Stephanie M. Wytovich's Blog, page 2

February '23 Madhouse Recap: Lattes, Friends, and Betelgeuse (Betelgeuse Betelgeuse!)

 February ‘23 Madhouse Recap

Hello friends and fiends–

I feel like I blinked and February was over, and to be honest, this month really tested my ability to keep my cool (spoiler alert: I didn’t keep my cool). My sensory issues have been getting worse and it’s making home life a little challenging with two pit bulls and a 1-year-old, but I’ve been using my sensory ear plugs and they’ve been really helping, so I think I’m just going to have to lean on them more. Plus, I don’t think the steady streaming of Elmo’s World and Baby Shark is really helping. I joke with Dennis that we worship at the house of the Red God now. 

Speaking of health, I’ve been trying to get clever with my cooking this month and have been finding lots of vegetarian recipes that are quick and easy to whip up and have on hand for lunches. I’ve been making this kale salad a lot lately that has dried cranberries, walnuts, and wild grain rice all mixed together with some sun-dried tomatoes and chia seeds, and it’s really good (and filling!). I found another one on TikTok that I want to try that uses sliced carrots as a base. Apparently, it’s a favorite of Florence Pugh, so that’s good enough for me! 

I did manage to carve out some time this month to relax and spend time with friends, though. Jennifer came up for the weekend and we surrounded ourselves with book talk, tea, good food, and lots of good conversation. We have so many plans for RDSP that I’m just over the moon excited about, and it’s really inspiring and I can’t wait to start working on some things here soon. Heidi and Jason even joined us for a bit and got to meet Evie, and it felt good to just have the gang over and laugh and make plans for the future. 

Speaking of books, I won a GoodReads Giveaway last month: The Destroyer of Worlds: A Return to Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. Eek! Christa Carmen also released the cover and preorder information for her book The Daughters of Block Island, which I immediately preordered–because obviously. 

Evie stayed at my parent's one weekend and Dennis and I got to kind of catch our breath and spend some time together for Valentine’s day. We went downtown and hung out at the strip, reenacting our first date. We tried a new coffee place, played pinball, went to the candy store, and visited some of our favorite shops. I left with my pockets full of antique keys, star mica crystals, and some beautiful rose-hibiscus perfume that Dennis picked up for me at Roxanne’s. We then had lunch at Allegheny Tavern and left full and happy. 

I also got to meet up with Michelle Renee Lane last month, which was way overdue! We met at the Steep Mountain Tea Company in Greensburg (which I’m now obsessed with) and caught up over Chocolate Strawberry Lattes and pastries. Then later in the month, it was my brother’s birthday so he and my sister-in-law came in for the weekend and we all went to go see Beetlejuice The Musical, grabbed dinner at Nicky’s Thai Restaurant, and then got drinks at Con Alma. Wrap that all up with the fact that I finished my Agatha Christie puzzle and made it to spring break in my psychology class and well, all I can really say is onward!

On the writing/teaching front:

To see Writing Poetry in the Dark be a finalist in the nonfiction category is a dream. It was one of my writing life goals to edit a collection of speculative poetry essays and I'm so happy with how this turned out and then to see it on the ballot? Honestly, it's emotional. A million thanks yous to Jennifer Barnes and John Edward Lawson for helping me with this vision. Beyond that, Cina Pelayo's essay (from Writing Poetry in the Dark) was nominated in short nonfiction, which is just incredible news, and when you add that hers and Donna Lynch's poetry collection made the ballot, too? I'm just so incredibly proud and excited and honored to continue working with such creative, brilliant people. I know how hard you both worked on those books and it's wonderful to see you getting recognition for that. *hugs* And speaking of kind and brilliant people, Lindy Ryan's anthology Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga is nominated in the anthology category and I could not be more over the moon for her. I love this project with all my heart and it was such a joy to be able to participate it in. Congratulations to everyone nominated, to everyone out there writing, to everyone celebrating and championing horror. I'm happy to be beside you all.I’m honored that my poem "Dinner Plans with Baba Yaga" has made the long list for the Rhysling Award. This piece was originally published in Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga, ed. by Lindy Ryan (Black Spot Books). Congrats, everyone!My undergrad students and I recently finished reading My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. One of the creative assignments I used this semester was for them to select five songs that made them think of the book so that we could construct a reading playlist, and I think it turned out really great. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.Last month in The Madhouse, I was honored to host Tiffany Morris and talk about her cosmic masterpiece: Elegies for Rotting Stars. Join us here.

This month, I read:

Lovesick, Issue #4

I Hate Fairyland, Issue #4

Farmhand, Vol 1 by Rob Guillory

Farmhand Vol 2 by Rob Guillory

Eat the Rich by Sarah Gailey

Poison Ivy, Thorns by Kody Keplinger

A Book of Days by Patti Smith

The Truth is Told Better This Way: Poems by Liz Worth

And Yet: Poems by Kate Baer

Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath

If you haven’t read her radio play Three Women, please do. I think it might be my favorite piece she’s ever written.

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (reread)

Daphne by Josh Malerman

Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison

Literally Dead: Tales of Halloween Hauntings edited by Gaby Triana

Flash Fiction, Nightmare Magazine: “A Girl of Nails and Teeth” by Hannah Yang

Flash Fiction, Nightmare Magazine: “In the Water” by Rowan Wren

Flash Fiction, Nightmare Magazine: “There Are No Monsters on Rancho Buenavista” by Isabel Canas

Flash Fiction, Nightmare Magazine: “The Mothers” by Laur A. Freymiller.

Flash Fiction, Nightmare Magazine: “Now Will You Listen” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu

On the media front:

Don’t Worry Darling (2022), We Have A Ghost (2023)

You, Season 4, Part 1: I gotta say, this entire series has become such a comfort watch for me and this season is living up to just that. It’s like a cozy murder mystery with one of my favorite villains, and I’m here for the old English settings and Agatha Christie vibes. However, I will say that I’m so happy Joe is paired with and going after a guy this season. It’s a nice change of pace, even if we do see his old habits break through now and again. I’m looking forward to Part 2 in March, and I’m sure I’ll happily binge it on its release day!

Wayward Pines Season 1: I’ve had this show on my radar for a while now, but randomly decided to pull the trigger on it last month. I enjoyed the first season…even if this was nothing like I expected it to be. I made it about halfway through season 2 and lost steam. I might finish it eventually, but I’m not in a rush to do it. 

Podcasts:

She Wore Black Podcast, “Cozy Fantasy with Legends and Lattes author Travis Baldree”

She Wore Black Podcast, “Julia Bartz and The Writing Retreat”

She Wore Black Podcast, “A Vietnamese Gothic with Trang Thanh Tran”

I listened to Harley Quinn and The Joker: Sound Mind this month and I enjoyed the hell out of it. If you’re a Joker/Harley fan, definitely make sure you check this out.

I also checked out Batman Unburied. Dennis told me about it when it first came out, but you know, I didn’t listen to him, so yeah, I’m a bit late to the party on this one. With that said, I enjoyed this a lot and it kept going places that I wasn’t expecting. Horror fans will especially dig this and 100% see the influence of Will Graham–which, honestly, was pretty cool. 

Also as a reminder, if you enjoy and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Best,

Stephanie

MADHOUSE AUTHOR INTERVIEW: ELEGIES OF ROTTING STARS WITH TIFFANY MORRIS

Hello friends and fiends--

Today in The Madhouse, I'm honored to welcome Tiffany Morris whose poetry collection Elegies of Rotting Stars completely devoured me in the best, cosmic, most amazing way. For those of you unfamiliar with Tiffany and her work, Tiffany Morris is a Mi’kmaw/settler writer of speculative fiction and poetry from Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Nova Scotia. Her work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, and Apex Magazine, among others, and she has an MA in English with a focus on Indigenous Futurisms. She is a member of the Speculative Fiction Poetry Association and the Horror Writers Association, and her work has been nominated for Elgin, Rhysling, and Aurora Awards. You can find her on Twitter @tiffmorris or at tiffmorris.com.

Now when Tiffany first approached me about her work, she sent me this summary: Witches, demons, and grief stalk a blasted wasteland. Pessimism and hope glimmer in odd constellations.  Elegies of Rotting Stars is a harrowing journey through the horrors of apocalypse, climate change, and colonialism. A collection of horror poetry for a world on fire. And with a description like that, how could I say no? I mean, it felt like it was everything I could hope for in a book, and once I started reading, I was taken in by this beautiful grief and violence, this otherworldly fear and terror that seeped through the lines and seemed to grab me by the throat. Truly, I can't say enough good things about this book, and I'm 100% a fan girl now forever more, so please join me in picking up a copy of her collection as you settle down with some Tarragon and Tentacle tea and join us in our conversation below.

With stardust,

Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: Hi Tiffany! Welcome to The Madhouse. Since this is your first time joining us here, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to poetry in the first place?

TM: Thank you so much for having me! My name is Tiffany Morris, I’m a Mi’kmaw writer from Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Nova Scotia. I’ve been writing poetry professionally for about a decade, though merging it with my love of horror is more recent and where I feel like I’ve truly found my voice. I love to incorporate Mi’kmaw language into my work to practice my own language reclamation and to experiment with meaning. As Mi’kmaq is a verb-based language and horror is a genre relying upon action and revelation, I like seeing where those elements can exist in tension and harmony.

SMW: What was your writing process like for Elegies of Rotting Stars?

TM: The sources of inspiration in this collection run the gamut from folk horror to giallo to theory that I’d read for my master’s thesis in 2020/2021 and still had on my mind. A lot of these poems channel my anger and anxiety over capitalism and colonialism and the corresponding apocalyptic conditions they create. My editor Sean Malia Thompson helped me bring these poems into greater resonance with each other to provide commentary on loss, pessimism, and spirituality, which is at the heart of the collection and overarching themes in my writing.

