The 40 But 10: Eugen Bacon

 

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title Another Nemesis, poems by Ai Jiang, Angela Yuirko Smith, Eugen Bacon, and Maxwell I Gold, by participating in their blog tour. 

For our portion of the tour, Eugen has decided to participate in our 40 But 10 series - where I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus and Foreword Indies Award winner. She’s also a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Awards and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was also announced in the honor list for “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.” Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a “sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work.” Visit her at eugenbacon.com.

Describe your book poorly.

It’s not a novel or an anthology and it’s kind of biggish at 100 pages. There’s not one or two or three authors and the cover looks like a rainbow with some devils and angels on it. So the real artist is the publisher. In effect, you can get painted pastures and news from the sea, a bit of Lilith and Circe and a bastardized song. Somewhere inside is an unbuilt thing and a Saraswati. Nah, yeah, Loki and Anansi too. Tell you what, something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, something taken, something forsaken. Bloody oath, she knows a bit more. Relax. What else were we to do? Look out for the wall of someday. 

Do you have any hidden talents?

I’m telepathic. My hand itches when I’m about to get money. For real, I feel things deeply. Like, years ago, miles away, I knew when my father was dying. Maybe I need to listen to that intuition more.

What’s the most useless skill you possess?

I’m telepathic. What’s the fucken point when you know someone’s about to break up with you or something’s about to go to shit, before anything’s even happened, and you can’t change squat?

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I love artsy movies, foreign language movies, swimming, power-walking to headphone music, reading collections of short stories or multi-authored anthologies… I’m quite a fussy reader, though. Certain books talk to me more than others, and I pay attention to those.

What is your favorite book from childhood?

I grew up reading African ‘how’ and ‘why’ stories: Why the crocodile lives in the water. How the zebra got her stripes. Why the hyena has two short legs… These were my favorite books, that always had a cultural or societal moral.

What genres won’t you read?

I don’t like erotica text for the sake of it. Sure, I love intimacy but bad sex is quite awful on page. I love something sensual that builds on an emotional connection rather than just a physical grind on a flesh whimsy.

What’s the single best line you’re ever read?

Michael Ondaatje. Divisadero, where, at Lucien Segura’s wedding, Marie-Neige—the woman who is not his wife—pulls a note from her cotton sleeve and pushes it into his breast pocket. It would burn there unread for another hour as he danced and talked with in-laws who did not matter to him… everything that was important to him existed suddenly in the potency of Marie-Neige:

The note she had written said Good-bye. Then it said Hello …

 

What are you currently reading?

I’m judging works for the 2025 Otherwise Award so I can’t name the works but I feel tremendously exhilarated to be in a position where I can pay attention to genre- and gender-expansive works that engage with difference in poignant ways.

Which literary invention do you wish was real and why?

A bit cliched… time machine, change outcomes—but would I really? What if the cascade effect of each alteration yielded far worse results?

 

Do you think you’d live long in a zombie apocalypse?

Good Lord, no. I’m too curious, too easily spooked.

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Releasing February 17, 2026

Dark Speculative Poetry

Meerkat Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

This dark and thought-provoking poetry collection is co-authored by four multi-award winning authors and poets, Ai Jiang, Angela Yuriko Smith, Eugen Bacon and Maxwell I. Gold.

anOther Nemesis unravels sinister speculative poems themed The Colonizers, Primal Sources, Nameless Others and Crooked Ontologies. It reconnoitres words as weapons, reshaping to the unworldly, casting transfigurations of that which was never meant to be changed, and featuring poignant behind-the-poems by each poet.

The extraordinary assemblage interrogates the ways cultures, language, information, and the lack thereof are used as means of control; how voices will always rise against systems that rewrite identity, suppress truth, and silence dissent; the distinctions of purity and diffusion and the infinite number of fates upon which our existence is simultaneously contingent; how Ubiquitous indifference can sometimes be the cruelest villain of them all... and more!

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Excerpts

Calibration by Eugen Bacon

worlding the merpeople insists on fundamental descaling and tail amputation without anesthetics to ascertain if the language of crying harbors an ideology of resistance

because the truth of a creature manifests itself

when its discomfort threshold

is breached.

