Hello friends!

Our editor-in-chief, Ammar Habib, was recently interviewed by the “Six Questions For” blog and had the chance to chat about Thriller Magazine for a bit. Below is a small portion of the interview. If you want to read the full interview, you can check it out HERE!

Six Questions For (SQF): Why did you start this magazine?

Ammar Habib: Hi Jim! Thank you for the interview opportunity. The goal of Thriller Magazine is to showcase some established and rising voices of the thriller genre. Our hope is to be a publication that gives new authors a place to show their work alongside more well-known names. We publish short stories, flash fiction, art, and the occasional review/interview. I believe one thing missing in the publishing world are enough opportunities for newer authors. As a bestselling/award-winning author myself, I had a lot of difficulty publishing my earlier works when I started my writing career a few years ago. Therefore, I wanted to create a publication that gave newer authors a fair shot, and I think that is the biggest difference maker with Thriller Magazine.

We publish a variety of sub-genres under the thriller genre. For our first issue (which was published earlier this month), we had a western thriller, a detective story, a superhero thriller, a horror thriller, and a murder thriller. So there is no one type of story that we favor. We enjoy works that have a strong voice and have some sort of emotional impact, even if that emotion is hollow. We want to feel ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist!

SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a submission and why?

AH: It’s tough to narrow it down to a top three, but I would say 1) an engaging story that is a page-turner, 2) a story that is emotionally charged and invokes some type of emotional response from the reader, and 3) a story that is well-edited and is not riddled with minor grammatical errors or typos.

SQF: What most often turns you off to a submission?

AH: I think there are several. The biggest one is a rude submission. Another turn off is when an author has obviously not read the submission guidelines. One thing I’ve learned from being both an author and editor is that when there are two stories of equal quality and merit, the publication offer will always go to the author that is the easiest to work with. So those are some things to keep in mind when submitting work to different places!

We encourage you to check out the full interview if you are interested in submitting to our publication!