Publisher Cover Reveal!

Canelo Books did their cover reveal today for the reissue of The Crows on their social media and it would be great if people could like, share and comment to help boost it on the algorithm! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Canelo (@canelo_co) You can find the preorder link here: https://www.canelo.co/books/the-crows-c-m-rosens/ Please link and share it to help boost the pre-order…

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A page from my book "Midnight Hunger: the Undying Curse" From the Nighttime Frights Series available only on Barnesandnoble.com

Midnight hunger - the undying curse: ( NightTime Frights Series #01) by Jason Edwin, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

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book review || The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

video review || ARC Reading Vlog — The Haunting of Alejandra and Yours Truly

~Thanks to Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of The Haunting of Alejandra in exchange for an honest review. ~

Oh, wow, this doesn’t shy away from the heaviness this book is going to be covering as we open our meeting with Alejandra and see how much she’s struggling with everyday tasks. Her depression has become so debilitating that she has a hard time taking care of her children and her shitty husband who guilt trips her for struggling. She’s come to resent her relationship with him and is now beginning to have visions of a woman in white. I deeply want to give this woman a hug and encourage her to get help— which thank god, she does. The therapist she finds is also Mexican American and they connect over the stories of La Llorona and La Catrina, which gave some depth to both pieces of folklore I wasn’t aware of.

Prior to moving for her husband’s job, she’d been trying to reconnect with her birth mother and her culture that she wasn’t able to experience while growing up in the foster care system. I really love that she’s also trying to share the things she’s learned with her oldest daughter, Catrina, and am hopeful to see more of their relationship as Alejandra heals. The showcasing of generational trauma was exquisite. Each of the women in this family line’s perspectives felt similar and yet different enough to keep them distinct. We start with the first woman in the family line to interact with the demon. Her voice is just as somber and bitter but still stands apart from Alejandra’s. In all perspectives, though, La Llorona’s visits are so eerie and unsettling.

The plot itself is character focused as we watch Alejandra’s journey to learn more about her family line, and the troubles that have followed them, and work to heal from her own struggles so that she can save her children from suffering similar fates. I really adored the discussions around motherhood and identity in this story, the way these women took hold of their fates and made what they wanted up them. I felt just as empowered by their stories as Alejandra. The horror we see is in the visceral and gory descriptions of our character’s experiences and are amped up most when we see La Llorona, but I wanted more. There were a few moments that had me making disgusted faces, but nothing particularly memorable about the horror. I did, however, really like the final perspective and how it twisted the usual tale of La Llorona, showcasing her in a more sympathetic light.

My biggest complaint throughout this was the dialogue didn’t really seem authentic or flow naturally. Conversations feel long-winded or just unusual to how someone would speak. I also would have liked a bit more explanation of the demon in the end, it felt unresolved in the end and like a cop-out wrap-up.

4 / 5 stars

2022 Horror Picks: Recs from your Friendly Librarian

A Black and Endless Sky by Matthew Lyons

Road trips can be hell. Siblings Jonah and Nell Talbot used to be inseparable, but ever since Jonah suddenly blew town twelve years ago, they couldn’t be more distant. Now, in the wake of Jonah’s divorce, they embark on a cross-country road trip back to their hometown of Albuquerque, hoping to mend their broken relationship along the way. But when a strange accident befalls Nell at an abandoned industrial site somewhere in the Nevada desert, she begins experiencing ghastly visions and exhibiting terrifying, otherworldly symptoms. As their journey through the desolate American Southwest reveals the grotesque change happening within his sister, one thing becomes clear to Jonah: It’s not only Nell in there anymore. Pursued by a mysterious stranger who knows far more about Nell’s worsening condition than they let on, the siblings race to find a way to help Nell and escape the desert before they’re met with a violent, bloody end. But there are far worse things lurking in the desert ahead... some of them just beneath the skin.

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost. But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined. When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano? Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her. Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness. Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Carlota Moreau: a young woman, growing up in a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of either a genius, or a madman. Montgomery Laughton: a melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his scientific experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers. The hybrids: the fruits of the Doctor’s labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities. All of them living in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Doctor Moreau’s patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction. For Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and in the sweltering heat of the jungle, passions may ignite. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is both a dazzling historical novel and a daring science fiction journey.

Sundial by Catriona Ward

You can't escape what's in your blood... All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice. Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive… The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.

“Well, Israel aren’t committing war crimes.”

The IDF literally tell you on social media what they are doing. They just don’t think Palestinians are human.

To quote from the film Jennifer’s body: “I don’t have a confession, I have a declaration.”

