The Ghoulish Times | 07.05.25
Hello and welcome to yet another issue of The Ghoulish Times. My name is Max Booth and this is our free spooky newsletter. I’m writing another newsletter so quickly for the normal reasons you might expect someone to write two newsletters in a week: we have more news. Sadly, we are fresh out of letters, so I will have to recycle many of them from the last email and rearrange them into the correct words to express what I need to tell you. If you see any typos at all, please understand it is not my fault. We’re under a letter drought. FOLKS. WE ARE UNDER. A. LETTER. DROUGHT. In fact if you ever find a typo in anything I’ve written or published, assume this was also the case. IT IS NOT MY FAULT. NOTHING IS EVER MY FAULT. I will die innocent and pure.
First, BIG NEWS. Earlier this week we partnered with Rue Morgue Magazine to reveal the cover art for Jess Hagemann’s MOTHER-EATING.
This modern retelling of Marie Antoinette’s reign will drop on October 28th. All paperback pre-orders before October 10th will be signed & personalized by the author.
Listen. This book is fucking nuts. And incredible. And unlike anything you’ve read before. I guarantee it. Please pre-order MOTHER-EATING.
So, San Antonio is currently flooding again. It’s, uh, really bad. Lots of death and many, many children still missing. My partner teaches dance around the area most of the major flooding has occurred, so she spent yesterday frantically trying to get a hold of her students to make sure everybody was safe (they’re okay).
Kind of insane to see the dumbest people on social media posting jokes whenever Texas goes through some kind of catastrophe. If I see one more post that contains something like “well YOU voted for this, Texas” or “I hope you’re proud of YOUR governor” I’m going to bust my head through a window. That’s like me placing blame on them because THEIR president is currently building concentration camps in THEIR country. Zero comprehension of what reality is right now, or what little control any of us really have over our lives, our world, our future. It’s childish logic that I just can’t tolerate. Yes, this is a red state, but does that mean everybody who lives here supports our current resident fascist? Hell no. Despite its reputation, Texas is bursting with some of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met in my life. It truly is a beautiful state with many, many kind-hearted people. Especially here in San Antonio. And even those who have voted red…I don’t care, man. These are human beings. There are children dead and missing. Learn what it means to be a person with a heart.
I woke up this morning to yet another flash flood warning. It’s not over yet. We aren’t insane people. It was pretty easy to decide not to bother opening the shop today. So, if you were attempting to tempt this storm…uh, don’t? Even your favorite bookstore is closed. Stay home, if you’re able.
Last month we had horrible rain, too, and our shop ended up flooding a bit. The carpet got fucked but the inventory was mostly fine, thankfully. Currently trying not to think about what’s happening over there right now, if we’re going to walk into another disaster next time we open those doors or not.
We were also closed yesterday, on the Fourth of July, although not for the normal reasons. It just happens to also be both my birthday and Lori’s birthday. Nobody’s working on their birthday if they can help it (let’s pretend I didn’t spend nearly the entire day working on freelance editing, anyway). I got Lori All That Jazz and she got me Paper Moon. It was a beautiful Criterion birthday for us both.
Want to give us a little belated birthday gift? Well, if you haven’t heard yet, we’re in the process of relocating our bookstore to downtown San Antonio, and we’ve set up an option on our webstore for donations. (Note: the donation page was broken for over a day earlier this week, so if you tried earlier and weren’t able, please try again.) Click HERE to contribute. We’ll even send you a free sticker. You can also just buy some books from our webstore. That would be just as cool.
Here is a very sweet, touching thing someone posted on Bluesky yesterday that made me cry a bit.
Okay I’m going to go pet my dog now. Goodbye.
—Max