Hey, Northern California — my debut storybook is back in stock right now at @wordhorde.bsky.social. Thank you, @lossrockhart.bsky.social! And for those who live in the #BayArea — lemme know if I should come do a book signing in your region. It’s being considered, so let’s hear from you. 👀 #goth

Book 2 for #SpookyBookSeason: Orrin Grey's Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts! Orrin's work manages to capture the "fun" of classic old horror movies while still being good creepy horror. bookshop.org/p/books/pain...

A must-read of contemporary horror letters

To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the guns, you absolute bell ends. 🔫

This month’s column is up at @nytimes.com! This time around, I talk about Ana Paula Maia’s On Earth as It Is Beneath, Tim Lebbon’s Secret Lives of the Dead, Lindsay King-Miller’s This Is My Body, and John Langan’s Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions. Free link! www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/b...

My conversation with @johnlangan.bsky.social on his new collection LOST IN THE DARK turns to the numinous as he describes a ghostly encounter. Plus: we compare John's view of the dif between horror & the weird with @lairdbarron.bsky.social's & @michaelcisco.bsky.social's! youtu.be/6j6suOg1lBc?...

International scams, bookstore events, the labor movement, and all the hottest books in Petaluma, CA. www.petaluma360.com/article/ente...

John Langan, the author of THE FISHERMAN, returns with 13 new tales of cosmic horror: www.amazon.com/Lost-Dark-Ot... Includes extensive story notes and an introduction by @victorlavalle.bsky.social. Join me Sunday for a conversation with @johnlangan.bsky.social! www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrC...

All month long, we’ve been celebrating INDEPENDENTS—publishers who keep the indie spirit alive by bringing you the best in horror, fantasy, and sci-fi (plus LGBTQIA+ fiction, weird fiction, Bizarro & more!).

I’ve got a thing in the latest Forbidden Futures! Here’s your chance to preorder a copy. Or several copies. forbiddenfuturesmagazine.com

I don’t believe in an afterlife, except as literary metaphor, let alone the image of an escalator leading there, but I do chuckle at the idea of Shunsaku Tamiya and Ozzy Osbourne having an awkward escalator conversation about model airplane glue while en route to their destinations.

It’s telling that rock ‘n’ roll’s Dark Prince, in his final public act, raised $200 million for charity, while across the world, so-called Christians build prisons, spread hatred, and worship money.

When I was a kid, my cousins locked me in their weed-scented back yard shed decorated with black velvet clowns and played Black Sabbath’s We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll at maximum volume, planning to scare the hell out of me.

Ozzy Osbourne may be gone, but rock ‘n’ roll lives on. Black Sabbath meets The Thing in Tony McMillen’s An Augmented Fourth… wordhorde.com/books/an-aug...

Reading @johnlangan.bsky.social’s LOST IN THE DARK AND OTHER EXCURSIONS, coming August 5 from @wordhorde.bsky.social. Wondrously clever. Devilishly frightening. You need this book. You aren’t ready for this book.

Throughout July, we're celebrating INDEPENDENTS at the Emporium! Today, we're looking at Washington, DC-based publisher of queer speculative fiction, 'zines, and chapbooks, Neon Hemlock Press (@neonhemlock.bsky.social).

Lock them in the jail they built for you. Hang them on the gallows they raised for you. Bury them in the grave they dug for you. Live the life you were meant to, without a tear for those who would harm you.

Democracy dies behind a paywall. www.theverge.com/news/709209/...

Reactor includes John Langan’s forthcoming collection Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions in their list of Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for July and August 2025. And gives John’s novel The Fisherman a shout-out. Check out the full list at: reactormag.com/cant-miss-in...

Laughing like a loon to see that @johnlangan.bsky.social has joined The Midnight Society. Want to read the story that inspired this? You can find it (and more) right here… wordhorde.com/books/mr-gau...

I'm super-excited to be working with @lossrockhart.bsky.social at @wordhorde.bsky.social again. Dude is an amazing editor; he just gets me.

Hey guess what.

Today is Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Langan’s birthday! 🥳 You can celebrate John’s birthday—and get yourself a present 🎁—by preordering his latest collection of cosmic horror, Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions! www.wordhorde.com/books/lost-i...

Throughout July, we’re celebrating INDEPENDENTS at the Emporium! Today’s spotlight is on a publisher focused on a singular vision, expressed through prose, comics, photography, noir, and the weird: Matt Maxwell’s Highway 62 Press (@highway62.bsky.social).

