So we’re entering our thousandth week in quarantine, which means we’re all past due for our Jack Torrance moment. The ennui of not being able to be out in the world coupled with the gorgeous summer weather are definitely getting many of us down. But before you pick up the nearest ax and chop down your family’s door just to say hi, consider attending one of these fabulous online events instead! That way, you’ll get some obligatory human interaction and have a whole lot of fun in the process.

Profs and Pints Online: Folkloric Felines
What could be better than learning about folklore? Learning about folklore AND cats, that’s what! Brittany Warman and Sara Cleto, the co-founders of Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, are hosting Folkloric Felines, an exploration of cats in folklore and fairy tales.  From the Yule Cat of Iceland to Puss in Boots, this lecture has got all the best tales for you cat lovers out there. This one is coming up tomorrow night, Friday May 29th, so if you’re interested, get to registering here!

Nightworms’ Celebrate Horror 2020 with Mother Horror
The incredible Mother Horror is having a birthday this month, and to celebrate, she’s hosting a weekend-long reading series from May 29th to 31st with authors of some of her favorite books she’s read so far this year! (Full disclosure: yes, I’m one of the authors, but even if you don’t want to hear me read, there are plenty of other fantastic authors to check out!) There’s a special Nightworms YouTube Channel, and you can learn even more about this event on the official Nightworms site!

Howard David Ingham’s Lecture Series
If you follow my social media, you’ve probably already heard me yelling from the rooftops about the awesome writing of Howard David Ingham. I met Howard last year at StokerCon, but I already knew their work from their incredible Stoker-nominated book, We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror. Howard also does unbelievably great lectures on topics as unique and vast as folk horror, cult cinema, and identity horror, and they’ve even served as moderator for a masterclass last year with Ari Aster of Hereditary and Midsommar fame. Now Howard has taken their lectures online; you can find the whole series here, with the first seminar, “The Scam from Atlantis: The Occult Roots of Fake Archeology,” scheduled for June 1st. Be one of the very cool kids, and get your ticket now by heading on over here. As someone who’s attended Howard’s past lectures, I can tell you with gusto that you won’t regret it.

Sundays with Dracula
Several years ago, my husband and I were fortunate to visit The Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia. A beautiful historic 19th-century building packed with so many incredible treasures, including countless rare books, it’s a must-visit locale… once the world opens back up. For now, however, the museum has been hosting Sundays with Dracula, a live virtual conversation featuring one chapter of Dracula every week from now through November. It’s a great way to take a fresh look at the classic novel. Plus, they’re also featuring rotating guests including Dacre Stoker, Leslie S. Klinger, Grady Hendrix, and yours truly. Come to support a fabulous museum; stay for lots of vampire discussions!

Boroughs of the Dead: Macabre New York City Walking Tours
Author Andrea Janes not only writes about ghosts, she also hangs out with them. As the owner and founder of Boroughs of the Dead, a tour company based in NYC, she knows all the best spooky stories that will leave your horror-loving heart chilled and thrilled. Right now, with the city and the nation still under social distancing orders, all the tours have gone virtual. From the spooky history of Greenwich Village to Edgar Allan Poe’s connection to the city, you can learn all about the specters of Manhattan and then some. Best of all, the virtual tours are currently available for free, so check out their next virtual tour date and get ready for some hauntings!

Raw Dog Screaming Press’s Literary Events
Even before quarantine, Raw Dog Screaming Press has been championing online events as a way to ensure that those who can’t travel to conventions still have a way to interact with those in the community. In keeping with that commitment, they’ve been hosting some fabulous author launches. Next up is the book launch for Albert Wendland’s new science fiction poetry collection, Temporary Planets for Transitory Days: Poems of Mykol Ranglen. The event is on June 20th and will feature a reading and an interview with the author.

Raw Dog Screaming Press is also organizing Writing in the Dark, a three-day conference in September led by Tim Waggoner, so consider this your early notice about that fantastic event as well. It’s sure to be a seriously great opportunity that horror writers won’t want to miss.

Fright Girl Summer
With all the in-person conventions canceled for the summer, it can be so disheartening to not have the sense of community that so many great cons foster. Fortunately, authors V. Castro and Sonora Taylor have got you covered. Their Fright Girl Summer is a book festival dedicated to women in horror, with a particular focus on women of color and QUILTBAG authors. This event will last all summer and will feature everything from interviews, readings, and essays to book promotion, free fiction, and an artist bazaar. Head on over to the brand-new website to learn more, because this is going to be one truly fantastic event series!

That’s all I’ve got for now, but if you know of even more awesome online horror events, please feel free to comment on social media!

Stay safe in quarantine, and happy reading!

