Romancing the Gothic organises free talks every Saturday all through the year! Our talks are open to all, happen at two different times (usually) so people can join us from different time zones, and are free (though donations welcome to support the programme) This year's programme below!

New blog post! Check out my review of @sarahgailey.bsky.social’s strange and sexy take on John Carpenter’s The Thing—SPREAD ME: www.thegothiclibrary.com/review-of-sp... 💙📚 😱📚

Happy Chanukah!

Okay, the AI-generated book club scam emails are getting ridiculous. Just got forwarded one from one of my authors that is literally a page long, with effusive flowery language.

I’m hiring a new intern to support me and the rest of the publishing team at Penzler Publishers!

New blog post! If you love demons and dysfunctional families, check out my review of PLAY NICE by @rachelharrison.bsky.social: www.thegothiclibrary.com/review-of-pl... 💙📚 😱📚

Crisis averted: I was able to find a copy of Play Nice at The Twisted Spine and check the quote I needed. Hooray for indie bookstores! Keep an eye out for my review tomorrow morning!

Hi! We're a small business & we'd love to get a sale today. 1st time since we set up in 2015 that we've had no traffic on #SmallBusinessSaturday It's so hard, we know everyone is spread thin. Us too. But if you like vintage / gothy stuff, everything below is still available, thanks for your time:

Does anyone have a physical or ebook copy of Rachel Harrison’s latest novel, Play Nice? I read the audiobook, but need to check the exact wording of a quote and have no idea how to go about finding it in the audiobook… If you’ve got a copy and are willing to look up the quote for me, let me know!

New blog post! Check out my review of CINDER HOUSE, a spooky and sweet Cinderella retelling by @freyamarske.bsky.social: www.thegothiclibrary.com/review-of-ci... 💙📚

Seen as it looks like I won't have a main job for a while (and seen as I haven't been paid anything since September) if you'd like to support the work that I do through Romancing the Gothic, you can! You can also buy courses (in case you didn't know!) ko-fi.com/samhirst

New blog post! Check out my reflections on this year’s #AScareADay reading challenge for October: www.thegothiclibrary.com/ascareaday-2...

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/

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/

Day 29 of #AScareADay is “The Portrait of Sal Pullman” by Lonnie Nadler and Abby Howard—a web comic and one of the most unsettling stories we’ve read so far! “I am celebrated. I am a masterpiece. I am in hell.” 1/

Day 28 of #AScareADay is “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island” by Nibedita Sen This was the only story on this year’s challenge that I’ve read before. In fact, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to Nibedita read it aloud at two different salons. 1/

Day 27 of #AScareADay is “Uncontainable” by Helen Stubbs “Good Wife Henny is fair of face but her heart is festerin’ black.” Young Rochelle seldom speaks, but when she does she speaks the truth. 1/

Feels like I'm preaching to the choir here, but seriously. Food pantries can stretch every dollar you spend on goods to drop off at their doors twice as far as you can, and stretch it into fresh, locally brought goods, too. Give $$.

Day 26 of #AScareADay is the poem “The Right Foot of Juan De Oñate” by Martín Espada. A bronze statue of a brutal conquistador faces a poetic justice. 1/

Day 25 of #AScareADay is “Eleanor Atkins is Dead and Her House is Boarded Up” by Kaaron Warren This was a fun one! Mostly a happy ghost story, but still with a slight air of the eerie or ominous. 1/

Day 24 of #AScareADay is "Sweet Subtleties" by Lisa L. Hannett. As in our earlier story "The Sandman," we have a female automaton, but this time she is made out of sweets and sugar rather than clockwork. And we get to see through her perspective. 1/

Day 23 of #AScareADay is “Itsy Bitsy” by John Lindqvist. We’ve reached the contemporary stories. A nice departure after yesterday’s gore, this story isn’t scary at all. Just slightly unsettling and filled with anxiety and anticipation. 1/

Enter our Goodreads giveaway for a chance to win an early copy of THE DAUGHTERS by Joanna Margaret, a "dark, gripping, and atmospheric" thriller (Lauren Nossett, author of The Professor). 💙📚 ⚡📚 www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

Day 22 of #AScareADay is “The Midnight Meat Train” by Clive Barker. I’ve been meaning to read this one for a while! Felt especially immersive reading this one on the subway (luckily not late at night)! 1/

Day 21 of #AScareADay is “Two in One” by Flann O’Brien. When an argument between two taxidermists over a tail-less cat ends in murder… I think you can guess what direction this story is going in. 1/

Day 20 of #AScareADay is "Three Miles Up" (1951) by Elizabeth Jane Howard--another new-to-me author. If we've learned nothing else from these reading challenge, it's not to trust strange watery women... 1/

New blog post! Looking for a scary haunted house book to read this Halloween? Check out my review of HOW TO FAKE A HAUNTING by @christaqua.bsky.social: 💙📚 😱📚 www.thegothiclibrary.com/review-of-ho...

