#20 - Trick or Treat 'Til The Neighbors Gonna Die of Fright
AKA "this is the halloween themed issue because it's halloween, dangit"
PROLOGUE
First of all, shout out to Nadia Noor. Second of all, Happy Halloween! If you didn’t start celebrating Halloween in August like I did, I hope you can at least acknowledge that the entire month of October is Halloween. Watch scary movies. Read spooky books (see below). Buy Witch’s Brew KitKats. Live your best haunted life.
In honor of the season, I’m finally diving into The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven, and I’m rewatching Scream 6, my second favorite Scream movie. On top of that, I saw Shucked on Broadway with a friend last month, so I’ve been listening to “Independently Owned” like they’re paying me. I’m also working on the second draft of So Let Them Burn 2 and the first draft of The Sinister Elite, so, believe me, I don’t sleep.
As a result, this newsletter is 99% book recs. I promise you more content in November. (And, again, shout out to Nadia Noor.)
CHAPTER 1: HALLOWEEN BOOK RECS
Looking for some books to read for Halloween? I tried to pick ones I don’t recommend over and over, but, honestly, two snuck in and I’m not even sorry about it.
A GUIDE TO THE DARK by Meriam Metoui
A haunted hotel and atmospheric black and white photos await you in this sapphic supernatural mystery by debut author Meriam Metoui.
TOGETHER WE ROT by Skyla Ardnt
Cult, bugs, and an unsolved mystery form the atmosphere of Together We Rot, a horromance that will slither beneath your skin.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING QUEERS: 13 TALES OF TERROR & DELIGHT edited by Shelly Page and Alex Brown
Shelley Page and Alex Brown unite authors like Kalynn Bayron, Vanessa Montalban, and Tara Sim for a series of Halloween horror stories starring BIPOC teens.
SAWKILL GIRLS by Claire Legrand
I will never not recommend Sawkill Girls, which features two sapphic heroines and one asexual heroine, as they contend with the hungry monster in the woods.
THE HACIENDA by Isabel Cañas
Now in paperback, The Hacienda is a haunted house mystery about a woman who must find out what happened to her husband’s first wife before it happens to her, too.
CHAPTER 2: HAVE A LITTLE PODCAST, AS A TREAT
In Talking Scared, host Neil McRobert talks to some of the biggest authors in the horror genre right now, from Isabel Cañas to Grady Hendrix, as well as doing a deep dive into things like the history of Gothic fiction and IT by Stephen King. It’s a perfect podcast for the season!
CHAPTER 3: THE REC ROOM
Welcome to the Rec Room, the section of my newsletter that I use to highlight books (not necessarily for Halloween) coming out each month I’m really excited about. For October, we have…
ALL THESE SUNKEN SOULS: A BLACK HORROR ANTHOLOGY edited by Circe Moskowitz
We are all familiar with tropes of the horror genre: slasher and victims, demon and the possessed. Bloody screams, haunted visions, and the peddler of wares we aren't sure we can trust. In this young adult horror anthology, fans of Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country, and Horror Noire will get a little bit of everything they love—and a lot of what they fear—through a twisted blend of horror lenses, from the thoughtful to the terrifying.
CURIOUS TIDES by Pascale Lacelle
Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess. To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school's most reclusive student, Baz—a boy whose sister happened to be one of the drowned students and Emory's best friend.
THE ROSEWOOD HUNT by Mackenzie Reed
Lily Rosewood has lived with her grandmother since her dad's death a year ago. Then Gram dies suddenly, and Lily's world is upended. Gram's quarter of a billion dollar fortune is missing, and Lily has been banned from the manor she and Gram shared. When Lily and three other seemingly random teens get letters from Gram sending them on a treasure hunt around Rosetown, they hope the fortune will be the reward. But they're not the only ones hunting for Gram's treasure, and soon the hunt becomes more dangerous than they ever could have imagined.
PEOPLE TO FOLLOW by Olivia Worley
Welcome to "In Real Life," the hot new reality show that forces social media's reigning kings and queens to unplug for three weeks and "go live" without any filters. But when the production crew fails to show up and one of their own meets a violent end, these social media moguls find themselves stranded with a dead body and no way to reach the outside world. When they start receiving messages from a mysterious Sponsor threatening to expose their darkest secrets, they realize that they've been lured into a deadly game... and one of them might be pulling the strings.
CHAPTER 4: LOOK AT MY CAT!!!
As you may know, I adopted a shelter cat in December 2021, who I named Sora Mittens. When I’m working at the breakfast bar, she likes to sit on the chair beside me and sleep, but she wakes up whenever I shove a camera in her face.
EPILOGUE
Thank you for subscribing and/or for sticking around! I hope you like rambles, shenanigans, and nonsense, because that’s truly all this is. Life can sometimes be a trick, but remember your existence is a treat for the people around you.