The meal slot is still open.

Know a trans person who needs lunch or dinner today? Form: forms.gle/54NvQQt2Q8AW...

Wanna support the fund? itch.io/s/159177/the...

A red-orange typewriter sits in a black space. White and orange text above it reads, “Thoughts from the Writer’s Desk open for nonfiction - links.ruadanbooks.com/nonfiction.” The Ruadán Books logo appears above the text.

Writers of nonfiction! Our online column, Thoughts From the Writer’s Desk, is OPEN.

Send us your unpublished, original essays about the writing life, from in-depth tips on the craft and business to thoughtful columns on genre fiction.

Details: links.ruadanbooks.com/nonfiction

#AuthorSky

Republican leadership intended to vote to gut the Endangered Species Act today… and then didn't have the support needed, so they pulled the bill.

Happy Earth Day! 🌍

Skin Deep: A Horror Anthology Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

Thank you for the fun villain questions! I'm going to again promote the latest anthology that accepted one of my stories, Skin Deep, published by Squirm Bookss. Inspired by The Substance, but YA, 22 horror authors featured within:

www.goodreads.com/en/book/show...

Because I mentioned the Scorpion Mother, I'm sharing DEEP DOWN today, my cave horror short novel about a man and his dog heading into a local cave after the end of the world. It is deeply depressing, but I still love it. #HorrorWritersChat

www.amazon.com/Deep-Down-Am...

Red bluebonnets with skulls in the roots. Book title Beneath the Bluebonnets.

Please help us launch our Texan female written horror anthology, Beneath the Bluebonnets, in Austin:

Rosette, May 26th
www.rosetteatx.org/upcoming-eve...

First Light Books, May 28th
www.firstlightaustin.com/events/a-con...

I think switching things up is really helpful for this. Right now, I'm not trying to fill up the well. I have lists of things to do. But if I needed to, I would try something I've never done before. Reading/watching stuff outside your genre also keeps you from getting in a rut.

#HorrorWritersChat

What would a group of Draculas be called? A mist?

Like many authors, I struggle the most with marketing. What do you mean the skill of hunching over a keyboard to type hundreds of thousands of words doesn't translate to being socially charismatic? I waste a lot of noodles, but all I can do is try to have a little fun doing it.

#HorrorWritersChat

Not from my cozy horror WIP, but from The Haunting of Lola Barrera:

Darwin's a ball of blood from outer space with googly eyes. Disguised as an amusement park mascot. It's keen on capturing the screams of children (from the roller-coaster) to power its ship to leave Earth. 👀

#HorrorWritersChat Q2

Whereas Mother and Annie in QUESTION NOT MY SALT and IN THE DOLLHOUSE WE ALL WAIT are kind of just awful people, their awfulness reinforced and normalized within their family units. Scorpion Mother is kind of a hypernatural entity. Mother and Annie are a very human evil.

I'm incredibly fond of writing terrifying women. You get great women villains in Disney films, but they fall off a bit when you reach adult horror.

The Scorpion Mother in cave horror DEEP DOWN is an antagonist—though not a villain—who's merely taking care of her children.

#HorrorWritersChat

I just think it's cool that he gets to enjoy this kind of resurgence in popularity so late in his life, and unlike Freddy Krueger, it's not physically demanding, mostly voicework. He's so damn charismatic, his voice calming while he's setting up the most violent scenarios.

Hell yeah. I'm doing a largely out-of-order rewatch of the movies right now. He's delightful.

Amanda M. Blake, purveyor of dark fiction, quiet to extreme, gothic to gory.

Reality has stolen my joy for a # of villains, which sucks. I'll lean into my love for various depictions of Dracula. I also just love the SILENT HILL movie, which is chock full of cool antagonists.

#HorrorWritersChat

Still not as solid as the first two, but at least THE CONJURING: LAST RITES was more interesting than the third, which didn't hold my interest even with John Noble in the cast.

Two hooded figures with lamps approach a moonlit, isolated cottage. A woman answers the door. We have come for the child, says the hooded figure So soon? she asks It is time, says the hooded figure. The woman is distraught. We should never have got him a library card! What is done cannot be undone, says the hooded figure We couldn’t see the harm! We just wanted him to enjoy reading! For most, it ends there, says the hooded figure, turning away and walking into the wilderness Oh lord, What have I done! says the woman, the child walks past her and out into the darkness with them. Do not cry mother. I am a writer now.

my latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

Pay to Play: Five Horror Films Where the Rich are the Absolute Worst In celebration of their latest book, In the Dollhouse We All Wait, author Amanda M. Blake brings us another great feature!

@amandamblake.bsky.social swings by with another great feature. This time, it's Pay to Play: Five Horror Films Where the Rich are the Absolute Worst. Give it a read and pick up Amanda's latest, IN THE DOLLHOUSE WE ALL WAIT, now out from @crystallake.bsky.social.

www.horrordna.com/features/pay...

Any #Hannibal fans here?

Check out this Kickstarter from the brilliant Elliott Cassel, cover artists for our Dark Paths novelette collection.

Submission Calls Food systems anthology submission callopen September 1st through 14th OverviewAn anthology of food systems horror and Weird fiction. Food systems include all infrastructure involved in the growth, …

Whoops! Just accidentally posted a call for our food systems horror and Weird fiction anthology, open to submissions this September. 👀
cursedmorsels.com/submission-c...

Don't sleep on Lily Kershaw for sad girl songs, y'all. And her voice is so soft for the brain.

Bluesky was fucked up when this was posted, so if you missed it and want to read a story about alien sex, this one’s for you.

If I don't develop an inappropriate crush on pollution, is it even really Fern Gully?

This is one of my favorite zines and dare I say essays on sexual assault in fiction and how survivors cope with what happened to them. Read it. You can flinch but sit in the discomfort. Don’t look away. Looking away doesn’t make complicated rape survivors go away. They need support like anyone else.

Where’s the love: Friday Update Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Pexels.com After a lot more time at the car place than I would have liked and eventually having to get a loaner car, and after way more money than I wanted to spend, my ca…

What's going on, Friday blog update: amandamblake.com/2026/04/17/w...

Watercolored drawing of the four turtles astral communicating with Splinter from a campfire, from the 1990 live-action movie

1990 TMNT movie farmhouse convalescence Splinter seance scene:

I got so many ads for these bodysuits I had to draw them 🐰🐶🐱

#anakinskywalker #qui-gonjinn #obi-wankenobi

I ate the mango chamoy. The customer had the ice cream sandwiches. Just clarifying.

And mango chamoy ice cream. The extra money I made from the first two batches going well doesn't make up for the stress of not knowing whether the ice cream sandwiches in the back was going to melt. (I had the coldest ice packs on them. I think they were fine.)

Spent over 45 minutes on hold because a glitch in the app gave one of my customers the wrong address on a day where there was a national outage in the app.

I ate so many tortillas when I got home, I cannot even tell you.