords talks to Andrew Hannon, editor of Thirteen,a fiction magazine that specialises in horror.

Tell us all about Thirteen - how it started, what it is, why, who

Thirteen is an international mail order magazine based in London that specialises in horror. It publishes thirteen short stories an issue and thirteen issues a year (one a month, with two in October ; one is a Halloween special). Each issue, one writer wins Ł113 and the twelve other contributors receive a free copy of the magazine in which their story appears. I am the first to admit that the whole thirteen thing is gimmicky, even cheesey. But I like it; the idea beind the magazine was to provide writers from the horror genre with a regular outlet to showcase their work, and to provide horror fans with a continual supply of mainly brand new stories. The thirteen theme manages to fulfil these aims. Myself and my friend Andrew Levy, who is the sub-editor and the man responsible for the magazine's covers, founded the magazine. It started off as a website towards the end of last summer, inviting writers to submit their work. We don't know how, but submissions soon started pouring in, even though we hadn't done any advertising. I suppose there are a lot of people who type the words horror, submit and writing into search engines!

What kind of writing are you looking for?

We look for anything remotely horror related. We are lucky in the sense that we have quite a number of slots to fill each year, compared to, say, a quarterly magazine. It gives us the option of accepting experimental stories along with the more traditional ones. As it says on the website, we are after no particular type of story; writers are asked to submit horror stories, yes, but the interpretation of horror is entirely up to them.

Who are your favourite writers and why?

Of the horror genre, my favourite writer is Richard Matheson (he wrote I Am Legend, Stir of Echoes and The Shrinking Man). Despite having lived in London all my life, I have never really got used to massive crowds. In a couple of his books his characters are completely isolated (I Am Legend is the story of the last human alive after the world is taken over by vampires) and you can probably deduce what the Shrinking Man is about. So I suppose I enjoy reading them because of the crowd not phobia, exactly, just strong dislike. For the same reason I like The Stand by Stephen King and a few of James Herbert's novels.

What excites you about a piece of writing - what keeps you interested?

I have to be boring and say a good writing style and a good idea. It's simple, but it's true. Expanding on this, I like to know there's a twist coming, but to not be able to guess it until it's delivered. A lot of our published writers have done this really well; Lee Betteridge, Matthew Batham, Thomas Gilbert and Leisa Parker, to name just a few.

And what turns you off ?

I had a teacher at school who got so sick of us all ending our stories with the first-person narrator dying or waking up to discover it was all a dream that he banned us from using those type of endings. I'm inclined to agree with him.

A longer version of this interview is available to WriteWords Full and Community Members.
Click here to learn more about becoming a member.

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Comments by other Members

Account Closed at 19:48 on 12 July 2004 Report this post

A good interview, and its great to see a magazine so certain and upfront about representing horror.

As son as I can raise the dollar, I'm going to subscribe! And I'll be submitting plenty more in the future!

JB