I’m so lucky, because I was like… let’s have a spooky reading in October!
So… which of my awesome writer friends have novellas or novels out recently, or coming out soon, that could be considered semi-spooky… or maybe not even spooky… maybe, just, like SUPER FUN TO READ IN OCTOBER?!?
And lo, I had more than enough friends to fill a Sunday!
When is it?
Sunday, October 4th, 2026
What time?
3 PM – 4:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
Where?
MY TWITCH CHANNEL! YAY!
http://www.twitch.tv/csecooney
You don’t need a Twitch account to stream it. But if you wanna jump in the comments and have hilarious conversations and let the authors know how much you ADORE THEM, then that’s when you sign up for a Twitch account.
Who’s reading, you ask?
What are their books about?
WHY SHOULD YOU ADORE THEM???
I have answers!
About Nadia
Nadia Bulkin is the author of the short story collection SHE SAID DESTROY (Word Horde, 2017) and novella collection ISSUES WITH AUTHORITY (Ghoulish, 2025). She is a two-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award: for ISSUES WITH AUTHORITY and as co-editor of the haunted house anthology WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST LEAVE (Cursed Morsels, 2024). She has also won a 2023 Bram Stoker Award for her non-fiction essay “Becoming Ungovernable: Latah, Amok, and Disorder in Indonesia.” She was raised in Jakarta (Indonesia) and Nebraska (the United States) and lives in Washington, D.C.
About Nadia’s novel, Issues with Authority
Issues With Authority drenches the reader in a sensory overload of power, belief, and horrifying transformation. Nadia will be reading from the first of three short novellas: “Cop Car”, in which a psychic government “fixer” discovers her true psychopathic calling.
Find your copy here: https://ghoulish.rip/product/issues-with-authority/)
Favorite blurbs!
“The work of a genius. Original, arresting — I immediately fell in love. Bulkin smoothly wields her talent at societal dissection to cut unique visions into your mind. Issues With Authority is truly one-of-a-kind.” —Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth
“Nadia Bulkin writes political horror like a surgeon who also keeps a flamethrower in her coat. Issues With Authority is a compact, razor-edged trio about power: who wields it, who kneels to it, and how it colonizes the body… Brutal ideas, clean prose, and a nasty aftertaste. Smart horror that stares back.” —The Blog Without a Face
About Christa
Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island. She is the Bram Stoker Award-winning and three-time Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Beneath the Poet’s House, How to Fake a Haunting, and the forthcoming Threshing Rock, as well as the Indie Horror Book Award-winning Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, the Bram Stoker Award-nominated “Through the Looking Glass and Straight into Hell,” and co-editor of the Aurealis Award-nominated We Are Providence and the Australasian Shadows- and Ditmar Awards-nominated Monsters in the Mills. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine, where she now teaches creative writing.
About Christa’s novel, How to Fake a Haunting
In How to Fake a Haunting, Lainey Taylor is being pushed to the brink by her alcoholic husband, Callum. Prone to hallucinations and erratic behavior, it’s only a matter of time before he puts Lainey’s life—and that of their daughter, Beatrix—in jeopardy. A divorce and full custody is out of the question. In Callum’s words: Over my dead body.
Lainey’s sympathetic friend Adelaide has a wild solution. They’ll stage a haunting so convincing it will drive Callum out of Lainey’s life for good. Nothing too over the top: strange smells, noises in the walls, and flies unleashed along the windowsills. It could work. Considering Callum’s alcohol-induced night terrors, he’s already close to broken. With each new scare, Lainey is closer to seeing the haunting through to its bitter, freeing end.
But in a house filled with so much rage, resentment, and fear, is it any wonder that Lainey and Adelaide’s plan goes horribly wrong? As their fake haunting spirals into something no one can control, Lainey discovers that the only way out of this frightening trap is to join forces with Callum, or die trying.
Find your SIGNED COPY here: https://christacarmenshop.bigcartel.com
“Christa Carmen delivers the goods in this twisty, clever domestic horror novel that Rachel Harrison fans will love! A twenty-first-century Amityville, haunted by marital strife and the meddling best friend we all need. Now I want the film version of this, immediately!” —Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Birds and Road of Bones
“One of the most intriguing and beguiling takes on the suburban-gothic haunted house since Anne Rivers Siddon’sThe House Next Door. Carmen doesn’t scrimp on the spooky atmospherics, but also wisely keeps the true scares rooted in the living and the all-too-real.” —Nat Cassidy, bestselling author of When the Wolf Comes Home and Mary
About Zig Zag
Zig Zag Claybourne is the author of the acclaimed Jetstreams Universe series, composed –so far– of The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan, and Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe. Most recently he has completed a flooping fantasy trilogy (Breath Warmth & Dream; Amnandi Sails; and Khumalo Tales). Zig believes a writer, like an actor, should experience the joys of varied roles and, as such, has no idea what he will write next.
