Closing in on my 1st month of the Ray Bradbury Challenge* and I've been thoroughly enjoying myself. I'd thought the weekly writing would be the hardest part but there are 4 new stories on my desk and my brain is purring. #amwriting #writing *Read 1 SS, 1 poem, 1 essay a day + write a story/wk

One of my favorite fun facts about LEGO is before ol' Ole Kirk Christiansen got going with the plastics he manufactured this popular wooden "peace gun" in 1949. #internationalLEGOday Also, always: #abolishice

Extrajudicial Killing He #slipped helping another up. His eyes burning in the cold, from the gas; he could not regain his footing on the iced street. Masked men put him on his knees before he could utter please. His back now bared to them, they saw their chance and took it. #vss365

Is there a German word for when you start writing what you think will be a 2K-word story but you're nearing 3K and you realize this will take at least another 3K to wrap up? #amwriting

Will damp bag of soggy muesli @schumer.senate.gov pretend to care a little harder or do we have to wait for them to actually shoot defenseless babies like this in the face instead of just ripping them from their homes and families? #abolishICE #defundICE

Q.3: My current WIP character is a robot detective snowed in at a mediocre hotel, cut off from the internet and the outside world. I'm not sure they would have any use for any of these days, save to try and understand the nature of the murderers they investigate. #HorrorWritersChat

Q2: Definitely International Squirrel Day. Those little stinkers are plotting things for sure. Could also combine it with Granola Bar Day—squirrels getting bloody over the Nature's Valley. Raiding Costco en masse, tearing out throats, shredding faces... #HorrorWritersChat

Hallo! I have managed to scrape aside some mucus and find myself a spot at the spigot for #HorrorWritersChat... I write weird stuff and not all of it horror, but all of it...weird. I like it weird. My fave int'l hoilday: UN's Day for Dialogue Among Civilizations. ...sigh...

Just read this take by @caspiandarke.bsky.social from @flashfictiononline.bsky.social… Gorgeous. Dark. Left me ruminating… 🖤

I’ve reached the age in life where I’ll make my Seinfeld references and no longer care if anyone gets them.

TL;DR: Jonathan Ross and ICE are murderers.

I can haz low tempz pleez and we haz no flamez, promiss.

Rental History The records go from digital, to typed, to handwritten, to the #wonky cursive of a 1924 inspector declaring a gas line satisfactory. Now there are no gas lines. Now this tenement is no longer rent-protected. Now she warms soup in a microwave, uses a phone to turn on the heat. #vss365

What in ever loving fuck…. @schumer.senate.gov Care to wag a stern finger at these goons or can we fucking impeach Noem and stop this before more murders are committed at ICE’s hands?

It’s all been so…just… yeah… 🙇‍♀️ So here’s my demon Wilson, aka the Slayer of Ankles, cozy and snug under the weighted blanket… #caturday #voids #blackcats #🐈‍⬛

Needs Must Mrs. Chippy did a job of climbing the rigging; as good as any sailor. Once he jumped overboard after a fish and had to be retrieved with a specimen net. By the time thought of reaching land had turned to #abstraction, he was ordered killed. His flesh did not make a tender meal. #vss365

And here’s to 2026…kid’s first time helping with the family lemon pig. Also the 2nd time we have done a lemon pig… #lemonpig #🍋🐷

It’s been quite the year Lemon Pig…quite the year…(also I suspect you may have started life as a lime)…#lemonpig #🍋🐷

My favorite part so far of watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers with my son for the first time is telling him the best parts to go on a bathroom break. #arwentimeispeepeetime

Old Cow The articulated skeleton of a polled miniature Hereford is the first thing to greet incoming students making their way to the laboratory. The cow’s preserved organs lie open to the #air at her feet, pertinent points of interest labeled for the newbies. Lunch is burgers on Main. #vss365

Hey let me grab my vintage 1942 cookbook and look up some holiday cookie reci— Uh…

Tomorrow will mark 1 year since I woke from poor sleep, stunned with grief. I'd returned from the hospital a few hours before. I could hear my son downstairs, chatting happily. How was I to tell him his grandfather was dead? For all those struggling with loss this holiday season, sending ❤️‍🩹.

Leave-Taking Per the penciled notes he’d left on the kitchen wall, he turned to gas when the gun failed. Among the details of the #fight to end his life: a bum gun, a jug of church wine. Apologizing to his pastor, he wrote, “I’m in the next room now. Sorry, scout. Will I find you there?” #vss365

Silence He said he had no #memory of the night’s events, refusing to name a culprit, denying even the fact of his injury. "I’m not shot," he’d declared from his hospital bed. “The wound is nothing.” Later, at the funeral in his parents’ home, guests noted the lack of corruption in the air. #vss365

I’m exhausted. The world is exhausting. I just want to lie down on the floor and not move until January. But I just let a sweet corgi wearing a festive jingle bell collar. So all right with the world.

