October 2023

It's October and the sun is coming up later and setting earlier and that means time to watch so many scary movies when I could have been writing. 

    Men - That ending... Wow

    Scream (2022) - So much better than I thought it would be

    Scream VI - Again, better than I thought it would be and like all the other scream movies, love the references to all the slashers and scary movies I grew up watching. 

    Totally Killer - Time travel slasher set in the 80s and was super fun

    It Follows - I had avoided this for years, not sure what it was about. I almost thought it was a knockoff of something else. I was wrong. It was dark, scary, original, and way better than I expected.

    The Blackening - Super fun slasher comedy 

    Look Away - The premise was scary but not great

    Renfield - Super fun Dracula, action, comedy with an excellent cast 

Read Never Whistle at Night - An indigenous dark fiction anthology loved the short stories, but I don't always do well with the constant shift between them. As soon as I get into a story or the characters, it's over. 

Read Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica and picked up her new book of short stories as well. It was Dark Dark Dark and disgusting. If that book has not made a few folks vegan, then the world is more messed up than I imagined. Always fun to add to the pile and then read new books in front of the ones that have been around for a while. 

Picked up Lone Woman by Victor LaValle and will likely watch The Changeling on Apple TV based on Victor LaValle's book of the same name. I also received the final secret Brandon Sanderson novel, The Sunlit Man, and have become a fan of his writing. Three books from the Goulish Book Kickstarter. Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies by E.M. Roy, another Maine writer. Saint Grit by Kayli Scholz, and Rainbow Filth by Tim Meyer. I am bad at not collecting books to read. 

Speaking of having too many books to read. My book 'A Good Meal' will be free on October 31st as part of the Terrify Your Tablet event being put on by Horrorsmith Publishing. https://www.horrorsmithediting.com/terrifyyourtablet. 200+ Authors will make their ebooks free for one day - similar to other genres 'Stuff your Kindle' events.

I also bumped into this weird ass book on the internet archive - Games for Hallowe'en by Mary E. Blain https://archive.org/details/gamesforha00bars/mode/2up

As for writing, I worked through some ideas and even wrote some of them down. I debated submitting a novella for a chapbook contest but after spending a few hours thinking about it I decided it's better if I just write something. 

That's it for October - Happy Halloween.

(Earlier this month, I traveled down to Florida for a work event. I took this photo one morning during a walk on the beach before all the business stuff started.)





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