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Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 24

Dark Academia novel: The Ravens by Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige (2020) From the cover: These sorority girls are real witches. Quote: That was when she noticed the single tarot card positioned nearly at the head of her bare mattress, as if placed there by a careful hand. It was the Death card her mother had given her. The skeleton leered up at her with a gruesome smile, and for a moment, it almost looked like the eyes glowed red. Vivi shivered, despite knowing that it was a trick of the light. I told you. Westerly isn’t a safe place, not for people like you… ALT
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Book mood. ?

ALT Book mood. ? These novels were inspired by the 1924 Leopold and Loeb case.
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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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30 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 18: If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio (2017)
Quote 1: But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart — by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.  Quote 2: You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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“Defining Dark Academia”

My latest “Looking Back on Genre History segment is up on the newest episode of the StarShipSofa podcast, and it focuses on Dark Academia! You can hear it here. 
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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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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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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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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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Halloween 2022: Day 22

Song: “The Lantern” Quote: In dark misty hills of Carolina,
Way back where the mountain laurel grows,
On cool October nights, with a lantern shining bright,
There’s something out there walking through the darkness all alone,
Creeping through the darkness all alone.

Read the complete lyrics. Listen to Front Range’s performance…
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Dice in Mind Interview

It was a delight to join Emily Strand, with whom I co-edited the anthologies Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier and Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away (both 2023 from Vernon Press), to talk Star Trek and Star Wars with the Dice in Mind podcast. Dice in Mind is a podcast hosted by Brad Browne and Jason Kaufman that explores the intersection of life, games, science, music, philosophy, and creativity through interviews with leading creatives. Episode 106: Drs. Amy Sturgis and Emily Strand | Dice in Mind
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