SMW: In your opening poem “There Are No Simple Hymns,” you write: “She boils the/amniotic milk: presses/crushed violets/to her mouth.”  You marry ritual with the cosmic so beautifully throughout this piece and this collection, and I wondered if you could talk a little bit about what drew you to that subgenre/approach?

TM: Thank you! I’m fascinated by ritual, and how the sacred emerges through the veils of perception – no matter what tradition, translating mystical experiences and/or inducing numinous states is some of the most interesting work that humans do. Add prophecy and witchcraft to that, and it’s absolutely my jam. I wrote “There Are No Simple Hymns” as part of my interest in all things mystical and witchy. I like to use specifically witchy imagery, often thinking of witchcraft alongside women being the traditional workers of death and oracles of different traditions and cultures – both of which provide a deeper glimpse into the machinery of the sacred. Maybe it’s also just me writing about my dream job as a forest oracle who gives cryptic messages to travelers.

SMW: I love looking at poetry as a form of shadow work. Can you talk about how you explore and process darkness in your work, especially in pieces like “I Am My Own Haunted House?”

TM: Oh, me too! I love to bury my emotions in poetry – sometimes it’s the only way the truth of them can be brought to the surface, which is part of shadow work. This book deals quite a bit with both Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher’s ideas of hauntology - ideas of the “always-already absent present” and nostalgia for futures that died or failed, and the spectral that exists in remnants of memory and desire. This emerges where I’m working through climate anxiety, personal anxiety about motherhood, and mourning my decision to not become a mother, which is where some of the pregnancy loss imagery comes from. While I didn’t personally experience it while writing this book, some people I love did, and it underscored a lot of the emotions I was already working through about failed futures and traces of those futures in the present. That’s why that imagery comes up quite a bit through the collection – and why I included a content warning for it, even though it’s not always at the forefront of the poems where it appears.

SMW: After thinking about it for some time, I think “We Are Born Devouring” might be my favorite poem in the collection. I love the marriage of the body and nature and violence that you have running throughout the piece, and I’m curious about your thoughts on how you approach body horror and where you think its purpose is in the genre, especially with women and queer identities.

TM: As a fat bisexual Mi’kmaw cis woman, I occupy categories in my existence and my body that are devalued by a patriarchal and colonialist society, so it’s always interesting to me to play with monstrosity as a force of empowerment. “We Are Born Devouring” is my Mi’kmaw vampire poem. While vampires are a great metaphor for consumption and greed, I think they are the most interesting when they are approached as boundary-breakers, crossing the thresholds of life and death to occupy spaces where they should not exist. An unliving state recontextualized this way becomes a defiance of social murder – “the dusk that does not burn but breathes” can become a proclamation of Mi’kmaq presence, our breathing despite attempts to make us burn – and in that way, “destroying that which created you” can also be destroying definitions of monstrosity, and/or the idea of monstrosity as disempowerment.

SMW: In “Flag Burning Against a Storming Sky” your worldbuilding is exquisite. How do you approach building landscapes and otherworldly environments in your poetry?

TM: Thank you! “Flag Burning Against Storming Sky” is my anarchist anti-western poem, where I’m speaking against colonialist expansion and emphasizing that land outlives nation-states. Many myths of nation-building – that continue to this day – hinge on exploitation of land, thinking of it as resource and a concretization of borders rather than something with which humans are in relationship. To me, having a good relationship with land is of the utmost importance for all of us. In making landscapes and environments in my poems, I therefore like to look to what is living, vital, and active within it, and what the relationship between the beings in it looks like – how those relationships are sustained, what brings them into crisis.

SMW: When I was thinking about words I would associate with this collection, I got stuck on “sublime,” “existential,” and “revelation.” Would you agree with that? What other words or themes come to mind that you want readers to resonate with?

TM: I appreciate that! Those are things I had in mind while writing, and it’s always interesting to see what elements resonate with people. Some people have said that they find the collection hopeful and I’m always surprised but glad to hear it. I firmly believe that finding and creating meaning can propel us forward through crisis, whether one would call that an act of hope or not – I think even the title Elegies of Rotting Stars suggests catharsis and understanding in calamity and darkness.

SMW: Something I deeply admired about your collection was your line work. Can you talk about how you approach the line and work with breath in your poetry?

TM: I love to play with enjambment and space on the page, seeing where gaps emerge and where parentheses complicate meaning – I can spend hours playing with where the eye travels and where the pauses happen! This means taking the poem on a sentence by sentence, stanza by stanza basis. My work tends to be very heavy in imagery, so it becomes important to know when to overwhelm the reader with my word choices and when to pull back so they can make sense of it, especially since the reader may not be familiar with any of the Mi’kmaw words that might appear.

SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?

TM: I just started reading Writing Poetry in the Dark, which of course you edited, and it’s amazing so far! I’m also eagerly awaiting Jessica Drake-Thomas’ new collection Bad Omens and Jessica McHugh’s The Quiet Ways I Destroy You. I’m planning on reading pretty much any other horror poetry collections come out this year, it’s something I try to keep on my radar constantly!

SMW: What’s next for your readers?

TM: My weird horror novella Green Fuse Burning will be released from cli-fi publisher Stelliform Press later this year! I’ve loved their output for quite some time, so I’m really excited about it. If you like mushrooms, rot, and mysticism you’ll want to check it out for sure.

Wela’lin Stephanie for these amazing questions, and wela’lioq to all for reading!

Blurbs:

“Elegies of Rotting Stars by Tiffany Morris is a gorgeous and visceral collection that takes readers down into the depths of a dark, poetic cathedral. Within, stars bleed and ‘flowers drip like meat.’ The spiritual meets the unholy, and clouds dance like ghosts in an angry sky. Lush word choices surround every verse, and Morris does an expert job at evoking emotion, whether she’s navigating the striking cultural influences of the Mi’kmaq language or describing the earth’s sorrow. Readers will delight in the rich descriptions and haunting melodies so carefully crafted within this outstanding collection.” —Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil’s Dreamland

"If you own one poetry collection by a contemporary Indigenous writer, it'd better be this one. Elegies of Rotting Stars strikes like a scream; it is a cry in the darkness of a world hurtling toward environmental disaster, a sound felt through the hearts of every citizen of the Indigenous diaspora. Horrific, beautiful, unforgettable, it is as much a love letter to the Mi'kmaq language as it is an exploration of terror when our ties to our languages and Nations are severed. This book occupies the space between devastation and hope, proving that even in the face of genocide and separation from our homelands, we can always find ways to come home.”—Mae Murray, author and editor of The Book of Queer Saints

"The power of Tiffany Morris's words wakes you up with righteous anger, heart-rending shockwaves of recognition, and restorative wisdom in the face of doom. She handles horrors both cosmic and specific deftly, like a magician. Elegies of Rotting Stars is a beautiful, masterful book.”—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and Convulsive

“What Tiff Morris does with language, with form, with imagery, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Somewhere between poetry and prophecy, between ruin and rebirth, Morris is undoubtedly our most clear-eyed witness of the anthropocene and all that comes after.”—Paula D. Ashe, author of We Are Here to Hurt Each Other

January '23 Madhouse Recap: New Year, New Semester, New Career Paths

Hello friends and fiends–

Happy 2023!

I started off the new year by drinking hibiscus-peppermint water and doing some cinnamon magic. I pulled my archetype card for the year (The Riddle) and lit my intention candle. I then did some thrifting and went to Barnes and Noble and then ate a bunch of dumplings, because that’s how everyone starts off the new year, right?

I also got a carnelian and rose quartz bracelet to wear this year because 2023 is all about self-love, self-care, and confidence. I even remembered to charge them (along with my selenite wand and a TON of moon water) on the full moon last month, so I already feel like I’m off to a good start there; I’ve also been working with sunflower and reishi a bunch lately, too. I even picked up some actual sunflowers for my dining room (and some pink roses, because why not?) and then I’ve been taking sunflower essence first thing when I wake up every morning. I’ve also been drinking tons of water and working to move my body more with light yoga sessions either first thing in the morning, or later on at night, which I think has been successful so far as well. 

January also brought with it Evie’s first birthday and 1-year checkup–can you believe it? I don’t know how we’re already here–time goes so fast–but my little lady had such a wonderful day eating spice cake, getting showered with presents, and being covered in kisses. She’s also continuing to grow well, standing up on her own, feeding herself (we’re a big fan of yogurt melts these days), and talking up a storm. Lately, she’s been carrying around her baby philosophy books and making me play with her hippo in her princess tent, and like, it’s pretty magical, I won’t lie.

On the school front, things have been busier than ever. I finished teaching a class at SNHU mid-January right before my three graduate classes at WCSU started (reading lists included below). I’m also teaching an undergrad Women Write Horror class at PPU and gearing up to teach Writing the Vampire via LitReactor on the 7th (yes, there’s still time to sign up!). Dennis and I did manage to sneak away and see a Cirque du Soleil show (Corteo), so that was a great time (and a late Christmas present).

Other stuff that’s going on: I’m taking a class on the psychology of sexuality this semester, and we’re about 3.5 weeks in now and I’m really enjoying it. Studying psychology at Point Park–especially through a humanistic, critical lens– has been a really transformative experience for me. I started out taking some classes on a non-degree path because I just wanted more of a foundation in philosophy and psychology, but then it woke something up in me, something I haven’t felt for a really long time: excitement and intrigue. I started reading clinical books, listening to psychology podcasts, and asking myself a lot of deep questions, and as it often does, one thing led to the other, and I have some news to share with you folks. Starting in the fall, I’ll be entering Point Park’s Master’s program in Community Psychology with a focus on gender and sexuality studies. I have a lot of plans and ideas for how I want to merge this with my literature classes and writing paths, but in order to do that, I need some more training and I’m hoping this path continues to be an inspiring journey for me and my intellectual pursuits.

