Spooky Reading! October 29th! Virtual!

Dear friends,

WE ARE DOING IT! WE ARE DOING OUR SPOOKY READING! NEXT TUESDAY NIGHT! 8:45 PM-10:30 PM EDT! Put it in your calendars, friends!

We are doing it on Twitch TV. You don’t even need a subscription to stream it! You can dip in whilst doing dishes and folding laundry! Wahoo!

Alas, I couldn’t come up with a better title than just “Spooky Reading” but, you know… VIBES.

Gregory A. Wilson is hosting us on his wonderful Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/arvaneleron.

Carlos and I will be introducing the authors, reading your their bios (with FLARE!), and telling you about the awesome stuff they’ve got going on.

At the end of each reading, we’re going to roll some dice, and use Kathleen Jennings’s amazing GOTHIC ART CHART and a list I created from her “Girls Running from Houses” gothic bot to give each author their own unique GOTHIC NOVEL GRAB BAG! That is: a visual prompt and a written prompt that they can leave with… just in case they need to go off right away and write (another?) gothic novel.

At the end of the night, we are going to give the CHAT their very own visual/written prompt as well.

THAT WAY WE CAN ALL GO HOME AND WRITE GOTHIC NOVELS TO OUR HEART’S CONTENT!

All of which to say… it’s time to MEET THE AUTHORS!

Tonia Ransom

Tonia Ransom is a writer and World Fantasy Award-winning creator of horror podcasts NIGHTLIGHT and Afflicted. Tonia has been scaring people since the second grade, when she wrote her first story based on Michael Myers. You can follow Tonia @missdefying on all the socials. Risen is her debut book.

Check out the NIGHTLIGHT podcast at nightlightpod.com/listen and the Afflicted podcast at afflictedaudio.com/listen, and buy Risen, a horror thriller novella here: bit.ly/getrisen

Mike Allen

Mike Allen has written, edited, or co-edited thirty-nine books, among them his new horror collection, Slow Burn. His first two volumes of horror tales, Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, were finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Story Collection, and his dark fable “The Button Bin” was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. As an editor and publisher, he has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Ruadán Books intends to publish Mike’s sidearms, sorcery, and zombies sequence The Black Fire Concerto and The Ghoulmaker’s Aria in 2025 and 2026, respectively. With his wife, Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, based in Roanoke, Virginia. Their cat Pandora assists.

Check out his new horror collections Slow Burn at https://mythicdelirium.com/slow-burn#Burn, and his new short story “Service Sector” here: https://kaleidotrope.net/autumn-2024/service-sector-by-mike-allen/

Celebrate his forthcoming novel series The Stormblight Symphony: https://ruadanbooks.com/wordpress/press-release-17-september-2024/

Kenesha Williams

Kenesha Williams is an author, screenwriter, speaker, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Black Girl Magic Lit Mag a speculative fiction literary magazine. She has been a panelist and speaker at StokerCon, the Horror Writers of America convention; Boskone, the longest-running science fiction & fantasy convention in New England; ECBACC, the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention; and BSAM, the Black Speculative Arts Movement convention. As an, essayist she has written for, Time Magazine’s millennial imprint, Motto, Fireside Fiction, and I Am Black Sci-Fi, among other publications. Kenesha is also a screenwriter who is in pre-production on a horror web series and a short horror film.

Dr. Kathleen Jennings

Kathleen Jennings lives in Brisbane and writes Australian Gothic fiction and fairy tales and illustrates other people’s books.

Check out her short story collection, Kindling, at Small Beer Press, her Redbubble page at tanaudel.redbubble.com, and this beautiful crowdfunder she contributed to as an artist: Elizabeth-Jane Baldry’s Great Oak Feasting Table. 

Cassandra Khaw

Cassandra Khaw is the USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth and the Bram Stoker Award-winner, Breakable Things. Other notable works of theirs are Bells Hells: What Doesn’t Break with Critical Role, The Salt Grows Heavy and British Fantasy Award and Locus Award finalist, Hammers on Bone. Khaw’s work can be found in places like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Reactor. Khaw is also the co-author of The Dead Take the A Train, co-written with bestselling author Richard Kadrey.

Juliette Wade

Juliette Wade is a novelist who never outgrew of the habit of asking “why” about everything. This path led her to study foreign languages and to complete degrees in both anthropology and linguistics. Combining these with a fascination for worldbuilding and psychology, she creates multifaceted science fiction that holds a mirror to our own society. She is the author of The Broken Trust books: Mazes of Power, Transgressions of Power, and Inheritors of Power, as well as short fiction found in magazines such as Analog, Clarkesworld, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her Aussie husband and her two sons, who support and inspire her.

Dr. Lisa L. Hannett

Lisa L. Hannett is an award-winning author of over 80 weird and whimsical short stories, five collections, and a mosaic novel. She’s an Associate Professor Creative Writing at Flinders University in Adelaide, where she writes and obsesses about Vikings, dreams about fantasy food, and dresses up in costumes.

Check out her latest: Fortunate Isles, nominated in the Best Collection category for the World Fantasy Award this year (and available in a beautiful hardcover edition!) as well as Viking Women: Life and Lore, available in bookshops everywhere in Australia, but only in ebook internationally.

Jessica P. Wick

Jessica P. Wick is a writer, poet, and editor. She co-founded Goblin Fruit with Amal El-Mohtar, a quarterly e-zine of fantastical poetry, and is a passionate advocate for the reading aloud of poetry and fiction. Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. Her short fiction can be found scattered across the internet; recently, her novella “An Unkindness” appeared in Mythic Delirium’s A Sinister Quartet. Jessica’s experience as an editor runs the gamut, from full-length novels to short fiction, poetry collections to magazine articles, academic papers to audio works. She also reviews books for NPR. 

Rob Cameron/Cameron Roberson

Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and writer. He has poetry, stories, and essays, in Star*Line, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, New Modality, Solarpunk Magazine, Clockwork Phoenix Five, and others. 

Daydreamer is his debut middle grade novel. Rob is also lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and executive producer of Kaleidocast.nyc.

Christa Carmen

Christa Carmen is the Bram Stoker Award-winning and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, “Through the Looking Glass and Straight Into Hell,” & the forthcoming Beneath the Poet’s House. Find her at www.christacarmen.com. 

Zig Zag Claybourne/Clarence Young

Named as one of Book Riot’s “6 of the best Black indie scifi writers you should be reading” (Jan 2021), Zig Zag Claybourne is the author of the newly released fantasy Breath, Warmth, and Dream. Other works include: The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan and its sequel Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe; By All Our Violent Guides; Neon Lights; and Conversations with Idras.

His stories and essays have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apex, Realm (formerly Serial Box), Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotosaurus, Strange Horizons, The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, and others. In addition to being a Kresge Foundation Literary Fellow, Zig is a frequent speaker at libraries, conventions, and other learning institutions. zzclaybourne.com

Check out his new fantasy Breath, Warmth & Dream, featuring wraiths, witches, and beasts!