Looking back on the year that was, and looking forward to the year that might be
Greetings all, and happy new year!
This is my 2023 wrap-up post, many thanks to all who have supported me and made this the most successful sales year to date.
My top viewed post this year was my just-for-fun list of Werewolf Films 1910-1949, cw for anti-indigenous and anti-ziganist tropes in some of those. Other films mentioned also looked at the werewolf as a psychological condition, not a real transformation but a psychotic delusion, so there’s that too.
My lowest viewed post this year was my review of My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, 5 out of 5 stars. I think that’s one of my favourite reads of 2022. It’s nice to see it squeak in as a post people have still found and read this year too!
As things stand at the end of 2023, my top 3 most viewed posts of ALL TIME are:
- Rapunzel Stories – I have no idea what is driving traffic to this, but my all time most-viewed post is still my Rapunzel stories one, where I looked at a version of the tale and break it down into its main elements, with a few little writing prompts to think about diverse retellings, and some ideas to make the original ending less ableist.
- Werewolf Films 1960-1969 (the werewolf gets sexy)
- Welsh Vampire Lore and Vampire Lit (1940s to 1997) – I love this post, it was so much fun to research and write. You get the vampire chairs and bed in here too.
What I Published (Books)
My publications in 2023:
- THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD – the third novel in the Pagham-on-Sea series.
Three possible futures. Two versions of the apocalypse. One chance to save the world.
Wes Porter, a severely depressed insanity-inducing playboy, is detoxing from hallucinogens that have unlocked his ability to see versions of potential futures – and he’s just foreseen two ways the world could end. Normally, Wes would leave the hero bullshit to somebody else, but he can’t abdicate responsibility this time… not when both those apocalypses might be his fault.
With some prompting from a mythological bard-prophet who may or may not be real, and a lot of assistance from his monster-eating baby sister who desperately wants to move out of his apartment, and their soothsayer cousin who has his own demons to fight, Wes attempts to save [his] world… but have his poor decisions doomed them all?
THE DAY WE ATE GRANDAD is the third book in the Pagham-on-Sea series. It is a dysfunctional family cosmic horror novel for fans of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES, and THE CALL OF CTHULHU, with themes of bereavement and grief, generational trauma, and a dash of Roman/Welsh mythology.
- THE RELUCTANT HUSBAND – a Lovecraftian pastiche novelette set in Pagham-on-Sea 1938
When Nathan Montague Porter, occultist and civil servant, catches the attention of Sir Jack Sauvant, he is invited to Sir Jack’s Sussex country house to attempt some grisly magical experiments. Little does he know that it is Sir Jack’s maid, Deirdre Wend, who actually holds the key to forbidden knowledge – but she won’t give it up unless he takes her to the pictures first.
A Lovecraftian pastiche for fans of Clive Barker and Ray Bradbury, a standalone prequel to The Crows.
This book contains implied scenes of a sexual nature involving tentacles, some graphic body horror (eyes, stomach, and transformations), rodent death/experimentation (not desciribed on-page) and cannibalism. It is written in British English in a style mimicking 1930s weird fiction.
What I Published (Audio)
Season 03 of my podcast, Eldritch Girl: Weird Gothic Stuff & Nonsense came out this year and I’m very proud of it. You can listen to it on any platform you like, it should be there! It’s still hosted on substack for now but I’ll be migrating it back across to RSS.com when I can pay for the monthly fees.
My interviews for S03 were great, and you should definitely check out the filmmakers and authors and creatives featured this season. Catch up on all interview audio and transcripts here.
S03 also came with a bonus 3-parter on the end, which was the audio of The Sussex Fretsaw Massacre, chronologically after The Day We Ate Grandad but written before that book was completed and published. It actually came out Oct 2022. Get that as an eBook here, on Amazon, (just change the .co.uk part of the URL to your own preferred store) or discounted in my Ko-Fi shop.
What I Wrote (and Finished)
- Monthly fiction for my Ko-Fi Supporters, including some short stories and a continued series of letters that may form the basis for the plot of Book 4 in the Pagham-on-Sea series with the Porters and co. This includes some short fiction for Monstrous May!