On the writing/teaching front:
In my one graduate class, we've been focusing on archetypes and representations of the poet, the witch, and the mother. We talk a lot about inward reflection and memoirs, rage, shame, and vulnerability, and it's going to be a powerful semester. This is the booklist for our upcoming term: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Animal Wife: Stories by Lara Ehrlich, M Train by Patti Smith, Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson, Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes, Depression and Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim, Woman Without Shame: Poems by Sandra Cisneros, Escaping the Body: Poems by Chloe N. Clark, Witch by Rebecca Tamas, and. The Truth is Told Better This Way by Liz WorthIn another one of my graduate classes this semester, I'm working with my student on editing and exploring the body. We're discussing different forms and approaches to poetry and then really looking at and dissecting the line. Below is our reading list: Eve by Annie Finch, The Sorrow Festival by Erin Slaughter, Internet Girlfriend by Stephanie Valente, Depression and Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim, Woman Without Shame: Poems by Sandra Cisneros, Escaping the Body: Poems by Chloe N. Clark, Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back by Alicia Cook, Poetry as Survival by Gregory Orr, and A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line by Emily Rosko and Anton Vander Zee.With my third graduate mentee, we’ll be working on the intersection of horror, true crime, and thriller this time around. Here is our booklist for the semester: The Science of Serial Killers: The Truth Behind Ted Bundy, Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, and Other Notorious Murders of Cinematic Legend by Meg Hafdahl and Kelley Florence, My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel, Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin, Daphne by Josh Malerman, Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey.The reading list for my Women Write Horror class at PPU this semester–which has just been an absolute blast to teach so far!--is: Monster, She Wrote: The Women who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kroger and Melanie Anderson, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez, Bunny by Mona Awad, Sisters by Daisy Johnson, Night Bitch by Rachel Yoder, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, and Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.Uncover the blood-soaked history and folklore surrounding the vampire while learning how to explore its archetype and leave new bite marks on the modern world. Interested? I’ll be teaching Writing the Vampire via LitReactor in February–class starts on the 7th, so be sure to sign up if you haven’t yet.I was honored to host Jessica Drake-Thomas (@bad_witchery) in The Madhouse today where we talk about poetry, the occult, and her upcoming collection Bad Omens, which is available for preorder now. You can read the interview here and check out my review of her past collection Burials here.

(RIP Lisa Loring--you brought me so much joy).

This month, I read:

Lovesick, Issue 2 &3 by Luana VecchioI Hate Fairyland, Issue 2 &3 by Skottie YoungBook of Slaughter by James Tynion IVHouse of Slaughter, Vol 2 by James TynionSomething is Killing the Children, Vol 5 by James TynionLore Olympus: Volume 3 by Rachel SmytheDid You Hear What Edie Gein Done? by Harold SchechterThe Science of Serial Killers: The Truth Behind Ted Bundy, Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, and Other Notorious Murderers of Cinematic Legend by MegHafdahl and Kelly FlorenceOne of our current WCSU MFA candidates wrote an article in response to the Bryan Kohberger killings and it’s a well-written and insightful piece on the intersection of criminology and psychopathology. If you’re interested in reading it, you can access it here.Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kroger and Melanie Anderson (reread)The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen GroszBad Omens by Jessica Drake-Thomas (make sure you folks buy this when it goes live!)Just Like Home by Sarah GaileyElegies of Rotting Stars by Tiffany MorrisI’m still working through Literally Dead: Tales of Halloween Hauntings edited by Gaby Triana, and this month I read “A Halloween Visit” by Dana Hammer, which I absolutely loved! I also read: “Bootsy’s House” by Dennis K. Crosby, “Soul Cakes” by Catherine McCarthy, “Halloween at the Babylon” by Lisa Morton, and “Ghosts of Candies Past” by Jeff Strand, which had me cracking up in the best way!I’ve also been casually reading Les Femmes Grotesques by Victoria Dalpe, which I’ve really been enjoying. So far I’ve read “The Grove” and “Mater Annelida”--and I can’t stop thinking about the latter. I’m really enjoying the collection so far and looking forward to reading more!“The H Word: The Missing and the Murdered: True Crime as Content” by Cynthia Pelayo“The Hunt for the Leather Apron” by G. Neri“Tiny Little Wounds” by Carlie St. George

On the media front:

Disenchanted (2022), The Wonder (2022), American Psycho 2 (2002), Life After Beth (2014), 7 Women and a Murder (2021), Sorry About the Demon (2023), Morbius (2022), Kimi (2022), Wendell and Wild (2022), Luckiest Girl Alive (2022), Smile (2022), Megan (2023), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).Cabinet of Curiosities:“The Mumering:” I have a deep love for horror that surrounds or focuses on birds, so this episode was right up my alley. Plus, throw in some ghosts, meditations on grief, anger, and fear, and I’m there. I finished watching the last episode of Queer for Fear, which I super loved because it was all about lesbian vampires and bisexual horror. Yes. Please and thank you. If you haven’t watched this series yet, I can’t recommend it enough. This was wildly powerful and educational and it reframed how I think about a lot of movies while confirming how I felt about certain ones, too, especially in my adolescence. Also, I haven’t seen Heavenly Creatures and I think I need to change that soon.Archive 81: I devoured this. Completely obsessed. This definitely has become one of my favorite limited series. The Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge: I randomly found this on Prime, so I had to watch it. I love the color and whimsy of Seuss, so this was a lot of fun to see translated into the baking world! If you like baking shows, I’d recommend giving this one a go!Ginny and Georgia, Season 2: Ah, what an ending! This season was somehow even more intense than the first and I felt my breath stuck in my throat on more than one occasion. This isn’t something I would usually watch, but I’m glad I gave it a go when it first came out because I’m completely hooked. Trixie Motel: I was browsing on HBO for something to watch that wasn’t horror-related (I know, I was shocked, too!) and well, I love drag queens and a good DIY project so this was an easy binge for me. My favorite part though, was when Evie clapped during all the room reveals, ha.Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre: It’s no secret that I love me some Junji Ito, so I’ve been savoring this series and trying to watch it slowly. I watched “The Strange Hikizuir Siblings: The Seance,” which was a story I wasn’t familiar with but ended up really enjoying, and then I watched one of my favorite stories of his “The Hanging Balloons.” The Last of Us: Dennis and I watched the first episode of this and it completely decimated my heart (in a good way, but damn). I definitely want to continue watching, but I think this is going to be a slow watch for me.

Podcasts:

I listened to the 12-episode audio drama Quiet Part Loud and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it. Really creepy stuff, great voice-over work, and it was a narrative that constantly kept me unnerved but excited to come back for more! If you haven’t checked it out yet, consider adding it to your list!

Books in the Freezer Podcast, “New Release Horror Books 2023”

Books in the Freezer Podcast, “Haunted Houses with Grady Hendrix”

She Wore Black Podcast, “Grady Hendrix and How to Sell a Haunted House”

She Wore Black Podcast, “Erotic Horror with V. Castro”

She Wore Black Podcast, “Mary Shelley with Kris Waldherr”

She Wore Black Podcast, “Edgar Allan Poe’s Enduring Appeal with Sara Crocoll Smith”

Talking Scared Podcast, “Grady Hendrix and the Radical Puppet Collective”

Welcome to Night Vale, “Pilot”

Welcome to Night Vale, “A Story About You”

Pyschology in 10 Minutes, “Why the Stages of Grief are Wrong”

Psychology in 10 Minutes, “Why Giving Up Can Sometimes Be Good”

Psychology in 10 Minutes,  “Is Psychology a Real Science?”

Psychology in 10 Minutes, “The Power of Rituals to Heal Grief”

Psychology in 10 Minutes, “Three Things People Say to Annoy Psychologists”

Psychology in 10 Minutes, “Mindfullness and Self-Compassion for a Difficult Year”

Psychology in 10 Minutes, “Why Daydreaming is Good for Us”

Also as a reminder, if you enjoy and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Best,

Stephanie

Madhouse Author Interview: Bad Omens with Jessica Drake-Thomas

Hello Friends and Fiends--

Today in The Madhouse, I'm honored to hold space for Jessica Drake-Thomas, a poet who completely took my breath away with her collection Burials in 2022. When she reached out to me about her upcoming collection Bad Omens, I could not read it fast enough and I think most of you will feel the same. 

In her own words: "Bad Omens is a book of dark, gothic horror poetry that combines tarot, dark goddesses, Victorian era funeral rites, and baneful witchcraft as vehicles to explore feminism in the pandemic/Post Roe era."

Reading it was like drinking a hot cup of poisonous tea, like sleeping with a scorpion on your face. It was beautiful and dangerous and angry--which is just how I like my poetry.

I hope you'll all join us below for a fascinating interview and consider preordering or picking up a copy of the collection with it goes live. Also as a reminder, if you enjoy and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

In moonlight, 

Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: Hi Jessica! Welcome to The Madhouse. Since this is your first time joining us here, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to poetry in the first place?

JDT: Thanks so much for having me! I’m a gothic horror poet and novelist, a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and a practicing witch, currently living and freezing in Wisconsin. I am one of several poetry editors at Coffin Bell Journal. I’m a dog mom to Poppy, a black lab. I’m also the author of two books of poetry, Burials, and Bad Omens.

I’ve had some really amazing teachers who got me turned toward writing and poetry. I was first drawn to poetry when I was in the second grade. My teacher read us a book called Sing a Song of Popcorn. Most of it was nonsense, but it was playful and good to read aloud. It taught me early on that poetry was something that you could have fun with. Then, when I was in the eighth grade, my English teacher gave us a whole hour every week to sit and write. It didn’t matter what, just that we were writing. I automatically started writing poetry, and I haven’t stopped since.   

SMW: What was your writing process like for Bad Omens?

JDT: I wrote Bad Omens in bed during 2020 while binge-eating a five-pound bag of gummy worms and binge-watching Penny Dreadful and Vikings. I wrote all the original drafts pretty quickly over a two-month period, and then I went back and revised extensively over the next two years.

