375 OF YOU! Hello and welcome. I really hope that you are enjoying the serial fiction on the podcast, and the interviews in the bonus eps. 📚🎧
Serialised (complete) novels:
THE CROWS - S01
THIRTEENTH - S02
THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD - S03
YELEN & YELENA - S04
Short fic #AScareADay mini season - S05
For those who enjoyed the #AScareADay stories and my creative responsses this year, I have rewritten the necromancy short into a 3K short story and made it a Ko-Fi exclusive. You can listen to the pieces on my podcast.
Dark Fantasy with m/m necromancy shenanigans
ko-fi.com/s/095ae061d6
🌈📚💙📚
New blog post! Check out my reflections on this year’s #AScareADay reading challenge for October:
www.thegothiclibrary.com/ascareaday-2...
34) 'Uncontainable' - Helen Stubbs
This is such a startling story. It's also proved to be one of the favourites in the #AScareADay list this year.
A little girl knows terrible truths and her soul fights itself free.
1805 engraving of a Long Eared Bat and a Ternate Bat.
engraving of multiple bat species in flight, from the Edinburg Journal of Natural History, 1835
Illustration of a Serotime Bat, flying through a forest. From HISTORY OF BRITISH MAMMALS, 1910
Some last minute vintage illustrations, of bats, from 1805, 1835, and 1910 for #AScareADay
#bats
I loved the prose style of this one.
“The cold earth speaks. I enter the earth, I follow the worms. I flee the creeping mist—I flee Death—into the arms of the Dead.”
3/ #AScareADay
Ironically, the people of this town must play dead to stay alive when the icy mist comes.
What happens to people who live alone? Why does the burden fall on their loved ones?
Like yesterday’s story, this is a bittersweet one of love and grief. But was this ending a happy ending?
2/ #AScareADay
Day 31, the final story of #AScareADay is “The Path She Sings” by Vanessa Fogg. A fitting last name for this story!
The narrator grieves his undead wife. The creature that moves around his house is no longer her, not really. Or is it?
1/
#AScareADay October 31 is Vanessa Fogg’s “The Path She Sings” where the dead leave a version of themselves behind, and “No one will visit while Elsie’s corpse still walks.” Appropriate read for All Hallows Eve.
And that's a wrap! My 9-episode mini-series has come to an end with the final episode for #AScareADay.
I close out with the last 2 stories + creative responses; my top 5 from the challenge this year; and lastly, my top 10 movies from the #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days challenge.
rss.com/podcasts/eld...
When the mist comes, lie still. Pretend to be dead.
But his wife slipped up- and came back changed. Now she hums in the kitchen, eyes blind and blue. The town says he must end it. But how do you kill what still sings with the voice you love?
#AScareADay #ThePathSheSings
@romgothsam.bsky.social
#AScareADay – October 31st – Vanessa Fogg – "The Path She Sings"
I'd rather Scare a Day didn't end, but this was a good one to end with.
An excellent blend of sad and eerie. Heartbreaking and haunting. Loved it.
psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...
When the cold mist comes with its needle-fine teeth, you must lie very, very still. You must close your eyes and silence your breath. Empty your mind of everything, save images of darkness. Think of night and rain and worms crawling through earth. The coldness of marble tombs. The breath of ancient sepulchers. Imagine yourself dead. Pretend to be dead. This is the only way to survive.
#AScareADay Day 31 – The Path She Sings by Vanessa Fogg
This was so sad and beautiful...and also just the right amount of chilling. 🖤
The final story of #AScareADay was Vanessa Fogg's haunting and beautiful 'The Path She Sings'
If you want a little story to break your heart and chill your blood (just a little), check it out!
psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...
#AScareADay – Day 31 – The Path She Sings by Vanessa Fogg
Our final #AScareADay is a banger, and it's also launch day for a body horror anthology I'm in. So this is a 2-4-1 post!
Thank you, @romgothsam.bsky.social, for organizing #AScareADay for lo! these many Octobers. I enjoy the arrival of Autumn b/c I know #AScareADay is "frighteningly" close.
I really liked:
The Little Room
Charon
Mystery of the Blue Jar
Ten Excerpts...
Midnight Meat Train
Eleanor Atkins...
Two in One
#AScareADay Fogg "The Path She Sings"
A song's power isn't only in its melodies & lyrics, but also in its singing by one's beloved. Their voice & intonation, the missed lines, all convey what was dearest in life and will be dearest in death.
The singer, it seems, endures longer than the song itself.
Ashley, of course, has her own untreated heartbreak that she has allowed to fester.
Physician, heal thyself!
3/ #AScareADay
Each heartbreak that Ashley plants in her garden grows into a different kind of flower. I’m intrigued by if there’s meaning behind the different flowers they grow into.
If your heartbreak grew into a beautiful flower, would you want to keep it, abandon it, or destroy it?
2/ #AScareADay
Day 30 of #AScareADay is “Bleeding Hearts” by Suzan Palumbo.
A sweet, uplifting tale as we near the end of the challenge. A witch who heals heartbreaks finally begins to face her own grief and open her heart up to someone new.
1/
#AScareADay – October 30th – Suzan Palumbo – “Bleeding Hearts”
Lovely witchy story with the most charmingly sad blood letting ritual that I’ve ever read.
Read here: www.havenspec.com/bleeding-hea...
Day 30 of #AScareADay and we read Bleeding Hearts by @sillysyntax.bsky.social (finally got there!)
I love this short story, its mix of loss and grief and prickly anger, cultivation, and a little romance.
A delight!
Read here
www.havenspec.com/bleeding-hea...
Day 29 of #AScareADay. I'm a day late posting because I forgot to write about it but I promise I read it!
The annual web comic today. We read 'The Portrait of Sal Pullman' by Lonnie Nadler and Abbie Howard.
A fun little tale with a horrid conclusion. 'I am become art' is a horrid way to live.
#AScareADay Day 30 – Bleeding Hearts by Suzan Palumbo
Not a scary one but I did love it. I really like the idea of all the plants growing from thr pain that people want to let go of.
I would also very much recommend the author's short story collection, Skin Thief. Tis excellent
#AScareADay – Day 27 – Uncontainable by Helen Stubbs
#AScareADay - Day 27 - some really twisted village horror today, and I'm here for it. Today I thought I'd share some of my own experimental writing around changeling lore!
#AScareADay – Day 30 – Bleeding Hearts by Suzan Palumbo
#AScareADay - Day 30 - today's gorgeous witchy story isn't scary, but it's definitely a good one to read by the fire with a hot drink and something sweet. My response for today is the conclusion of the necromancy story!
#AScareADay Day 28 is Suzan Palumbo’s “Bleeding Hearts.” Enjoyed this story about a magic-user haunted by a past relationship, who also needs to bleed off some ghosts.
#AScareADay Day 28 is Lonnie Nadler & Abby Howard’s comic “The Portrait of Sal Pullman,” about a painting so real, it takes on a life of its own.
#AScareADay – October 29th – Lonnie Nadler and Abby Howard – "The Portrait of Sal Pullman"
Reminds me of how I sometimes feel when I'm doing my nervous smiling thing and someone compliments me on my cheerfulness.
What? No, no, no. That's the anxiety bearing its teeth, not me smiling.
3/3 #AScareADay Palumbo "Bleeding Hearts"
...Then love returns, perhaps differently, maybe unexpectedly.
Unfortunately, the botanical analogy portends a continuing cycle.
In the interests of enjoying how the seeds of love are being planted, I appreciate that Palumbo ended the story at that point.