Day 19 of #AScareADay is Hugh Walpole's 1936 short story "The Tarn." You know, I only ever come across the word "tarn" in short horror fiction. There's Poe, Blackwood, and now Walpole. Does anything good ever happen at a tarn? 1/

Day 18 of #AScareADay is "The Canal" by Everill Worrell, a vampire tale from 1927. A brooding young man likes to wander the banks of murky canals at night and becomes obsessed with a young woman he meets in the dark. However, his rash pledge of devotion to her leads him down a horrible path... 1/

Day 17 of #AScareADay is “The Mystery of the Blue Jar” by Agatha Christie. A ghost story—or is it a crime story? The twist in this one felt remarkably similar to yesterday’s story, “The Accusing Voice” 1/

Day 16 of #AScareADay is the 1923 short story “The Accusing Voice” by Meredith Davis. This was a fun one! The lead juror on a murder trial is plagued by a manifestation of his guilty conscience 12 years after sending an innocent man to trial. But is it ghost, man, or all in his head? 1/

What roles did women play in theorising, popularising, writing, publishing and reading the early Gothic? Come find out! youtu.be/ZYXmHoErwL8

Day 15 of #AScareADay is the 1916 poem “The Vampire” by Conrad Aiken poets.org/poem/vampire This is the second time in this reading series we’ve come across a pair of “basilisk eyes”! 1/

Hundreds of talks on Gothic and Horror topics by experts from around the world? Check it out!

Authors beware: I’m seeing a ton of scammy emails pretending to be book clubs interested in your book. They often impersonate real people who lead real book clubs. But the emails have the hallmarks of ChatGPT (bullet points, weirdly specific) and if you engage, eventually they ask for money.

Day 14 of #AScareADay is “Charon” by Lord Dunsany. Such a brief little snippet of micro-fiction, and yet what a story it tells! The apocalypse from a psychopomp’s perspective. 1/

Day 13 of #AScareADay is the 1914 poem “The Spider and the Ghost of a Fly” by Vachel Lindsay A poor fly has the misfortune to fall in love with a spider. After getting eaten, he comes back to haunt the spider, but she doesn’t seem too bothered… 1/

Day 12 of #AScareADay is “A Little Room” by Madeline Wynee, yet another unfamiliar author. It’s a brilliantly frustrating story about a disappearing room and a pair of spinster sisters who cause generations of couples to doubt each other and themselves. 1/

Day 11 of #AScareADay is "An Itinerant House' by Emma Frances Dawson, another new author to me. This tale has the classic trope of a room that kills its inhabitants, but--quite unusual--we start with the sad moment from which the room's curse originates. 1/

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion. As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.

Day 10 of #AScareADay is the 1893 poem “Dark Angel” by Lionel Johnson. allpoetry.com/poem/8526407... I had never read this poet before! 1/

Day 9 of #AScareADay is "The Secret Chamber" by Margaret Oliphant. There are three tropes in one here: a hidden chamber, a haunting, and a family curse! Those who know only of the existence of the secret chamber, but not what it contains, romanticize it. "A ghost is a sign of importance." 1/

Day 8 of #AScareADay is "The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing but the Truth" by Rhoda Broughton--another new to me author! The story is epistolary, told in letters between Mrs. De Wynt and Mrs. Montresor. It's got the classic trope of one bedroom that leaves inhabitants dead or mad. 1/

Day 7 of #AScareADay was “The Last House in C____ Street” by Dinah Mulock (1856). I wasn’t familiar with either this story or this author before, but I enjoyed it. It is subtle, sad, and sweet. A classic ghost story of the deceased appearing to far off loved ones at the moment of death. 1/

Day 6 of #AScareADay is the poem “And now the house dog stretched once more” by Emily Brontë. Such an innocuous title. And, really, an innocuous scene of a stranger taking a meal with a shepherd and his family. Yet an uncanny gleam in the man’s eye frightens all present—except for the dog. 1/

New blog post! Check out my thoughts on why AMERICA’S MOST GOTHIC by @leannareneehieber.bsky.social and Andrea Janes should be your next Halloween read: www.thegothiclibrary.com/review-of-am...

Day 5 of #AScareADay is the poem “The Kraken” by Lord Tennyson. Somehow, I don’t think I’ve read this one before. It’s kind of sad😢 1/

Day 4 of #AScareADay is “The Buried Alive” by John Galt (1821) This made me think of a chapter I recently read in AMERICA’S MOST GOTHIC by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes, which explores the cases of 19th-c spiritualists who went into deep trances and their family feared burying them alive 1/

Day 3 of #AScareADay and I nearly fell behind already. But it’s a bit after midnight and I have finished reading “The Sand-man” by ETA Hoffman. 1/

Day 2 of #AScareADay is “The Elopement” by Johan Karl August Musaus (1801). This story is clearly a precursor to the Bleeding Nun scene in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. Though with a much happier ending, all tied up with a bow. 1/