Thanks, Eryn! I'll promo this interview I conducted with the terrific @ivygrimes.bsky.social : frolicpress.substack.com/p/in-convers... I also have a new collection. Kindle is here: www.amazon.com/dp/B0GM9FDSKW Paperback is out April 21. (It's better in print!) #HorrorWritersChat

It was the way light died inside it. Nothing came. No ghost. No revelation. No damnation prettier than the ordinary ruin he carried sealed in skin. He laughed once, a dry scrape like a match struck on bone. The sound died in the room without echo. The mirror had never lied. #HorrorWritersChat

Any description of battle gets put off. I find these scenes very hard to write without being spatially confusing. Just my luck—my novel in progress is full of pistol and knife fights. I'm comforted knowing that most writers aren't very good at this stuff, either. Homer was. #HorrorWritersChat

I wrote a story from the perspective of a failed artist who becomes a failed murderer. That was difficult because it demanded identification with a very unpleasant character whose personality I based in part on what I dislike about myself. But usually I have a great deal of fun #HorrorWritersChat

Hello again, folks! I'm Travis and I write strange stories, many of which are rather horrible. What draws me to this is that it is, I think, the best tool that we humans have for making sense of the world. Because first we have to confront the terror and absurdity of it. #HorrorWritersChat

I had the supreme pleasure of interviewing Ivy Grimes! @ivygrimes.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/frolicpr... #WeirdFiction #SouthernGothic #FolkHorror #LiteraryInterview

Thanks, Gabino! My little book of strange stories is coming in April. It does include gay characters and characters of ambiguous race. I hope I handled them well. The only oppressed group I belong to myself is the proletariat. I don't think fascists would like it. travisdjohnson.net/books/blood-...

With my book coming out in April, I compiled a discography of some of the music that informed its writing. I always find these things interesting; I hope you'll find this one interesting. #WeirdFiction #Blues #ExperimentalMusic #FolkHorror #WritersPlaylist frolicpress.substack.com/p/the-sound-...

Thank you, @marywyrd.bsky.social ! Frolic Press has launched with a special edition of Fritz Leiber's 'Conjure Wife' featuring two essays by @ramseycampbell.bsky.social Available for pre-order wherever books are sold. More information is here: frolicpress.ink/Conjure-Wife/ #HorrorWritersChat

He sat already at the table, fingers knotted, suit marrow-bruised gray. Eyeless. "You kept the meat warm," he rasped. "Like a mother chewing cord to keep the child inside." Tea poured itself. He smiled—a red seam unzipping. The clock on the mantle grew fainter with each tick. #HorrorWritersChat

June Moore, my series character and the hero of my novel in progress, is physically small, racially ambiguous, and somewhat androgynous—attributes that both help and hinder her in her world, which is North Florida during the post-Civil War turpentine boom. #HorrorWritersChat

Truthfully, I hope. I've never written anything like a traditional haunted house story, but there's one tale in my new collection that involves a forest in which there is a cottage that eats sounds. #HorrorWritersChat

Hey #horrorwriterschat I’m Kimberly. I don’t think about sub genres too much, feels like they slice things too thin. I want to be in the “Staff Pick” category in bookstores, that’s the shelf I go for first. The Yellow Wallpaper and The Exorcist for stories in a house. Q1

#HorrorWritersChat Hello again! I'm Travis and I write strange stories that could fairly be called horror, fantasy, and Southern Gothic. I'm really not interested in subgenres. I'll go with the fairy tale "Hänsel und Gretel" and its 1974 variant 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'.

My first book is coming! Seven tales. Some of them have been in my brain for decades. They will finally be set loose to enter yours on April 21, 2026. Cover illustration by James Hutton. Available where books are sold. ISBN: 979-8-9944387-4-9 #WeirdFiction #CoverReveal #IndiePress #HorrorAuthor

In fact, I only answered three of four questions because I was exhausted and fell asleep. So, I will not promote anything this week other than #HorrorWritersChat itself. And I will say thank you to @greethewriter.bsky.social and to everyone else who participated. See you next week!

I've written of those who attempt to cultivate their own depravity as exercises of will. What changes is that their illusions are destroyed. As in Lovecraft, the site of horror in my stories is often ontological rupture, though my own philosophy is nearly opposite to Lovecraft's. #HorrorWritersChat

I think that I tend to write characters who struggle with their darkness, or are forced into confrontation with it. I write within a definite moral framework. #HorrorWritersChat

#HorrorWritersChat I'm Travis. I write strange tales and poems. The darkest part of me? I don't know; it's too dark to see.