The Nightmare Cycle by Lawrence Dagstine - Now available in Barnes & Nobles

Just here today real quick to announce that my latest horror collection, The Nightmare Cycle, from Dark Owl Publishing, is available in Barnes & Nobles. Not just Amazon or horror specialty stores and conventions. You can obtain it online or through “select physical stores,” probably the ones that have a horror section. If they don’t have it in stock, it can usually be obtained within two business…

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bakugou would be uncharacteristically quiet when you get sad. not out of spite or discomfort—he just thinks that maybe the space normally taken up by his brashness could be better saved for something else—something softer. when he sees you curled into yourself on top of the comforter, he doesn’t say anything—doesn’t poke fun at you, doesn’t berate you for not getting into bed the right way—he just pulls another blanket from the foot of the bed to cover you with. he molds himself to you, not pulling or pushing you any which way, but sliding into place behind you like he was born to fit there. he drapes an arm over your waist—lightly, in case it’s too much—and rewards you with a gentle kiss to the back of your shoulder when your fingers intertwine with his. he breathes deeply, slow and rhythmic, hoping you’ll start to mirror him, and he thinks that maybe he needs it more than you do. thinks it’s a way to feel connected to you right now. he doesn’t say anything—not that it’ll be okay, not that he loves you—he hopes that you know that both are true and that you’ll be able to see it a little better when the sun comes up tomorrow.

Magik (Illyana Rasputina) FanArt

Original Art and Commissions: Nrissoart.com

“An intense horror-action game—like Jumanji but Japanese-inspired and really disturbing.” —Kendare Blake, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Three Dark Crowns series

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Set in a nightmarish underworld, an estranged group of friends return to an evil game to try and save the boy they thought they killed in Kristen Simmons's masterful breakout horror novel, Find Him Where You Left Him Dead. Four years ago, five kids started a game. Not all of them survived. Now, at the end of their senior year of high school, the survivors—Owen, Madeline, Emerson, and Dax—have reunited for one strange and terrible reason: they’ve been summoned by the ghost of Ian, the friend they left for dead. Together they return to the place where their friendship ended with one goal: find Ian and bring him home. So, they restart the deadly game they never finished—an innocent card-matching challenge called Meido. A game without instructions. As soon as they begin, they're dragged out of their reality and into an eerie hellscape of Japanese underworlds, more horrifying than even the darkest folktales that Owen's grandmother told him. There, they meet Shinigami, an old wise woman who explains the rules: They have one night to complete seven challenges or they'll all be stuck in this world forever. Once inseparable, the survivors now can’t stand each other, but the challenges demand they work together, think quickly, and make sacrifices—blood, clothes, secrets, memories, and worse. And once again, not everyone will make it out alive.

hob gadling being so goddamn normal compared to his anthropomorphic husband, in-laws, and husband's social circle that he circles right back around to being the more sus/shady one OR hob gadling keeps accidentally derailing dream's attempts to be King of Nightmares by horny vibes/going "joke's on you, i'm into it"/"promise?" to any and all threats

Hob isn't normal, is the thing. He's not. He never was. He was smouldering with strangeness and hunger long before his future sister-in-law took one look at him and decided he'd be good for her little brother.

He asked her, once, bit drunk, if that was why she chose him: if she'd heard him forswearing her in the White Horse and looked at him, peered into the contents of his soul, and thought: well, there's one at least as stubborn as my brother - maybe they'll be good for each other. She'd just smiled and waited for Hob to take another sip before saying, "Good? I just thought it would be interesting," and twinkled at him when he sputtered. Hob said older sisters were terrors, and they'd toasted to that.

Whether she'd intended or not, they were good for each other, him and Dream. It took them a little bit to realize, a small handful of centuries holding one another at arm's length for fear of what would be seen any closer. Then they'd crashed together anyways, and it had turned out they were matched not just in that bloody-minded stubbornness to keep a decent thing going, but also in all the intensity they'd tried to smother to do so, the roaring hunger and devotion and need; the both of them strange creatures capable of giving so much and greedy enough to take just as much in kind.

On the outside, though, others see Dream, his distance, his power, the thunder of his voice, and don't see it as the armour it is, the necessary carapace protecting the sort of tender feelings that could scorch the entire earth, because he is a vessel for human emotions that are strong enough to live on in stories and dreams, because he is, in that respect, - and Hob gets choked up about this, if he allows himself to think about it too much - fundamentally more human than him, than all of them, the embodiment of every fantasy and fear and tall tale of men, tending to them each night, taking no rest for himself.

On the outside, others see Hob, his banal humanness, and other humans assume the rest of him is the same, and so do most non-humans, except they're baffled by it, baffled by why he is Dream's husband. So he plays it up, because it's funny, and if they're too incurious or gullible to figure out what lays beneath, then that's alright, because his husband figured it out, and loves him for it, and that's all he needs.

Dream didn't understand at first why Hob acted extra human whenever they mingled with other capital-e Entities and inhuman sorts, but now he finds it so amusing as well that Hob wonders how the gig isn't up from the moment anyone sees his twitching smirk. His husband has a terrible poker face, Hob thinks.

He's much better at pretending. In fact, he's so good at performing the petty normality expected of him that it goes full circle and becomes, somehow, magnetically strange to all the fantastical creatures in his husband's social circle.