SMW: In your opening poem “Speak to Me” you wrote: “as if I’m covered in blood:/a crimson dress/of sacrifice’s incarnadine, /or don’t speak/at all.” Something I loved about your collection was how assertive it was. It demanded my attention, held me accountable, and wasn’t afraid to ask for what it wanted. Can you talk a bit about how that relates to feminist horror poetry and themes of rage and empowerment?

JDT: At the time, I was taking a class for my Ph.D. program titled Gender and Anger. In the class, we were talking a lot about how women express or can’t express rage, and how speaking up and taking space is empowering. Something that I really love about feminist horror poetry right now is how the speakers confess their rage in a way that is really compelling. I wanted to do that for myself, especially with “Speak to Me.” I was raised by a man who was always very angry, and too comfortable with expressing it and taking it out on others. In my daily life, I don’t feel comfortable expressing anger because of that.  With that piece, I created a speaker who feels fully able to express herself without reservation. Writing that piece felt empowering. It was really refreshing. It was a nice way to start off a book that’s about female rage and empowerment.

SMW: You work with a lot of occult and spiritual images throughout the collection (Hel’s Horse, Fenrir, Tarot, The Book of the Dead). What draws you to these subjects and how do you like to work with them in your creative work?

JDT: When I was working on this book, I was working with those occult and spiritual images that I most feel a kinship with. It was 2020, and the height of the pandemic, so I was looking for ways to keep myself rooted, so I turned to the dark goddesses—particularly Hel, the Morrigan, Hekate—to pull through it and keep myself sane. There are several poems speaking from their perspectives, and that really helped me.  

SMW: In Bad Omens, you talk a lot about the beyond, peeking behind the veil, what comes after death. As such, I’m curious: have you ever had any experiences with ghosts or hauntings? Do you have any superstitions you feel comfortable talking about?

JDT: 100%. I totally believe in ghosts. I’ve lived in several apartments that were definitely haunted and I had to share space with them. Most recently, I was over my boyfriend’s house, and I saw a figure dressed in white muslin pass through a door on the landing. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, but I could see the way that the cloth of her dress swept across the floor—it was late 1800s period clothing, with that wide skirt. She didn’t feel threatening. I think she was just letting me know she was there. As far as superstitions go, I do think there is another world that we can’t see but is pressed right up against ours. I think the people who we’ve loved who have gone on are in that world, and they’re still with us. I believe there are spaces where these two worlds bleed into each other. I was thinking about it a lot while writing this book since a dear friend had died by suicide. I felt that she was close by during that time.

SMW: There’s no mistaking how you marry the macabre with the beautiful in this collection. Can you talk a bit about the beautiful grotesque and where you think its power exists for readers and horror creators alike?

JDT: I just think there’s something lovely about darkness. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of shadow work, and was able to connect with something within myself that I really loved. I think that’s a pretty common experience within the community of horror writers and readers. We’re curious about the darkness, and then when we go looking, we find something that’s beautiful and meaningful within the grotesque.

SMW: A question I like to ask poets who work with darker subject matters in their work is how you protect yourself when dealing with and exploring shadows. Can you speak to how you protect your mental health when spending time in the dark?

JDT: People laugh when they find out that I really love cupcakes, pop music, and romance novels. But that’s how I protect myself. There has to be a balance to the darkness—I can’t consume it one hundred percent of the time. I need a break, and that’s when I turn to more lighthearted things for comfort. I also have a lot of people and dogs in my life who bring me joy. They keep me really balanced. 

SMW: Bad Omens reminds me of a poisonous flower and if I had to connect it with/to anything, it would be The Witch. What about the archetype of the witch do you like playing with the most? Furthermore, why do you think the witch has gotten more and more popular over the years?

JDT: It’s funny that you say that because I was thinking of Belladonna/Deadly Nightshade a lot while writing this book, and the plant sort of became a character/speaker in my mind. The witch as an outsider is an archetype that I really relate to—someone who doesn’t quite fit in and is on a different path from the rest of society. I’ve never really felt like I’ve fit in—I’ve always stood out.

SMW: What poets are you currently reading? Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?

JDT: Recently, I’ve read Cynthia Pelayo’s Crime Scene, Zephyr Lisowski’s Blood Box, Doireann Ni Ghriofa’s To Star the Darkness, and torrin a. greathouse’s Wound from the Mouth of a Wound. I’ve been re-reading Lament for Art O’Leary,by Eiblin Dubh ni Chonaill, which is this gorgeous 300-year-old poem about a woman mourning her murdered husband. When she finds his body, she’s so upset she starts drinking his blood. I am really looking forward to Grace R. Reynolds’ new collection, The Lies We Weave.

SMW: What’s next for your readers?

JDT: I have a novel forthcoming from Cemetery Dance’s ebook and paperback line in March of 2024 called All Hollow Girls that is inspired by Hellierand The Blair Witch Project.

Praise for Bad Omens:

Bad Omens by Jessica Drake-Thomas is a seance, a collection of shadows. These poems are both plague and witch, a journey into the burning, a dance into the violent. Best enjoyed with a cup of black tea, readers will siphon the poison off these pages, kiss the death that awaits between each word. --Stephanie M. Wytovich, Bram Stoker award-winning poet of Brothel. 

BAD OMENS by Jessica Drake-Thomas begets a canticle of death and resurrection, a spell for love and revenge, a bellow to claw your way out of the dark and back into this world with fire in your heart. Gothic and mystical, this occult collection drips with saccharine siren songs that tear you apart and inspire righteous anger. Readers will be haunted, enticed, and moved to be true to the darkness in their hearts and ‘let the wolves loose.’⸺ Grace R. Reynolds, author of Lady of The House

December ���22 Madhouse Recap: Honoring Time and Saying Goodbye to 2022

Hello Friends and Fiends���

I don���t know about you folks but I���m so happy to be on the other side of 2022. What a year, yeah? Like I feel like Veronica Sawyer at the end of Heathers. After dealing with PPD, getting diagnosed with OCD, and grieving loved ones, and dealing with some health scares in my little family, I just want this year to be calm. It doesn���t even have to be exciting���a boring 2023 would actually be great.

That aside though, 2022 taught me a lot about myself. Evie has blessed my life in countless ways and honestly, I know some people are weird about scars, but I love that I see the results of carrying her and birthing her every day. It feels empowering to me, and it reminds me that I���m strong���and for me, that���s something that I need and treasure. I���ve also been seeing a therapist pretty much once a week for the past year, and it���s been a tremendous journey of healing���emotionally and physically. I got on a new medication plan, have new insight into how my body reacts to trauma and my PTSD, and I���m putting in the work to unravel some generational pain to make sure it doesn���t make its way to Evie. This entire process has brought me so much comfort, stillness, and hope, and I feel so much closer to my daughter as a result. I hope this path continues to enlighten me and my heart and that I continue to gain confidence and acceptance of my inner self. 

That���s why my power word for 2023 is no. 

Needless to say, though, because of the above, I really struggled to get in the holiday spirit this year. I had a lovely spa day mid-month to celebrate the end of the semester, but I didn���t really do anything else for Yule, and I had pretty much given up on Christmas; I didn���t even buy a tree. I did throw up some decorations though, and Evie and I watched a TON of holiday favorites, but I was slowly becoming okay with the idea that I just didn���t have it in me to make any magic this month.

 

One day though, while Evie and I were pregaming for an evening of Elmo World, Dennis fixed our stove (which broke last month), and then went out and got all the ingredients I needed to do my Christmas baking. I was so excited (yes, I cried), and I spent the whole night baking with Evie. She stayed up till 1 a.m. licking spoons, sampling cookies, and dancing to Disney holiday music and we both went to sleep exhausted but happy (and okay, covered in powdered sugar, too). I finished the rest of my baking the following day with an army of gingerbread cookies and a cranberry-orange loaf to have for breakfast on Christmas morning (a tradition of mine). It felt so good to make all of these homemade treats and give them out to family and friends, and that certainly perked me up and brought joy into my holiday. What was even better was that Evie stayed up till midnight on Christmas Eve and Dennis decorated her whole nursery with Christmas lights, and her face when she saw it? It was the most beautiful thing I���ve ever seen and I���ll remember it forever.

I closed out the year by spending lots of time with friends. My friend Patrick came in for a holiday visit and we all went to The Aviary with Evie and then grabbed some drinks and dinner at Church Brew Works; I had some friends over for a craft night where we made spell jars and set our intentions for the new year; Dennis and I went out for drinks one night at Meat and Potatoes and I had the best drink of my entire drinking history: an upstate sour. Trust me. Try it. And then we closed out 2022 at a friend's house with lots of kids, laughter, champagne, and good spirits. 

I���m looking forward to all that 2023 has to bring.

On the writing/teaching front:

I finished up teaching two grad classes this term and sat in on a student���s thesis semester as well. I���m so incredibly proud of my mentees and I think we shared a lot of great experiences (creative and human, alike) that pushed us to evolve, think critically, and push ourselves as artists. I truly love my job at WCSU so much and I���m already looking forward to the spring semester there.I finished up two psychology courses this fall and got a 4.0 at the end of the term. I had a blast learning and challenging myself (especially from a critical lens rather than a clinical one) and I���m looking forward to the spring when I���ll be studying the psychology of sexual behavior.I���ll be teaching my Archetypal Vampire class with LitReactor again here soon. Details: Study the archetype of the vampire to track how it's evolved throughout literature & film, then create a series of stories/poems in response to the vampire & its place in contemporary fiction. Writing the Vampire starts February 7th. Sign up now!This review came in for Writing Poetry in the Dark and I���m so incredibly moved by it. This is exactly what I hoped the book would accomplish and I���ll carry this one with me.Check out some behind-the-scenes craft advice that walks you through how I wrote my story "A Trail of Feathers, a Trail of Blood" from my poem "Dinner with Baba Yaga" for Into the Forest via Black Spot Books.Looking into the new year, have you ordered the Shakespeare Unleashed anthology yet? If not, you can pick up your copy here.My article ���The Must-Read Horror Graphic Novels of 2022��� was published at LitReactor last month. If you missed it, you can read it here. Likewise, if you want to see some of my favorite reads from 2022, you can check out this LitReactor end-of-year wrap-up, too!