About Zig Zag’s Novel, Khumalo Tales (third in the Khumalo Trilogy)
In Khumalo Tales, the legend of Amnandi and Mother Khumalo has grown–and rightfully so. For decades, the Khumalo family has nurtured Erah, correcting wrongs and healing the injured.
All while adhering to the unspoken but immutable rules of witches.
Yet, in the shadows of a small village, a mystic rises to tamper with new powers and shatter sacred oaths, tipping the balance of Erah toward a war between knowledge and compassion, between the worlds of mysticism and the mundane.
A war the Khumalos will not allow.
To stop it, they must face a new challenge beyond their worst imaginings, one with the power to overtake every belief they have and every magick they hold.
A witch obeys one rule above all: Protect.
Even if that means protecting reality itself.
Back it on Kickstarter today! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidiansky/khumalo-tales
Favorite blurbs!
“Extraordinary and lovely…As I read KHUMALO TALES, I felt like a beautiful mermaid had taken me by the waist and propelled me through a warm and glittering ocean. I had no choice but to abandon myself to the adventure. Claybourne’s newest represents the very best fantasy has to offer: a truly unbridled imagination, the daring poetry of a craftsman, poignant wisdom, and a bone-deep understanding of what human connection should mean.” —Maria Dong, author of Aviary and Liar, Dreamer, Thief
About Eden
Eden Royce is a writer from Charleston, South Carolina now living in Southeast England. She’s a Shirley Jackson Award winner, a Locus Award finalist and a World Fantasy Award finalist for her adult fiction, which has appeared in a variety of print and online publications. Her books for young readers have received Walter Dean Myers Award Honors, and been recognized as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, an Ignyte Award winner, and a Bram Stoker Award winner for outstanding children’s literature. Find her online at edenroyce.com.
About Eden’s Novella, Pyschopomp and Circumstance
In Psychopomp & Circumstance, Phee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. Coddled to within an inch of her life by a mother who refuses to let her daughter live a life other than the one she dictates, Phee yearns to demonstrate she’s capable of more than simply marrying well.
When word arrives that her Aunt Cleo, long estranged from the family, has passed away, Phee risks her mother’s wrath to step up and accept the role of pomp—the highly honored duty of planning the funeral service. Traveling alone to the town of Horizon and her aunt’s unsettling home, Phee soon discovers that visions and shadows beckon from every reflective surface, and that some secrets transcend the borders of life and death.
Order it here:https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250330963/psychopompcircumstance/
Favorite blurbs:
Psychopomp and Circumstance is a nimble story of beginnings, endings, and everything in between. Enchanting from the first to last word, you’ll ponder about death—and the rather unexpected opportunities it brings.”—Nicole Glover, author of The Conductors
“Energetic and delicate, intimate and splendid. So colorful, so cozy, and yet so haunted: Eden Royce’s Psychopomp and Circumstance is an adventure of deep awakening set during the Reconstruction Era, vigorously reimagined in magic-steeped sepia.” —C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter
“As an eldest daughter, Phaedra’s battles reminded me of how much courage and self-love it takes to become and continue becoming in a world that doesn’t set you up to. From the moment we started her journey I was hooked, I couldn’t put it down.” —A$iahMae, Poet Laureate of Charleston, SC
A.T. Sayre has been writing in some form or other since he was ten years old. His work has appeared in The Cosmic Background, Aurealis, Haven Speculative, Andromeda Spaceways, and most notably in Analog Magazine, where his debut novel The Last Days of Good People, was published in the July/ August 2024 issue, and was released as an audiobook by Dreamscape and an in print/ digital by JABberwocky in February 2025. His first short story collection, Signals in The Static, was published in May 2024 by Lethe Press. His novel The Asterist, will be released by Diversion Books in October 2026. You can find out more about him and his publications at atsayre.com.
Born in Kansas City, raised in New Hampshire, he lives in Brooklyn and likes to read in coffeehouses.
About A.T.’s novel, The Asterist
Dull days drift by at the dead end of the galaxy for misanthrope Bill Jeffries. While fulfilling his mundane duties as an Asteroid Station Commander, or “Asterist,” everything changes when his only companion, the monotone computer he has nicknamed “Nag,” alerts him to a spacecraft that has crashed near the station.
Thrust into circumstances beyond his pay grade, Jeffries investigates the wreckage and makes the shocking discovery of a four-foot-long spider-like being inside. If the alien still lives, Jeffries and his superiors from light years away must decide if it should be treated as an ambassador, a test subject, or a threat. But as Jeffries studies the alien and attempts to communicate with it, his cynical exterior begins to shatter and an unlikely bond grows.
With the alien’s life in his hands, Jeffries must discover what extreme lengths he will go to as he races against the clock to understand its origins before his superiors arrive to determine their fate.
