A couple of weeks ago we gained access to the home of my Uncle Owen, who died last January. My dad found a couple of USB drives with documents my uncle had written about older generations of the family pieced together from his own memory and the stories his parents and grandparents had told him 1/5

A couple of weeks ago we gained access to the home of my Uncle Owen, who died last January. My dad found a couple of USB drives with documents my uncle had written about older generations of the family pieced together from his own memory and the stories his parents and grandparents had told him 1/5

If you ever feel like you're living in your sibling's shadow, just think about Sophia Lane Poole who wrote a whole-ass book, only for her brother to be named and have his book plugged on the title oage, but she is only credited as "his sister" 💙📚

As a frequent user of the ponds, it disgusts me that terfs are taking a beautiful place and pouring their hate into it. Please fill in this survey if you want to protect this space for all women and make trans women feel. PS the ducks think terfs suck. And the friendly fox. And the crows.

Running a charity 2ndhand bookshop has taught me that generally ppl are not good at estimating book numbers. "200+ books" turns out to be 80. "Huge" donations come in at anything between 50-150 books. Not this one. This one is actual huge - decently over 1000. I'm going to need more bags 💙📚 #hubris

Solidarity with Jewish people affected by anti-semitic terror *and* unceasing protest against the genocide in Gaza

dark comes earlier the little boat of the moon capsized in the clouds

Well don't I feel stupid

The thing I'm most looking forward to about Short Reads Club tomorrow is hearing a middle-aged French woman dropping F-bombs over the concept of entropy (again). Always a treat. Feels properly intellectual, somehow. We're reading J G Ballard's The Voices of Time and The Garden of Time 📚💙

There are now 3 full chapters (that's 106 pages!!) of completely free-to-read KEEPING TIME, the queer, slow burn between two former friends and now current bandmates who - for better or worse - fall in love. #KeepingTime #webcomics 🎸 keepingtimecomic.com

Event organizers: heads up that authors are getting absolutely inundated by AI-generated spam inviting them to be "featured" in pay-to-play "book groups." If you're a *real* book group, I recommend being specific in your email—mention something about their work a bot couldn't get by scraping a bio!

Give me weird girl horror or give me death

THE CABAL SHALL START ITS SERMON IN AN HOUR! Fellow shadow dwellers, it is almost time! And I'm VERY honoured to helm this week's #HorrorWritersChat for you all! The theme? Curses & hexes. 😈

Just about one week left to submit to TRUNK. PS It's not a big deal, but to those of you who provide the info we ask for and format your titles the way we like, I see you and thank you for saving me time and trouble.

Hello, friends! We're Monarch Queer Literary Awards, a project of @fifthwheelpress.bsky.social. Monarch is a new anthology recognizing the best new queer writing and art published by literary magazines and independent presses. 🦋 Submissions open September 1. Until then, get to know us: monarch.gay

Winter Haunts returns this November, and we have another stellar line-up of ghost story and Gothic fiction writers taking part in our range of interviews, workshops and panels! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/winter-hau... #ghoststory #ghoststories #gothic #gothicfiction #writing #writers

Horrible to discover, midway, through my, edit that I actually don't understand, how to use, commas.

The real suburban horror is discovering you only have a ten inch cake board left, which won't fit into the box you're going to use to transport an eight inch cake, and then one of the cake layers splitting in half when you transfer it from the cooling rack

I read This is Where We Live by Kate Hardie yesterday. It was an impulse buy & based on the blurb. I thought it was going to be more of a distinct gory werewolf creature feature horror juxtaposed with the mundane struggles of parenthood with clear feminist allegory. I was hoping the wolf was 💙📚 1/5

Taking Submissions: Christmas Ghosts Short Stories horrortree.com/taking-submi... Deadline: September 28th, 2025 Payment: 8 cents/6 pence per word for original stories, 6 cents/4 pence for reprints Theme: Seasonal ghosts and spirits for Christmas #WritingCommunity #AmWriting

The weird thing about cream of tomato soup is I would fully retch at the thought of eating something else the same gloopy texture & one of the reasons I hate ketchup is that it's too sweet, but slam all that sugar into a hot, viscose tomato(ish) slurry & I will fight a bitch for seconds

A very cosy evening to you! At them moment, I'm reading a couple of J G Ballard's short sci-fi stories for bookclub, and an anthology of horror shorts called Of the Flesh for me

Ruin a song by adding the word "literally" to the title. Everybody Literally Hurts

📢The Folklore Society President’s Prize 2025: deadline 30 Sept 2025📢 The Prize is awarded to a folklore studies essay by a student on a relevant undergraduate or post-graduate or equivalent course at a university/institution of HE or FE in the UK or Republic of Ireland. tinyurl.com/423xwexv

