Truth be told, my blog’s usually pretty quiet—because I’m always slammed with other writing projects, and honestly, my craft and art come first, and this summer was absolutely no exception. I still have lots to share, but for now: NECRONOMICON PROVIDENCE is almost here, and I can’t wait!
Here’s my committed (meaning these are things I absolutely will not miss; the rest is fluid) schedule (below). I’ll also be attending panels, the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, the art show opening reception, and of course some street parties as well as performances (I’ll also be helping out at the sales tables for both WE ARE PROVIDENCE and the New England Horror Writers). A few of my friends are having a picnic at Lovecraft’s grave, too, so there’s that to look forward to…and, of course, Waterfire!!
Sound like a great time? It is. Get tickets/day passes here: https://necronomicon-providence.com/passes-and-tickets/
Full schedule for the con is here (in a handy-dandy downloadable grid!): https://necronomicon-providence.com/core-programming/
Kristi’s Schedule Read the rest of this entry
THRILLED to announce Monsters in the Mills, with my story “Cinched,” is now available in instant e-book and paperback pre-order! If you like abandoned (and some pieces are definitely 34O if you like that), you’ll love this!
Behind graffitied fences or obscured by woods, the abandoned mills of New England watch. For thrillists and historians, urbexers and developers, or just the average passer-by. Omnipresent and looming, the mills lure the innocent to their mysteries, secrets…and terrors.
The We are Providence writers hunt what lurks among the crumbled bricks and strangling sumac. A widower on a demolition crew wakes the revenants. A musician rents a foundry’s rehearsal space…and otherworldly tenants are practicing on him. A lonely girl combs the ruins to find an unsettling friend; a bitter punk moves into a refinery where her bestie vanished, and a criminal breaks into a cloth factory to discover a sentient—and sinister—machine.
These eighteen terrifying tales suggest when abandoned mills beckon, it’s best to ignore them.
After all, they’ve come to collect their due.
You can get the ebook instantly or pre-order the paperback here: https://bit.ly/4bhZmWa
SPECIAL OFFER! Take a photo Read the rest of this entry
Up until a few weeks ago, I was in hell.
The past nine years have been rough. I had sudden attacks of nausea with heart palpitations and passing out, brain fog, lack of energy, and abnormal depression and anxiety. Doctors insisted it was “menopause,” “stress,” or “food poisoning.” It was after the COVID shots everything got worse: my hair fell out, I was in constant abdominal pain, and eventually, I couldn’t eat anything except oatmeal. It was all I could do to get out of bed, and, to quote Steven Belanger’s story “Blackstone,” in the Monsters in the Mills collection, “do the damn day.” Food terrified me and social situations became impossible, so I didn’t go anywhere except work. Doctors just kept telling me “I don’t know. More tests a month from now” while I was literally starving to death.
Meanwhile, the world chugged ahead. I felt abandoned, visiting my friends’ social media accounts to see them delight in life, eat things without a second thought, write stories, go places, make plans. In Britt Nicole’s song “The Sun is Rising,” she sings about a person’s hopes for the future burning, and I identified: I was being reduced to ashes and swept aside.
I thought seriously about Swedish Death Cleaning and making my will. Call me a drama queen, but when everyone tells you there’s nothing wrong with you and you know there is, you’re sick as a dog, you can barely function and that starving will eventually kill you? You lose something very important: hope.