The Asterist will be coming out October 20th, and is available now for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other online stores.
Preorder here: https://www.atsayre.com/asterist
Favorite Blurbs
[An] emotionally supercharged tale. The novel’s big hook isn’t the wonder-inspiring SF backdrop or the strange structure of the aliens (although both are impressive); it’s the intimate relationship that evolves between human and alien. Sayre creates a powerful story about compassion and sacrifice that will have readers applauding.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Fans of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary (2021) will enjoy this engaging tale of a man alone in a big universe as he tries to make sense of where his new companion came from, what he can do to communicate with them, and why their condition is degrading so quickly.” —Booklist
“The Asterist is both a rapidly evolving sci-fi puzzle and something more intimate. Wry, relatable, but heartfelt and urgent, Sayre’s The Asterist is classic character-driven sci-fi at its best.” —Thomas Ha, Nebula, Hugo, and 2x Locus Award-winning author ofUncertain Sons and Other Stories
“A.T. Sayre has firmly established himself as a master of contemporary hard science-fiction. The Asterist is clever and funny by turns, and what I loved most was its deeply human and empathic core. This is the first-contact story we need right now, and one of the best hard SF books I’ve read in a long while.”—Matthew Kressel, multiple Nebula Award-nominated author of The Rainseekers
About Francesca
Francesca Forrest is the author of the Tales of the Polity, which include The Inconvenient God (2018), Lagoonfire (2021), and A Flash of Scarlet (forthcoming 2027), all from Annorlunda Books. She has also published a number of short stories, including “Semper Vivens” (Andromeda Spaceways, 2024), “The Bee Wife” (self-published, 2025), and “The Road from Windy to Dragonroot” (Luna Station Press, 2026). She enjoys learning languages and would like to learn a word or two in yours.
About Francesca’s Novel, A Flash of Scarlet
A Flash of Scarlet is a novel in the world of the Tales of the Polity: Decomissioner 37’s latest case threatens the highest echelons of the Polity… and just might kill her.
Decommissioning deities the Polity has outgrown can be rewarding: Decommissioner 37 counts several retired gods and goddesses among her precious handful of friends. Too bad the Ministry of Divinities is transitioning from gods and goddesses to Abstractions. It’s hard to feel personally involved with even the most noble of Abstractions. Courage, Justice, Propriety … they’re so … well, abstract. Still, you can’t argue about their worth. So why is the Polity’s feared Civil Order police force demanding that Propriety be decommissioned at an important mining site? Decommissioner 37 finds herself embroiled in a case that challenges her understanding of ghosts, gods, the Ministry’s powers, and her own family history.
Where to find Tales of the Polity books: https://annorlundaenterprises.com/books/the-inconvenient-god/ and https://annorlundaenterprises.com/books/lagoonfire/
Favorite blurbs:
FORTHCOMING!
About Virginia
Virginia M. Mohlere lives north of Houston in a fort constructed of yarn, ink bottles, native plants, and ramen packs. Her work has been seen in Cicada, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, and Goblin Fruit. She was the 2019 winner of the WSFA Small Press Award for her short story, “The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change,” which appeared in Luna Station Quarterly.
About Virginia’s Novel, A House of Perfect Safety
For centuries of seasons, Warden has served the Pact at Ash House. For any creature of the Twilight Lands who shows up on the doorstep of her House with a need, she stitches wounds, cures poisons, provides safety and rest, assuming the form demanded of her by each of her varied visitors. When a guest arrives whose mind is so locked away that she does not know what form to take, what injuries he has suffered, nor how to help him, it will stretch her skills — and the Pact — to the limit.
Should the Pact be broken, it could be the end of the Twilight itself.
Pre-order link: https://dancingstarpress.com/product/a-house-of-perfect-safety/
Favorite blurbs!
“It’s said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but in A House of Perfect Safety, Virginia Mohlere uplifts and honors both. It’s a tender, resolute, and moving story that speaks to both the oppressive-systems fighters and the single-starfish rescuers among us.” — Francesca Forrest
About Amanda
Amanda J. McGee is a planner by day and a writer by night. She has degrees from Hollins University and Virginia Tech, where she studied languages, identity politics, policy, and infrastructure. She is the author of the dark epic fantasy series The Creation Saga and is an Art Matters Grant recipient, a program of the City of Roanoke and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her novella Viridian was published in the anthology A Sinister Quartet, which made the 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List. A River Wide is her debut standalone novella.
About Amanda’s Novella, A River Wide
Rhiannon Blackburn is a witch, which isn’t so much a problem until her backyard spits up a corpse one Saturday. A woodworker, Rhia lives in rural Appalachia with her grandmother and adopted sister, Amey. With Amey kidnapped and likely a murderer, Rhia can’t go to the cops. She’ll have to rely on her knack for divination and face the spirits of the water before time runs out and another person dies.