A Home You Don’t Remember by Ai Jiang

How to Miss

You’re eager to sip sweet nectar

from deep chasms and explore

the long winding valleys of the place

of your birth. But how do you miss

a place that seems like only a passing

portrait because it has been so long

since your physical body roamed

across its soils, stepped into its marrows,

     uprooted

from its grooves, troughs, and furrows? 

a place renamed, unnamed, renamed,

until it has forgotten what it had been

before the touch of human hands, 

untrodden by human footprints,

now holding memories not its own.

Sun Wukong by Angela Yuriko Smith

The Monkey King—Sun Wukong, mischief embodied, irrepressible rebel birthed from stone to defy gods. His voice taunted heaven and teased immortals, arrogance wrapped in humor, wisdom hidden behind mirth. He defied limits, another snatcher of forbidden fruit, he grifted peaches of immortality and rewrote destinies with defiance. His laughter shook the celestial palaces; his clever tongue twisted divine decree into chaos, leaving order trembling in his wake.

Today, the Monkey King swings through digital jungles, flipping conventions and mocking algorithms with anarchic glee. He leaps across viral trends, prank videos, and meme culture, rebellious against the gravity of expectation. Sun Wukong is the chaos in the comment section, the unpredictable tweet that shatters expectations, the influencer who refuses to follow the script. He challenges censorship, mocks digital vanity, and playfully dismantles the serious facade of modern life, reminding humanity that freedom lies in laughter and that chaos is is needed for creation.

Defy all order—

Creation is subversive.

Freedom is laughing.

The Wall of Someday by Maxwell I. Gold

To Hope there was more,

over death,

over stars

after the Earth was ash

and there was no more less than,

no more walls;

in Hope to see towers that might stretch beyond limitation

outside my window or a house trapped

on the edge of a someday

I’d never know or to see what lay beyond the thick walls of night,

To Hope each time a great storm gathered,

cackling with heavy thunder and light,

I’d never know the words,

‘ne’er to pass the wall’

And to hope one day I might cross the threshold,

where the Gates of Tomorrow swung wide

and no longer the dark cruelties of today,

beat ceaselessly against my brain;

though with each passing night,

the storm’s call grew ever deeper,

‘never to pass the wall

and hope there was more,

over death,

over stars

after the Earth was ash

and there was no more less than,

no more walls.

About the other authors: 

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, Ignyte, Bram Stoker, and Nebula Award winner, and Hugo, Astounding, Locus, Aurora, and BFSA Award finalist from Changle, Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario. She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of A Palace Near the Wind, Linghun, and I AM AI. Find her at www.aijiang.ca.

Angela Yuriko Smith, former president of the HWA and publisher of Space and Time magazine, is the proud recipient of multiple awards, including two Bram Stokers. As a Publishing Coach, she helps writers search less and submit more with her weekly calendar of author opportunities at authortunities.substack.com.

Maxwell I. Gold is a Jewish-American cosmic horror poet and editor, with an extensive body of work comprising over 300 poems since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genre.  His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Maxwell’s work has been recognized with multiple nominations including the Eric Hoffer Award, Pushcart Prize, and Bram Stoker Awards. Find him and his work at www.thewellsoftheweird.com.

The 40 But 10: Robert Hoffman

 

I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Robert Hoffman, who recently retired from teaching after 34  years.  He was a blogger for six years for his local paper, the Albany Times Union. He also blogged for Albany.com, Fark.com, CrooksandLiars.com, and kneesandfists.com. In 2021, he published my his first novel, "Blind Spot.  He also wrote a television pilot with a friend which was just named an "Official Selection" at the  Las Vegas  International Film and Screenwriting Festival.  "Taken to the Grave" marks his second attempt at writing a work of fiction.

Why do you write?