This month, I read:

Motherthing by Ainslie HogarthWoman Without Shame: Poems by Sandra CisnerosThey Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces by Eric LaRoccaBad Dolls by Rachel HarrisonWitch by Rebecca Tamas���The Lizard Dance��� by Jeff VandermeerFarmhand, Issue 1 by Rob GuilloryHex Ware, Issue 1 by Tim Seeley

Something that I love sharing is my reading stats (thanks to The Story Graph!). I ended up reading 85 books this year (not including all the single-issue comics I enjoyed), and below is a look at my moods and my top 10 genres of 2023.

On the media front:

New Watches: How to Change Your Mind (2022), The Work (2017), The Imposter (2012)

Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror, Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), Orphan: First Kill (2022), Monstrous (2022), The Invitation (2022).

Cabinet of Curisioites: 

���Dreams in the Witch House���- So this is another favorite Lovecraft story of mine, and I gotta say, I really wasn���t into this interpretation. I thought Keziah looked cool but it felt more dark fantasy than horror to me (which is totally fine), but it just didn���t vibe with the vision that was in my head, and Brown Jenkins really didn���t work for me. Sigh. Oh well. 

Dragula, Titans: I���m so happy that my QUEEN Victoria Elizabeth Black took home the crown as Dragula���s ultimate Titan, but I���m just devastated with how that finale turned out. I wanted to see the tenants on display, and I was so upset that there wasn���t a crowning and that Victoria didn���t have her Carrie moment. I get that creatively they were looking to do something different this season, which I respect, but it didn���t necessarily work for me; trust though, that I will happily be here for whatever the Boulet Brothers do next. 

Riverdale, Season 6: I really wasn���t sure what to expect with this season, especially because I wasn���t a big fan of season 5, but I have to say, I enjoyed the hell out of this. I was a little thrown with the Rivervale vs Riverdale paradox in the beginning and I honestly didn���t think they would be able to tie it all together (I���m not really a fan of time-jumping plots) but I was hooked and I dug it: the multiverse, the magic, the darkness, and the TBK plot. Looking forward to season 7!

Afterlife: I really enjoyed the final season of this. I���ve been putting it off for some time because this show always sends me into an existential crisis, but I thought it was beautifully done and it gave me a lot to think about in regard to life, kindness, and love. 

The Santa Clauses: I loved this. I haven���t really been in a Christmas mood this year, but I always watch all The Santa Claus movies, so having this as something to look forward to every week was really nice. I thought the humor was spot on, too, I loved that La Befana was in there, and I���m happy with how they tied up some loopholes, too. Also, the elves totally cracked me up (Team Betty and Noel)! 

I also watched A Christmas Story Christmas (begrudgingly). I don���t want to admit that I liked it, but I kind of did, and seeing that I had no holiday spirit at all last year, this was at least a nice step in the right direction. 

We watched the new Great British Baking Show Holiday episodes and had a blast with them. That show inspires the hell out of me and I���m not ashamed to admit it.

The Sex Lives of College Girls: What can I say about this? I���m just so happy this show exists and season 2 was perfect and everything I hoped for. But that ending? DAMN. How am I supposed to wait all this time for season 3 now? If you���re not watching this, at least give it a shot! 

Dead to Me, Season 3: I couldn���t really remember the first two seasons, so I happily rewatched them before diving into season 3 (which I basically cried all the way through). I thought the ending was perfect and beautifully sad and just appropriate on all levels. Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini were just goddesses throughout this entire project and I highly applaud them both.

Podcasts:

Talking Scared, Episode 39 Josh Malerman and a Local Town for Local People

Talking Scared, Episode 125 The Best Horror Books of 2022

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Holiday Horror with Janelle Janson

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Best of 2022 with Rachel

It���s Not Just in Your Head, Episode 106 Borderline Personality Disorder, ft Dr. Bethany Morris 

Pop Psych 101, Episode 9 Psychiatric Hospitalization in One Flew Over the Cuckoo���s Nest (Movie)

Pop Psych 101, Episode 1 Dissociative Identity Disorder in Fight Club (Movie)

Pop Psych 101, Episode 24 Psychopathy vs Sociopathy in Mindhunter (Netflix)

Pop Psych 101, Episode 31 So You���re Dating a Murderer in Netflix���s You

Pop Psych 101, Episode 78 Wellness Gurus & Psychedelics in Nine Perfect Strangers

Pop Psych 101, Episode 5 Phobias in Stephen King���s It (Movie/TV Mini-Series)

Also as a reminder, if you enjoy and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Best,

Stephanie

December ‘22 Madhouse Recap: Honoring Time and Saying Goodbye to 2022

Hello Friends and Fiends—

I don’t know about you folks but I’m so happy to be on the other side of 2022. What a year, yeah? Like I feel like Veronica Sawyer at the end of Heathers. After dealing with PPD, getting diagnosed with OCD, and grieving loved ones, and dealing with some health scares in my little family, I just want this year to be calm. It doesn’t even have to be exciting–a boring 2023 would actually be great.

That aside though, 2022 taught me a lot about myself. Evie has blessed my life in countless ways and honestly, I know some people are weird about scars, but I love that I see the results of carrying her and birthing her every day. It feels empowering to me, and it reminds me that I’m strong–and for me, that’s something that I need and treasure. I’ve also been seeing a therapist pretty much once a week for the past year, and it’s been a tremendous journey of healing–emotionally and physically. I got on a new medication plan, have new insight into how my body reacts to trauma and my PTSD, and I’m putting in the work to unravel some generational pain to make sure it doesn’t make its way to Evie. This entire process has brought me so much comfort, stillness, and hope, and I feel so much closer to my daughter as a result. I hope this path continues to enlighten me and my heart and that I continue to gain confidence and acceptance of my inner self. 

That’s why my power word for 2023 is no. 

Needless to say, though, because of the above, I really struggled to get in the holiday spirit this year. I had a lovely spa day mid-month to celebrate the end of the semester, but I didn’t really do anything else for Yule, and I had pretty much given up on Christmas; I didn’t even buy a tree. I did throw up some decorations though, and Evie and I watched a TON of holiday favorites, but I was slowly becoming okay with the idea that I just didn’t have it in me to make any magic this month.

 

One day though, while Evie and I were pregaming for an evening of Elmo World, Dennis fixed our stove (which broke last month), and then went out and got all the ingredients I needed to do my Christmas baking. I was so excited (yes, I cried), and I spent the whole night baking with Evie. She stayed up till 1 a.m. licking spoons, sampling cookies, and dancing to Disney holiday music and we both went to sleep exhausted but happy (and okay, covered in powdered sugar, too). I finished the rest of my baking the following day with an army of gingerbread cookies and a cranberry-orange loaf to have for breakfast on Christmas morning (a tradition of mine). It felt so good to make all of these homemade treats and give them out to family and friends, and that certainly perked me up and brought joy into my holiday. What was even better was that Evie stayed up till midnight on Christmas Eve and Dennis decorated her whole nursery with Christmas lights, and her face when she saw it? It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and I’ll remember it forever.

I closed out the year by spending lots of time with friends. My friend Patrick came in for a holiday visit and we all went to The Aviary with Evie and then grabbed some drinks and dinner at Church Brew Works; I had some friends over for a craft night where we made spell jars and set our intentions for the new year; Dennis and I went out for drinks one night at Meat and Potatoes and I had the best drink of my entire drinking history: an upstate sour. Trust me. Try it. And then we closed out 2022 at a friend's house with lots of kids, laughter, champagne, and good spirits. 

I’m looking forward to all that 2023 has to bring.

On the writing/teaching front:

I finished up teaching two grad classes this term and sat in on a student’s thesis semester as well. I’m so incredibly proud of my mentees and I think we shared a lot of great experiences (creative and human, alike) that pushed us to evolve, think critically, and push ourselves as artists. I truly love my job at WCSU so much and I’m already looking forward to the spring semester there.I finished up two psychology courses this fall and got a 4.0 at the end of the term. I had a blast learning and challenging myself (especially from a critical lens rather than a clinical one) and I’m looking forward to the spring when I’ll be studying the psychology of sexual behavior.I’ll be teaching my Archetypal Vampire class with LitReactor again here soon. Details: Study the archetype of the vampire to track how it's evolved throughout literature & film, then create a series of stories/poems in response to the vampire & its place in contemporary fiction. Writing the Vampire starts February 7th. Sign up now!This review came in for Writing Poetry in the Dark and I’m so incredibly moved by it. This is exactly what I hoped the book would accomplish and I’ll carry this one with me.Check out some behind-the-scenes craft advice that walks you through how I wrote my story "A Trail of Feathers, a Trail of Blood" from my poem "Dinner with Baba Yaga" for Into the Forest via Black Spot Books.Looking into the new year, have you ordered the Shakespeare Unleashed anthology yet? If not, you can pick up your copy here.My article “The Must-Read Horror Graphic Novels of 2022” was published at LitReactor last month. If you missed it, you can read it here. Likewise, if you want to see some of my favorite reads from 2022, you can check out this LitReactor end-of-year wrap-up, too!

This month, I read:

Motherthing by Ainslie HogarthWoman Without Shame: Poems by Sandra CisnerosThey Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces by Eric LaRoccaBad Dolls by Rachel HarrisonWitch by Rebecca Tamas“The Lizard Dance” by Jeff VandermeerFarmhand, Issue 1 by Rob GuilloryHex Ware, Issue 1 by Tim Seeley

Something that I love sharing is my reading stats (thanks to The Story Graph!). I ended up reading 85 books this year (not including all the single-issue comics I enjoyed), and below is a look at my moods and my top 10 genres of 2023.