Forthcoming editions for summer 2026! The Wellman volume will include an introduction by library scientist Zachary George, the St. Claire volume an introduction by writer and scholar of weird fiction Dr. Jolie Toomajan @jolietoomajan.bsky.social #weirdfiction #manlywadewellman #margaretstclair

Some new additions to my collection of #vintagepaperbacks

Creating the cover illustration for Many Wade Wellman's 'Fearful Rock' I used charcoal and graphite to create a drawing, made a Sator square on the opposite side in traditional iron gall ink using a dried cowpea pod as a pen, and placed the paper in my worm bin to see how the soil biota transform it

I've been shouting about Frolic, my new small press, every Wednesday. I've probably shouted for the moment. You can find the information on my profile. This week, I'd rather shout about @charibdys.bsky.social , whose 'The Maidens of Midnight' is really quite extraordinary. #Horrorwriterschat

The first deputy fell dead, eyes wide in the wiregrass. The second kept his distance, mandate trembling in his hand. “Says here it’s mandatory, miss.” June’s razor caught the light. “So’s dying,” she said. He looked to his partner. “We’ll mark you exempt then, ma’am.” #Horrorwriterschat

National Hugging Day. Squirrels are meat. Sweatpants and granola bars don't exist yet. Playdates are for children who have homes and futures that aren't soaked in blood. Her body isn't for comfort or casual contact, but to survive. Hugging Day demands what to her is obscene. #HorrorWritersChat

Every playdate ended the same way: mother calling down the stairs, "Time to go home!" The children filing up from the basement, one by one. Every visit, there was always one more child than when they went down. #Horrrorwriterschat

#HorrorWritersChat Hi, I'm Travis. I write strange stories. I quite like International Jazz Day (UNESCO 36 C/Resolution 39) because I love jazz and blues, which inform my work. I also observe International Day of Potato [FAO] (A/RES/78/123).

Is it Wednesday? Why yes, it is. Did you know, it's also: International Squirrel Appreciation Day National Hugging Day International Playdate Day International Sweatpants Day National Granola Bar Day I bet you're glad to know that! Hmm. Laters, then. You know what to do. #HorrorWritersChat

Locals can pick up a copy of Frolic Press's new edition of Fritz Leiber's classic 'Conjure Wife' early and at $2 off the list price at Buy the Book St. Augustine! #SmallPress #LocalBookStore #IndependentBookstore #WeirdFiction #Fritzleiber #RamseyCampbell

My small press is releasing a new edition of Fritz Leiber's 'Conjure Wife'—featuring two essays by Ramsey Campbell—on March 20. It can be pre-ordered from @bookshop.org (and wherever books are sold): bookshop.org/a/110901/979... A collection of my own short work will be out soon #HorrorWritersChat

My protagonists are usually antagonized by venality, cruelty, hubris, vanity... often their own. #HorrorWritersChat

Similarly, prosody is the most important part of my technique. Many of my stories begin as poems. The transformation to prose is never complete. Many poems simply remain poems. #HorrorWritersChat

The perceived reality that I'm most interested in violating is the reductive one that sees the world as fully explicable by rationalism and materialism. #HorrorWritersChat

Hi, I'm Travis and I write strange stories. Looking at the tales I've written for the collection that is is my WIP, I detect some influences: "Stranger In The House" by Lisa Tuttle "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen 'The Princess and the Goblin' by George MacDonald #HorrorWritersChat

#HorrorWritersChat will start in 30 minutes. Prepare yourself!

frolicpress.ink Our special new edition of Fritz Leiber's classic 'Conjure Wife' is now available for pre-order from @bookshop.org , @barnesandnoble.com , Thriftbooks, and independent book sellers! #WeirdFiction #HorrorFiction #FritzLeiber #RamseyCampbell #SmallPress #FrolicPress #Booksky

The Frolic Press edition of Fritz Leiber's 'Conjure Wife' is now avaliable for pre-order at Barnes and Noble: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/conjure-wi... #FritzLeiber #WeirdFiction #ClassicHorror #Booksky

It's amazing to hold this in my hand. From contemplating starting a small press to holding the first book in my hand after five months of exhausting work. The Frolic Press edition includes scholarly apparatus by @ramseycampbell.bsky.social and lists at $16. It will be available worldwide March 20.

Changes may accrue: barnacles on wrists that breathe with the tide, veins turning to ink, or a child growing translucent, drifting like milkweed seed. #HorrorWritersChat

My characters sacrifice daylight’s illusion—easy disbelief, untroubled sleep, loved ones who flee the new quiet in their eyes. They bury ambition for obsession with the unseen. The pain is a slow flaying, raw and irrevocable—yet paid willingly, lest blindness claim them. #HorrorWritersChat

My characters survive, when they do, by shedding daylight skins—scholars wake tasting old sea voices; skeptics return with something gazing from behind their eyes. They become quiet keepers of the thin places. #HorrorWritersChat

#HorrorWritersChat I am Travis D. Johnson—scribe of the weird, guardian of Southern ghostlore, founder of Frolic Press. Most I dread surrendering my watch upon the threshold: that dusk-haunted ear attuned to footsteps not my own along ancient stones

Went to my favorite bookstore today. #thomasligotti ##weirdfiction ##vintagepaperbacks #independentbookstore

!!!

frolicpress.substack.com/p/conjure-wi... #WeirdFiction #HorrorFiction #FritzLeiber #RamseyCampbell #SmallPress #BookDesign #ConjureWife

Full wrap reveal! CONJURE WIFE by Fritz Leiber - The 1943 Text, with two essays by Ramsey Campbell, illustration by James Hutton Available March 20, 2026 at bookstores everywhere #WeirdFiction #HorrorFiction #FritzLeiber #RamseyCampbell #SmallPress #BookDesign #ClassicHorror

I look like this now.

Visual art I made, 2010–2013. #artsky #weirdart #horrorart #collage #scannerart

My favorite first reads of 2025—new releases + older books I finally got to. (It's mostly horror.) #HorrorWritersChat