Welcome, newcomers and veterans alike!
If you’re not familiar with The Midnight Vault event or the previous book, go take a look. We’ll wait, it’s worth it.
What you saw over the last week–how could you miss all those restacks?–was a literary megaton blast of incredible stories by writers young and old from all over the world.1 Then, immediately, an outpouring of love for independent fiction authors—which is ultimately the point.
But every explosion has its unseen mechanics…
Running an event like this might seem like herding housecats2. Fortunately, we came armed with a spreadsheet, a deadline, and some lessons from last year’s mayhem, which kept things at least mildly under control.
And once the dust started to settle, something fun happened: the data started talking back. The writers of The Midnight Vault II—without meaning to—handed us some delightful morsels to chew on.
Let’s start with some basics. Last year we invited 34 creators, and 31 said yes—a wild 91% conversion rate. We were stunned. Who gets numbers like that? (hint: we do?)
So when we opened the doors to everyone this year, we braced for maybe 30 or 40 brave souls. Instead, 98 writers came barreling in, blowing past expectations with a 216% jump. Happily wrong doesn’t even begin to cover it.
As Shane Bzdok would say: Oof.
Or as we like to call this chart, “What stories keep writers awake at night.”
Horror came out swinging at 30.61%, which honestly tracks—nothing motivates a writer quite like letting something unspeakable skitter around in the dark. Sci-Fi held a strong second at 19.39%, followed closely by Satire & allegory and Suspense & Thriller duking it out in the mid-teens.
Then there’s the grab-bag at the bottom: Sci-Fi Horror, Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, and a tiny sliver of Fantasy Horror—each one a little gremlin refusing to be left out.
If you ever wondered what a genre pie looks like when nearly a hundred creatives all shout, “I’ve got something weird,” this is it…
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by”
- Douglas Adams
Look, I get it—we’re all stretched thin, juggling life, work, and whatever strange, sputtering engine powers our creativity. Sometimes the muse shows up instantly. Sometimes she leaves you standing at a bus stop after midnight, wondering if she’s ever coming back.
So yes, we expected a slow burn of submissions.
What we didn’t expect was the tidal wave at the end. The last five days look less like a gentle uptick and more like someone hit the “oh no, that’s due?” button.
Side note: I think our editors, S.E. Reid, Kristen Weber and Emil Ottoman might be finally caught up on sleep.
Maybe it took a while for word to get around. Maybe everyone collectively remembered the deadline at the same time. Or maybe writers really do work best with a little fire licking at their heels.
Whatever the reason, the chart doesn’t lie: procrastination is our shared love language.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting—in the tick-tock of submissions.
Sci-Fi showed up like the dependable friend who texts you back right away. Satire & Allegory kept pace too, dropping stories at a calm, almost civilized rhythm.
Horror, though? Very different energy. That heatmap looks like every Horror writer bolted upright at 3 a.m., convinced something was chasing them through the woods, and realized the only way out was to finally finish their draft. Maybe a collective flop sweat of productivity?3
Whatever nightmare fuel powered them, it clearly worked.
Events like this—perhaps book sales too—spread because the numbers give them wings. Here are a few details that might surprise you:
Restacks ARE the engine. Stories with around 10 restacks consistently jumped into the 300–700 view range.
Engagement was unusually high. Many posts pulled 8–14% like rates, well above what fiction usually sees.
Comments spread because the community showed up. Writers read each other, responded, and kept the momentum going.
And the middle held strong. Most stories landed between 200 and 700 views, creating an event that felt active across the board, not just at the top.
Maybe the most telling stat about the mythology of Substack and story length is this: in our dataset there’s zero correlation between word count and views. Long pieces didn’t sink, short pieces didn’t magically rise—visibility came from restacks and community, not length.
Okay, that’s all the big data stuff. The rest here is about the strange, little patterns we found by standing back, squinting and twisting our heads just so.
Titles that feel like using a magnifying glass with Google Maps.
“Noun + Preposition + Noun.” A trusty construction that implies something is a bit off somewhere.
Titles that slap you across the face, give zero context, and dare you to open the story anyway.
Fit — also qualifies as shortest title.
Titles that hinge on a specific moment in time. Apparently the universe loves a countdown as much as writers do.
Finally — The award for longest title goes to: The Agony & the Ecstasy of Still Life
So, what did all this number-crunching, heatmap-staring, and title-taxonomy reveal?
That nearly a hundred writers can unintentionally create a perfect portrait of creative chaos. It’s messy, charming, and somehow still incredibly organized—like a symphony composed by housecats who eventually remember the deadline.
And honestly? We wouldn’t have it any other way.
On three continents anyway.
It’s not. Maybe more like children with overactive imaginations …a superiority complex… who like yarn. Wait just a minute. It’s exactly like herding housecats!
I call dibs on that story idea (J)
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