He had not realized the heady effect of normal human upon non-humans until the time he had gone to a Samhain 'do in the Underhill, in his formal role as Prince Consort to the Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, first of his name, et cetera, and, rather comfortable with those sort of events by then, which were really not that dissimilar to interdepartmental faculty parties, with all the posturing and alcohol, only far better outfits, had, a bit soused on the fantastic elphin mead, accidentally started talking with a member of the faerie delegation about the football tables. At first he thought he'd committed a faux pas when the faerie just stared at him, slack-jawed, but later that night, he'd found himself surrounded by a cluster of wide-eyed dryads and undine and fae, gratifyingly holding court on why Billy Wright had been such a shite Arsenal manager. Apparently, it was the highlight of the evening.

It also helps grease the wheels of immortal statecraft, which Hob thinks of as something of a secondary benefit to making his husband smile. He would be a fierce bodyguard and soldier for Dream, in a heartbeat, he would curry favour on his behalf with pretty words and eager gladhanding, but what works out best, he's realized, is when important folk approach them to talk shop with Dream, to head it off with warm conversation about things like Tube construction, ABBA, and sausage rolls, until they look thoroughly disconcerted, before gracefully handing them off to his husband.

Whenever the occasion allows it, he'll skip on the finery too (another thing, he thinks, that he only cares about his husband seeing). Once, a baku ambassador, himself arrayed in glorious golden robes that matched his sharp gilt claws, had been so baffled by Hob's appearance on the arm of Dream, in his ratty old jeans and a United jersey he got as a gag gift once (and, on principle, refuses to wear in the Waking) that the chimera had absently agreed with Dream's suggestion for revised quotas on devouring nightmares.

Dream had been so delighted by that victory that he'd pressed Hob up against the front door of their flat in Islington, the moment they got back in, and laid kisses all over the hideous jersey, murmuring that Hob was a fearsome diplomat, and Hob had laughed and said he was only a distraction, then let Dream drag him to the bedroom anyways to thank him for his contribution.

Some see what's underneath, of course, and Hob's just as glad for that too.

The second time they'd had dinner with Crowley and Aziraphale, well past the food and making excellent headway on the rest of the wine, Dream had been called away on urgent business. Hob thought the night would end there, but the moment Dream left, Crowley had leveled an unsober finger of accusation at Hob and said, "Don't think I can't tell what you're doing."

Hob hadn't needed to try and look confused, but then Crowley leaned in and said, conspiratorially and only accidentally hissing a little, "This 'regular bloke' thing, but you're worssse than him, aren't you? Bet you are. Bet anything," and Aziraphale had genuinely emitted a tiny gasp of affront on Hob's behalf, and Hob was too busy laughing to say that he wasn't wrong at all, while Crowley gleefully swiveled around and said "I told you so, angel. S'obvious. Humansss. Not a normal one among 'em."

It was a lovely thing to say, actually, and all too easy for Hob to forget sometimes, being a particularly abnormal human leading a particularly abnormal life. But Crowley knew what he was talking about. He spent far more time with humanity compared to most of the inhuman lot. When Hob had made him promise to keep his secret from the rest of them - humanity's secret, really - and explained why, Crowley had laughed and laughed and laughed. He thinks it's the moment they became proper friends.

Hob isn't normal, is the thing.

But it's fun to don it like ceremonial garb and be an ambassador of humanity twice over: in truth and performance both. It's fun to be exactly what's expected and still disconcert.

And most of all, it's fun to go back home with his husband, to their terribly normal human flat, and curl up together in their terribly normal human bed, and watch Dream's face flush with pride or amusement as he debriefs Hob on what chaos he's wrought this time, intentionally or otherwise, with his terribly normal human presence, and Hob just laughs, then smiles until his face hurts, because Dream is his husband, wholly apart from humanity and still the most human creature Hob has met, and he knows all the ways that Hob feels like both, too.

Parliament of Rooks to be printed via ABLAZE!

I'm delighted to hear that DEEPHAVEN as been selected by the New York Public Library as one of their Best Books Of The Year!

I'm so proud of this book, and so honored by all of the support and enthusiasm it has received.

You can find NYPL's full Best Of The Year list here!

Dear Friends,

I grew up devouring 90s horror books, and it breaks my heart that these amazing stories have faded into obscurity. But guess what? I'm on a mission to resurrect that classic nostalgia and the jaw-dropping artwork we all loved.

Available now at BarnesandNoble.com

I'm writing a series of ( One book per month! ) that will transport us back to those spine-tingling days. It's time to bring back the thrill, the chills, and the excitement that made our hearts race. Join me on this radical journey to relive the scares and keep the legacy alive!

Stay spooky,

Your friend ~Jason Edwin

Direct Link to book: Midnight hunger - the undying curse: ( NightTime Frights Series #01) by Jason Edwin, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

Woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming this meme.

૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა 🦢🎀🍒🥣

. ྀི ⊹ “We never joke about bunnies, Bunny.”

⁺ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ -Bunny by Mona Awad ⋆୨୧˚ ⋆

(My most favorite book ever)

Well, someone just cost himself a role in Scream 7.