My son, very magnanimously, shared his school-borne illness with me, so I'll be languishing on the couch, consuming wild amounts of historical and contemporary Gothic literature.

Doctor's orders, you see.

Audiobooks: for when you have chores but would absolutely rather be reading

💫📖💫

A path through tall, skinny trees with the following text: an agent's guide to Salting Day, upper YA horror, 75,000 words

Two gray text boxes with the following text. Left box: Pitch: Flames and flesh. Salt and blood. Pious hogwash. The Salting Day rituals of blood, salt, and sacrifice won't save Seventeen-year-old Damaris from the Ravenous, the demon that eats any who venture out of her cult-choked Pennsylvania town. Damaris must stop the bloody rituals and the person responsible for sacrificing villagers to the Ravenous, or all in her village will be devoured. Right side text: Themes: isolated village in the woods, ill-fated love, monstrous girl, folk horror, creeping dread, grief feminine rage, loss, body horror, religious horror, atmospheric world.

A foggy path through the trees, with the text Comps in the center. Skeletal hands point from the word Books to the cover of MY THROAT AN OPEN GRAVE and SLEWFOOT, and two skeletal hands point from the word Films to THE VVITCH and MIDSOMMAR.

A gray box with the following text: Snippet: The pile of salt was an oblong hill of translucent squares—all angles and sharp edges. Before long, everyone in the meeting house would be hard at work, preparing the sacrificial flesh for the Ravenous. Damaris shivered. Their crimson-coated arms, from elbow to dripping fingertips, would be laden with the life blood of the sows. Coarse junk salt would gouge their palms as they pressed the grains into the thirsty flesh, blooming pink as it reached the liquid from the surface. On the right side, a mood board with the following pictures: a steeple on a white curch, two wrought iron candle sticks with one lit white candle, a foggy, tree-lined path through the forest, a man all in black carrying a book, and a pair of muddy, upturned hands with the following text near the center: We should always endeavor to toil, to ever render our flesh palatable for the Eternal Flame. Damaris wrinkled her nose. "I do not wish to be palatable."

I made this graphic as marketing practice for my querying YA folk horror manuscript, SALTING DAY.

It's historical horror a lá THE VVITCH, and folk horror a lá MIDSOMMAR, with an angry girl who isn't afraid to embrace the darkness within 😈

😂 Absolutely. The struggle is real sometimes!
Here's to writing down our middle-of-the-night/early morning epiphanies AND their context, too ☺️

Right?!
And the ensuing regret of not writing it down is worth the few minutes of blinding.
The things we do for our words! ☺️

I woke up at 5am with this in my head, and I squinted through the phone's blinding brightness to preserve it. Witchy love stories are my favorite ☺️

"Her soul sang to him of fresh turned soil warmed by the sun. Of summer and wheat and clear blue skies. Of comfort and peace. Of home."

#writers

This is a great litmus test for story ideas! 😊

Yes! These characters can be relentless, but they also come up with some great ideas too! 😁

Witchcraft! 😈
But really, I just repeated the idea over and over and over... because I was too warm under the covers to get my phone off the bedside table and type it 😅

I'll have you know, I was plotting things for my first chapter before bed last night, and I ACTUALLY remembered them this morning.

😄

#writingcommunity

😂 😂

Oooh, that sounds intense! I get a feeling the couple might end up in a close encounter or two! 😉 And absolutely, short stories can be a lot of fun! I have a Gothic short story I was shopping around, but no bites yet.

Sending all the "right story/right time" vibes for your short story subs!
And I'm intrigued by a house renovation werewolf story! Tell me more (if you want to, that is!)

Nice to meet you too! 😊 I just finished a YA folk horror manuscript about a creepy religious cult and the flesh-eating creature they worship. I'm hoping to query it soon! 🤞
How about you? ☺️

Yay! 🖤

Awww, shucks! 🥰

I am meandering into the land of The Olds, where we want to keep up with the times and have ALL the SOCIALS, but time and life responsibilities eat up our energy. 🫠

Where are my fellow horror writers? Spooky aficionados? Dark fantasy and witchy folk? Let's be friends!

This is not a drill!
The Fall of the House of Usher is LIVE on Netflix.
I repeat, The Fall of the House of Usher is LIVE!
🖤😍🖤😍🖤

Ah, look. A new place for me to lurk. 🙃