On the media front:

New Watches: How to Change Your Mind (2022), The Work (2017), The Imposter (2012)

Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror, Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), Orphan: First Kill (2022), Monstrous (2022), The Invitation (2022).

Cabinet of Curisioites: 

“Dreams in the Witch House”- So this is another favorite Lovecraft story of mine, and I gotta say, I really wasn’t into this interpretation. I thought Keziah looked cool but it felt more dark fantasy than horror to me (which is totally fine), but it just didn’t vibe with the vision that was in my head, and Brown Jenkins really didn’t work for me. Sigh. Oh well. 

Dragula, Titans: I’m so happy that my QUEEN Victoria Elizabeth Black took home the crown as Dragula’s ultimate Titan, but I’m just devastated with how that finale turned out. I wanted to see the tenants on display, and I was so upset that there wasn’t a crowning and that Victoria didn’t have her Carrie moment. I get that creatively they were looking to do something different this season, which I respect, but it didn’t necessarily work for me; trust though, that I will happily be here for whatever the Boulet Brothers do next. 

Riverdale, Season 6: I really wasn’t sure what to expect with this season, especially because I wasn’t a big fan of season 5, but I have to say, I enjoyed the hell out of this. I was a little thrown with the Rivervale vs Riverdale paradox in the beginning and I honestly didn’t think they would be able to tie it all together (I’m not really a fan of time-jumping plots) but I was hooked and I dug it: the multiverse, the magic, the darkness, and the TBK plot. Looking forward to season 7!

Afterlife: I really enjoyed the final season of this. I’ve been putting it off for some time because this show always sends me into an existential crisis, but I thought it was beautifully done and it gave me a lot to think about in regard to life, kindness, and love. 

The Santa Clauses: I loved this. I haven’t really been in a Christmas mood this year, but I always watch all The Santa Claus movies, so having this as something to look forward to every week was really nice. I thought the humor was spot on, too, I loved that La Befana was in there, and I’m happy with how they tied up some loopholes, too. Also, the elves totally cracked me up (Team Betty and Noel)! 

I also watched A Christmas Story Christmas (begrudgingly). I don’t want to admit that I liked it, but I kind of did, and seeing that I had no holiday spirit at all last year, this was at least a nice step in the right direction. 

We watched the new Great British Baking Show Holiday episodes and had a blast with them. That show inspires the hell out of me and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

The Sex Lives of College Girls: What can I say about this? I’m just so happy this show exists and season 2 was perfect and everything I hoped for. But that ending? DAMN. How am I supposed to wait all this time for season 3 now? If you’re not watching this, at least give it a shot! 

Dead to Me, Season 3: I couldn’t really remember the first two seasons, so I happily rewatched them before diving into season 3 (which I basically cried all the way through). I thought the ending was perfect and beautifully sad and just appropriate on all levels. Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini were just goddesses throughout this entire project and I highly applaud them both.

Podcasts:

Talking Scared, Episode 39 Josh Malerman and a Local Town for Local People

Talking Scared, Episode 125 The Best Horror Books of 2022

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Holiday Horror with Janelle Janson

Books in the Freezer Podcast, Best of 2022 with Rachel

It’s Not Just in Your Head, Episode 106 Borderline Personality Disorder, ft Dr. Bethany Morris 

Pop Psych 101, Episode 9 Psychiatric Hospitalization in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Movie)

Pop Psych 101, Episode 1 Dissociative Identity Disorder in Fight Club (Movie)

Pop Psych 101, Episode 24 Psychopathy vs Sociopathy in Mindhunter (Netflix)

Pop Psych 101, Episode 31 So You’re Dating a Murderer in Netflix’s You

Pop Psych 101, Episode 78 Wellness Gurus & Psychedelics in Nine Perfect Strangers

Pop Psych 101, Episode 5 Phobias in Stephen King’s It (Movie/TV Mini-Series)

Also as a reminder, if you enjoy and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Best,

Stephanie

For Mrs. Vasko--

One of my party tricks (and I say that lightly and in jest) is that I can recite a list of all the prepositions faster than most people can say “Hi Stephanie. How have you been?” My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Vasko, taught it to me as a kid to help me with my writing, and at 33 years old, it’s still fresh as can be in my head (along with all the presidents and all the state capitols).

So much of my childhood is intertwined with her and her family: trips to Touchstone, softball games, the Leo Club, tons of community service projects, and countless art projects. Heck, I can still remember decorating my bowl for the Empty Bowl Dinner in elementary school. Why? Because everything we did was met with a bigger purpose. I never felt like I was just learning or just helping out. With Mrs. Vasko, everything was always bigger, brighter, and more meaningful. She taught from a place of kindness, and empathy, and honestly, it was a beautiful thing to witness.

She was my first mentor, and she was the first person who made me want to be a teacher; I even considered Clarion University for a while because that’s where she went and I wanted to be a similar force of good in the eyes of those around me. Someone who made a difference, someone who was the change they wanted to see in the world. I remember when she started Mrs. Claus and truly, there wasn’t a better person to encompass that name and everything the group stood for. Mrs. Vasko made miracles happen every day for so many people and it breaks my heart to think that when she needed one herself, it wasn’t granted to her.

I was talking to my dad this morning and he said it perfectly: “she took [something] that was already amazing, and then put the cherry on top.” And she did—with everything. She was magic, someone who always went the extra mile and who greeted the day and all those around her with love. If you were sick, she brought food. If you needed her, she’d travel. As I grew up, I watched her instill similar lessons of compassion in my brother, and our families got closer because her daughter and my brother were in the same class, so I got to see my teacher (and her family) become a dear family friend.


Mrs. Vasko celebrated my wedding. She came to my baby shower. She sent me cookie recipes and checked in on my daughter, and even got Evie her first Christmas ornament. We danced together at my brother’s wedding and drank tons of wine together at events over the years. If I close my eyes, I can still hear her laugh, still see her smile, and when I was going back through my messages this morning, the last thing I said to her was: “Love you. Thank you for always being so wonderful and supportive in my life. It means so much and I just think the world of you.”

I’m so happy those were my last words to her because that’s what I wanted to tell her, what I still want to tell her. My life is better for knowing her, for being taught by her, for being loved by her. I will miss her terribly, and it’s not fair—it’s never fair—but she was a bright and shining example of someone who lived and who lived fully, and I will try to remember that when the sadness surfaces, when the pain of her not being here hits.

I hope there are tons of books and wine and comfort and laughter where you are, Mrs. Vasko. I hope you can rest and know that you were and are loved and that we’ll take care of your family the way that you’ve always taken care of us.

I miss you and I love you.

And thank you, thank you so much for everything.

November '22 Madhouse Recap: Comics, The Music of Lily Dale, and Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

Hello Friends and Fiends—

November seemed to fly by, didn’t it? Most of the month I was lost in audits and registration woes for my day job, but there was also a fair amount of midterm grading, advising chats with my mentees, and a ton of reading (both for pleasure and for market research/work). I’m already looking ahead to next semester as I’ll have 3 mentees with WCSU and then I’ll be teaching an undergraduate course at PPU: Theoretical Approaches, Women Write Horror. I’m really excited about all of this and we’re going to read a ton of great books. I haven’t finalized my syllabi quite yet, but I can say that I’ll definitely be teaching Bunny by Mona Award, Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez, Sisters by Daisy Johnson, and Monster She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kroger and Melanie Anderson. I’m going back and forth between a few more books/short story collections, so we’ll see what happens in the next couple of weeks for the undergraduate class, but as always, I’ll be sure to post the readings lists in my January update for anyone who is interested in following along with us!

I feel like I haven’t been creatively producing a whole lot lately, but I’ve been doing a ton of research and reading for my psychology classes and working on a bunch of nonfiction stuff, and I’m feeling very okay with that. I definitely feel drawn to some new horizons lately and while internally I’m a panicked mess about it, I’m trying to honor and embrace change rather than run away from it (which I normally do). But don’t fear! I have a new poetry collection coming out in 2023, and I’ll have some short stories making their way into the world as well, so my dark and creepy isn’t leaving anytime soon. With that said, I have been playing with a new monster poem recently that I’m enjoying; I’m trying to accomplish a lot with it though so it’s taking some time, I bought Jill Tracy’s album The Secret Music of Lily Dale, and I’ve been vibing with that and enjoying it immensely; one of my friends also introduced me to the artist Blind Sage, and I’ve been listening to their 2022 Ice Wind album a bunch, too. Both of these soothe me and inspire me in different ways, and because I tend to obsess over songs instantly, these albums have pretty much been on repeat all last month.

Thanksgiving was bittersweet this year. We had a wonderful time at my cousin’s the weekend before and then celebrated again the day of at my mother-in-law’s with my family as well, but my sweet, angel dog Edgar Allan passed away a few days before and I’ve just been heartbroken ever since. Most of you know or have certainly seen pictures of my darling boy, and while I’m devastated that he’s gone, we spent 13 beautiful years together and he died a king’s death: warm, with a full belly, and surrounded by love. Edgar was instrumental in my life; he was my comfort, my solace, my critique partner, and such a sense of happiness and joy when I felt empty and alone. I feel blessed to have gotten to be his mom, and I’m confident I’ll feel his slobbery kisses again in another life because our bond was too strong for us not to continue on somewhere on the other side of the veil.

