Re: Frankenstein, an audio drama adaptation of your favorite gothic sci-fi novel, is crowdfunding! We're less than $400 from our next stretch goal (releasing a bonus episode on the main feed)! We're also nearly at 200 backers! igg.me/at/refrank

New week, new episode.

The crowdfund is going live in 6 days! Ahhhh!

The weather has turned. Waking’s kissing. Yes.

Writing outside today.

As someone who saw this shit happen in audio fiction podcasting, LISTEN when people say this. Every smug podcaster I saw make a comment about other podcasts being 'the competition' is no longer a going concern in the industry. None of them lasted or had a scrap of community to work with.

I just had an epiphany that solved the thing I couldn’t figure out about my current WIP. It deepens all three main characters, ties together two disparate plot threads, explains a later event, and has real emotional heft. It just fell into place after months of trying to figure it out.

Sad to hear of the death of Dave Cousins of Strawbs. I’m in the midst of writing a new show heavily influenced by the sound of their Hero And Heroine album, a record that is permanently etched in my brain. His idiosyncratic voice and songwriting were important pieces of my musical history. RIP.

REMEMBER: All the "Don't use em-dashes" "don't use rule of three" advice because it makes your writing "look like AI" is because they stole actual writers work, and their "predict the next thing" stuff just simulates what WE FUCKING DO. Keep writing well. Use every style and trick you have. Fuck AI.

Fuck that guy, eternally. Link within to Lila Shapiro's definitive @nymag.com piece. Using this link because some folks might not be aware that NG is **suing** one of the survivors of his alleged abuse. something something "ally" something something "feminism" www.vulture.com/article/neil...

Just read a passage in House of Bone and Rain that made me flinch so hard I dropped my lit cigar on the book, then leapt up blowing ash off me and the book, yelling “fuck” so loud the dog came to check on me. That’s how good @gabino.bsky.social is. 😂

I’m about to pitch our new show to our agent. It’s just a test run to see how to package it. But I’m hells nervous, y’all.

If you look around at everything and all you have to complain about is Zohran Mamdani, you’re probably an asshole.

If you use AI to create your art, your story, your whatever, I immediately know you don’t care about making things — you only care about selling them.

1000 words today. Actually writing on this thing now.

Hey! My story “Dark Gonna Catch Me Here,” (originally published in Mirror Dance) just got accepted into an anthology raising fund for reproductive rights, called Midnight at the Crossroads. Very cool.

I hate that "AIs" (aka people-pleasing hallucinating plagiarism engines) are trained on work stolen from writers, incl. all my books. I hate more that it's eroding our ability or even desire to think. I get it. Thinking is hard. It's ALSO the work. It's the whole point. It's what makes us human.

Just finished my last week of fulltime teaching, which coincided with working alongside my freshly ex-wife to put on a garage sale of many of the things we amassed in our life. Feeling kind of broken at the moment.

New painting by Chloe Gilmore. I love it a very lot.

Breast cancer diagnoses rose by over 300% between 1973 and 1992. Was there a breast cancer epidemic?! NO. Mammograms were implemented for screening in 1976. PREVALENCE is a function of being able to correctly diagnose something. This is also about autism.

Spent the morning at @kellylink.bsky.social ‘s amazing bookstore Book Moon, where I bought books and a t-shirt and browsed for over an hour. Such a well-curated store.

Writing at a coffee shop in South Hadley, Mass while I wait for my daughter. A good Friday.

Does RFK think vaccines made Musk autistic?

Your nostalgia for HP does not and never will be more important than trans lives, safety and welfare. Get rid of the media, stop buying the merch and don't support new things cause it just lines that hateful transphobes pockets so she can continue to use her wealth for evil.

Don’t want to be bragging-pants, but I’ll ride on this for a minute. Glenis Redmond!

I’ll be reading with Dark City Poets this Friday with this excellent line-up. WNC come through…

Morning reading, with dog.

Worth remembering that the point of confronting officials, if that's a tactic you choose, isn't to make them see how they're wrong or whatever, it's to break their morale. Keep going y'all.

DO. NOT. BUY. THE. AI. HYPE. I cannot stress it enough. I know your grad schools are teaching it, I know there are content/tech jobs in it, and I know you're using it. But for the love of fuck, run the opposite direction.

Do not travel to the US. If you absolutely have to, scrub your SM and make as much private as you can. Use a temporary phone with no biometrics only PIN - they cannot compel you to give a PIN but can for biometrics. Have a photocopy of your passport. Set up regular check-in times with friends.

Happy Women in Horror Month!

For International Women's Day, here are some of my fave women/non-binary folks working in the horror space: Brea Grant Issa López Alice Maio Mackay Jane Schoenbrun Jennifer Reeder Coralie Fargeat Barbara Crampton Julia Ducournau Vera Drew Mary Lambert Ana Lily Amirpour Karyn Kusama 🎥 #filmsky

Y’all. The soap holder on the awesome clawfoot tub in my new place also holds a glass of bourbon. Seems auspicious.

Moved into the new place yesterday. Still boxes but we have coffee and bagels. The dogs are a little confused, but they like the yard.

Packing has begun. Books largely done (28 boxes worth). Two weeks til the move.

So stupid and cliche for a guy like me to say but I do wish Joe Strummer was still around to make public service announcements (with guitar)

It’s Valentine’s Day and the launch of the @redracula.bsky.social production of Carmilla in which you can hear me being my best gothic vampiric romantic self! In honour of all that here’s one of my favourite love poems, by Natalie Dunn, which also features a most beloved (slightly oblivious) Laura.

Last year I served as executive producer on a new audio adaptation of Carmilla, which is my fav vampire tale. The cast and crew are an all-star audio drama dream team. It’s a really great adaptation, beautifully done. And the first episode is out today!

Breakfast in the garden. Gonna miss this house.

Grab your tickets! I jave written a double-length stand-alone episode just for you. storyparloravl.com/calendar/got...

Gorgeous day on campus.

No, Democrats aren't going to save us. Conflating voting with activism has led to the myth that voting is the ONLY activism. It's not. We save ourselves - with protests, with mutual aid, with community, with refusal to comply in advance, with organizing, with litigation, with direct action.

When I was kid, I had the *three* album soundtrack to the Rankin/Bass Hobbit. My younger brothers and I had it memorized, and our favorites game was to lip synch and perform the whole 90 minute thing. A good twenty years before Peter Jackson. That’s my nerd pedigree, y’all.

Three weeks from tonight!

My daughter made Cherry pie for tonight’s Twin Peaks marathon.

Come watch us be scary.

This came in today! Excited to read it! @jmridenhour.bsky.social

There’s still time to sign up!

Good morning! Hoping to get some writing done today, but I need to vacuum this place first. Actually I need to put down my coffee and stand up first.