Horrified parents, strange books, and a HUGE spooky giveaway
Why I love short stories
At the start of the pandemic, I struggled to focus on reading. As such, most of the books I picked up were short story collections and anthologies. I loved knowing that I could sit down for ten minutes and finish a whole story.
But more than just accommodating my pandemic-poisoned brain, these stories showed me how much a writer could accomplish in very few words. Vivid worlds, characters, ideas, and dreams could be distilled into a few short pages, and the questions left unanswered would linger in my mind for days after. In the right hands, a short story could possess a potency hard to find in longer works of fiction. Even now, I wonder how the hell certain writers can condense so much brilliance into just a couple thousand words.
These reasons are why I’ve dedicated Cursed Morsels Press to short horror and Weird fiction. I want to read more of it, and if I can play a role in giving these stories a platform, I intend to do so.
With that in mind, Cursed Morsels will have a call for short story collections in the first week of October. Check out the guidelines here and the graphic below for more details.
What do horror writers’ parents have to say about their books?
Lots of horror writers don’t let their parents read their books, but those who do often get interesting responses. Just for fun, I got on Twitter and asked some horror writers to share how their parents reacted. Here were some of their wild, funny, and intense responses:
Cursed Morsels bundle giveaway
To celebrate the start of spooky season, I’m doing a Cursed Morsels bundle giveaway. Four awesome horror anthologies for FREE to one lucky winner. Winners in the US get a choice of ebooks or paperbacks, and winners outside the US get the ebook bundle.
To enter, simply share this Substack post on social media (Twitter, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram) and tag @cursedmorsels. I’ll announce the giveaway winner on September 25th.
Strange book recs for strange readers
This summer, I read several great books, but I wanted to highlight just a couple for folks who love fiction with a heavy dose of strangeness.
The first is The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud—an author who can do no wrong in my eyes. If you like books that get messy with genres—a little western, a dash of horror, a side of sci-fi, a pinch of coming-of-age—you’ll love this one. Ballingrud is intensely imaginative and knows how to bring a bizarre world to life without explaining away too many of its mysteries. I highly recommend the audiobook, performed brilliantly by Sophie Amoss.
The second book I’ll recommend is Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada. I loved Oyamada’s previous novella, The Hole, one of the strangest, most feverish summer reads I’ve encountered. Weasels pursues a different sort of strangeness, more subtle but no less unsettling. I deeply admire Oyamada’s talent for tiny details that haunt the reader and bring the story’s reality into question. This book is also a quick read at just around 90 pages. Check it out!