Less Than Pulp, Issue 16
Discover more from Fiction for the Cosmically Disturbed
“He did mad things perhaps to camouflage an awful misfit sanity.”
- Tanith Lee, Dark Dance
Whoa! I can’t believe I’ve kept this going for four months. I had my doubts as I tend to go through bouts of depression and general scatter-brained-ness, but weirdly enough, writing one of these a week has helped me keep my head. Routines have power, my friends. That’s why most successful people follow them.
I haven’t yet reached the elusive 100 subscribers, but the newsletter has grown, and I’m grateful that most of you have decided to stick around. These really are the best way to stay in touch with readers, as social media tends to throttle posts unless they meet certain criteria—criteria which I still haven’t quite figured out.
Things are pretty good here on the family front. My oldest seems to be doing well in 1st Grade. It’s a significant level up from kindergarten, but he’s adapting like a champ. We have him seeing a tutor to stay on top of things, but I don’t suspect he’ll need one for long. He and I talk a lot about Bigfoot and Nessie, the Poppy Playtime games, and Gabby’s Dollhouse (which he watches with his little sister).
And speaking of her, she’s very opinionated already, and she’s not even two! She seems to prefer my company to anyone else’s, which is nice, of course, but also kind of funny and frustrating.
In other news, I’ve been playing around on TikTok a little bit. So far, I’m mostly doing photo edits. If you want, you can check out my page here.
I put it off forever, and I do still think that of all the social sites, scrolling it is the most terrible for your brain, but it is an interesting platform where creators can try new things. I’m not sure how much I’ll post on there, though, as I’m trying to only allow a manageable amount of work on my plate. As I approach middle age, I want to avoid burnout at all costs.
On the writing front, I’ve been working an essay related to the writing of GODS OF THE DARK WEB and DIGITAL DARKNESS, as well as an expansion and explanation of the lore behind those books. It will likely be the first of a series I’m tentatively calling Secret Histories.
I’m also working on a collaboration with Judith Sonnet and that novel-in-stories I’ve mentioned here before.
On this week’s episode of MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN PODCAST, we look at the career of Eli Roth, one of horror’s most polarizing creators. You can listen to the episode here, or by clicking the video below.
Jeff and I are trying to take the show to the next level, so we opened a merch store! We’ve got a T-shirt for sale on there now and more items to come. You can check that out here.
This Dark Dance book is great. I’m coming up on the halfway point. It’s my first work by Tanith Lee, and I’m absolutely in love with her style. Very unique and descriptive as you can see from the quote at the beginning of this newsletter. This book was part of the Dell/Abyss line of novels that dominated the horror market in the early 90s. I can’t wait to see where it goes.
I took a little break from Mistborn, but I’m sure I’ll be picking that one up again soon.
A final note for this week: I want to mention Peter Straub who we lost on September 4 of this year. Though mostly known for his collaborations with Stephen King, he had quite an impressive bibliography of his own. His books were always so thematically dense, and you got the impression he wrote not just to entertain but to stimulate the reader’s intellect. I don’t reckon there will be another like him.