Very quickly, a sprinkling — a soupcon — of news bits from me, largely about My Cool New Book Which You Need To Read And Review Or I Die Unrecognized In The Abyss, The Calamities.
First, and perhaps most importantly, don’t forget! I’ll be going back out on the road next week to the following very cool locations:
10/13: Gibson’s Bookstore, Concord, NH, with Delilah S. Dawson. Deets here.
10/14: Phoenix Books, Burlington, VT, with Delilah, deets here.
10/20: Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, NY with Sam Rebelein, deets here.
Or you can just smell the air and follow the redolent scent of apples.
Esquire did a post about the 10 Horror Books They’re Reading For Halloween, and The Calamities made the list, flagged as THE SUCCESSION meets THE OMEN, which isn’t exactly right, but it’s close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades.
“From author Chuck Wendig comes the start of a new series in which souls are up for sale. In The Calamities, the first of a planned duology, the rich and powerful Maynes dynasty leads the underworld in soul trading. The heir to the Maynes fortune, Mourning, wants little to do with his family’s evil business. While Mourning’s father forces him back into the fold, he finds allies who might help him topple his family’s empire. But will Mourning actually rebel against his family’s wishes, or will he live up to his dark legacy after all? Wendig’s Fiends series is off to a great start with a devilishly great family drama that feels ready-made for HBO.”
And whoa-dang, at Elle (!), Veronica Roth (!!) recommends The Calamities (!!!) which is very fucking cool. (And don’t miss her return to the world of Divergent with The Sixth Faction, though while you’re here, do your very best to read When Among Crows, okay?).
Also, did I mention I got a very nice Booklist review?
“The Calamities is Wendig at his very best: a horror story with elements of dark fantasy… this novel features a host of otherworldly characters and the kind of detailed world building that makes Wendig’s novels such a tactile experience for his readers. A great start to what should be a spectacular series.”
Anyway!
Very happy people are reading and enjoying the book.
You’re the best.
Yes, even you over there in the corner. With the weird hat and the fingers that smell like Cool Ranch Doritos.
Also, because I am not a monster, I pay the Puppy Tax with Cooper Content:
This year, I am considerably daunted by the prospect of doing in-depth apple reviews — I want to! I do! But with our brand new dog, Cooper, and with one big leg of a book tour over and now a second, shorter leg coming up (see you in New Hampshire, Vermont, Ottawa, and Rhinebeck NY?), oh and a whole book I gotta finish writing, I’ve been sorta maybe kinda busy. So busy I can’t even edit that sentence down to a manageable length.
That said, I am still eating apples, and of course I’m gonna talk about them.
So I figured, let’s do a first round of capsule reviews here — a big post of yummy and, er, not so yummy apples what I done ate.
(As a sidenote, I think my last formal apple review was last February — #41, The Wild Twist. And you’ll find link backs to the 40 reviews prior to that.)
We begin with —
Gravenstein
GRAVENSTEIN WAS THE DOCTOR, NOT THE MONSTER, YOU PLEBE. What? Sorry.
I’ve had a real mixed bag with Gravensteins, but this one was pretty darn lovely. Not as crisp as I expected it to be, but juicy, and with a profound taste of vanilla, rooibos, and a hint of honey and elderflower. Skin had a nice pop, too, and was not deleterious to the eating experience. I know these can be a bit fussy here in America (it’s a Danish apple, I believe?) but this one, from Scott Farm, was a damn delight.
Let’s call it a 7.5 outta 10.
Hubbardston Nonesuch
“HUBBARDSTON NONESUCH, YOU GET OUT OF THAT BARN AND STOP TINKERING WITH THAT GOAT.”
I dunno, it sounds like some old-timey Depression-era farmer name. Or maybe like snake oil. Whatever. I ate two of these — one out of the box, a second a couple weeks later. Both times, got hit by a tongue-scrubbing astringency. First time, was real dull. Juice hits, then it’s replaced with a kind of bright white nothingness. With maybe a ping of elderflower or some other florality. Second apple had a stronger taste — suddenly sub-acid, having lost all of its zip-zoom-zap. Very sweet. But once again, that flavor didn’t last, ghosting into the hedge like Homer.
Uhh, Simpson, not the sightless Greek poet.
Not my favorite apple of the batch. From Scott Farm, Vermont.
Let’s call this a 3.7 out of 10. Why 3.7 and not 3.8? Or 3.6? I don’t know. I’m just making this shit up. Using decimals make it seem like math. (Also it lets me get a bit more granular, if anybody cares about that. Which you shouldn’t. I am not an appleologist and any opinions I offer here should be viewed subjectively and honestly, suspiciously.)
