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Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

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The House of Night, Watchmen, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

In my latest “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the new episode of the StarShipSofa podcast, I talk about Ray Bradbury’s concept of science fiction as a “reflecting shield” by discussing The House of Night, Watchmen, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. You can listen here. 
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Halloween 2020, Day 26

I am so delighted and grateful that @OGOMProject put a vintage 1978 book on my radar this year: The Dracula Cookbook: Authentic Recipes from the Homeland of Count Dracula by Marina Polvay. I was able to find a copy in good shape, and it’s a treasure. If you’d like some festive and spooky mood reading, here is the introduction to the section on “Wines & Special Drinks”: And here are a couple of recipes, in case you like the warm, red stuff (but not in a vampiric kind of way):  The Count and the Bride seem to enjoy it. 
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Halloween 2020, Day 9 (Star Wars!)

Star Wars is all about Halloween! Are you in the mood for some Star Wars Halloween goodness?
1. If you’re feeling crafty, learn how you can make a creeptastic Darth Maul bookmark here! 
2. Check out the General Grievous Halloween audiocast! This was an audiocast recorded by Matthew Wood as General Grievous and released on StarWars.com for Halloween of 2005. It was re-released on October 31, 2014. Today you (or your trick-or-treaters) can feel the Force of fright! Download this free audiocast to bring Star Wars scares to your October!
3. Did you know that Halloween was part of the classic Star Wars Expanded Universe? According to Wookieepedia,
4. Check the official Star Wars site’s Halloween Hub for a “ghoul-actic collection of articles, crafts, and more”! In particular, don’t miss the chance to hang around with mynocks!  5. In 2018, Star Wars knocked it out of the ballpark with new publications Are You Scared, Darth Vader?, one of the best Star Wars picture books I’ve ever read (and a terrific tribute to Halloween!), and the Tales from Vader’s Castle limited comic series, inspired by classic Hammer Horror films. I can’t recommend these enough! Last year, we got the Return to Vader’s Castle series. This year, both Tales and Return will be combined into the single-volume Beware of Vader’s Castle! 
But wait, there’s more! October is the annual Star Wars Reads celebration. Star Wars Reads combines the love of a galaxy far, far away and the joy of reading. Star Wars Reads Printable Activity Kit and Posters: Plan your own Star Wars event with this amazing party kit, complete with party invitations, posters, and activities for kids to adults. Click here for goodies!
There will be events around the world sponsored by Star Wars publishers, so keep your eye on the Star Wars Reads Facebook page for more information.
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Halloween 2020, Day 12

(Photo is “Spooky Woods” by GypsyMist.) Do you consider crime thrillers and murder mysteries good reading fare for the Halloween season?  I do. And I’m glad that we’re in a time when crime fiction by Indigenous American writers is increasingly recognized and celebrated. Here’s a terrific article by Lakota author David Heska Wanbli Weiden for CrimeReads: “Why Indigenous Crime Fiction Matters.” He also contributed this useful reading list for The Strand: “Seven Essential Native American Crime Novels.” Speaking of David Heska Wanbli Weiden, I read, thoroughly enjoyed, and highly recommend his gripping 2020 novel Winter Counts, which is a (to borrow the official description) “groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx.” A tense and engrossing read.  And speaking of his essay on “Why Indigenous Crime Fiction Matters,” I was very glad to see Cherokee novelist John Rollin Ridge mentioned front and center. Earlier this year in my monthly “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the StarShipSofa podcast, on Episode 628, I discussed how we can trace parts of Batman’s origin back to John Rollin Ridge and his fiction. 
(Photo by Yours Truly.) Perhaps my favorite discovery this year is the wonderful Cash Blackbear mystery/crime series, including Murder on the Red River (2017) and Girl Gone Missing (2019), by White Earth Nation author Marcie R. Rendon. Set during the Vietnam Conflict, these books follow 19-year-old Cash Blackbear – “aged-out foster child, girl pool shark, truck driver from Minnesota’s White Earth reservation” – who asks questions, has dreams, and regularly helps out her friend Wheaton, the cop who is her family by choice rather than blood, as he solves crimes. These books deliver on mood and atmosphere while also telling difficult, important, meaningful stories. Here is one of Cash Blackbear’s vivid and haunting dreams:
- from Marcie R. Rendon, Girl Gone Missing (2019)
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Halloween 2020, Day 23

This year I took part in the Ladies of Horror Fiction anniversary mini-readathon, and one of the titles I read is going straight into my next class syllabus: Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor (2019). What a powerful, insightful, and beautifully written work this is! Highly recommended. Here is the official description: “Leila Taylor takes us into the dark heart of the American gothic, analysing the ways it relates to race in America in the twenty-first century. Haunted houses, bitter revenants and muffled heartbeats under floorboards — the American gothic is a macabre tale based on a true story. Part memoir and part cultural critique, Darkly: Blackness and America’s Gothic Soul explores American culture’s inevitable gothicity in the traces left from chattel slavery. The persistence of white supremacy and the ubiquity of Black death feeds a national culture of terror and a perpetual undercurrent of mourning. If the gothic narrative is metabolized fear, if the goth aesthetic is romanticized melancholy, what does that look and sound like in Black America?” And here is a sample of Taylor’s haunting prose: - from  Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor (2019)
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Ring Out The Old, Ring In The New