I’ve enjoyed writing since I was in high school.  My dream was to be a sports writer, but then I began to enjoy writing about a host of issues.  In college I had my own column which I enjoyed immensely.  However I was unable to further my writing career when I graduated and ended up as a social studies teacher for my career which worked out fine.  About 12 or 13 years ago I started blogging and I was picked up by our local newspaper, the Times Union of Albany.  I did that for a few years, but began to get bored doing it, and so I decided to try writing a work of fiction.  I enjoy getting to express my ideas and opinions through characters that I create, and I enjoy the challenge of completing a story that moves people.

 

What’s the most useless skill you possess?

My wife says I have a head filled with “mindless muck.”  If I were to translate that I would say that I have a head for trivia.  As a social studies teacher, this skill can come in handy, I mean, if somebody asks you who the 14th president was, and you don’t know that it was Franklin Pierce, aren’t you going to feel silly.  I also have a head for sports trivia, and can quote a lot of movies and old television comedies.  If being able to do that is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.

 

 Describe your book in three words.

 Journey of Discovery

 

Would you and your main character(s) get along?

Well that’s pretty funny because the story was inspired by something that my wife experienced and for a while, because of it, we did have a few disagreements, however, I’m happy to say we get along just fine.

If you could cast your characters in a movie, which actors would play them and why?

Maria could be played by Julia Louis Dreyfuss, although I’m not sure she’s Italian enough looking, but she’s spunky and intelligent and passionate like Maria.  Mark could be played by Matt Walsh from “Veep.”  I would think that Annie could be played by Chloe Grace Moretz, and perhaps Michael could be played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Sofia and Lawrence would have to be played by multiple actors since their stories are kind of told through flashbacks.

What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

 I tend to look for books that have some comic relief to them.  I like Richard Russo, as well as Gary Shteyngart, and Kurt Vonnegut.  I also enjoy Philip Roth because he seemed to always be ahead of his time when it came to understanding where America came from and where it’s going.

 

What’s the one book someone else wrote that you wish you had written?

 “Confederacy of Dunces,” and it’s not even close.  The characters, the setting, the way the story all comes together at the end, it is brilliant and laugh out loud funny.  My favorite book of all time.

 

If you were on death row, what would your last meal be?

 I actually wrote a blog about this several years ago.  I took a look at what many of the most infamous amongst us who were on death row ordered for their last meal, and it was quite illuminating.  I narrowed mine down to three choices:

               A - A Burger King bacon-double cheeseburger with onion rings

               B - A meatball pizza from almost any Long Island or New York City pizzeria

               C - A pastrami sandwich from almost any Jewish deli in New York City or Long Island.  After that, all I can say is, “Warden, do your worst!”

 

If you could time travel, would you go back to the past or forward into the future?

 I would go forward in time.  There are no “good old days.”  The past was pretty awful, racism, no air-conditioning, no medicine, who wants it?  I would like to travel to the future so I can see how my grandchildren turn out.

 

What’s the one thing you wish you knew when you were younger?

 I don’t have regrets because they are the biggest waste of time that there is.  You can’t change the past, and even if you could go back and talk to your younger self, you, being you, would you even listen?  However, I would have given writing a real shot as a profession, so I would have told myself to be ore daring and less cautious, but I’m sure wouldn’t have listened because that’s who I am, thus, a waste of time.  It would be more lucrative to go back in time and tell my younger self to bet it all on the 2008 Super Bowl, and pick the Giants before the season started, I would have made a mint.

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E-book  |     Paperback   |   Goodreads 

Maria Abrams has always needed answers. A college professor with a gift for logic, she believes that if you dig long enough, the truth will rise to the surface. But when she turns her relentless curiosity toward her own family, she unearths more than she bargained for: a web of secrets her mother carried silently to the grave.

A precious gift from her favorite niece reveals a hidden relationship and its lasting consequences, Maria’s pursuit of clarity collides with the resistance of relatives who would rather leave the past buried. Her journey takes her from small-town New York to séances with reluctant mediums, forcing her to confront uncomfortable truths about loyalty, betrayal, and the fragile bonds that hold families together.

Taken to the Grave is a layered family mystery about identity, silence, and the cost of uncovering what was meant to remain hidden. At once intimate and suspenseful, it asks the ultimate question: when does the truth set us free, and when does it break us apart?