Lamb Abbey Pearmain
I dunno what lambs are doing what in what abbey, but I support my sheepy monkbrothers and monksisters. Baa, baa, my brethen. Baa, baa.
Anyway. Last time I had one of these about… five years ago? I was largely unimpressed. It was a good, not great apple. Maybe a little boring?
This time, not boring at all. A happy-making apple. Kind of a platonic ideal of an apple — crunchy-crispy flesh, great balance of tart and sweet, classic apple flavor with a hint of tangerine or some other kind of citrus? And a slightly weird-but-pleasing umami MSG thing. Sometimes pearmains are expected to taste like pear; this did not. Anyway! It was nice. Not jaw-dropping amazing, but much better than I got last time around. It’s why it’s always good to try apples of the same kind from season to season, or even at different times within a season. Apples change. It’s fun. They’re a chaos fruit. Eris knew it.
That’s another 7.5 / 10.
Hewes Crab
Crabapples, which I initially mistyped as “crapapples,” oops, are a pretty neat little thing. A handful of species are native here, unlike Malus domestica, which is only native to my heart. Crabapples have long-served as a good way to make cider, or jelly, or to improve standard apple stock, or to throw them at children without hurting the children, but really just as a way to let the children know, “I don’t care for you, child, and that’s why I’m throwing a small apple at you — not to harm you, but simply to assert my distaste for you and your diminutive kind!”
Anyway, this little fucker is the Hewes Crab. Or the Virginia Crab. More a cider apple or throwing-at-children apple than one you eat.
It’s weird. Crabapples are weird. But it is interesting, at least. The ones I had were a bit mealy, without juice, but had a curious pear-meets-pineapple-meets-savory-tamarind thing? And then as I ate it, more kinda happened in the mouth. It finished with a complex butterscotch hit. Which is pretty strange. And fun. So try one. But then throw the rest at children.
Worth a 5 outta 10, just for the butterscotch thrill.
Opalescent
No photo here, just a brief update — I reviewed this last year and gave it a nut-kick of a score: 2.5 outta 10. But this year, I had a batch, and found them pretty sublime. Crisp, dense, a berry hit of tart-sweet, a tinge of something floral. A major fucking glow-up for this apple. From dud to stud. Easily bumping it to a 8 outta 10, which again: wow, zero to hero. Good job, Opalescent. Good job.
Chenango Strawberry
Is this the sequel to Django Unchained? No. It is fun to say though. Especially as some kind of exclamation of surprise. “Chenango Strawberry!” you exclaim, as the masked killer leaps out from behind the curtain.
Ate this fun friend in Wisconsin — the first of many apples I bought and consumed there (from Brightonwoods, a great orchard). First, the smell off that apple was profoundly strawberry. Which, okay, it’s right in the name. But a lot times, you don’t always get what a name advertises. The Hubbardston Nonesuch does not smell like a guy named Hubbardston, for instance. Or maybe it does. I’ve never met a Hubbardston.
So, beyond the smell… it was a tough apple to review. Lovely aroma, and the taste was honestly fairly berry-like. But the texture on my iteration of it was just gushy mushy mealy mess. Like, a pre-applesauced apple. You don’t even need your mouth to make it. It just exists in that state already.
So, sadly, a 4 outta 10 from me.
William’s Pride
William! You fool! With your damnable pride! Yes, you are an apple! Yes, you have a butt, unlike other apples! But your juicy butt will be your downfall!
Another softer apple, but not mealy or mushy — just on the side of still pleasant.
Very juicy, drippy juicy, with some warming pie spices attached to the aftertaste — you know, that cinnamon-clove-nutmeg. Autumnal shit. Though also there’s an after-aftertaste, where it tastes like the air in a used bookstore. Or maybe like you’re just licking a used book. I dunno.
It’s good. I coulda used more tart. Maybe something a little more exciting. I’m not sure William really deserves all that Pride. But I’ll afford him a 6.3 outta 10. In part because of that juicy butt.
Blenheim Orange
Real dense cronchy boy here. The skin is forbidding. It’s like you’re trying to open plastic packaging with your teeth. But the flesh…
THE FLESH
SAVOR THE FLESH
Okay sorry, got weird there.
It has the sunny disposition of a Cox’s Orange Pippin. It’s bright, friendly, a floral zip, an electric lemon tickle. The density of it though is difficult. It’s like eating an apple at the center of a black hole. An apple crushed by all the pressure of collapsing space-and-time. Not pleasant in that sense.