In just one week, we’ll be hitting the road and heading out to the awesome Saugatuck StoryFest in Westport, Connecticut! It’s my last convention for the year, and I’m incredibly excited for it! So in case you’ll be there, here’s my official schedule of panels and signings during the event. (Plus, check out this super cool graphic that StoryFest created for me! EEEE!)

Scary Stories Presented by the Horror Writers Association on Saturday, September 28th at 12pm
Moderated by HWA president John Palisano, I’ll be joining panelists Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, Mallory O’Meara, Grady Hendrix, and J.W. Ocker on The Forum Stage. We’ll be talking all about the current state of the horror genre as well as its future. And as if all of this isn’t cool enough, this panel serves as the “opening act” for R.L. Stine who will be giving his keynote address right afterward. For real, how cool is that?! *writer swoon*

Book Signing on Saturday, September 28th at 2:30pm
If you want a chance to talk a bit or to pick up a copy of The Rust Maidens, Pretty Marys All in a Row, or And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, I’ll be signing books in the afternoon. This signing event will also include all the great panelists and moderator from the previous panel plus the absolutely delightful and talented Christa Carmen. So head on out to meet us all and get your books signed!

The Storyteller in the World on Saturday, September 28th at 3:30pm
My second panel of the weekend explores the worlds that writers create and how we have personal connections to those worlds. Moderated by Meryl Moss, I’ll be with fellow panelists Marah Hardt, L.L. McKinney, Christa Carmen, Tope Folarin, and Courtney Maum. Also, in case you miss my first signing, the panelists and I will be doing a signing right after this panel too!

There are so many other great events all weekend, so you can find the full schedule for StoryFest right over here. Needless to say, I’m looking so forward to seeing everyone in Connecticut next week! Definitely say hello if you see me!

Happy reading, and happy StoryFest!

July is nearly over, and the summer’s really disappearing fast this year. While I’m looking forward to October more than ever, I’ve still got some very cool events on the docket this summer, along with some brand-new and forthcoming releases that I’m excited to share. So without further adieu, let’s get on with this post, shall we?

HWA Pittsburgh Chapter

First and foremost, let’s talk about this super exciting announcement. This one isn’t a convention or an appearance, but instead, an all-hands-on-deck kind of deal: if you’re a writer in the greater Pittsburgh area (which includes West Virginia and Ohio, if it’s in driving distance for you), please consider joining us for the 1st meeting of the brand-new Horror Writers Association Pittsburgh Chapter. The truly fabulous Sara Tantlinger and Michael Arnzen are co-hosting this meeting on Saturday, July 27th at 5pm at Seton Hill University. For this initial meetup, you don’t need to be an HWA member, so please join us as we talk about what kinds of horror-centric events we’d like to put together in the region. Needless to say, it’s going to be a really amazing time bringing an HWA chapter to Zombie City USA, so come and hang out with us!

NecronomiCon Providence

So this event is a bit of a last-minute addition to the summer, but for good reason. I just got word in recent weeks that a couple projects that I’m part of will be hosting their launches at NecronomiCon, so I decided to break my no-cons-until-fall plan and head on up to Providence from August 23rd to 25th. I waited too long to be considered for panels, which means I’ll just be spending the weekend celebrating new releases with friends, and honestly, that sounds perfectly delightful. If you see me around, feel free to wave or glare. Being strange and unusual myself, I respond equally well to both.

Saugatuck StoryFest

And for my last convention of 2019, I’m thrilled to be returning for a second year in a row to this festival, hosted by the Westport Library. I’ve seen the preliminary programming that I’ll be joining, and I’m just giddy with excitement over it. The festival runs from September 27th to the 28th, and like last year, it will definitely be a lovely time, so if you’re in the area, please head out for this! Lots of genres mingling together here, and lots of fun for people of all ages!

New and Forthcoming Releases

Finally, I’d like to do a quick rundown of my recent and forthcoming publications. 2019 has been a pretty busy year on the short fiction front for me, so I want to make sure I give everything its due here on the old blog.

First up, recent releases! Welcome to Mistaktonic University from Broken Eye Books just made its way into the world this week. The table of contents includes my cosmic horror tale, “A Lost Student’s Handbook for Surviving the Abyss,” alongside a ton of other fantastic authors. I’ve been excited about this release for a while now, so it’s awesome to see it finally go live, tentacles and all!

As for nonfiction, the 10th issue of Unnerving Magazine was released earlier this month, and I’m proud to have an article titled “Beyond the Forest and Bloodied Paths: A Foray into the World of Folk Horror.” I get to talk all about Howard David Ingham’s awesome book, We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror, along with my favorite folk horror films, including The Company of Wolves, Eye of the Devil, and Picnic at Hanging Rock. So much creepy rural devilry, so little time!