In happier news, Evie is a riot. She’s standing and crawling everywhere and she chugs her bottle one-handed now like an absolute party girl (I know, I know–I’m paying for my past sins). She’s wild and hysterical and makes faces at us all the time now, and she’s absolutely enchanted by Santa (we’ve been watching the Tim Allen Santa Clause movies and series), but she also devoured Wednesday with me and literally never took her eyes off the screen. She eats everything including avocado for breakfast and sweet potatoes for lunch, and on Thanksgiving, we learned this girl loves some pumpkin pie! She also started drinking from a sippy cup, which just feels unreal to me, and she super enjoys bubble baths (especially when they’re lavender-scented). She’s growing up so fast and while I love it and am so excited, it’s always a little sad, too. Ah, pesky emotions!
On the writing/teaching front:
I participated in Winter Haunts, a day of workshops and panels sponsored by Writing Magazine and hosted by the wonderful Alex Davis. I taught a speculative poetry workshop in the morning and then sat on a panel later in the afternoon about Baba Yaga, which was personally quite inspiring and empowering. I hope everyone had an enjoyable time, learned a lot, and is off creating magical, frightening, fantastical things as we speak.Austin and I had a brilliant and fantastically funny chat about poetry, axe murder poems, mental health, Writing Poetry in the Dark, and this idea of "bad poetry,” You can check out the episode courtesy of the Ledger Podcast here.Austin, I know I owe you a poem edit! I promise I haven’t forgotten!Into the Forest, Tales of the Baba Yaga, edited by Lindy Ryan went live last month. I remain so honored to have a poem and a short story in this anthology. Baba Yaga is beyond special to me, so this feels like the best kind of magic. You can pick up your copy here.My open letter/ poetic musing to Anne Sexton was published on her birthday via LitReactor. This is one of my favorite pieces I think I’ve written and you can read it here.The Writing Poetry in the Dark Roundtable Interview 6 went live with an interview with FJ Bergmann, Lucy A Snyder, and Bryan Thao Worra. Each contributor talked about identity in some way in their essay, and you can read it here.The last Writing Poetry in the Dark Roundtable Interview 7 went live with an interview with Donna Lynch, and Jim and Janice Leach. Each contributor talked about writing from within, whether that be from the POV of marriage, the wound, or mental health, and I can’t recommend this one enough. You can read it here.I welcomed Grace R. Reynolds to The Madhouse last month, and we talked about domestic horror and chatted about her poetry collection, Lady of the House. You can read it here.H V Patterson from Dreadfulesque interviewed me about Writing Poetry in the Dark. You can read it here.I'm also incredibly happy to announce that Ellen Datlow long listed a number of my pieces for Best Horror of the Year 14.“The Crow’s Nest,” (poem) Were Tales “The Returned,” (poetry) Nightmare #106, July“Night Mare,” (poem) Vastarien Vol. 4 Issue 2 Fall“Mother Knows Best,” Attack From the 80s “Blood, Like Chocolate,” (poem) Shadow Atlas

This month, I read:
A Mirror Mended by Alix E. HarrowWain: LGBT reimaginings of Scottish Folktales by Rachel PlummerLady of the House by Grace R. ReynoldsWoman, Eating by Claire KodhaThe Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez (reread)Sisters by Daisy JohsonI’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdyBriar, Issue 1 via Boom! StudiosLovesick, Issue 1 via Image ComicsTwo Graves, Issue 1 via Image ComicsTen Thousand Feathers, Issue 1-3 via Image ComicsSpecs, Issue 1 via Boom! StudiosBolero, Issue 1 via Image ComicsTwig, Issue 1 via Image ComicsI Hate Fairyland, Issue 1 via Image ComicsRogue State, Issue 1 via Black Mask StudiosThe Closet, Volume 1 via Image ComicsThe Nice House on the Lake, Vol 1 by James TynionStray Dogs, Vol 1 by Tony Fleecs (review on Goodreads)I read some stories from Rosario Ferre’s short story collection The Youngest Doll. These were first-time reads for me and were recommended by a friend because they know I love dark magical realism. I read “The Dreamer’s Portrait,” “The Youngest Doll” (which was delicious) as well as “The House that Vanished.”I’ve also been reading Erica LaRocca’s novella They Were Here Before Us. So far, I read the first three stories: “All That Remains is Yours to Keep,” “Delicacies from a First Communion,” and "A God Made of Straw."On the media front:
New Watches: Halloween Ends (2022), The Curse of Bridge Hollow (2022), Where the Crawdads Sing (2022), Mandrake (2022), Grizzly Man (2005), The Menu (2022), Ouija (2014).Cabinet of Curiosities: I’m really enjoying this series, mostly because I’m such a creature fan and I feel like we’re getting a lot of cool stuff here. I’m only five episodes in but here are my thoughts so far:“Lot 36”- I love stories about antique shows, storage units, estate sales, etc., so once this started, I knew it was going to be for me.“Graveyard Rats”- Willard pretty much ruined my life (I’ll never be able to get that cat scene out of my head) so I didn’t think I would really like this one, but it was decent and that final scene was gross-out perfection!“The Autopsy”- I’m such a sucker for medical horror, and when you throw in a good splash of body horror and the supernatural? Yes, please! This was one of my favorites“The Outside”- So I have a sensory thing with lotion, so this was really hard for me to watch (despite me actually loving the plot). I gagged a lot but this was such a great piece of body horror and I liked all the social issues it tackled, too. With that said, I never want to see someone get in a tub of lotion again. UGH!“Pickman’s Model”- This is my favorite Lovecraft short story, and I absolutely loved how they paid homage to the original while still creating something new. This will be one I revisit, and might even show in my classes. All the applause!Wednesday: This show made me so happy and there were so many Easter eggs in there for Addams Family fans. This will definitely be a repeat show for me, and I kind of want to go back and watch the original tv series again now, too.The Santa Clauses: The Santa Claus is one of my favorite Christmas movies, and I watch it every year (all of them, honestly) so when I saw this come out, we immediately dove right in. Again, all the nostalgia and Easter eggs for fans of the original, and I love how they’re tackling loopholes in the original, too. I can’t wait to keep watching!I don’t usually write about holiday/romance things on here but I had to watch Lindsay Lohan’s return in Falling for Christmas. I’m not the audience for this so I won’t really comment on it, but I did love the nod to “Jingle Bell Rock” from her Mean Girl days...Blockbuster: I didn’t especially like this, but it was an okay show to kind of just watch with Dennis when we needed to take a break. I don’t know that I’ll necessarily jump if there’s a season 2 though. I will say that while streaming is great, I do miss going to the video store and mining the horror section for classics, sequels, and weird titles that I’d never heard of.Big Mouth, Season 6: As usual, I flew through this season because I just adore this show. I appreciated how they tackled gender and sexuality this season and I remain so jealous that this type of show and discourse wasn’t available when I was growing up, but I’m so happy these conversations are happening now.

Podcasts:
This Ends at Prom, Episode 111 “Coraline with Bona Bones”This Ends at Prom, Episode 109 “The Babysitter (2017) with Xero Gravity”Talking Scared Podcast, Episode 61 “Cassandra Khaw and Stories to Tell Death”Talking Scared Podcast, Episode 45 “Carmen Maria Machado and Literary Kidnery Stones”It’s Not Just In Your Head Podcast, Episode 98 “A Beginner’s Guide to Trauma Responses”It’s Not Just in Your Head Podcast, Episode 103 “Life After a Cult (ft. Alisa Mahjoub)Books in the Freezer Podcast, “Halloween Horror with Briana Morgan”Books in the Freezer Podcast, “Macabre Nonfiction with Stephanie’s Husband”Books in the Freezer Podcast, “Creepy Dolls with Agatha from She Wears Black Podcast”
Also as a reminder, if you enjoy and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Best,
Stephanie

Madhouse Author Interview: Lady of the House with Grace R. Reynolds

Hello Friends and Fiends--

Today in The Madhouse, I'm welcoming Grace R. Reynolds. Grace R. Reynolds is a native of the great state of New Jersey, where she was first introduced to the eerie and strange thanks to local urban legends of a devil creeping through the Pine Barrens. Since then, her curiosity about things that go bump in the night bloomed into creative expression as a dark poet, horror, and thriller fiction writer.

When Grace is not writing she can be found dreaming up macabre scenarios inspired by the mundane realities of life. Her debut collection of horror poetry “Lady of The House” was released in December 2021 by Curious Corvid Publishing.

I recently read Grace's collection Lady of The House, and you folks know I love me some domestic horror, so this was a fun, dark world to explore. Below is our conversation, which discusses feminism, women's labor relations, the balance between violence and the erotic, and much much more! 
As always, if you enjoy this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.

Holding the butter knife a little too hard,
Stephanie M. Wytovich
SMW: Hi Grace! Welcome to The Madhouse. Since this is your first time joining us here, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drew you to poetry in the first place?

GR: Hi Stephanie! It's great to be here. We're all a little mad, aren't we? For readers who don't know me, I am a New Jersey transplant living in Texas who loves to read and write dark poetry and fiction. I am the author of the horror poetry collection Lady of The House.

I've written poetry for as long as I can remember. Still, I never seriously considered it an art form that I loved until I was in high school when I found a copy of Sylvia Plath's post-mortem collection Ariel in the school's library. I devoured it. It wasn't the untouchable Shakespeare; it wasn't an epic verse written in Old English or Homer's The Odyssey. It was accessible to modern readers. Raw, dirty, sad, and vulnerable. I didn't know poetry was allowed to be self-loathing or that it was allowed to show the darkest parts of a person's psyche. Sylvia made me feel seen and permitted me to write all the horrible and beautiful lines that floated in my head onto post-it notes and notebook paper. I've loved poetry ever since.

SMW: What was your writing process like for the Lady of the House?

GR: Chaotic. Painful. Cathartic. Repetitive. Fun. Reflective.

Writing this collection was an exercise in writing perspectives. Channeling difficult emotions that did not sit well with me into a fictional woman I could relate to at the time was triumphant and challenging. I created a character built entirely out of raw emotion, which forced me to think of the oppressive circumstances for her in a prison of domesticity where my everyday fears became her reality. Did she daydream of accidentally slicing off her fingertips on the cutting board or getting her hand stuck in a garbage disposal? Did she have intrusive thoughts, too? I then broke the collection up into three sections to help me organize the Lady’s dissent. I think doing that helped me focus on the build-up and pace of the events that take place in the book.