But tasty otherwise!
7 outta 10. Woop.
Golden Nugget
Boy, that’s an ugly fucking apple. It’s some kind of goblin butt canker. Like you pried it off an ogre’s back and then it fell into the dirt.
In short: tough, gnarly apple with a green, unripened smack of tartness — as the flavor resolves, it goes straight for unripebanana. Not under-ripe. But totally un-fucking-ripe. Green. No yellow. Like you’re eating the banana while it remains hanging from its tree. Or bush. Or shrub. I don’t know how bananas grow. Maybe you pluck them from a monster’s diaper, I have no idea.
Ummmmmm. I think I should really hate it, but my mouth did find it interesting, and my mind was more compelled by it than I expected.
The sign notes it develops in cold storage, which I did not give it a chance to do. Like a GoldRush, it may really mature off the tree.
This one sucked but I also liked it, because tastes are weird.
I still can’t give it more than a 5.9 outta 10. I mean, let’s be real.
Doctor Harvey
“DOCTOR HARVEY, DOCTOR HARVEY. WE HAVE HUBBARDSTON NONESUCH ON THE LINE FOR YOU, DOCTOR HARVEY.”
This very old apple (er, variety, I’m not eating a 400-year-old vampire apple) is designated a cooking apple — which is to say, good for sauce, pie, what-have-you.
This would not be good for pie because it was a bit too soft. Not mealy! But soft. It’d turn to PIE GOOP, I think.
Still, for a cooking apple — it’s fairly pleasant, and I encourage you to watch the video of me eating it, because the pop of the skin is honestly unparalleled. I’ve never had an apple pop like this. It’s straight up ASMR shit.
The flavor itself starts nice — it’s got this berry-flavored wine cooler thing going on. And it was juicy as all heck. Just a gusher. A real squirter.
The flavor, though, recedes quickly, as to flee a crime scene.
So, it’s a 5.1 outta 10 for me, just over the line with that magnificent pop.
All right. More apple reviews to come! I’ve still got an absolute shitload of apples to talk about — and next week, I’ll be in New England, so you can be sure that Imma eat some fancy goddamn apples there, too. Just don’t tell Delilah I’m dragging her to an orchard and we’re going to sacrifice ourselves to the apple trees. Shhh. Shh!
Also if you want a perfect spooky-season-apple-season read, I feel obliged to remind you I wrote a book about a sinister orchard and its evil apples —
*Straightens up, squares her shoulders, and tiptoes onto the stage of Chuck’s Terrible Minds blog.*
*Chuck holds up a poster saying “GO FOR IT! YOU CAN DO IT!”*
*Nods at Chuck, takes a deep breathand clears her throat.*
Salutations, everybody! Is this mic working? *Blows on mic. Jumps a little at the high-pitched squeal coming from the speakers.* All right – here we go:
The Pixel Project, a 501(c)3 anti-violence against women nonprofit, is proud to announce that our Read For Pixels campaign has reached its 12th annual fall edition in September 2026.
Read For Pixels has come a long way since September 2014 when Chuck himself, Joe Hill, Sarah J. Maas, and nine other award-winning bestselling SF/F, Horror, and YA authors helped us reach out to their readers and fandoms about violence against women (VAW) and raise funds to keep our anti-VAW work alive. Just over a decade on with almost 300 author livestreams, over 100 AMAs, 24 fundraisers, and 1 Shirley Jackson Award- and Audie Award-nominated charity anthology under our belt, we are continuing to grow our archive of globally accessible resources about VAW for geeks, book lovers, fandoms, parents, teachers, and kids, as well as leveraging the power of genre fiction and storytelling to educate people about VAW. Authors, editors, publishers, and agents have also helped us raise approximately $10,000 per year by providing exclusive goodies as thank-you treats for readers, fans, and book collectors who donate to support our work.
You’re probably thinking: “Oooh! Let’s see what the fuss is all about! So why the guest post on Chuck’s blog?”
The short answer: “Because we need your help to reach our $5,000 goal for the 12th Annual Fall Edition of Read For Pixels and keep our work alive in this [insert expletive of your choice] year of 2026.”
