In 2009, Emma Newman started a short story club on her blog which now has over 300 members. Free to join, members receive a short story in their inbox every month, inspired by a winning prompt submitted to the blog. The winning commenter has the opportunity to read the story prior to its release to the club.

In early 2010, between short story club stories and flash fiction written for her blog, Emma realised she had enough to create a small anthology. Keen to experiment with self-publishing, she produced an e-book entitled ‘From Dark Places’ containing 11 short stories, sold via Smashwords.

During this time, eMergent Publishing commissioned Emma to write a second short story for their Chinese Whisperings anthologies, after the success of The Red Book in 2009. After such a positive experience with the company, Emma approached eMergent in late 2010 to hire them to edit an extended second edition of From Dark Places. Instead, eMergent Publishing offered Emma a contract to publish a new edition of the anthology in traditional and digital formats.

The 2011 edition of ‘From Dark Places’ contains 25 stories, including one written specifically for inclusion in the new collection.