The Word Horde Emporium of the Weird & Fantastic welcomes back special guest MATT MAXWELL (@highway62.bsky.social) for a Meet & Greet TOMORROW, Saturday, July 5 from 2 pm to 4 pm! Chat him up about his latest Hazeland book, FAKE BELIEVE, and get your books signed.

Throughout July we’re celebrating INDEPENDENTS at the Emporium! We kicked things off on July 2 with the press that puts “the lit in literary,” @clashbooks.bsky.social.

Throughout July we’re celebrating INDEPENDENTS. On July 3 we looked at a publisher dedicated to the odd, the antiquarian, and the eldritch, @jackanapespress.bsky.social.

Throughout July, we’re celebrating INDEPENDENTS! Today we look at a publisher known for their limited edition bespoke chapbooks, California-based @dimshores.bsky.social.

“The New York Times collaborated with a white nationalist eugenicist hacker and agreed to keep his identity a secret to publish a Zohran Mamdani hit piece” is a way bigger story than “18 year old Zohran Mamdani ticked ‘African American’ on his Columbia application because he was a citizen of Uganda”

commemorate the 4th as i do every year with a reading of Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?" read here by the late James Earl Jones www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtfZ...

BUMP: They're nearing 50% funding. Let's keep this moving.

We can stop this!

In these days of constant noise, social media decay, and AI intruding into everything, I’d like to remind you that you can still choose to shop a small, local indie bookstore and FLGS like the Word Horde Emporium of the Weird & Fantastic! www.weirdandfantastic.com

Paranoid rants about chemtrails, lizard people, & vaccines set to a dub beat were a staple of 90s alt-rock CDs. Now they run the country.

We’re sticking around at the Word Horde Emporium of the Weird & Fantastic until 6 this evening, mostly so we can listen to Evie & Marco playing a dance party on KEXP. Wander by if you feel like dancing. 💃🪩🕺

I signed. Will you?

Did you catch my latest Book Marks column? Check out the hottest books in Petaluma, plus a list of all the Bram Stoker Award winners, upcoming events at the Word Horde Emporium of the Weird & Fantastic, & the Weird Book of the Week, Joe Abercrombie's The Devils! www.petaluma360.com/article/ente...

Got a new book out this week. Probably the only book that comes out from me this year. It's just me and my fearless Kickstarter backers making this happen. No publisher, no crew of hardened professionals on a last job, no nothing. www.amazon.com/dp/B0FB22P6X1

The original cover piece for @johnlangan.bsky.social forthcoming collection ‘Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions’. Readers are going to love this collection. Preorder and more info @wordhorde.bsky.social

Add this to today’s soundtrack: “No More Kings” from Schoolhouse Rock! youtu.be/3R1tZ6l876Q?...

Cover reveal! Here's your first look at Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions, the new collection of cosmic horror from Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Langan coming in early August, featuring this haunting cover art by Matthew Jaffe! www.wordhorde.com/books/lost-i...

If the personnel are wearing masks and have no badges, only displaying velcro replicas of official agency markings, how is any citizen supposed to tell the difference between these officers and cosplayers?

Move to hold the agents who assaulted a sitting senator in contempt of Congress. Call for articles of impeachment against Noem. Stop working on crypto legislation. Demonstrate the stakes of what is happening in LA with your actions.

Here's what I'm telling my reps about impeaching Kristi Noem, feel free to take what you like (script in alt text). And again, here's where to contact your reps: Find Your Senators: www.senate.gov/senators/sen... Find Your Representatives: www.house.gov/representati...

Padilla: If this is how DHS responds to a senator with a question you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.

Defund the Empire

Immigration is not a public safety issue. Fascist masked kidnappers entering our cities with tactical vehicles and military escorts are a public safety issue.

Everyone I knew who covered disinformation got laid off, their bosses got bullied into firing them, or they changed their beats from actual Nazi harassment campaigns. It cannot be stressed the damage the paid-for Substack “free speech” guys did in the service of fascism and against real free speech.

A problem of social media platforms owned by fascist lickspittle billionaires is the ease with which a message can be quashed. Like this piece, which got its author suspended from Facebook. Be a shame if it spread like a California wildfire. www.meditationsinanemergency.com/some-notes-o...