Fighting the good fight while grappling with the effects of increased geopolitical turbulence worldwide in 2026 is continuing to take a toll on our organization, as it has with many small grassroots-run nonprofits. Women’s organizations have experienced decades of scarce funding for the overall women’s rights movement and women’s human rights are often one of the first casualties in turbulent times such as these. In fact, UN Women sounded the alarm in summer 2025 that the funding situation is so dire that up to 60% of nonprofits and charities working on women’s rights are at risk of shutting down. The ongoing – and seemingly neverending – war on Iran has relentlessly sent global inflation further spiraling, and our 12thannualfall fundraiser is now officially the SLOWEST fundraiser the history of the campaign, moving so slowly that we feel as stuck as Atreyu’s horse Artax who perished in the Swamps of Sadness in The Neverending Story. It’s been a month and we’re stuck at $2,527, which is just 50% of the way to our very modest $5,000 in a single fundraiser so you can imagine our growing concern. While we are 100% volunteer-staffed, we do have bills to pay so that we can keep our campaigns, programs, and services running.
Chuck, who has been a solid supporter of our work for years, received our SOS and leaped into action by publishing this blog post to boost the signal for our fundraiser.
So here my team and I are, as Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2026 kicks off, presenting five fabulous reasons why you should consider giving to our fundraiser to help get us to our $5,000 finish line by our extended deadline of October 15th 2026:
Great Reason to Give Today #1: Support accessible information for victims and survivors of VAW… while acing your holiday gift list
One of the core services The Pixel Project provides is bridging the information gap that victims and survivors encounter when trying to get help. Our daily helpline retweet session, which tweets out domestic violence and rape/sexual assault helplines for women in 205 countries worldwide from 8.00PM to midnight Eastern Time, 24/7, 365 days a year, has now transitioned to Bluesky. Additionally, we continue to respond to individuals contacting us for help, doing the research legwork to provide them with information about specific victim assistance services in their part of the world, and incorporating this life-saving information in the books, videos, social media posts and other awareness-raising tools we deploy.
THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: Donate to our fundraiser and tackle your holiday season gift list at the same time! From signed rare/limited/luxe editions to goodie bundles stuffed with books and handmade treats to poetry written just for you, we have treats for every donation level from literary luminaries across different genres such as Kelsea Yu, Linda D. Addison, Milton J. Davis, Sarah Read, Sylvain Neuvel, Zig Zag Claybourne, Subterranean Press and more. And while you’re savoring the satisfaction of squaring away some of your holiday gifts early, also savor the fact that your donation will be going towards running programs and initiatives that connect victims and survivors of VAW with the help that they need. BONUS: You’ll have an interesting story to tell your loved ones about where their holiday gift came from. It might even be a great opener for chatting with them about VAW.
Great Reason to Give Today #2: Support resources for educating folks about VAW… while getting help for your writing
THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: Whether you are a budding writer or experienced author who is considering making a donation, we have a stellar line-up of Read For Pixels author alumni offering critique bundles for WIPs (works-in-progress) and query letters, and/or 1-to-1 video chats focused on the craft of writing and/or tips about the publishing industry. Participating authors include Karen Odden (Historical Fiction),Keith Rosson (Horror),Juliette Wade (Speculative Fiction), Pintip Dunn (YA Fantasy and Romance), Romina Garber (YA Fantasy), Sara Tantlinger (Horror and Poetry) and more. Enjoy knowing that while you are getting expert help for your WIP or fixing a seemingly intractable writing challenge, you’re also supporting the creation and expansion of online resources for educating folks around the world about VAW.
Great Reason to Give Today #3: Support online platforms for people to speak up about VAW… while having a chat with your favourite author
A key pillar of our activism and advocacy work is providing digital platforms that are safe spaces for people from different walks of life to speak up about VAW. Every October for the past 10 years, we have hosted the “People and Pets Say NO!” photo statement campaign via Facebook and Instagram for people and furbabies from all walks of life to step up and publicly call for an end to VAW during Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We also offer VAW survivors and dads who are male allies opportunities to speak up via blog interview initiatives such as the Survivor Stories series and the Voices of Dads Against VAW series.
THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: While your donation keeps our platforms available for folks to speak up about VAW, you can enjoy a chat with your favorite author in the name of supporting a good cause. For this fundraiser, Clay McLeod Chapman (Horror), Mercedes M. Yardley (Horror and Poetry), Pintip Dunn (YA Fiction), Susan Elia MacNeal (Historical Crime/Mystery), and Rachel Howzell Hall (Mystery/Crime and Romantasy) are all happy to have a video chat with donors to natter about everything from writing and the publishing industry to Victorian crime history and geeky hobbies. These video chats are all open to individual donors, with some also open to groups (Book clubs or library groups or even just a group of like-minded geeky friends/fans are welcome to pool together the donation to get one or more of these chat sessions).