Now that’s some holiday spirit I can get behind this year…Santa’s eyes are especially bonkers (in a good way).

the internet may be under threat of being smothered to death by AI slop but if you can still dig deep into newspaper archives I'm a happy gal. This ad in the 12/16/25 edition of the NYT had me going, "Yeah and how did that work out?"

Lodging The old woman's cries from the window protesting imprisonment begat a visit from city services. She claimed no #memory and refused them leave to enter. Neighbors said she roamed the halls most nights, scratching doors on the way to the outdoor privy, where she kept a certain bottle. #vss365

This got me right in the guts. His smile.

Makes me think of the recent @blindboyboatclub.bsky.social episode where he talked about getting distracted by puffins while filming.

The entire freakin’ year…💔

Unable to do #HorrorWritersChat today due to work-life balance issues. But enjoy, y'all, and I'll try to check in later...

I’m fighting a cold, on a deadline, the old man is home sick, holiday stress/depression having its way but damn if this @bradlander.bsky.social video didn’t get me in all the right feels. Happy to live where I’ll be able to vote for #dadlander !

Lamp Accident Mr. Simpson said his wife had been agitated since the loss of their 4 children. So it was no #consolation to the grieving husband that once she started burning, it was determined Mrs. Simpson attempted to smother the flames, which, unfortunately, only increased their vigor. #vss365

Jingle All the Way The sleigh overturned before we reached the cemetery, the coffin slipping deep into a snowbank. We stood, numb and cold, for some time, unsure of what next. I held my hat, and my partner, already ice mad, recited Hamlet’s #soliloquy and then bid me join him on the horse. #vss365

I mean neither author is wrong but damn if it were me I’d be salty that my book came out with the same exact title as someone else’s at the same time. Which is why if I ever publish an actual book it will be called something like “Pickle Dear” or “Crab Shatter” so as to avoid confusion. #booksky

Read a great story last night—had everything I dig: violence, redemption, unconventional friendships, ichor. Went to look up the author this a.m. and it turns out they are a horrible transphobe. I truly don’t get how someone can write a story that beautiful and be so willfully ugly to others.

Q3 #HorrorWritersChat March 2020, right before pandemic lockdown, I dreamt about a goblin king demanding I say his name 3 times. It woke me up. When I went to the bathroom my cat had left a mouse head, cleaned down to the skull, on the rug. This was the inspo for a story I wrote about a Rat Queen...

Q2: #HorrorWritersChat For me, horror is an exploration of transgressive behavior, micro or macro, be it a person turning into a fanged bloodsucker or a mother slow creeping her way to a child's bedroom, knife in hand... It's things/people not behaving as they should and how that makes us feel.

Hallo #HorrorWritersChat Q1: Me, still an old fart, farting around. I write a lot of weird mixed genre horror, lately leaning into the folk edge of things. As for Matt...❤️‍🩹 If you seek his monument, look around this chat...

Trying to work on some other (bigger) stuff in my wee writing time, so I’m not obsessing over #vss365 as as much these days. (Although #aphotic is a tasty word. 🪼) And all has been quiet here for the last hour…even the watch cat is at rest. 🐈‍⬛ #5amwritersclub #blackcat #amwriting

The cat’s face always lets me know when someone (the child) who should be sleeping is creeping about the apartment… #5amwritersclub

Ghosting In twenty-three days, a year will have passed since your abrupt departure. No #suave exit for you, no casual slipping out the door, a thank-you-for-the-party text from the taxi. Instead, you set an alarm on a clock we didn’t know was ticking, until, like your heart, it went off. #vss365

Evergreen, as the kiddos say…

I have nothing to promote because that is my life at the moment...except me; I promote ME. Give me the old follow if you don't already. I don't bite...often. Tah @greethewriter.bsky.social for a great turn at hosting!

Passing on!

Q4: I hear a mechanical hum from somewhere above. I try to turn my head but I can’t move. No part of me can move. The hum grows nearer; I feel a breeze, a whirring. When it bites into my temple I am surprised at how warm everything becomes before I fall into the freezing black. #HorrorWritersChat

#HorrorWritersChat Q3: Consciousness is what makes us human, right? (RIGHT?) So I think the removal of that consciousness = full dehumanization.