What I Read In January

New year, new reading goal set over at Goodreads, new reading challenge too!

I kicked the year off having read a total of 13 books - 2 for potential publicity purposes, which won't be listed here; 1 audiobook, 1 book from my tbr, and 9 review copies. Phew! 

There were some really good ones and some kinda meh ones and if you're curious to see which was which, take a peek-see below: 

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VW Schwab

I spotted this one at 2nd & Charles, and the only reason I grabbed the hardcover was because it was a signed copy. I’d been curious... it’s been all over my #bookstagram feed, hyped as a toxic sapphic vampire story, but good lord, this thing is a brick.

I cracked it open on New Year’s Eve right before the ball dropped and only just finished it last night. It’s a slow‑burn, centuries‑spanning “making of a villain” tale that follows three women whose lives eventually collide in a way that’s somewhat predictable but still thoroughly satisfying.

There’s love, lust, and sex, as you’d expect in any vampire novel, plus just enough gore to keep the horror girls fed (This was a fun line - “They came apart like Christmas paper”). Schwab did a nice job building out each character’s backstory… except for Alice. Her chapters were much shorter than the others and her history was squeezed into her current timeline as flashbacks and felt more clunky, compared to how Maria/Sabine and Lottie’s arcs unfolded.

One thing I loved - the vampires never actually refer to themselves as vampires. Instead, they refer to themselves as having been 'buried in the midnight soil', which gives the whole mythology this earthy, ancient texture. And one character’s childhood nickname ends up looping back into the title in a way really clever... a double entendre that lands beautifully once you get there.

This is my first, and probably my only, Schwab. Not because there’s anything wrong with the book — she’s a fantastic storyteller — but because her other work doesn’t really sound like my thing, and her novels tend to run a little long for my taste. I don’t mind committing to a chunky book, but a story told in 500 pages often could’ve been told in 300 and been just as impactful.

Regardless of length, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil delivers exactly what it promises: a lush, bloody, sapphic epic with teeth. So if you’re like me and a little late to the game, there’s no time like now to grab a copy. This one deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with Interview with the Vampire as a modern must‑read of the genre.

The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay

Look out, bitches — this book is fire. I’m not kidding. It’s so friggen good I’m still vibrating. I devoured all 300 pages in a single day, blew off every Sunday responsibility I had, and even stayed up past my bedtime the night before going back to work after five glorious days off. And I have zero regrets.

If you’re not familiar with the biblical story of King Herod and the Massacre of the Innocents, take a minute and Google it. I’ll wait. (I had to do the same. Apparently my CCD teachers skipped that chapter.)

The short version: a paranoid king hears a prophecy about a child destined to overthrow him, so he orders the execution of every male infant two years old and under. An absolutely horrific historical event.

Enter David Scott Hay, who takes that nightmare and zooms in on one man caught in the middle of it — a grieving father, a master butcher, forced into the ranks of the Black Masks and compelled to participate in the very massacre that stole his own son. Many years later, he’s a man hollowed out by guilt and haunted by apocalyptic visions. Those visions point to a single surviving child, one who slipped through the slaughter. And now this butcher, this broken man, is tasked with finding the boy who got away… and killing him to prevent the end of the world.

What made this book so compulsively readable is how deeply Hay roots the story in this man’s torment. He’s not a villain. He’s a father trying to claw his way toward redemption through an impossible, soul‑splitting mission. The tension between duty, prophecy, grief, and the faintest flicker of hope is just... uuuugh... chef’s kiss.

This book didn’t just hook me. It dragged me by the throat. An absolute must‑read… as long as gory, alternate takes on biblical events don’t send you running for the hills. If you can handle the darkest corners of the Bible (and let’s be honest, that text gets grim), you’re going to have a blast with this one. I promise you.

Kayak by Kristal Stittle

Oh gosh, you guys. I really wanted to like this one. The premise had me hooked: a meteor crash-lands on Earth, scattering dust filled with alien seeds. As the wind carries this dust across continents, the seeds take root, and what grows from them is monstrous. These creatures are brutal, relentless, and hungry for human flesh.