Great Reason to Give Today #4: Help us boost the signal for anti-VAW activists and advocates worldwide… while getting your Fall Reading Fix
THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: Donate to our fundraiser and stock up your stack of fall 2026 reads at the same time! From good bundles stuff with books and swag to e-book bundles to single signed titles, we have book-filled treats for every donation level from acclaimed authors such as Angela Sylvaine, Grace R. Reynolds, Kendare Blake,Marisca Pichette, Padma Venkatraman, and more. And while you’re feeling the satisfaction of ensuring you don’t run out of great stories to fill your fall days, also know that you are helping amplify the voices of activists and organizations around the world striving to bring an end to VAW.
Great Reason to Give Today #5: Support the right of women and girls to live a life without violence
So donate to our fundraiser because you believe in supporting efforts to prevent, stop, and end VAW. Whether you can give us $5, $50 or $500 to help us reach our $5,000 goal (or even zoom past it to a stretch goal), every cent counts.
(And when you donate to us, please also consider donating either cash or supplies to your local women’s shelter or rape crisis center. Like us, they need all the help they can get.)
It’s time to stop violence against women. Together.
Interested in checking out our Read For Pixels fundraiser and making a donation to help keep our work alive? Gohere.
Regina Yau is the founder and president of The Pixel Project, a virtual volunteer-led global 501(c)3 nonprofit organization on a mission to raise awareness, funds and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women at the intersection of social media, new technologies, and popular culture/the Arts. A Rhodes Scholar with a double Masters in Women’s Studies and Chinese Studies, she has a lifelong commitment to fighting for women’s rights. In addition to running The Pixel Project, Regina also teaches English to middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, writes stories about cheeky little fox spirits and terrorist chickens, bakes far too many carb-and-sugar-loaded goodies, and can be found artistically posing upside down in Aerial Yoga class.
It’s a strange thing, to get a dog after you’ve ever had any other dog, because frequently the new dog is there to replace, in some sense, a dog who has come before them. I don’t mean as a literal replacement, where you’re hoping to get a weird little clone of the former (likely ending up with a real Paper Jam Dipper situation there), I just mean, you know you had a dog in one of the beloved dog slots in your household, and then one day, you didn’t. You had a VOID OF DOG and that hurts to have but it’s also kind of awful to fill, isn’t it? The great emptiness of having lost a dog hurts really horribly, but it can feel, I dunno, somehow like a betrayal to replace the dog that you lost, too.
(Ah, the paradox of grief: terrible to behold, but worse, perhaps, to be rid of.)
But the truth is, as George Carlin correctly noted, life is a series of dogs. And when we lost Loa in April, I knew at some point we would not be replacing her, because she is irreplaceable — but, that we’d still want to and maybe even need to fill the Great Yawning Dog Chasm in our life.
That has now happened.
We now have Doctor Cooper Cheese Esquire, the Third:
Cooper — or Coop, or Cheese, or Mister Squish, or simply Dude — came to us quite fortuitously, whereupon we entered into the possibility of getting a new dog by setting an incredibly high standard for ourselves, one that we knew would take a long time to surmount. We figured we’d dip our toes into the process, waggle them around a bit, and then slowly, slooooowly wade into the waters of New Dog Loch over the next several months. Maybe we’d end up with a dog by Christmas, we thought. That’d be quite speedy!
*clears throat*
Our last two dogs, Loa and Snoobug, aka the greatest dogs ever, were both shelter pups, each of them coming from one particular shelter called Last Chance Ranch. They’re a great, great shelter. They are like sommeliers pairing people with the best dog available. They are cautious with who they give dogs to, but not so cautious that they’re just driving by in a van and chucking a puppy at your head before speeding off. They always have dogs, but rarely do they have them for too long.
So, we took a look at their website, saw they had their annual Open House. We decided to go. The event is less OOH LOOK AT OUR ANIMALS thing and more a fun day with merchants and food trucks and horse demonstrations and stuff. But they also walk their dogs around so you can meet them. Mostly we figured, hey, we’ll meet a few dogs, get used to this process again, and that’ll be great. Who doesn’t want to meet random dogs??
Thing is, both my wife and I, independently of one another, also looked at their list of current, adoptable dogs.
And we saw one named Scout.
He was listed as seven months old, and as a Hound / Terrier mix.
My wife was like, “I don’t really want a boy dog?”
And I was like, “Oh, same, and also, a dog who was part retriever would be nice.”
And we were, together, like, “Yeah, no, probably not this dog,” and yet, I guess in each of our minds we were like, well, but he looks really nice?