And finally, forthcoming anthologies! I’ll talk much more about each of these as they’re released, but I’m beyond honored to have stories in Weirdpunk Books’s A New Flesh: A Literary Tribute to David Cronenberg, Muzzleland Press’s Behold the Undead of Dracula: Lurid Tales of Cinematic Gothic Horror, and Nightscape Press’s Horror for RAICES: A Charitable Anthology. Plus, I’ve got a couple other publications that I haven’t been given the green light to announce quite yet, which just means there will be more fiction to share in the next post.

In the meantime, happy summer, and happy reading!

In a little over a week, I will be heading to Providence for this year’s StokerCon. If you’ll be there too, you can catch me on panels or at my reading! (Or you know, you can also use this schedule as a guide for how to avoid me! Either or.)

So just where exactly can you find me in Providence? I’m glad you asked…

Shirley Jackson: Master of Horror panel on Friday, March 2nd at 12pm
The moderator for this one is Jack Haringa, and my fellow panelists are Jennifer Barnes, Karen Bovenmyer, Nicole Cushing, and Paul Tremblay. I was on a Shirley Jackson panel at NecronomiCon last August, where Jack was the moderator and Paul was a panelist, so I already know this one is going to be a lot of fun. I’m also super excited to meet Jennifer, Karen, and Nicole; I know their work, and it will be great to get to know them too! Also, I could basically talk about Shirley Jackson all day, every day for the rest of eternity. So yeah, this panel will definitely be a great time.

Universal to Hammer: The Classic Screen Horrors on Friday, March 2nd at 4pm
I’m moderating this one! I know, right?! I grew up on Hammer and Universal films, so to get to lead a panel in a discussion about the movies that really shaped my childhood and my love of horror is so cool that I’m truly giddy about it. Also, if that wasn’t cool enough, the panelists are Ramsey Campbell, Michael Gingold, Christopher Golden, and Amanda Trujillo. Obviously, with huge names like that, the pressure’s on for me to do well, so light a candle for me, will you? I prefer Creature from the Black Lagoon green, thank you.

Happy 200th Birthday Frankenstein! Mary Shelley in the 21st Century panel on Saturday, March 3rd at 11:30am
The moderator for this one is John C. Tibbetts, and the panelists include Michael Arnzen, Jennifer Barnes, Leslie Klinger, and Victor LaValle. At NecronomiCon, I was also on a Mary Shelley panel, which you can actually listen to over here at The Outer Dark if you’d like. Naturally, I’m so excited to be discussing Shelley’s work again, especially with such an incredible group of authors! ( I know, I know; I keep using the word excited a lot in this post, but that’s only because it’s true.)

Fairy Tales: A Child’s First Taste of Horror panel on Saturday, March 3rd at 2pm
The moderator here is Leslie Thomas, and my fellow panelists are Edward Ahern, April Grey, Charie LaMarr, and Trisha Woolridge. Anyone who is at all familiar with me or my work already knows how much I love fairy tales and all the darkness and creepiness contained therein. With this one, I’m not-so-secretly hopeful that the conversation will steer toward Angela Carter’s work for at least a moment since her dark fairy tales are among my favorite stories of any genre.

Reading Block on Saturday, March 3rd at 4pm
Just in case panels aren’t enough for you, you can also see me spouting off my fiction, most likely in a rather animated voice (hey, that improv and acting background has to help me somewhere in life). I will be reading one of the flash pieces from my collection as well as teasing an excerpt from my novel, The Rust Maidens. Authors Marc Abbott and John F.D. Taff are also in the 4pm reading block, and I can’t wait to hear them read their work!

And finally, on Saturday night, Bill and I will be attending the Stoker Awards ceremony! EEEE!!! I’ve always wanted to go to the Stokers, and um, you might have heard, but this year is a bit special to me (as in very, very special). I’ve talked about this a lot already on social media—talked so much, in fact, that people are probably sick of hearing about it—but I very much want to announce it here too: my collection, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, is nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection! That’s an insane sentence to type out, but here’s a link to the final ballot in case you need external verification.

Also, because I have the best editor in the world, she also put together that updated cover you see to the left with an official Stokers seal and everything. Thanks, Jess!

So it will certainly be a busy couple days in Providence, and for that, I’m quite grateful and excited. Honestly, I’m downright thrilled. This will only be my second writing convention after NecronomiCon last summer, and I’m looking so forward to meeting a lot of new people as well as catching up with everyone I already know, either online or in person. It should be a truly wonderful weekend! *cue excited screaming*

Happy reading, and see you in Providence!