#substack does classics

[evelinaeveryday]

The Reverend Mr. Villars reading L.14 wherein Evelina just happens to uber pool with her long lost grandmama who could expose her parentage and claim legal custody

[susiephone]

wtf is dracula daily?

i’ve seen a couple people ask this question on my posts about it, so i thought i’d go ahead and clear it up here!

ok so, the classic horror novel “dracula” is an epistolary novel - that means it’s told via letters, diary entries, ship logs, and news articles. (technically the term “epistolary novel” refers to works told solely through letters or emails, but many have expanded it to mean any work that is told via in-universe documents, hence why diaries and logs often get included as well. “frankenstein” is another classic example; the whole framing device is robert walton is recounting the story he heard from victor to his sister via letter. a modern example would be “several people are typing,” which is told via slack messages, or “the perks of being a wallflower,” which is told via letters from charlie to his anonymous pen pal, which is functionally more like you’re reading his diary.)

because of the nature of the narrative, we actually know the exact day nearly everything in dracula happens - the letters, news articles, diary entries, etc. are all dated.

“dracula daily” is a substack project where the novel is broken up into parts, with people who are subscribed to the project getting emails every day something in dracula happens - for example, the novel opens with jonathan harker’s journal entry on may 3, so on may 3, subscribers are emailed that entry. the action of dracula takes place from may 3 - november 6, plus an epilogue set some years later. the project started in 2021 (i think), but fucking BLEW UP in 2022, and they’re doing it again this year! lots of us are very excited - especially people like me who fell behind last time.

why not just read the book?

valid! due to some parts of dracula being told out of chronological order, dracula daily does reorder some things. for example, the first section of dracula is told entirely from jonathan harker’s pov, then the second section switches the pov to mina murray. their sections have some overlap in the timeline, so dracula daily jumps back and forth between their perspectives.

if you want to read the book as bram stoker intended, dracula daily may not be for you. but for a lot of people (myself included!), it breaks up a very long text into easily digestible chunks (....mostly. there is one entry that is 10k words), and the fact that it’s a big project means there are a lot of people reading along with you.

i think there’s also something valuable about experience the slow revelation of wtf is going on along with the characters. the book which you might otherwise get through in a few days is stretched out into months of suspense and agony as you wait for the other shoe to drop, and it’s great.

plus, the whiplash between “jonathan harker’s neverending horror” vs “lucy is basically on the bachelorette” that you get in dracula daily is very very funny.

how do i sign up?

right here! and if you sign up and fall behind in the emails, no worries - the dracula daily website posts past entries so you can catch up.

what if i prefer audiobooks?

have i got great news for you!

like i mentioned before, i couldn’t keep up with the emails last year. part of it is that it is much easier for me to focus on an audiobook or keep up with a podcast than it is for me to sit down and read, especially with longer entries.

this year, there is going to be a podcast titled “re: dracula” that was inspired by dracula daily. every episode will be a dracula daily entry, with a full voice cast! (seriously, if you listen to british podcasts, you will recognize some of these names. the magnus archives and wooden overcoats girlies are WINNING.) you can find that here.

there is also a podcast called “cryptic canticles” that has an already-completed audiodrama of dracula that i’m told is also extremely good, and was also broken up by date. you can find that here.

why do i keep hearing about paprika/the boyfriend squad/lizard fashion/cowboys?

you’ll see.

oh god am i gonna hear about this nerd shit for the rest of the year

yes. sorry.

[see-arcane]

Friends, bookworms, bitter lovers of classic literature’s greatest and most greatly cheated horrors, I have a request to make of you:

Send me the absolute worst film and TV series you know of when it comes to adapting—read: ruining, rewriting, and/or bastardizing beyond the point of recognition—the books of classic horror we know and love.

Give me your fanfictions of a fanfiction-level headaches. Your reincarnated wife plots. Your no-homo’d friends and/or siblings. Your heroes made into sudden assholes, your grating girlbosses full of contemporary wink-at-the-camera edginess, your dull damsels sanded down into corseted props, your monsters alternately stripped of their proper menace or their intelligence in order to fit the Universal Classics mold.

Give me the worst of your slop.

Plague me with your anti-recommendations in their dozens and hundreds.

Why do I make this request? So I can form a list. Ideally with cited sources, though I think we’re all aware that the easiest way to form said list is to just link to Wikipedia. I am at a loss for any known work that faithfully does right by our dusty old monsters and their foes.*

*Incidentally, if anyone has anything they would sincerely recommend to take the edge off, pass those my way too with your review. No need to suggest the Substacks or @re-dracula. They are my sole refuge as-is.

The reason for the list is that I would like to have it as reference material for what I hope can be a decently public-facing open letter to Hollywood as a plea, a curse, and a general shaming for the industry that has refused to actually read, comprehend, and acknowledge the books they continue to harvest for content without ever doing right by the stories, casts, or themes. Their notion of ‘adaptation’ has dissolved entirely into a game of Telephone with the last half a dozen filmmakers who barely skimmed, let alone liked, the books in question.

That said, I have some specific books in mind already, starting with Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Gray. You know why. But others on the roster include Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Carmilla, and The Phantom of the Opera. Let me have the worst of the worst of their movie and television counterparts; that goes double for the ones that have made you full-body cringe at their popularity.*

*It goes without saying that Francis’ fanfiction is at the top of the list. No need to rub more salt in that wound.