So we went, wandered around, met dogs, and it was great.
And yet, we hadn’t seen Scout wandering around.
They weren’t really doing new appointments for one-on-one dog meets that day, but we figured, okay let’s just pop in and see what’s up.
I had already put in a generic application and was approved, so that helped when we got in there and they were like, it’s a really busy day, but you guys ARE approved, and your last two dogs did come from here, soooooooo.
And the very nice young woman behind the counter said, “Oh, I know what you need. You guys need to see SCOUT.”
And it was like, shit, okay, she read us like a damn book. We hadn’t said anything about Scout. She just knew.
So — they bring this dog out.
And he is just an absolute love bug. He is a dog-type dog, if you know what I mean — just a happy galloping FRIEND TO EVERYONE. He came to each of us in order, and with each of us he leaned into us, then melted to the floor like the cheese on a cheeseburger.
We spent maybe five minutes with the dog. They also showed us another dog, Lumi, who was this sweet little hound girl, but they correctly (if a bit grimly) noted: “She loves other dogs, and she’s gentle, so she’s going to get along great with your older dog, but she’s also maybe not going to do great when that dog… isn’t around anymore.” And I thought that was actually pretty insightful and thoughtful. So we said, fuck it, whatever idea we had about being cautious and critical through this process was out the fucking window.
We loved Scout.
We wanted to adopt Scout.
Like, right then and there.
But they said, you haven’t had a dog meet yet. Meaning, we still needed to bring Snoobug up to meet him. To make sure they don’t try to tear each other to ribbons or something.
Further, they do not generally put a ‘hold’ on dogs, so if we walked out of there, there would be plenty of chances for people to adopt him. And they would, because he was great. (And would have a shot at walking the open house that afternoon.)
We said, hell with it, we’ll go get our other dog right now.
And they said, it’s too busy to do that today.
But.
BUT.
They also said, you know what, we can see this is the right fit, so we will put a hold on him. Nobody else will be able to adopt him until you bring your dog up in a couple days. So, two days later, we were back up there, and Snoobug and him had a great DOG-MEET-DOG situation:
And that was that. There were no barriers to us taking him home.
So, spoilers warning:
We brought him home.
We’ve had him for several days now, and lemme tell you —
This dude rules.
He very much has his own personality, and yet, reminds us of our last dog, Loa, in a lot of crucial ways. He loves toys. He’s food-focused. He’s people-focused. But he’s also none of that to the extreme. He isn’t destroying toys (or our stuff). He loves treats but isn’t always on the hunt to eat stuff he shouldn’t. He’s not so much a Velcro dog as a dog who always wants to know where we are before he chills out. He’s incredibly sweet, and fun, and smart? He’s actually very polite? Snoobug has come around to him, too, which I’m so glad for, because — you know, she and Loa were like sisters. They worked in tandem quite well. And we weren’t sure what it would be like to bring in a young buck like this goofball — but his energy has given Snoobug energy. She’s kind of come back alive a little? Doing a lot less loafing about. (Not that there’s anything wrong with loafing!) They chill in the same bed without an issue, so I love that. And he gets along splendidly with my sister’s new dog, a seven-month-old something-or-other. They spent about 45 minutes just tearing into each other in the best possible way:
(Oh, the other thing? He’s not a seven-month old hound-terrier, either. He’s a 9-ish month old hound-retriever mix. As evidenced by how relentlessly — and how well — he will play a game of fetch.)
He’s already sitting like a little prince. We’ve got him ringing the sleigh bells by the door when he wants to go out. No accidents in the house. He’s also really pretty! I mean, my gosh, his eyelash game alone is champion shit:
Though to be fair, he’s not always so well-put-together:
Still. What I’m trying to say is —
We’re very, very lucky.
AND HE’S VERY SQUISHABLE LOOKIT THE LITTLE SQUISHY MAN HIMS A PRECIOUS GENTLEMAN
Ahem.
You’ll have to excuse me. I just can’t help it. Look at him.
Expect more COOPER content to come, I’m sure. Honestly this might have to just be a COOPER CHANNEL, 24/7 from here on out, but okay fine I guess I’ll still talk about apples and book-writing and all that.
If you wanna help keep Mister Cheese here in that sweet kibble, buy my books. And if you get ’em from D-Town, they can send them to you signed and personalized.
Oh, also, don’t forget:
I’ll be at Gibson’s Bookstore in New Hampshire on Oct 13th with Delilah S. Dawson, and also with Delilah at Phoenix Books in Burlington, Vermont. Then, I’m at Can*Con in Ottawa before heading back into the states and hitting up Oblong Books with Sam The Man Rebelein on October 20.