An Appalachian witch thriller about magic, murder, and the how far we go for the ones we love.
Where to find it: https://www.interstellarflightpress.com/ariverwide.html
Favorite Blurbs!
An Appalachian murder ballad for the twenty-first century, Amanda McGee’s nail-biter of a novella shows us why it’s dangerous to be a witch and dangerous to cross one. At the same time, A River Wide overflows with joys and sorrows that arise from the deep blood ties of family, drawing from profound wells of grief and hope to brew a ghost-haunted spell.” —Mike Allen, World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson award-nominated author of Trail of Shadows
“A River Wide pulled me in with narrator Rhia’s vivid voice, a small town’s secrets, and a kind of elemental witchcraft I hadn’t seen before. Rather than bend water to her will, Rhia must work with it, sometimes even bargain with it—and she can’t take that lightly, even when what she’s bargaining for amounts to her sister’s life. I hope McGee has more plans for the witches of the Blackburn family and the Appalachian home they so lovingly, so precariously, inhabit.” —Laura Blackwell, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author
“Like Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic, and Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots, Amanda J. McGee’s novella A River Wide taps the bonds of sisterhood, survival, and power, and floods the senses with river water and witchcraft. McGee’s characters have a deep, Dillard-esque, and—dare I say—holy bond with the Appalachian landscape, which can be capricious, cruel, generous, or tender in turns, much like the prose itself. A River Wide wanders deftly into various creeks and hollows of genre: thriller, ghost story, romance, family drama, and a middle-of-life coming-of-age. It moved me, deeply.” —C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter
Emma J. Gibbon is an award-winning horror writer, poet, and librarian. Her debut fiction collection, Dark Blood Comes from the Feet, was one of NPR’s best books of 2020 and won the Maine Literary Book Award for Speculative Fiction. Her stories have appeared in various anthologies, including Hotel of Haunts and Something Peculiar, magazines such as Reactor (formerly Tor.com) and Unnerving, and was collected in Some of the Best from Reactor. Her poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies, including Strange Horizons, and Pedestal, and she has been nominated for the Rhysling twice. Emma was part of the writing team behind Realm’s “heavy metal werewolf” podcast drama, Undertow: Blood Forest, and her fiction has been adapted in audio for podcasts, including the upcoming season of Kaleidocast. Emma lives with her husband, Steve, and her collection of small monsters, Mothra, Hamlet, and Grim, in a spooky little house in the woods. You can find her at emmajgibbon.com.
About Emma’s short story “Everybody Is in the Place.” The fair comes every year with its wild music, boys, and rides, but Maybelle and Enid are far more interested in the rumored return of the Labyrinth, which hasn’t been seen in several years…
Read it for free on Reactor: https://reactormag.com/everybody-is-in-the-place-emma-j-gibbon/
Buy the short ebook on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0DH3JVVCZ
Favorite blurbs!
“Shirley Jackson Meets Johnny Rotten,” —Jason Heller for NPR
“Gibbon is a compelling new voice in horror. Part punk, part metal, part crooner, her work resonates beautifully.” —Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times / USAToday bestselling author of Space Opera and Deathless
About Steve
Steven T. Gibbon is a writer, poet, game designer, artist, and loving father to several beautiful, hairy children. He and his wife live happily in a little gremlin hole in the woods of Midcoast Maine.
About Steve’s novel Lipsnitch Snilly
For crimes against decency and for being an ornery little son of a gun, the young goat man Lipsnitch Snilly is banished from his hometown, thus embarking on a quest to find Ohio and become the world’s greatest practitioner of dark magic. His loyal friend Gary, a talking crow, does not harbor any such grand ambitions and mostly just wants to keep Lipsnitch from constantly sabotaging his own future. Whether he can succeed or whether the goat man is simply destined for the gallows remains to be seen.
Where to buy this book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/lipsnitch-snilly/8582f5a80e1f5f89 and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HF3FZRWY
Favorite Blurbs!
“I cannot recommend Lipsnitch Snilly. I am too jealous. It is made of sentences that are too good. It is a dark and twisty labyrinth of absurdity, veined with dry wit. Steven T. Gibbon should not be allowed to keep these sentences for himself. He should be exiled from town, and his sentences should be redistributed to the rest of us poor bastards with keyboards, so we will feel better about ourselves.” —Scott Lynch, New York Times bestselling author of The Gentleman Bastard Sequence
“Steven T. Gibbon’s Lipsnitch Snilly is one of the most unique and engaging fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years. Wonderful writing that makes you feel immediately at home in a strange, fabulist world, and characters that, although odd, remind us of the people in our lives. For readers who love something different.” —Jeffrey Ford, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author of Pandemonium Waltz
SEE YOU ON THE ONLINES, FRIENDS!
Yours Truly,
C. S. E. Cooney