- 18K first draft of Eglantine Pritchard’s backstory – free to Ko-Fi members to download. Sapphic crushes to lovers to enemies, Blackwood’s THE WILLOWS meets Machen’s THE WHITE PEOPLE in 1912 Wales. (They don’t stay enemies… they get an enemies to lovers arc and become life partners by the 1930s/40s).
- A second-world dark fantasy Beauty and the Beast reimagining – YELEN & YELENA is out with betas, and I’m revising the main side character’s arc so it’s more sapphic and happier for everyone at the end. Thanks to Nicole Carver for helping me with this! So this isn’t exactly finished, but I have 2 complete drafts, and I’m now on Draft 3.0, ready for professional editing and either shopping around as a dark SFF novel next year, or for self publishing. Let’s see.
- Dark Places, a horror short story I’m shopping around. Loads of rejections so far and no feedback, so I’ve revised and edited it and redrafted it, and it’s ready to go out again.
What I Wrote (and shelved for now)
I often start projects, get into a hyperfocus thing and then the interest dies out. This happens usually when I’ve answered the question that got me into the WIP to begin with, or when I’ve written the scene in my head that I really wanted to write. Then I just lose all interest in the story – even if I’ve written around 20K of it – and that’s that.
Shelved WIPs (for now) include ones that I’ve gone back over recently and ones that are still bobbing about at the back of my mind, so I might well go back to them.
- Best Friends Bury Bodies – an experiment in “can I write a second chance romance”. The answer is no, not unless that’s a secondary plot and the main one is about murder, and very old friends rallying around an estranged member battling addiction and blackmail.
- Ellie Jenkins, Final Girl/Changeling WIP – this ended up in the Pagham-verse, not sure how, but I think it works there. A bored woman in a dead-end relationship that she can’t afford to leave suddenly wins the lottery thanks to some faerie influence, and discovers her relatives (and her bland boyfriend) will do a lot more than she bargained for to get their hands on her jackpot.
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Fortress – a second-world comic fantasy (not in Y&Y world, a different one based on Medieval Wales and the Marches), in which a grumpy, cynical, middle-aged henchman ditches his lord mid-climax as some hero or other makes his grand magical entrance, and legs it across the border to a rival warrior’s fortress – but gets abducted by a band of outlaws on the way.
What I Read
I didn’t read a lot this year. I’ve really struggled. My GoodReads Year in Books is under my target goal of 20. I’ve bought a lot but just… haven’t managed to get to them. Ones I did manage to read:
Woe To Those Who Dwell on Earth by John Lynch
Quiet, Pretty Things by Megan Stockton
…And Nobody Knows it But Me by Megan Stockton
The Knock Knock Man by Russell Mardell
The Hacienda by Isabel Canas
We Are Here To Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe
The Searching Dead by Ramsey Campbell
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
The Hematophages by Stephen Kozeniewski
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
A Novel Arrangement by Arden Powell
The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker (and a lot of short stories in The Books of Blood but I didn’t log all these!)
Lesser Known Monsters by Rory Michaelson
Dark Woods, Deep Water by Jelena Dunato
I Feed Her To The Beast And The Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea
Skin Thief by Suzan Palumbo
What I Watched
A ridiculous amount of films, frankly.
My full list of Horror films watched for the 92 Days Challenge can be found here.
Films I watched for Horror Movies for the Holidays can be found here.
My posts on horror films I watched this year include: Welsh Gothic in Film: Darklands (1996), [CW for male rape in that film and its narrative purpose discussed in the post]; Here For The Horror (I) and Here For The Horror (II), with the bonus post Dirty Dozen to round off.
See You Next Year!
That’s it for 2023. See you all next year for more Beauty and the Beast posts, and more fairy tale retelling recs. Looking forward to all of that. I will be joining in the 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days challenge again Aug-Oct, and who knows what else 2024 will bring.
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda, pawb.
Mutlu yıllar!
Happy New Year.