(And if you’re reading this the day I’m posting it — I’ll be at Doylestown Bookshop tonight in support of Keith Rosson and his newest, CRONE. 6PM!)
“God-killing seemed a lofty ambition. Then again, is that not what we’re here to do in our hunt for the Dweller in Darkness?”
All of Cassius Marius’ life has been spent in service to the Pale King. Ever since his birth sixteen years ago on the night the Hero of Hathur died, his mother prepared him to join the Lightbringers: seven young men selected every equinox by the Church of the Pale King to descend underground to hunt and destroy the Dweller in Darkness, a chthonic entity the Church names as source of an unnatural blight ravaging Hathur and beyond, year after year.
Cassius has known since he could speak that he was destined to destroy the great evil poisoning his home. His inevitable confrontation with the Dweller on his holy descent changes him inside and out and puts him on a collision course with the Pale King he once worshipped. With his world and body crumbling around him, Cassius must choose between loyalty and honor, family and humanity, not to save his home. But to destroy it.
COMPS ARE YOUR FRIEND
Comps are a marketing gimmick, yes, but they can also be a source of inspiration. The seed that grew into the Deadlights Duology sprouted during a comps class at the Futurescapes Writers’ Workshop in spring 2022. It was my first time attending the workshop after spending years writing an epic fantasy novel, only for me to be disabused early on by several agents and editors as to the odds of a debut author selling a doorstopper manuscript in the current world of trad-publishing, let alone one meant to start a series.
A tad despondent, I started pondering something shorter I could write next during the comps class taught by literary agent Elizabeth Copps. She proposed we try to reverse-engineer a story from a pair of comps. Mine came preloaded, as I was reading The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers at the time and had just the day before fallen down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about the medieval French nobleman/serial killer Gilles de Rais, with both the fictional and historical stories revolving around a mysterious, possibly occult play.
From The King in Yellow-meets-Gilles de Rais, the story of my dark fantasy-horror novellas The Mystery of the Pale King and now Dweller in Darkness exploded outward. Just from knowing the comps, I knew the protagonists, the antagonists, and the central hook that would grab readers whether they read the back cover or heard me describe the idea. Whereas at the time I worried I had poured myself into my epic fantasy novel for nothing, I can look back and see that nothing was wasted, that all of that writing (I’m talking hundreds of thousands of words) made me a more efficient writer, because God knows I wasn’t going through that again. The work was the engine, the comps became the fuel, and the Deadlights Duology was off to the races.
BUILD THE BOX BEFORE YOU THINK OUTSIDE IT
Worldbuilding requires rules. Whether these rules are as quantifiable as the Brandon Sanderson school of hard magic or as opaque as the Jeff VanderMeer school of new weird, they must exist to undergird the thematic and emotional scaffolding of the story.
What fantasy and sci-fi writers have to worry about that realist literary types don’t is we don’t get to presume the reader knows the rules of our extraordinary settings from the start. More than in other literary traditions, establishment of these rules takes much more precedence in speculative fiction for the simple fact of orienting a reader to an entirely new setting (tidally-locked planet!) or perspective (raccoon detective!).
Only after establishing what is known can the author reveal not everything is what it seems. You align character with the rules of the worldbuilding, meaning you have them demonstrate and rely on their knowledge of the rules. Then you can effectively pull the rug out from under the character and thus the reader. One word I particularly like here is “misbelief.” You start with a character believing one thing and through the course of the story they either come to terms with their misbelief or cling tighter to it.
For example, our main character Cassius in Dweller in Darkness was raised in a world that praises his namesake, the antagonist of the previous book. His reckoning with the truth that the hero whom he was named after was in fact a villain is a huge part of his arc.
THE KEY TO COSMIC HORROR IS DREAD
Another use for a character’s misbelief is dread. Sure, horror has shock, there’s disgust, but of all the fears nothing cuts deeper than dread. Dread is the essence of cosmic horror, the notion that we are less than ants in the face of an indifferent at best, malicious at worst universe, because unlike the other fears, you cannot do anything about dread. You can’t run from it, fight it, or even understand it. Dread, like inertia, creeps (shout out Massive Attack).
All this intersects with misbelief by bringing cosmic horror down from an intellectual to an emotional level. There is something slithering off-page the character cannot see, hear, or sense at all. Let’s call this eldritch abomination “the truth.” While the character toils in their efforts to maintain their misbelief, the truth keeps bubbling up, prodding them to stare into the abyssal truth. It is up to the author to decide if the character succeeds or fails.