As far as my writing, I prioritized the Spring 2024 issue of 34 Orchard, which was released with great success and, if I do say so myself, it’s a stellar issue (get your free copy here: https://34orchard.com/issue-9/). Our Zoom release cocktail hour was an absolute blast, in which I was talking to people in several different countries around the world right in my dining room; my husband’s reception at his Masonic lodge, which I planned, was an amazing day; I was honored to serve on a virtual panel for StokerCon 2024. But everything I had in progress—a short novel for an upcoming call, a screenplay due at the end of June, the finishing up of Tidings, a short story for an anthology that needed an overhaul—all of that was shelved. I couldn’t write a decent sentence if you’d tied me to a chair and forced me; my inner voice was gone. In truth, though, none of it seemed to matter. Most nights, all I had the energy for after a long day of surviving was laying on the couch and watching Netflix. I didn’t talk to too many of my friends, even though I made sure their birthday gifts went out on time. I would look around my messy house and think, oh well, weren’t those parties so glorious? Wasn’t going out and having pizza and spending time with your friends fun? How about all of those awesome vacations—aren’t you lucky you got as many as you did? I’m so glad you took photos, because you’re never going to have that again. Your life is over, be grateful for what you had and what you accomplished. Next.
That said, there were some other interesting bright spots, Read the rest of this entry
I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve been a member of the Rhode Island-based writer’s community We Are Providence since November of 2023, and what a ride it’s been! I’ve had strong Rhode Island ties since the early nineties, when I did undergraduate work at the University of Rhode Island. Over the past thirty years, I’ve spent so much time in the state it feels like home, and the folks in We Are Providence have not only welcomed me with open arms, they have made me feel like I truly belong.
Helmed by Christa Carmen (The Daughters of Block Island) and L.E. Daniels (Serpent’s Wake: a Tale for the Bitten), we’ve just put the finishing touches on the group’s second anthology, Monsters in the Mills, which releases in August (and includes a brand new story by me called “Cinched”).
If you love all things abandoned, this collection is for you. Edited by Christa and L.E., cover art by Mr. Michael Squid, and introduction by Faye Ringel, and published by Australian-based Interactive Publications, here’s the back cover copy (if you’re wondering if I wrote it because it sounds like me, yes, I did):
♦
DEEP IN THE WEEDS, THEY WAIT.
Behind graffitied fences or obscured by woods, the abandoned mills of New England watch. For thrillists and historians, urbexers and developers, or just the average passer-by. Omnipresent and looming, the mills lure the innocent to their mysteries, secrets…and terrors.
The We are Providence writers hunt what lurks among the crumbled bricks and strangling sumac. A widower on a demolition crew wakes the revenants. Read the rest of this entry
StokerCon—the Horror Writers Association’s annual gathering chock full of panels, readings, special events, awards ceremonies and other things horror writing—takes place this coming weekend, May 30—June 2, in San Diego.
If you, like me, can’t make it to California but would like to check out some live and pre-recorded content on the same weekend it’s all happening (including a super-cool horror film festival)—and enjoy a panel and a reading featuring yours truly—you still can! Tickets for the virtual event are $75 ($100 if you’d like the souvenir anthology) and include The Final Frame Horror Short Film Competition and can be purchased here: https://events.ringcentral.com/events/allaccesscon-presents-stokercon
For my part, I’m on a panel called Dark Fantasy – A Discussion on Horror with Fantasy Elements, which was pre-recorded in April, and what a fantastic conversation with writers Holley Cornetto (Moderator—We Haunt These Woods), Lee Murray (Into the Mist), Ai Jiang (I Am AI), Corey Farrenkopf (short fiction in many publications), Jonathan Duckworth (The Book of Never), and Austin Shirey (City of Spores). Several other panels fill out the schedule.
I’ll also present the first portion of my short story, “King of Bull,” which will be published next year in my next collection, Songs for a Dying World (cover release coming shortly!) In “King of Bull,” a boutique brewer Read the rest of this entry
~NO SPOILERS~
Nathan and I just finished watching The Fall Guy (2024), and it was everything we loved about 1980s action shows on crack: insane car chases, explosions, fist fights and shoot-outs but no one gets hurt, moustache-twirling villains who don’t care about anything but themselves so YES you wanna see them go down, sexual tension between the leads that may or may not be resolved, and character humor. We laughed, we screamed in glee, we yelled at the television.
As a bonus, there are plenty of 80s-TV Easter eggs—but the film itself, including its storyline, is a love letter to everything we miss about 1980s primetime. The acting is Read the rest of this entry
I was devastated to hear that Richard Sherman passed yesterday.
