Bold, Boundary-blurring Fiction
Stay Updated and Informed
November Smoke Cover Art
The Last Generation
Austin Lubetkin
A Warm Welcome from the Haze!
Each month, new stories rise from the haze at Neon & Smoke—tales that blur the line between literary and genre, between what’s real and what almost is. We hope you’ll make reading them a ritual.
This month, you’ll meet:
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a man facing his mortality,
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a bit player tired of living in the background,
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a woman torn between love and fear—
…and that’s just the beginning.
This month, we’re also sharing something special: a new Letter from the Editor, Every Story Has Its Place, about finding the right home for your work and the quiet power of alignment. It’s a reflection for anyone creating—or searching—for stories that resonate.
Read the letter ›
And good news for writers: submissions reopen November 19.
Bring us your best misfits—your half-genre, always-lit stories that don’t fit anywhere else.
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Thank you for reading with us, for supporting independent storytelling, and for keeping the glow alive.
With gratitude,
T and J
Where the Glow Meets the Haze
Flash Fiction
We publish bold, layered flash fiction—stories that move, that mean, and that linger. We welcome all genres, as long as there’s emotional resonance, narrative stakes, and a voice that leaves a mark. Surprise us.
Digital Art
Each issue, we feature a curated selection of digital art around a central theme. This time, it’s People Like Us—a call for visual storytelling that explores identity, intimacy, kinship, difference, and the quiet (or loud) ways we gather, resist, and belong. Think vibrant, strange, layered, raw. Interpretation is welcome—we want to feel something.
Poetry
We’re looking for poems that pulse with energy, voice, and emotional honesty. For this issue, we invite work that engages with the theme Ritual—daily or divine, inherited or invented, personal or shared. Whether lyrical or narrative, formal or experimental, send us poems that break and mend, that think and feel, that earn their place.
Editor’s Light
your editorial voice guiding readers through updates and insights.
Our Story Unfolded
Neon & Smoke is a home for bold, voice-driven fiction with emotional weight and narrative fire. We publish stories that don’t sit quietly—tales where the plot might thrill, chill, or make you laugh, but always reveals something deeper. We crave characters who leap off the page, language that crackles, and stories that blur the line between genre and literary not for the sake of novelty, but it’s the most honest way to tell the truth.