By building that box around the character, referring to their misbelief, you can now see what lies outside of it and start bringing those two halves into conflict and perhaps resolution.
FOLLOW THE BEAD ON THE STRING
Imagine a long string held horizontal and taut. Now imagine a single bead sliding across it. That bead is the heart of the story. As it travels across the string, an author’s goal scene to scene is to keep your readers following the bead like they were transfixed by the Virgin Mary. The moment their gaze wanders or they lose track of the bead, the storyteller did something wrong (taking ownership is the only useful perspective I find as an author, as we don’t control audiences but we do control how we tell stories). We’ve all experienced a book, movie, or show that had our attention and then fumbled it. The storytellers took their eye off the bead.
On the flip side, we all have fallen in love with stories that carry us along with purpose and propulsion, stories so masterful they transcend and become greater than the sum of their parts. If the emotional axis of a story, how it makes us feel, is the Y and the thematic axis, what it’s about, is the X, our favorite stories hit his chart smack dab in the middle. One of the strengths of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror is the ability to do this at scale. Speculative elements, whether they be monsters, magic or faster-than-light travel, can stand in as symbolic substitutes, demonstrate internal character’s strength or conflict externally (superhero fights are basically extended arguments with fists), or depict unheard-of civilizational disruption across a continent, a planet, a galaxy.
Bringing it back to worldbuilding, after my experience doing so much prior to writing my first novel, I went in the opposite direction with the Deadlights Duology and that looser grip gave me the ability to see the bead much better than I believe I had before. I started to intertwine the character’s personal stakes with the larger plot as much as possible, tying them together for enhanced effect. That’s the reason in Dweller in Darkness (no spoiler as this is spelled out in the opening pages) our main character’s mother is responsible for the tradition of seven Lightbringers that kicks off our story. It gives our main character a direct connection to and reason to believe in the world state and gives a supporting character greater agency in the story. As much fun as worldbuilding is, it should ultimately be born out in character.
SWEAT THE POISON OUT
Dweller in Darkness was not the original idea I had for the sequel to my debut The Mystery of the Pale King. There were a few reasons I put the original idea aside but one looms largest. The 2024 U.S. presidential election once again shook me and the country I live in to its core. The rage, the disgust, the fear, it all had to go somewhere. What writing has always done for me is allow me to sweat the poison out. There’s nothing less judgmental than a blank page.
The sequel needed to change because I had changed. This would be an angry story. There would not be peace, not for those who wrought the world of the Deadlights Duology. Peace would have to wait until after I told the story of how their world ends. Fascists abhor creativity and art because imagination is anarchic. Imagination allows our minds to go anywhere we choose, inhabit anyone’s POV (empathy, another fascist weakness), and dream better worlds. Fascists have no imagination and their jealousy frustrates them to no end.
But it’s not enough to write an angry screed. My favorite dark fantasies are laced with romanticism, however bruised, however bloodied, a flickering flame that refuses to go out in the dark. While Dweller in Darkness was an exorcism of all the darkness swirling inside me at the time, it also became a vessel for hope, because stepping into the dark made me seek out that flickering flame and hold it close until the end.
Sam Flynn (he/him) is a lifelong resident of Ohio where he lives with his wife Angela and their plethora of pets. He is the author of the Deadlights Duology consisting of the dark fantasy/horror novellas The Mystery of the Pale King, named one of the best reads of 2024 byGrimdark Magazine, and its sequel Dweller in Darkness, both published by Timber Ghost Press. When not writing or reading, you can find him watching old movies or going on long runs.
Popping in here to letchyall know there’s a couple sales going on if you’re so inclined to save some ducats — both The Staircase in the Woods and The Book of Accidents are on sale in their respective electronic formats for a buck ninety-nine a pop. And this is true at all the e-book sites, which is to say you can find them at Kobo or Bookshop.org, if you’re the kind who doesn’t want to go poking around the place of the long river.
And here I note these books are… mmmnnnyeah, kinda useful if you’re looking to read The Calamities. By no means is The Calamities a book that requires the reading of any other book of mine. That said, the books do connect in a non-intrusive, non-essential sort of way. You’ll find some crossovers and such. (Also with Black River Orchard, and even Wanderers/Wayward a little bit, but those aren’t on sale.)
Anyway, just thought you guys might like to know.
Enjoy! Or don’t! I’m not your mother! Thought I do talk to her on the phone a lot and she’s a reaaaaaal gossip.
