100 Horror Haiku for Halloween

 

Happy post-Halloween hangover! I hope everyone had a spooktacular Halloween season. This was kind of a weird one for me -- much more laidback than usual. We did the bulk of our celebrating at home, although we did manage to make it out to a Cinespia screening of Bram Stoker's Dracula at the lavish Los Angeles Theatre downtown and visit a very cool and atmospheric speakeasy-style distillery called The Obscure, among a few other outings. 

One of the advantages of spending so much time at home was that I've been able to write a lot more than usual this year. Here are a couple of my recently published pieces:

• Halloween Haunts: October Baby for Horror Writers Association (personal essay)
• Some Say Sirens (poem) & Automaton (microfiction) for Tiny Frights Vol.1 No.2

I also decided to write 100 haiku inspired by 100 of my favorite horror movies, posting two per day to my Twitter! 

If you'd like to read those, you can check them out here:

From now until Halloween, I’m going to write haiku for 100 of my favorite horror movies. Two per day, culminating on October 31st, in no particular order other than that in which they occurred to me. Enjoy! 🎃

— The Tell-Tale Tart (@mpleckham) September 12, 2022

Here's to a creepier-than-normal November!  

Spooky Self-Promotion: Discover What's "Hidden" in HelloHorror

My short story "The Hidden" is featured in the Spring 2017 issue of HelloHorror, which you can read online for free right now! Who needs ice cream during this monstrous heat wave when you can have delicious chills running down your spine instead? (Or check out my piece and the other sinister selections while eating ice cream for maximum summer enjoyment.)

Either way, stay cool, babies! October will be here before you  know it...

Spooky Self-Promotion: See What's Lurking Under the Bed

My short story "The Song of Love" (inspired, in part, by binging on Twin Peaks while housesitting in suburbia) is in the October 2014 issue of Under the Bed magazine (Vol. 03 No. 01). Please check it out here or on Amazon for "awesome reviews, horrifying relationships, cannibal terror, deadly bees, and a whole lot more." What horror fan could say no to that?!

P.S. I know I've been quiet lately. (Okay, basically dead.) Rest assured, I'm still spooky. I'm just not sure how I feel about blogging, but I do update the SLG Facebook page from time to time.

Here's a brief and incomplete list of things I've been meaning to write about but just haven't gotten around to lately:

• The amazing selection of Halloween goodies at Spirit stores this year.
• The haunts I've visited this year (so far, Universal HHN, the Halloween Harvest Festival at Pierce College and the Empty Grave).
• My newly rekindled love of rollercoasters, which are so much more terrifying to me than mazes and haunted houses.
• Nicholas McCarthy's The Pact and At the Devil's Door.
• ScareLA, which I can't believe was all the way back in AUGUST. 
• The Houses October Built (loved it) and the Haunters documentary (can't wait for it).
• My feelings on "extreme haunts," i.e. San Diego's infamous McKamey Manor.

Maybe some spooky day I'll actually get around to some of it...

Until then, enjoy this beautiful October. I know I will.

Fun, Spooky & FREE Tonight in LA

Come to Stories Books & Cafe in Echo Park tonight; there will be spooky stories & bloodcurdling mayhem on the back patio from 7:30 to 9pm, and it's FREE.

Details:

Boiling Bat Blood doubles the splatter this week... with two nights of terror...

WEDNESDAY | Oct 23 | 7:30pm

D.M. Collins and Cardoo
"Accompanied by scintillatingly strings, a possessed D.M. Collins narrates a caranaval-esque descent into torture, atrocity, villainy-- through the killer's eyes..." - Goodby Ennyman

Lola Rose Thompson recites haunting prose...

Melissa Pleckham (Kissing Cousins) orates a spooky story...

Plus, a head-rippingly horrifying tale from Scott Schultz...

Cafe specials will be available! And imbibes, too... Oh, the horror! The horror! (of missing this rare event...)

Stories is located at 1716 Sunset Blvd. Facebook invite here.

Spooky Self-Promotion: My Time in the Sanitarium

I have a poem in Issue #014 of Sanitarium Magazine, which comes out TODAY, October 20, 2013! (Incidentally, also my one-year wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary, Mr. Spooky!) Please download and/or order a paper copy and enjoy my Shirley Jackson-inspired poem, along with tons of other great creepy poems, stories, interviews, etc.