Dream Skin, a collaboration between bloodmilk x Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is akin to a dream diary, a midnight scrapbook of filmy filaments teased from nocturnal murmurs, pressed between pages of mist and glass. Belled flowers gently floating across the face of the moon, reflected in a dark, fathomless pond. The whispered conversations between spectral, silvery quartz rock and wild, golden lightning, a tender grinding cascade of stardust. A pale moth glows and dims and dies on a cool silk shirt; a marble egg wrapped in lavender ribbon, shattered and swathed. An atlas of personal symbology, a ..read more

I think I have mountain sickness. I don’t know if that’s a real thing, but you know how dizzy and disoriented you feel after having been on the water for a while? I’ve been traveling through the mountains near Asheville, NC this week, and now that I am home I feel all weird and woozy and wobbly. While I was up there though, I was visiting one of my sisters, who moved to the area a year ago on Thanksgiving. On that day in 2022, they were still unpacking and had to eat Walgreens Hot Pockets for their first holiday meal in their new home! These two little sweeties kinda look like fluffy ham and ..read more

Queen of the Bad Fairies, Brian Froud In a recent interview with Jessica Chobot of the Bizarre States: Resurrected podcast, I was asked questions about what art that might not make it into my books, and why, and I thought I might share that snippet of Q&A here today. It seemed an appropriate segue for a new blog post featuring a whole slew of artworks that I included in earlier drafts of my most recent book, The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook Of All That Is Unreal but which never made it into the final pages. There’s practically a whole separate book of works here! For each work ..read more

  I didn’t really want to get into sharing all over my social media accounts, because I wasn’t trying to be dramatic about it, but I think a little less screen time would be immensely helpful for me. I had posted this to my Patreon, but it occurred to me that friends might worry if they don’t see me online for a while, so I might want to make an update on my blog here as well. It may look like I’m disappearing for some amount of time, so before I let too much time go by I thought it might be wise to check in with you all and share where my head and heart is at right now. We’re living in ..read more

  I wouldn’t necessarily say that cemeteries have always fascinated me. I think it might be more truthful to say that I never really gave cemeteries or graveyards all that much thought as a kid, except as something that occasionally showed up in cartoons with rattling skeletons dancing a crazy jig.  Death itself was an abstract concept, and I certainly didn’t spend any time thinking about where we kept our dead. What I did spend a great deal of time thinking about between the age of 6-9 was how to weasel out of my weekly Brownie meetings. My mother was on a mission to socialize shy ..read more

  Terrifier wasn’t originally on my radar, but after reading Bryan’s thoughts on it a few years ago, it lodged itself in my brain as something I was low-key intrigued by in a low-stakes kind of way. Meaning I had zero expectations, but at the same time I was semi-looking forward to watching it at some point. But it was also one of those films so far down on my list that I never even remembered I wanted to see it, even when I was wracking my brain for something new to watch. Last night I finally remembered. We open to a scene a year or so after the events of the film have taken place. A h ..read more

Wishmaster was, I thought, one of those 80’s films that I should seen by now. It was recommended to me last week, and I’ve been wracking my brains as to why it’s never really been on my radar. As it turns out, the answer is pretty simple. Centering on an ancient, evil djinn who collects souls by granting wishes that come with terrible, twisted consequences, all monkey’s paw-like, Wishmaster’s got Wes Craven’s name on it (though I don’t think he’s as involved as the movie posters would have us believe), a writer from the Hellraiser sequels, a who’s-who cast of horror gems, and, as it turns out ..read more

When I polled my Facebook friends the other day for some fun movie ideas, it was with the caveat that Renfield was very much already on my radar–I just couldn’t watch it that particular night because it was already promised viewing. But I finally got around to it last night when we watched it with Ývan’s brother, after his birthday dinner (it was the brother’s birthday, not Ývan’s–I would never marry a Scorpio!) I have no notes. It was everything I ever wanted in a silly comedy about Dracula’s beleaguered familiar recognizing his dysfunctional, co-dependent relationship with the infamous mons ..read more

Book cover art by James Jirat Patradoon for ‘The Dead Take The A Train’ by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey Despite the fact that my reading has been on the back burner this month, I did manage to finish a few things in the almost-final-days of October… The Dead Take A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey I’d found the previous title from Cassandra Khaw that I’d read (Nothing But Blackened Teeth) a bit off-putting. In that story, five friends convene to have some pre-wedding adventures at a purported haunted castle– but I have never in my years of reading been subjected to a group of fr ..read more

As you might surmise from the title,  Slotherhouse is about a killer sloth on the loose in a sorority house. You don’t need to know anything more than that. Except yes, the featured image from this post is that of a sloth driving a car. She uses GPS, too! Yesterday I implored my friends on social media to help me pick a film, which is how Slotherhouse ended up on the docket.  I was in desperate need of something FUN. I have noped out of so many viewings this October, either because of the squick factor (ie Day 20’s Dead Ringers) or because they triggered massive anxiety (ie Day 25’s ..read more