Horror Flash Fiction anthology I have a short piece in - launching 30 Sept 😱📚🩸 #Horror #IndieAuthors #BookSky books2read.com/b/BHP-ALONE

Below a sky swaddled in grey my heavy step startles a loose paving slab forcing a fount of cold grimy water past my knee to soak through denim & ripple goosebumps across the flesh beneath. Even so, with the promise of hot soup & a soft blanket waiting at home, I welcome the return of autumn #writing

My local wishing fountain was turned off and drained - so people have started knocking coins into a nearby stump (without any encouragement from me, I promise). It goes to show, wishes find a way

Open Call: Astrolabe ( @astrolabe.ooo‬ ) Fall Window horrortree.com/taking-submi... Window: Sep 22 - Oct 22 Pay: $50 Theme: Stories about how we seek out, discover, & grasp onto connection in all genres with a particular fondness for anything that moves beyond realism in form or content or spirit

All I saw was cheesecake boat and ocean for at least 5 minutes

For nobody & nothing other than posterity-my prolonged absence from here was due to being informed I was in a 1 month redundancy consultation period at the start of June. It was handled extremely poorly & dragged on over 11 weeks without any confirmation of whether my job was secure or not 1/4

Today, I saw The Fantastic Four, Together & Weapons. Surprisingly pleased with FF, but absolutely not interested in multiverse shenanigans so probs won't bother with follow up. Together was entertaining but fell far short of expectations. Weapons was not what I thought but was best watch of the day

I've been absent from here for quite a while & I want to say lots of things happened, but it's just one thing that's had me stuck in a limbo of powerless uncertainty over my future and it still hasn't been resolved I do have two lemon éclairs from M&S, tho, so it's not all doom and gloom, I guess

For lunch, today, I'm having a burrito and a Capri Sun. So at least something in my life is going right

Son: Bro, I just went outside and there's a whole guy stealing our hedges Me: Omg, you should call the copse!

The Sea Was Angry by Armand Rosamilia "Wicked concept. This is an apocalypse story dressed up as a sea monster tale" - Amazon review buff.ly/qebi3Ue

Son: Bro, I just went outside and there's a whole guy stealing our hedges Me: Omg, you should call the copse!

Horror folk are, in my experience, usually the most wholesome folk.

Dip pen Tree Mari today to combat overthinking

I will add that every book I've ordered from bookshop.org, and there have been a fair few, has arrived in pristine condition and in fully recyclable packaging of an appropriate size. You can also make shareable wishlists to keep tabs on what you want and in case someone needs a gift idea for you.

Apropos of something I can't discuss yet, I hope I always face life with the ferocity and absolute certainty of a retired upper-management, self-styled intellectual, life-long socialist man who is incensed enough to say "We'll threaten to write to The Guardian, that'll put the shit up them."

I finished a book. The first of this year. In 2025 I took my pea sized, phone-rotted, attention spanless brain and finished a bloody book. I'm unstoppable.

eBook bundle on Ko-Fi - 10 eBooks for £10.99 (GBP) ko-fi.com/s/811fa7d3b0 Ultimate bundle on Itch - 10 eBooks & 3 audiobooks for $15.00 (USD) itch.io/s/153308/ult... #BookSky #IndieAuthors #Horror #Fantasy 🌈📚💙😱📚🩸🪐📚🎧

He's not sorry!

🧵Spotted at a Second-Hand Book Fair in Aotearoa New Zealand: A woman (60s?) wearing a sequinned black beret and a fluffy pink jumper is showing a friend her cookbook finds. She says: "I LOVE cookbooks. I don't often make the recipes but they're so good for ideas even if you don't follow them." (1)

The universe is sending me unmistakable signs. And all those signs point to *squints* a tendency toward confirmation bias.

I just this week finished the new book by @daviddemchuk.com , The Butcher's Daughter, and it is fantastic! (Only caveat: it's left me in the mood for more epistolary horror!) I'm also still thinking about the amazing The Woods All Black by @leemandelo.bsky.social . #HorrorWritersChat

I haven't read that many recently. @KatVoleur and @mcknightwrites.bsky.social have two great sapphic horrors, and of course our lovely host, @chaoticauthor.online has a string of great books with queer characters, and I read his most recent. So these I can certainly recommend! #HorrorWritersChat

I think the last one I read was Residents of The James Hotel by our lovely host @chaoticauthor.online and it was a lot of spooky fun #HorrorWritersChat

#HorrorWritersChat The character Peter in my WIP ‘Killingholme’, who has surprised me by turning out to be not the most evil character in the story after all. That honour goes to his mother, Irene.