Bold, Boundary-blurring Fiction

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ISSUE TWO Cover Art

Shake 'em Off

Vinay Ghodgeri

Volume 2

This collection leans into the surreal and the mythic — into ritual, longing, devotion, fracture — into those moments where the familiar slips slightly off-center and something older, stranger, or more tender reveals itself.

Don’t miss Kelly Cooper’s “Testimonial.” It’s her first publication, and we couldn’t be more grateful that she chose to begin that journey with Neon & Smoke. Championing emerging voices is central to who we are.

If you haven’t yet read our recent Editor’s Light, We Write, We Grow, it feels like a fitting threshold into this issue — a reflection on staying with the work long enough to witness our own change.

And we’re just getting started.

March brings our Love Issue in two parts — a deeper exploration of devotion, heat, ache, and intimacy — followed in April by the debut of our first anthology. This season at Neon & Smoke unfolds in movements, and we’re grateful you’re here for it.

For visual artists: submissions remain open for In the Body. We’re seeking figures caught mid-feeling — desire, anger, tenderness, defiance — work that privileges embodiment over abstraction and emotional presence over distance.

If a piece unsettles you, steadies you, or lingers longer than you expected — write back and tell us which one. We read every reply, and we’re always grateful for the conversation.

Thank you for reading.
Thank you for building this with us.

T & J
Half-genre. Always lit.
@neonsmokemagazine (IG/BlueSky)

New Artist Spotlight

We are proud to feature Kelly Cooper’s first-ever published piece, “Testimonial,” in ISSUE TWO. Her debut signals the arrival of a compelling new voice, and we are grateful she chose to begin that journey with Neon & Smoke.

Step into the Smoke

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

We Write, We Grow

Remember when you first knew you wanted to be a writer? I was eight at the time. All of my friends wanted to be firemen and policemen. I wanted to write Batman comics. (Sometimes I still do.) Back then, I thought it was about the action. Now I know it’s about the words. We often say words have meaning. But they have more than meaning. They’re a kinetic force—able to cut, convince, and comfort. They linger. They travel. They land in places we may never see. As I’ve gotten old

Writing Can Be Lonely

Writing can be lonely. Not metaphorically lonely — literally lonely. It’s hours spent inside a mind no one else can access. It’s choosing silence when the world wants noise. It’s disappearing into a story only you can hear, only you can hold. Most days, it’s just you at a desk, trying to say something the way it deserves to be said. And even when you finally finish a piece, the loneliness doesn’t end. You send it to a friend, a partner, a writing group, hoping they’ll feel wh

Why We Exist for the In-Between

Every magazine has its lane. Some publish horror that bites. Others prefer fiction that aches quietly in the corners of the human heart. The literary ones say they want realism; the genre ones want monsters. But what about the stories that blur the line? The ones that live somewhere between the real and the imagined—between faith and fear, grief and transformation? Those are the stories we love. Neon & Smoke was built for the in-between. For the stories that don’t quite belon

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.

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