Time for a reader poll: are you a “Halloween is all year” haunt or an “October is the best season” haunt? Hailing as I do from warm and gross climes, I gravitate toward sunlit horror and the abject state brought on by waiting at bus stops when it’s 95 degrees out. I like stories that dabble in the eeriness and ecstasy of springtime; I like dread prompted by extremes of heat and cold.

That said, there’s something ineffable to October. Each fall I spend in New York, I understand it a little more—although my autumn heart will always be with Cleveland, the first autumn I experienced and the first coffee also, a honey-clove latte I still dream about every year as the season turns again.

• First things first: it’s hallowzine season! Print copies will be arriving in the next few weeks, in time for drop-off at local shops and inclusion at my next tabling event on All Souls’ Day… but since you’re here, you get the digital edition early, bundled with all previous volumes!

• DIS/MEMBER’s latest Publisher Spotlight is for Panoptic Press, an incredible zine publisher out of Rochester. I met Steve at an artfest this summer and immediately dropped like $40 at his table. Gorgeous, weird stuff.

• A teensy bit of news regarding Kristen Arnett’s upcoming Florida Anthology (real title yet to be revealed), in which I have a weird little story: 2027 release projected! Not a real year, but then, nothing is real these days!!

• Despite gravitating toward films with great soundtracks or scores, I don’t really listen to film scores by themselves. I do love music with a cinematic bent, though, especially in the lead-up to Halloween. A couple new albums in this vein are the most recent Jenny Hval and clipping. records; a couple perennial faves include Bat for Lashes and Samothrace.

• I’ve been reading The Barre Incidents and Thief of Night (!! finally. Shadowfucking is real, thanks be to God), and watching… mostly Robert Redford movies in memoriam, but the Criterion capsules for October are delish and I’m planning both my annual rewatches (Donnie Darko, Possession) and new-to-me scary entries (Cuckoo, Ravenous). What’s in your seasonal rotation?