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Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

Entries in this blog

 

Halloween 2022: Day 23

Song: “Katie Dear” Quote: Then he picked up this golden dagger,
And stove it through his troubled heart,
Saying, “Goodbye, Katie, goodbye darling. The time has come for us to part.” There are many versions of this song. Read more here. Listen to the performance of Brennan Leigh & Noel McKay…
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

Halloween 2022: Day 15

Song: “In the Pines” Quote: “My husband was a hard working man, Killed a mile and a half from here. His head was found in a driving wheel And his body hasn’t ever been found.” “My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me. Tell me, where did you sleep last night?” “In the pines, in the pines, Where the sun don’t ever shine. I would shiver the whole night through.” Read the complete lyrics. Listen to Lead Belly’s performance…
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

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Back to the Future Is Female! I am looking forward to this online event at 6pm Eastern on March 14, 2023! From Pulp Era pioneers to the radical innovators of the 1960s and ’70s, visionary women writers have been a transformative force in American science fiction. For Women’s History Month, acclaimed SF authors Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Pamela Sargent, and Sheree Renée Thomas join Lisa Yaszek, editor of LOA’s The Future Is Female!, for a conversation about the writers who smashed the genre’s gender barrier to create worlds and works that remain revolutionary. 
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

Halloween 2022: Day 4

Song: “Murder of the Lawson Family” Quote: It was on last Christmas Evening, A snow was on the ground, His home in North Carolina Where this murderer he was found. His name was Charlie Lawson And he had a loving wife, But we’ll never know what caused him To take his family’s life.
Listen to The Carolina Buddies’ performance…
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

The Dystopian Tradition

My graduate course on the Dystopian Tradition will be offered again this summer online at Signum University if there’s sufficient interest. I hope the class will make, because it seems more relevant than ever. ALT The Dystopian Tradition - Signum University
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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 17

Dark Academia novel: The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven (2022) Quote: It was open on the very last page I’d looked at: ‘How the Ritual Was Performed’. I wondered which of my fellow philosophy students had stumbled upon it. And why did they leave in such a hurry that they left the volume lying around like a piece of old junk? The page was exactly as I last saw it, with one tiny, significant exception: the droplet of blood in the bottom right corner. A small smudge, as though someone had pricked their finger on a spindle and then tried to turn the page. The sight made me smile. Someone had tried to perform the ritual. I knew it in my bones. There was someone at Carvell as intrigued by the occult as I was. For some reason, this knowledge bolstered me. In a moment, the decision was made. I was going to attempt the ritual too.   ALT
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 16

Dark Academia novel: Missing Clarissa by Ripley Jones (2023) Quote: Everyone from Oreville knows the story of Clarissa. Her living ghost haunts the long rain-dark winters alongside the looming specters of Washington’s grim army of infamous serial killers and litany of missing girls…. Clarissa Campbell, who vanished so completely that no one has found a trace of her – not the full investigative force of the Oreville police department, not legions of armchair sleuths and online obsessives, not television news crews or magazine reporters or Clarissa’s friends and family. ALT
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

2024 Wrap-Up: Publications

New Publication in 2024:
An essay, “‘Lifting Old Curses’: The mirror dance of The Flowers of Vashnoi and The Mountains of Mourning” in Short But Concentrated #2: a second essay symposium on the works of Lois McMaster Bujold, edited by @unamccormack. New in Paperback in 2024 (previously published in hardback & ebook in 2023):
Two books, Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier and Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away, both co-edited with Emily Strand.
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

2024 Wrap-Up: Talks

Some of the university and conference talks I gave this year are now online.
Why You Should Read The Last Man by Mary Shelley
Why You Should Read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
“A Fortnight in the Wilderness” with Alexis de Tocqueville
“Missing Students & Their Fictional Afterlives: True Crime, Crime Fiction, and Dark Academia" (presented at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining Crime in Popular Culture” conference). View this presentation here.
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 5: Grey Land Duology by Peadar Ó Guilín (2016-2018) Quote from The Call (2016):  “Oh, they mean to do more than kill you, child. They want to twist you. To crumple you up like an old sheet of paper.”
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

Halloween 2022: Day 10

Song: “Old Tom’s Restless Bones” Quote: Old Tom on the front porch smoked his cigarette, And when he was done, another one he lit. “Hey, now,” Old Tom said, “You’re the reason that I’m dead.” Listen to the performance of David Norris…
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

Halloween 2022: Day 16

Song: “Banks of the Ohio” Quote: I held a knife against his breast As into my arms he pressed. He cried, “My love, don’t murder me! I’m not prepared for eternity.” Read the complete lyrics. Listen to the performance of Gangstagrass Feat. Alexa Dirks:
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 29

Dark Academia novel: Fraternity by Andy Mientus (2022) From the cover: Be careful what you pledge. Quote: How to make a Perfect Storm: 1. Allow terrible, unholy powers to find their way into the hands of children. See that those children only half-translate their conjurations, missing key protective details. 2. Have them perform those conjurations at the very height of autumn, the dying of the year, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. Make sure they are coming to the work not soberly but at an emotional breaking point, dripping blood, hungry for violence. Aim their violence at another child. 3. Pray for those children. Terrible consequences await them. ALT
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 13: Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas (2020) Quote: You are here. You are in. And doesn’t it feel good?
You are in the house and the house is in the woods.
You are in the house and the house is in you.
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

 

Reading…

My two-part plan to fill the time between the end of Picard and the start of the new season of Strange New Worlds is going very well. Cheers for Una McCormack, John Jackson Miller, and Star Trek.
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eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

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