Well wasn’t that a lovely break, filled with feasting, friends and general merriment with not a care in the world.

Oh look, I see we in fact have a rather long list of cares. Hmmm, some of them are in bright red boldface all-caps, and this one care is taking up an entire page.

Great start to the year.

While I was very glad to have a new book out in 2025, and that I more or less successfully navigated the associated bookstore and library visits, interviews, signings, podcasts and conventions (and met/reunited with many wonderful peers and friends), the rest of the year was flat-out terrible. Airline strike, postal strike, a financially and existentially ruinous death in my family, plus all the (puts arms in the air, waves them in all directions) whatever this is. And this year’s not looking like a real winner so far. Sunday Scaries indeed.

I did watch and listen to and read and make and play quite a few things over the holidays. I can’t say they provided much escape from The Miasma but at times they were an intriguing counterpoint and even offered a bit of hope and cope, which is pretty much all we can ask for at the moment.

Some highlights:

The Awakening (2011, Nick Murphy) - A post-WWI spiritualism debunker (Rebecca Hall) is called to a traumatized boy’s school where her education and modern ways are a subject of uneasy fascination; as one would hope, her investigation into the ghostly goings-on exposes past crimes and tears open seething resentments and immeasurable guilt and grief. Perfect holiday viewing! A welter of late-game twists and turns sets it all wobbling but it rights itself by the end. Hall is thoroughly engaging in an increasingly difficult role. Solid backup from scream queen Imelda Staunton and brooding hunk Dominic West.

Closed Circuit (1978, Giuliano Montaldo) - The investigation of a shooting in a local cinema during a matinee showing of a Spaghetti Western jumps the rails in this amusing Italian comedy-mystery. It seems like a conventional locked-room whodunit at the start but goes off in several lightly eccentric directions—political, sexual, and otherwise—before its genuinely surprising if somewhat whimsical reveal. A love letter to the movies and their audiences, from the deeply passionate to those who just want to get away from the troubles of the world and spend a few hours in a cool dark room. Very much an ensemble piece, but Brizio Montinaro stands out as an inspector trying to maintain a modicum of logic and discipline amidst the unfolding chaos.

The Lion in Winter (1968, Anthony Harvey) - A first-time viewing for me, this was much less stagey and stodgy than I feared it would be. The scathing exchanges between Eleanor and Henry are the whole film’s reason for being, and frankly there could have been more of them. Anthony Hopkins’s debut as a decisively gay Richard the Lionheart must have been a brave move at the time. Katharine Hepburn saying the word ‘nipples’ was easily one of my top three jumpscares of the year.

Currently watching: Well, it’s an embarrassment of riches over here. Season six of Canada’s Drag Race is well underway; season 17 (!) of RuPaul’s Drag Race has just begun; and season four of The Traitors UK made its debut on New Year’s Day with a delicious twist that has upended the traitors’ game. I started Pluribus a few days ago but had to stop after half an hour as it was already so stressful. Licking donuts! (shudder) But I will get back to it and push through to at least the end of the first episode.

This week in horror: Oh, let’s not.

Cool story, bro: I was very impressed by the standalone audio drama Tond by Will Maclean and Joel Morris, the team behind the Broken Veil podcast. A chilly two-hander in the Ghost Story for Christmas vein with Rosie Cavaliero and Carrie Quinlan as therapist and patient, it is perfectly suited for a quiet evening in a darkened room with a pair of headphones.

That’s all for this evening. If the many and various gods see fit, I’ll be back on January 18, and hopefully so will you. In the meantime, I leave you with this:

“Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little—that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.”

Let’s have an amen to that.