If you don’t know who he is, the short version: gifted half of the songwriting team (with his brother, Robert B. Sherman, who predeceased him) behind such long-standing classics as “It’s a Small World,” the music of Mary Poppins (“Feed the Birds” was my “time for night-night!” song when I was like four), and “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” (Carousel of Progress). His songs were integral to my childhood, and Nathan, Charles and I were lucky enough to get to meet him—and have him sign the copy of my childhood It’s a Small World album—at a Kritzerland event back in 2014. I was so excited to meet him I could barely talk. I recall being absolutely overcome (I don’t fangirl easily but this was massive).
Charles took this photo, and I love it, because we’re holding hands there. Just a testament to what a warm, lovely person Richard was.
He was a lovely, gracious, and Read the rest of this entry
The twenty-one artists in 34 Orchard Issue 9 examine all aspects of waiting: its ups and downs, its held-breath nature, its power. A dead girl languishes instead of going towards the light and a predator banks on his next meal. One mother is driven to pursue a reunion with her daughter, another’s moment for revenge finally arrives, and generations of sons resist—yet compulsively anticipate—the inevitable. A frozen town dreads its death knell. An angry specter prays for her misery to have company, while spirits trapped in the brick and mortar of a bridge wait for nothing more than the next passer-by.
Sooner or later, the waiting’s over, but when we finally get what we want, was it everything we’d imagined? At the end of it, was it really worth it—or did it turn out to be the beginning of yet another long wait for something else? Find out and get your copy at this link today!
Once again, the ToC:
Cover Art: When the Light Dies – Keith Molden
D-Day – Norie Suzuki
Revenge – Dan B. Fierce
Lake Effect – Jason P. Burnham
There – L.T. Ward
First Day Jitters – Donna J.W. Munro
Humans Suppress and History Reveals – Sonali Roy
The Man in the Gray Suit – Fariel Shafee
You Have Summoned a Demon – Ray Daley
Search Underway for Missing Submarine Bringing Tourists to Titanic – John Jeffire
Stillbirth – Jaclyn Eccesso
Suyuntu – Christine Lajewski
Skyline – Jennifer Fanning
Hot on the Trail – Josh Schlossberg
The Seduction – Elizabeth Falcon
Halloween Notes from Bloody Mary of the Philippines– Caroline Hung
The Ghosts at Yazá Bridge – Andrea Ferrari Kristeller
Family Heirloom – Christopher Emmerson-Pace
Last Stop – Brenna Monaghan Behel
Eleven Ways the World Could End – Jack Powers
Unidentified Climbing Object – Angelique Fawns
We at 34 Orchard have just been informed that Ray Daley—author of the story “You Have Summoned a Demon,” which will appear in our Spring 2024 issue, releasing tomorrow—has passed away.
We first met Ray when we published his piece “All Clued Out” in our Autumn 2021 issue (Issue 4). Aside from its technical excellence, the story’s subtext deals with the universal anxiety that sometimes, yes, the worst can happen to each of us. Its world is beautifully rendered, we see its narrator in ourselves, and we’re viscerally struck by its bang-up of a twist ending.
Ray was meticulous about his work, and took much joy in not only his writing, but in sharing others’ writing and pieces he loved with others. He was quite accomplished, with at least one hundred pieces published in a myriad of speculative publications.
Sadly, it is always true that nothing gold can stay. Ray will always be part of the 34 Orchard family, and a piece of his passion will always stay with us. It’s a 34O tradition to have a release cocktail/mocktail hour on Zoom. At this issue’s event, we will raise a toast in his memory. We offer our deepest condolences to his family and friends, and we are grateful that we got to know him and could share some of his work with the world.
We’ll miss you, Ray. We hope that wherever you are, there is a room full of the books you love most, an endless supply of paper and pens, and finally plenty of time to finish that Hitchhikers fanfic you’ve been working on for decades.
Kristi Petersen Schoonover, Founding Editor
