Meditation of the day: H. P. Lovecraft and Monsterfucking

My mum: "I don't like all that folk horror stuff people are always talking about. It gives me the creeps." My mum's workroom... www.tom-cox.com/the-magic-ro...

Thank you to readers/writers/editors who have mentioned a story or two by me as favorites this year. I'm honored when you take the time to read and pretty freakin psyched when a story sticks & you can't get it out of your head!

all very good books I can't wait to share with y'all... also, not quite everything we have planned for 2026 (i am slow and disorganized)

I'm one of the few lucky writers who can read reviews to cheer myself up and cheer my work on if I need it. Sam (editor of experimental horror magazine ergot.) reviews my collection CONVULSIVE, which you can buy here if any of this speaks to you. Thank you! www.barnesandnoble.com/w/convulsive...

Hit me with your giant cellular telephone, 1988 Denise Crosby.

Hey hey hey, look what’s 25% off at the Barnes & Noble sale! Preorder your most anticipated books of 2026 (including @shortwavebooks.bsky.social titles) and maybe SLEEP ALONE wanders into your cart too…

Our next submission call is right around the corner. Check out our guidelines to learn more: https://bit.ly/3FZcgMA

Up now at @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social, I wrote about one of my favorite trilogies, Jeffrey Ford’s The Well-Built City, and what it has to say about living in a society in thrall, the fascist mindset, and the daily work of staying alive.

Made a B-movie module for Mörk Borg. THE THING FROM THE SWAMP is creature-feature aesthetics meets doom metal. Currently 34% off. https://loottheroom.itch.io/swamp-thing

Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last

Emphasize the flaws

Favorite short I've read this week. Nice one @psychoholosuite.bsky.social apocalypse-confidential.com/2025/12/21/p...

Gore Poetics by Samir Sirk Morató

modesty laws prevented showing even one lousy frame of John Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS (1972) in the trailer, so the only footage in it is of people reacting to a screening they just came out of. every single type of extant queer person is contained in the specific sequences I have selected here

How I am walking out of 2025

Dear bluskeeters! I'm doing research with a friend. If you're a Black Author with a speculative book publishing in 2026, could you please pitch and link me, please? This a difficult to sus intersection. Please add your friends' work. Please tag people. Please share

Oh heck yeah I'm the handsome guest who fucks every member of the bourgeois nuclear family (plus one saint) regardless of age or gender thus bringing communism to Milan!

Something to read over the holidays. Based on a true story.

12YO girl signed up to do “stand up comedy” at the talent show. 13YO boy decided to heckle her. Teacher started to tell the boy to leave her alone, but the 12YO comedian said “no, no, let him go, this is the closest he’s ever going to get to having a conversation with a girl.”

15% off everything in our website with code MALARKEY at checkout. You can get one of the last copies of the first edition Hair Shirt, with a bonus @yoadrianididit.bsky.social poem on the French flaps. malarkeybooks.com/store/hairsh...

Real men don't have dogs. Real men go to the zoo and climb into the polar bear enclosure and try to fight them in the water.

Merry Christmas, and may you know the pleasure of imprisoning your enemies in a magical snowglobe through the power of dance

Accurate.

Merry Christmas to all… And to all- uh A good night-uh Good night-uh

The “Pink Flamingo Rat King” is an extremely rare phenomenon that’s only been seen in the wilds of the suburbs of Los Angeles. The smog of the urban sprawl becomes infused into the plastic of the flamingos, causing them to temporarily animate and attempt murder suicide of other lawn ornaments

Maybe it will happen today.

"Just put garbage on the page and fix it later" - no, you need to actually be thinking, feeling, and composing as you write. Placeholders that lack clear intention will derail the cumulative narrative impact. Details matter. Always Be Crafting.

Dr. @chesyaburke.bsky.social and I are editing an anthology surveying the evolution of Black literary horror. Tentatively titled Black Horror, Then & Next: We Have Always Dreamed in Darkness (FlameTree Press), here are the guidelines… blog.flametreepublishing.com/fantasy-goth...

Look what’s arrived! A beautiul volume of @fraidycatpress.bsky.social Fraidy Cat Quarterly, featuring stories by me and others including @nicholeon.bsky.social and @abigailkemske.bsky.social. Pick up a copy at fraidycatpress.com/shop/

in hell watching a true crime recreation about my murder and the guy they picked to play me is at least 50 lbs heavier than i ever was, the demons are clowning on me

V i b r a t i n g

The "just asking questions about trans childcare" and "pedophile" venn diagram continues to be a circle, I see.

If any journalist wants to talk to a trans man with a PhD in Human Genomics who was trained in labs that studied the evolution of sex, I'm right here Or just keep platforming Republicans who have a 5th grade understanding of biology so they get more trans people killed, sure 🤷🏻‍♂️

owo what’s this @theuglymachine.bsky.social

Out today! Jennifer Lee Rossman's ALLOSAURUS IN WONDERLAND, featuring cowgirls riding dinosaurs, Amelia Earhart and DB Cooper, queer love under medieval LARPer authoritarianism. Lor Gislason calls it "a buckwild and inventive interconnected set of stories." Get it at frombeyondpress.com

Time for the Literary Nasties. Dark fiction. Weird. Mean. Uncomfortable. The type of fiction that doesn't play well with others. Vote for your favorite work of the year on the Filthy Loot website. Please share. 🥰

"In the basement the television is on, and Robert Stack is waiting for me, his gray trench coat perfectly still against a black void. 'In the closet under the stairwell, remove the wood paneling...'" @iamchrisscott.bsky.social leads us into impossible architectures, new today on hex!

Midwestern Chrome hits the streets this summer, but I might know a guy who can get you a copy (an ARC) from the black market (my inbox). We're all fixers here @tenebrouspress.bsky.social 🩵🚬

I might need to be pinched because I can't quite believe this Library Journal review is really real and really mine ❤️❤️❤️❤️😅 Who over there needs an alibi? I'm great in a crisis and you were with me all day that day I swear

This is incredibly important. If you read one thing this week: marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-...

See the thing is, last christmas I gave you my heart and now this year I just happened to be browsing at the secondhand heart store and what do I fucking find there?!

When you looked behind you and saw only one set of footprints in the sand…but then you blinked and saw another…and another and another another ANOTHER anOTher ANOther anOTHER ANOTHER another another another ANOTHER anOTher ANOther anOTHER ANOTHER another

Today's news in Librarians Are Heroes

No one warned the tourists that it was the river that walked.

Hey folks, The Deadlands is not just a magazine I love reading, it's one I love working for. One of the great ways to keep it going is to join the Patreon. Join (or up your pledge!) before the end of the year to avoid the $1 price increase that starts January 1. www.patreon.com/c/the_deadla...

playing the chipmunks christmas songs in a grocery store should be considered some sort of war crime imo

I can’t get into a yelling match because I’d blurt out “lurid,” or “ghastly,” & it would all be over for me.

I mean this year is terrible. We welcome Lake Michigan godzilla. Why not?

If a genAI prompter asked the plagiarism machine for an image inspired by Starry Night, it would probably be a night sky, corrupted by details from hundreds or thousands of other pieces of art in a way that neither elevates nor was inspired by the piece. Art is a path-dependent process.