Like any good alien invasion tale, there’s a weakness. Water. Once that’s discovered, humanity scrambles toward the nearest lakes, rivers, oceans — anything that might offer safety. In the chaos, Keith loses his parents at the beach, and the story follows his fight for survival as he searches for his friends and family out on the Canadian lakes, alone in his little kayak.

I was really excited to read this one. It should have been gripping. The setup was eerie and cinematic, and I was ready to be swept into the horror. But the execution just didn’t deliver. The pacing felt flat, the writing was somewhat stilted and never quite settled for me. If I didn’t know better, I’d have assumed this was a debut. It reads like Stittle was trying too hard to channel what she imagined a sixteen-year-old boy might sound like, and the result felt forced and awkward.

I kept hoping it would find its rhythm, that that the tension would build, that Keith’s journey would pull me in. But instead, I found myself wanting to DNF more than once — and regretting that I didn’t. Cool concept, but kind of disappointing follow-through. Which is upsetting, because I really like what Tenebrous has been putting out lately!

Funeral Song by Carly Racklin

I requested a copy of this one because the premise hooked me and, yes, the cover is ridiculously pretty. A town where the dead are resurrected and just… rejoin the living like it’s no big deal? Sign me up.

“Praise All-Eternal Death who restores life to the dead.”

In Cairney, Death grants resurrection to its residents, a ritual the townsfolk treat as sacred. But Friede, the church pianist, has always viewed it as a curse. When she awakens in the catacombs coughing up mud and brackish water, her first thought is a horrified no… no, no, nooo. As her memories return, she realizes she has died and been dragged back against her will.

Soon after, she learns that Death’s relic has been stolen and the acolyte who guarded it has been murdered in a manner disturbingly similar to her own. With Allhallowsmas approaching and the resurrected at risk of fading away, Friede and her friend Bastian set out to recover the relic and restore order to a community obsessed with death, even as she longs for the rest she was denied.

The setup is fantastic. The vibes are moody. But the story never digs into the lore the way I hoped it would. Cairney is begging for deeper history, richer mythology, and more fully realized characters, but the narrative keeps things frustratingly shallow. Racklin had a killer concept, but instead of plunging into the depths, the book just treads water.

Pretty prose, great concept, underwhelming execution.

The Midnight Muse by Jo Kaplan

Add another one to your fungal fiction list, because The Midnight Muse is a welcome addition to the genre — eerie, immersive, and so easy to fall into.

This is my first Jo Kaplan novel and my god, I love the way she writes. Her storytelling has this wonderfully strange, magnetic energy that pulled me in from page one and never let go.

We start with two timelines that will ultimately come crashing together: one where our primary MC Harlow is hospitalized after a traumatic event that begins very mysteriously but quickly starts coming together, and another that takes place a little earlier, following her and the remaining members of the dark metal band Queen Carrion as they head into the woods a year after their lead vocalist Brynn vanished. They’re there to say goodbye… or in Harlow’s case, to make one last desperate attempt to find her.

The cabin they rent is every horror trope turned up to eleven — remote enough to feel wrong, without wi-fi (of course), and oh look, a trap door in the floor. Plus that prickling sensation that they are being watched.

Once they settle in, the weirdness starts simmering. They hear singing in the woods. There's a glimpse of a white deer that feels more omen than animal, mold creeping in the corners, cobwebs sagging from the chandelier, and when Rhys starts getting sick… that’s when the weird-o-meter snaps clean off.

Because the land itself is alive — crawling with an aggressive, hungry mycelium eager to burrow into their bodies and rot them from the inside out. It lures. It whispers. It waits for them to step outside so it can try to claim them. And now our fearsome friends find themselves fighting for their lives.

This book is creepy, cringey, atmospheric as hell, and absolutely drenched in dread. And the body horror? Oh wow. Think The Ruins but with sentient mushrooms.

I absolutely devoured this. It got under my skin in the best way. Kaplan didn’t just write fungal horror. She wrote a fever dream you can’t shake.

