About Us
You may be wondering who’s behind all this.
Tarl Kudrick
The founder, co-publisher and chief editor of On The Premises. You can look him up on LinkedIn if you like. In his day job, he works at the three-way intersection of cybersecurity, strategic human capital planning, and measurement for a big consulting firm. He was successfully self-employed as a consultant for two and a half years before deciding it’s better to join forces with other smart, capable people than to do everything by himself.
Tarl has sold fiction to a variety of paying markets, including ChiZine back when it paid professional rates for fiction (and back when it existed!). Most of the stories he’s sold aren’t “in print” anymore. These two are: A Pocketful of Silence, and The Ogre King and the Piemaker. Tarl’s not sure what to do with his old published fiction. An ebook? Would anyone be interested? Write him at Editors@OnThePremises.com if you think it would be worth doing.
Quite some time ago he designed an adventure add-on to a computer role playing game called Blades of Exile. His adventure, Tatterdemalion, won first prize. Google it!
Bethany Granger
Bethany is our magazine’s other co-publisher. She contributes heavily to overall story selection, story editing, and also helps critique stories. She comes up with quite a few contest premises, too. In her day job, she is a proposal manager for what is currently the world’s largest architectural and engineering consulting firm. She loves reading fiction but has never seriously attempted to write any.
Frank Dutkiewicz
Frank has been a two time finalist in the Writers of the Future contest, has appeared twice in Daily Science Fiction, and has a bunch of other works of speculative fiction published in a dozen other places. He reviews currently for Diabolical Plots, and serves as an assistant editor for the annual humor anthology Unidentified Funny Objects. He has appeared three times in On The Premises and was a constant submitter to the contest. Making him a full time judge was the only way the editors could get him to stop. [From the editors—but mostly, we find his critical takes on our top ten stories to be highly valuable. Seriously, we can see why other magazines also use his talents.]
Vanessa Finaughty
Vanessa grew up in Cape Town, South Africa and still lives there with her family, including two four-legged bundles of love (otherwise known as a rottweiler and German shepherd). Vanessa ran a writers’ critique group for close on seven years and is editor of the Grumpy Old Gods fantasy anthologies. She has written and edited for magazines, national newspapers in South Africa, Oxford University Press Southern Africa and the International Trade Centre in Switzerland, and has edited countless fiction and non-fiction novels, university student theses and business documents. She has also published many books in many genres, including the start of two fantasy series. Her first writing ever published was a short horror story in South Africa’s Something Wicked horror magazine in 2007, in which one of her favorite authors (John Connolly) was also published – what a rush! Growing up with her face stuck in a book and her day job as an editor (roughly translated: being paid to read) make her a good fit for On The Premises!
In Addition to the Regular Crew…
We enlist the help of amateur short story enthusiasts to help us select winning stories. We’ve had anywhere from four to nine prize judges for any particular contest, and we usually have either five or six. Why do we ask for such help? Because we want to publish fiction that can be enjoyed by a wide range of audiences. This magazine was never intended to be Stories Tarl Likes Even If Nobody Else Does. Any story that can get through our fairly diverse crowd of fiction lovers is likely to be enjoyed by most of our readers, and we think that’s the best a fiction magazine can hope for.