by admin | Jul 20, 2025 | The Writing Life
It’s Saturday afternoon/evening, and the 2025 Shirley Jackson Awards for, and I quote, “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic” have just been awarded at Readercon 34 in Boston. Here they are… The ones...
by admin | Jul 17, 2025 | Reading Matters
The ‘better’ is his storytelling, style, unexpected plotting, and startling characters. The ‘worse’ is the depth and complexity he achieves just keeps getting more effective and disturbing with each story. I’ve been a Nat Cassidy fan since Steal the Stars, the truly...
by admin | Jun 6, 2025 | News of the Weird
Straight from the creators of Welcome to Night Vale, with surprises all its own. Welcome to Night Vale started as a strange little fiction podcast a few years back has grown into an international business all its own, with best-selling books and after-shows and merch...
by admin | Feb 8, 2025 | What's Worth Watching
The only (and most interesting) thing about it is the inexplicable appearance of Richard Dreyfuss – in a shark movie, ffs. Yes, that Richard Dreyfuss. I’ve lost count of the number of ‘maritime women in jeopardy’ movies I’ve seen over the years (the first, I think,...
by admin | Nov 2, 2024 | Listen Up
A charming weeky reminder of why we started listening to podcasts in the first place. I confess, I have a soft spot in my heart – and head – for Australians. Never been down unhah, and probably will never get there, but Ozies have been plaguing me for nigh on to fifty...
by admin | Feb 20, 2024 | What's Worth Watching
Here’s an idea that should never have worked. Yet it’s one of the most popular shows in the UK … Choose about a dozen absolutely normal people out there – couples or families, married folks or siblings or best friends – and you don’t bring them into...
by admin | Feb 16, 2024 | What's Worth Watching
YouTube has become too huge to truly comprehend, and most of the ‘tubers that built their base from YT have either moved on, retreated, or sunk into scandal. But once in a while you stumble overcome with long-form content that is charming and insightful about...
by admin | Feb 8, 2024 | Reading Matters
I just finished Jenny Kiefer’s This Wretched Valley, by first-time novelist Jenny Kiefer … and I almost liked it. But there was something missing… and I wonder if anyone else felt it, too. You remember the podcast, Talking Scared, that I reviewed a while back? They...
by admin | Feb 7, 2024 | News of the Weird
Here, come on down the rabbit hole with me. I went looking for some background on Henry Thomas for a review of The Fall of the House of Usher… and found an entirely different little gem: a very short, very special sequel to E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, posing as an...
by admin | Jan 30, 2024 | News of the Weird
Let’s face it: all the entertainment awards shows, from the Oscars and the Emmies to the execrable Golden Globes are a terrible mess. Such a mess, in fact, the only decision might be simply to burn them all down and start over. I’m not usually an extreme kind of guy....