King Sorrow by Joe HIll

I sat on the fence with this audiobook for a long time before finally pulling the trigger. Honestly, the only reason I did was because I spotted it for cheap on Chirp and thought, why not? And then, just like that, it became my commuting companion for the last three weeks.

And… ugh, you guys. I just wasn’t a fan.

It actually starts out kind of cute. A college kid gets targeted by an older couple whose mother is in the same jail as his. They threaten to have their mom hurt his mom unless he steals rare, expensive books from the library where he works so they can sell them off and pay down some debt. Arthur goes along with it under duress, and his friends rally around him to figure out how to get these people off his back. In the process, they discover that one of the rare books is a journal belonging to a man who practiced dark magic and summoned a dragon. So naturally, they decide to summon the dragon too.

Enter King Sorrow, who appears, marks them, and makes a pact: he’ll protect them as long as they give him one soul on Easter. They agree… and quickly realize dragons are tricky little monsters. One soul turns into many, and suddenly they’re stuck feeding him for decades while scrambling for a way to break the pact or kill him outright so they can finally be free.

The whole thing was just too long and a little too unbelievable — yes, even for a story with a dragon. The characters were grating, especially King Sorrow. Every line he delivered was clearly meant to sound ominous and menacing, but instead it landed as goofy and corny.

And the strangest part? Every so often, right in the middle of the narration, the audiobook would shift into these odd little dramatized segments — actors, sound effects, the whole production — layered into the story without warning. It was jarring, and not in a fun experimental way.

This one just didn’t work for me. Please don't hate me.

Dig by JH Markert

Strange things are starting to happen on Crow Island — an isolated stretch of land known for its tupelo honey, its Geechee folklore, and Jericho, the unsettling giant of a child who went on a murder spree one Fourth of July eight years ago.

Amy Barnes, whose family owns the island, gets a late‑night call from Reverend Dodd telling her to contact his son Nathaniel and tell him to dig. Sensing something is horribly wrong, Amy rushes to Dodd’s house but she’s too late. He’s dead. His hand has been severed and coated in honey. His yard is torn up with frantic holes. And he’s been obsessively sketching red crows… which would be odd anywhere, but especially here, since Crow Island hasn’t seen a single crow in centuries.

Sheriff Lawrence quickly finds himself in over his head as more islanders develop the same compulsive urge to dig, frantically releasing clouds of dirt into the air and unearthing disturbingly large bones. And if those bones belong to who they fear they do, the island is about to face a reckoning unlike anything in its long, haunted history.

I really loved this book. I appreciated its slow burn and the way Markert gradually revealed the tangled relationship between the characters and the island, which feels like a character in its own right. The history of the bees, the quest to create truly pure tupelo honey, the honey house no one but the beekeeper can enter, the small earthquakes growing in frequency and intensity… it all builds with this steady, uncanny pressure. You may think you know where it’s headed, but trust me, you won’t guess everything.

It’s atmospheric, strange, and deeply rooted in place... the kind of Southern‑gothic‑adjacent horror that seeps under your skin. Crow Island has secrets, and watching them rise to the surface was an absolute treat.

Pedro the Vast by Simon Lopez Trujillo

I read this book cover to cover in my antilibrary while snowmageddon 2026 continues to whollop us. Even though it's the wrong time of year for fungus to live 'amongus', it was a great excuse to sit in one place and just read... guilt free.

Pedro the Vast follows three groups of people that are intimately connected to a forest worker who becomes infected by mushroom spores and survives, or appears to survive, because it's kind of hard to tell how much of Pedro is actually still in there... There's a religious group that basically kidnaps him once he awakens from his coma and treat him like a prophet, his son and daughter who are learning to deal with his absence, and a mycologist who is briefly called upon to consult on Pedro's case and its potential for additional contamination.

Trujillo’s writing has such softness to it, a musicality and a melancholy that feels distinctly, beautifully Spanish. The prose stays tender and attentive, lingering on small gestures, quiet moments, and the natural world with a reverence that makes the whole novel feel alive.