Thanks to all of you for your friendship throughout this past year. Here’s to making the new year a much better one! Happy 2021! Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more, Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. - Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ring Out, Wild Bells”
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Halloween 2020, Day 11

(Photo by Yours Truly. Skulls from Toscano.) Today I bring you several recent articles that are perfect for getting into the Halloween spirit.  1. From Danielle Trussoni for The New York Times: “Grisly Slabs of Gothic Horror.”  2. From Marc E. Fitch for CrimeReads: “Literature Is Built on a Foundation of Horror.”   3. From Dr. Sam Hirst for Tor.com: “More Thrilling than Fiction: The Real Life Heroines of the Early Gothic.” One of the heroines mentioned in the article above is Mary Darby Robinson (1758-1800). Here is an excerpt from her poem “The Haunted Beach” from Lyrical Tales (1800): Read the complete poem here.
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<p>Now that Anna Torv’s great work on <i>The La...

Now that Anna Torv’s great work on The Last of Us is encouraging some folks to (re)discover the brilliant series Fringe, I’m reminded what a delight and joy it was to contribute the essay “In Search of Fringe’s Literary Ancestors” to Kevin R. Grazier’s anthology about the show, Fringe Science: Parallel Universes, White Tulips, and Mad Scientists. ALTALT
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Halloween 2020, Day 14

For today I have some great lists of Halloween-appropriate reading for younger readers as well as scary-story lovers of all ages. First, from Angie Manfredi: “Shivers & Shudders: Scary Middle Grade Books.”
Second, from the Spooky KidLit site (“Celebrating the kids’ books that go bump in the night.”), two lists: “Celebrating Black Authors, Part 1″ and “Celebrating Black Authors, Part 2.” One of the stellar books recommended in two of the lists above is The Forgotten Girl by India Hill Brown (2019), and here’s a haunting little taste: You can read a longer excerpt from The Forgotten Girl here.  And here’s some great news! The Forgotten Girl is one of four books being adapted for television: “Scholastic Entertainment to Develop ‘JumpScare’ Kids Animated Horror Series With ‘Ben 10’ Team.”
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Halloween 2020, Day 21

(Photo by Elizabeth. See the original source here.)  - from “Since I Died” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, originally in Scribner’s Monthly (February 1873), as published in Avenging Angels: Ghost Stories by Victorian Women Writers edited by Melissa Edmundson (2018)   
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Halloween 2020, Day 4

Halloween 2020, Day 4 – from The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf (2020) This year I fell in love with the middle-grade novel The Girl and the Ghost, which is based on Malaysian folktales about the pelesit, a shape-shifting spirit bound to serve a single master. In the novel, young Suraya inherits such a ghost from her witch grandmother and learns that this pelesit is loyal – and jealous. Hanna Alkaf offers genuine chills as well as laughs, but most importantly she delivers a thought-provoking, heart-warming, life-affirming story of loss, grief, friendship, and family. The characters feel so real!  Don’t let the middle-grade classification of this story fool you; The Girl and the Ghost has much to offer readers of all ages, including plenty of ghosts, graveyards, and spookiness. You can read a longer excerpt from The Girl and the Ghost here or listen to sample from the audiobook here.     View the full article  
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 15: The Truly Devious Series by Maureen Johnson (2018-2021) Quote from Truly Devious (2018):  It was, in short, idyllic and fantastical, and may have remained as such had it not been for that foggy night in April 1936 when Truly Devious struck. Schools may be famous for many things: academics, graduates, sports teams. They are not supposed to be famous for murders.
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Halloween 2020, Day 5

One of the coolest new-to-me discoveries of this year is  The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo (1819), which Andrew Barger (in The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Vampire Anthology) credits as quite possibly “the first black vampire story, the first comedic vampire story, the first story to include a mulatto vampire, the first vampire story by an American author, and perhaps the first anti-slavery short story.”  Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life has a “Just Teach One” page devoted to The Black Vampyre, including the complete text with introduction and notes prepared by Duncan Faherty (Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center) and Ed White (Tulane University), and several illuminating essays written by teachers who have included this text in their classes. You can read or download The Black Vampyre and these additional resources for free here. Here is a spine-tinging excerpt from The Black Vampyre:
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Halloween 2020, Day 18

(Art is “Zbrush Doodle: Day 1750 - Festive Pumpkin” by UnexpectedToy.)
For today, here is the atmospheric opening of the short story “Haunted!” by Jack Edwards, originally published in The Weekly Tale Teller #83 (December 3, 1910), as found in Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories edited by Mike Ashley (2018):  

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Halloween 2020, Day 3

(Artwork is “Jack-o-lanterns” by NocturnalSea.)   
If you’re looking for more Halloween festivities, check out the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2020 Halloween Poetry Reading, which is already underway and will continue updating throughout the month. Images! Audio! Spooky poetry!
And speaking of poetry… - excerpt from “Henry’s Shade” by “Susan,” originally from October 1894, as published in Schabraco and Other Gothic Tales from The Lady’s Monthly Museum 1798-1828, edited by Jennie MacDonald (2020).
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! October 31: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818) Quote 1: My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine. Quote 2: But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.


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