SMW: This collection tackles domestic horror in a hauntingly violent yet empowering way. If you’re comfortable answering it, what drew you to the idea of the “haunted house” and the trapped female figure?

GR: My love for horror started with haunted houses, both physically and metaphorically. I grew up in a haunted home, and my body, too, is haunted by its ghosts. In the gothic, haunted houses often reflect a character or family’s inner turmoil, so the setting felt appropriate for the collection.

As for the forlorn woman trapped in her suburban hellscape, Lady is the manifestation of my affinity for all things vintage and my background as a student of labor studies and employee relations at Rutgers University. I’ve always found studying women’s history in the workforce to be one that pulls back the curtain on realities for women that transcend generations.

When I started writing the collection in December 2020, I had moved across the country twice in one year for my partner’s job. The first move happened in January, before the pandemic. After a horrific and emotional personal experience, I decided to leave the conventional workplace so my child and I could reside with my spouse, as he moved ahead of us at the time. The second move happened later that summer. Imagine moving a couple of thousand miles with a fifteen-month-old trying to isolate as best you can from the world around you. Even after we settled in, I looked for work, but every job announcement I applied to was canceled left and right. Subsequently, we learned our child had developmental delays that required them to attend weekly appointments. I told myself that this was how I could redefine my role in society, but I still struggled.

I was raised to become a productive member of society by joining the working class, and I knew that stay-at-home parents were not similarly valued. Moreover, in 2020 I became a statistic. I was one of the nearly 1.8 million women that left the workforce due to personal situations stemming from the pandemic, and that number has only grown. That’s why I wrote this book. I wrote it for the readers, mainly women, who felt like me and struggled with their new identity.

 
SMW: Reading this reminded me of movies like The Stepford Wives, Death Becomes Her, or Kept Woman. How do you think your collection comments on feminism in a culture where female rights are constantly under threat?

GR: I think the collection shows that the fight for a female’s autonomy in its multiple facets is one that endures. How far have our rights come in the past seventy years? Where can we improve? The collection is a reminder that despite all the progress made, we still live in a society that prefers women to serve in traditionally defined gender roles in and out of the home.

SMW: Something that I particularly loved from a structure standpoint is that you included recipes throughout the book, especially since food prep and cooking is often attached to domestic duties. Where did that idea come from and what do you think it adds to the overall collection?

GR: The collection was built around the poem “Ambrosia.” It was the first I wrote, setting the tone for the collection. I wanted the poetry throughout to be very tongue-in-cheek “because presentation is everything,” and what better way to do that than to experiment with epistolary writing?

The recipes also reflect the deterioration of the Lady’s psyche. When we think of the recipes in the context of the entire collection, on their surface, they represent something physically mundane, but what happens to a dish when just one of the ingredients or directions is altered? Maybe there is little to no difference in the outcome, or perhaps the dish is irrevocably changed.

SMW: To kind of build off of the question above—and play a little bit—if you had to describe this book as a meal or a drink to readers, what would you pick and why?

GR: My first instinct is to suggest a dirty martini – charming, silent, and dangerous. Tell me you’ve never felt an air of mystery around someone holding one of those. I could also describe this book as a delightful slice of cherry pie, of which you aren’t entirely sure whether the red food coloring is from the sticky syrup or something more sinister.

 
SMW: Something that I’m always interested in chatting about is the balance of the violent and the erotic. There is a focus on pleasure here amongst all the death, and I’m curious about how you approach that in your work. Throughout the collection, the phrase Lady of the House is repeated. Can you talk a little bit about why that emphasis was important to you and what you hoped it to do for your readers?

GR: “Pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin.” Both are powerful sensations, and I tend to view death through a romantic lens as both a pleasurable and painful release from despair. The Lady’s desire for freedom from the confines of her role at home, marriage, and mind is depicted through violent visions of self-harm, a behavior to which I am unfortunately not a stranger.

I think back to Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Lady Lazarus’:

“Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.”

And the following excerpt from her semi-autobiographical novel “The Bell Jar”:

“I am. I am. I am.”

The repetition of “the Lady of The House” reinforces her attempts to redefine her place with a title of importance while also acting as a mantra that she is still alive and breathing.

SMW: What poets are you currently reading?

GR: I’m currently reading the biographical poetry collection Threadbare by Adanna Moriarty, and the horror poetry collection Embrace The Madness by Timothy P. Flynn.

I also had the recent pleasure of reading Christina Sng and Cynthia Pelayo’s latest collections, The Gravity of Existence and Crime Scene, respectively.



SMW: Are there any collections you’re looking forward to adding to your TBR list?

GR: I am always looking for new collections to read, in and out of the horror genre. I need to catch up with Courtney Peppernell’s Pillow Thoughts series. The first installment, published in 2017, got me through a challenging time and is of great importance to me.

Aside from that, I am looking forward to reading The Place of Broken Things by Linda D. Addison and Alessandro Manzetti, The Gorelets Omnibus by Michael A. Arnzen, The HWA Poetry Showcase Volume IX edited by Angela Yuriko Smith, and Elegies of Rotting Stars by Tiffany Morris.

SMW: What’s next for your readers?

GR: My next poetry collection, The Lies We Weave, is forthcoming from Curious Corvid Publishing in April 2023. It explores the darker side of adolescence, adulthood, and motherhood with a flair for the macabre. It is my hope, as it was with Lady of The House, that this collection connects with its readers, that they feel seen, and that they are reminded they are not alone.

If readers don’t want to wait until then, they can check out my poetry and short fiction in current and forthcoming publications listed on my website www.spillinggrace.com.

Short Summary of the book:

Lady of The House shares the fictional tale of Lady, a 1940s riveter turned housewife trapped by a loveless marriage and societal framework that makes it difficult for her to abandon her current circumstances. She feels purposeless, hopeless, and she is angry. Resentful. And she festers…

Blurbs:

“A dark tale which chills and shudders the spine…Grace R. Reynolds’ Lady of The House augments the capacity of the human mind to observe or neglect its own deterioration and the ability of the mind to comprehend its own destruction.” - David Grinnell, author of the gothic psychological horror novel Ashes and poetry collection Moonglade

“When does domestic bliss turn deadly? Grace R. Reynolds’ Lady of The House is a dark poetry collection that answers this question as it spins its web like a favorite crime podcast” - Stephanie Kemler, author of the paranormal thriller novel Bloodborn and The Bloodmad Series

“This poetry collection is a fascinating, sinister exploration into the thinking of the time through the lens of one woman’s stifled freedom, one woman’s crumbling restraint, and ultimately, one woman’s destruction of the cage that keeps her from becoming the woman she knows she is.” – Vivian Rainn, author of the gothic romance novel Solita and The Solita Series

Promotional Links:Website: www.spillinggrace.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/spillinggrace/Twitter: https://twitter.com/spillinggrace

Writing Poetry in the Dark, Roundtable 7: Writing From Within

 Hello Friends and Fiends--

Today is our last roundtable in celebration of Writing Poetry in the Dark. As always, I want to continue to educate and spread some more wisdom via the courtesy of our brilliant contributors, all of who have left their mark on the genre in the most groundbreaking of ways.

Today's Writing Poetry in the Dark roundtable celebrates Donna Lynch and Jim and Janice Leach. I chose to group these poets together because all of them wrote essays for the book about digging deep inside themselves and sharing their vulnerability with readers. Donna wrote about exploring the wound and Jim and Janice wrote about writing collaboratively and how that experience shaped them individually as poets. 

I hope you'll enjoy our conversations today and maybe consider picking up a book or two on your way out.

Best,
Stephanie M. Wytovich



SMW: What is something you had to learn the hard way with writing poetry, i.e. a teachable moment in your career?

DL: This is my answer to this question and question 3: You cannot create art for other people or accolades or recognition. I mean, you *can*, but I don’t recommend it. It takes the joy out of it. You have to do it because you want to. I know that’s a cliche, but it’s the truth. You will get bad reviews, you will get passed over, and you will get ignored. If this is your passion, then you do it until if/ when you don’t want to anymore. But remember that there’s no actual metric for “success”. It looks different to everyone and may look like 100 different things to you over a lifetime.

JJL: The phrase "Kill your darlings" has always irritated me. Isn't the phrase itself a "darling"-- an extra, unnecessary cuteness? The idea however is central to writing and to poetry especially. If a goal of poetry is to distill language to its essence, a poet cannot afford to rely on images or words that distract from the whole, that don't communicate, that are a private allusion, or that please only the poet. Your work doesn't have to be for everyone-- but it must work for someone besides the author. Sharing poetry with other people and getting feedback can be hard, but it's the only way to grow as a writer.

SMW: What poetry collection would you recommend to someone interested in studying poetry? This can be speculative poetry, literary poetry, classic, contemporary, etc.

DL: A good place to dive in for contemporary collections can be found in the Raw Dog Screaming Press catalog. Maybe I’m biased, but also no…it’s really good stuff.

And file under “This definitely wouldn’t fly today” —and nor should it—but Bukowski was the first poet I read that used looser formats and had a very different voice from the classical stuff I knew. He just told stories in plain language that looked and felt like poems, and he exposed the ugly parts of himself and of life and that was an enormous influence.

JJL: In university, I first encountered Carolyn Forché's work in The Country Between Us. Her writing shows that poetry, while beautiful in language, images, and form, can do even more-- evoke emotions like horror, panic, and fear, and capture history. Read her work and be prepared to be stretched and changed, especially her poem "The Colonel."

SMW: One piece of advice for all our poets-to-be.

DL: Never reply to bad reviews. Don’t point them out to people online, either, unless they are so absurdly, hilariously over-the-top that it will provide entertainment for all.

JJL: Read a lot, observe the world, and write every day.

If you enjoyed this interview and appreciate the work we do here in The Madhouse, you can show your support for the blog by "buying a coffee" (or two!) for our madwoman in residence: me! As always, I thank you for your time and support and I look forward to serving you another dose of all things unsettling and horrifying soon.