As the three storylines work together, the novel becomes less about the horror of Pedro’s infection and more about the ways life insists on continuing, reshaping itself, adapting, pushing forward. It’s quiet, contemplative eco‑fiction with a speculative shimmer, and it will have me thinking about the resilience of living things long after I move on from this book.

Crawlspace by Adam Christopher

Crawlspace. An interesting name for a cosmic horror novel… set in outer space… on a spaceship. And yet, it kinda works, because the ship’s crawlspace is exactly where all the real trouble starts.

I didn’t fall head over heels for this one, but Adam Christopher absolutely knows how to let the tension simmer and marinate his readers in atmospheric dread.

The story takes its sweet time getting going. We meet the crew of the XK72 (truly one of the least inspiring spacecraft names imaginable) as they prepare for a test flight of a hyperspace prototype called the SLIP drive — a machine meant to break the laws of physics and fling them across two light‑seconds in two microseconds. It’s a lot of setup... but hang in there.

While the descriptions of the different parts of spacecraft and the mechanical techy terms were a bit snoozey and hard to follow, the characters were pretty fun and easy to latch on to. You can tell something's going to go down pretty early on and when the weird and sabatogy stuff does start, everyone does that classic horror‑story thing where they shrug it off, rationalize it, or pretend it’s fine until it very much isn’t. And by the time they finally stop making excuses, well… it’s already too late.

The knocking that sounds like it's overhead, and then underfoot, and then in the walls. The shadowy movements in the corner of their eyes, catching the reflection of someone in the mirror or the window when you are alone in the room ... and now the missing crew members...

Crawlspace doesn’t reinvent cosmic horror, but it knows exactly how to make you sneak a peek over your shoulder before you turn out the lights and brings the darkness of the void uncomfortably close.

I Am Agatha by Nancy Foley

What do you get when an eccentric, aging artist hooks up with a woman slipping into the early stages of Alzheimer’s? You get I Am Agatha.

This is a tender, twisted little tale about love, loyalty, and moody‑ass bitches. Our narrator, Agatha, has recently relocated to New Mexico and fallen into a relationship with Alice, a widow whose mind is beginning to fray at the edges. Alice’s family owns the property Agatha rents, and as Alice’s dementia worsens, her son — who has never liked Agatha and considers her a corrupting influence — announces he’s selling the land out from under her. Cue Agatha’s quiet, simmering rage. She’s a classy butch, after all, and she’s not about to be pushed around.

Just as she’s trying to convince Alice to move in with her, Alice disappears. And Agatha, in all her stubborn, steel‑spined glory, starts covering for her when the questions begin.

It’s funny, it’s dark, it’s a little unsettling — the kind of story that keeps you leaning forward, wondering what this prickly old woman is going to do next. Agatha’s commentary is what really makes this book. She’s observant, wickedly petty, and fully aware that she’s the most interesting person in any room, even though she hates to draw any attention to herself.

If you love books narrated by unreliable, isolated older women... think Too Old For This, Elena Knows, or Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead... then buckle up, baby! Agatha’s in the driver’s seat, and she’s taking you on one hell of a ride.

Killing Stella by Marlen Haushofer

Took a break from all of the review copies I've been reading lately and pulled this out of the TBR.

Never judge the decisions a person makes. That's what I had to keep reminding myself as I read this novelette yesterday.

If someone wants to live in the dark, ignore the obvious, and torture themselves with spiraling assumptions instead of facing the truth head‑on… fine. Good for them. Personally, I find that kind of willful avoidance maddening and enablist, but hey, to each their own. That's the bed you made. But also, I'd be lying if I said I never did that, sooo...

Killing Stella is beautifully written, but wow did it piss me off. The emotional choices, the passivity, the refusal to act — all of it pressed every one of my buttons. I spent half the book wanting to shake the narrator and the other half reminding myself to unclench my jaw.

And yet, despite how massively frustrating and triggering it was, it’s clever, tightly crafted, and incredibly readable. Just not sure it was worth the full paperback price for a story that's less than 90 pages long.