My inbox is ready for your worst, friends. Hand over the bile.

[dailydamnation]

Wow, Bleeding Cool, you're really gonna bait me specifically this way?

But while we can cheer Kittykate getting one step closer to finally realizing the ship that was meant to be, the Illyana article does not make me optimistic.

The actual quote being quoted from Brevoort's Substack is as follows:

"In the past, I haven't liked Magik pretty much at all. But that doesn't mean that the character doesn't have fans, lots of them. And being in the position that I'm in now means that I can prevent her from being written in the manner that used to irritate me. So there's no problem with using her."

As someone who loves classic Illyana--and everything points towards the fact that he disliked Illyana waaay back before she died--and feels dissatisfied with the shallower bad-ass take we get so often now, this just sucks.

Before Brevoort's tenure started, I figured that even if I didn't always agree with his takes, he's an editor who lets his creators follow their passions. Now he's basically saying he'd probably obstruct the stories I want to see.

Add this to the way he talks about the Krakoan Age... I don't even disagree with some of the points he makes, but he sounds like the Krakoan comics are something to scrape off his shoe. So anyway. Can't wait for this era of X-books to be over already.

[nitewrighter]

I realize I'm saying "Step outside your reading comfort zone, step outside your reading comfort zone" over and over again and people might actually be interested in doing that, but might not know where to start, or really where their 'reading comfort zone' ends. Well, the good news is, there's a lot of "book bingos" and other reading challenges on library websites and blogs all over the place that have plenty of prompts for books it might not occur to you to read--I'd say like exercise though, you obviously don't want to immediately force yourself to read something you know is going to make you miserable.

Like if you say, "Well I've never read a biography before, so I grabbed this giant fucking brick on President Warren G. Harding, but it was boring and it sucked. Oh well, I tried. Back to fanfiction." Like, come on, there's no way in hell you were engaging in good faith there. There really is a lot of accessible nonfiction out there, if you're willing to look, and also don't be afraid to ask your local librarian for help. Also even if you're a grown-ass adult, please don't feel ashamed about reading non-fiction adapted for younger readers to ease yourself into it. Podcasts and media communities can also help steer you to nonfiction subjects so that you're springboarding from something you know you're interested in, to something you wouldn't usually read--I got steered to "Frozen In Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition" and have added Jean Genet to my To-Read list because of the Terror fandom.

Also short story collections and essay collections are your friends!! You don't have to complete those cover to cover! You can bounce around as you need and it's still different enough content and style for your brain to form new neural pathways! You can give your brain tiger a pumpkin full of meat for enrichment while still being ADHD as hell!

Stepping outside of fictional genre comfort zones can also be a trickier bird, but there are ways to go about it! If you're interested in tackling a classic, there are a lot of substacks which can often come with their own respective communities to help keep you motivated through the drier parts. Like, yeah those communities might not be as big of a phenomenon as Dracula Daily, but it really does help to have buddies to discuss the book as you go along. Like, yeah I'm currently behind in my reading of Moby Dick, but I'm still motivated to keep going because I want to catch up with the rest of the Whale Weekly crowd. There are also a lot of book list communities that group books by their respective tropes and structures and can allow you to ease yourself to new subject matter. Don't be embarrassed to make "short reads/quick reads" a search criteria when browsing books, as well.

Anyways, what I'm saying is, going outside of your reading comfort zone doesn't mean immediately throwing yourself in the deep end, it can be as simple as engaging with an interest you already know you have, in a text format you wouldn't usually work with. Or vice versa!!

[unreeled]

In a Violent Nature

And the Deep Breaths Between Horrors.

(This article can also be found on my Substack).

It happens a number of times within the film. Facing a choice or a disappointment, Johnny’s shoulders rise and fall in the act of taking a single deep, distinct breath. Then he’ll move, towards the next goal or the sound of muffled voices off in the woods, with a slow gait and little sense of urgency. It’s as if he knows it’s a long walk, but that he’ll get there eventually. Watching the film, you take that walk with him. If there was ever a horror movie to give you time to breathe, In a Violent Nature is it. Set in a remote, woody area of northern Ontario, it’s the story of a group of teens who remove a locket from a rotting fire tower and re-awake the violent entity that it was keeping dormant. And this time, the camera is solely focused on the undead monster that claws itself out of the earth to track them down and slaughter them. 

There’s a certain kind of bravery in making a slasher film that takes its time to move from one stunt to the next, as the classic slasher fan may find themselves bored by the long periods of time spent engrossed in the simple wild. And it’s brave to make a contemplative, slow-burn horror film into a slasher, as the arthouse fan might find the premise too simple. A fan of both, or someone who walks into the theater simply knowing what to expect, will find something clever, thoughtful, and eerie. One standout element of the film is found in its sense of choreography; despite a lack of musical score, there is a rhythm to the entire film. Johnny’s heavy, lumbering steps. The repeated swing of an ax, the perfect way in which the characters move around each other in order to catch or miss a glimpse of one another. Some of its best moments are when you realize that you- and Johnny- can see the next victim up ahead, but they remain oblivious.

In many ways, this film is a spectacle. Shot with a 3:4 aspect ratio and making full use of the Canon EOS C70’s Super 35mm Sensor, In A Violent Nature couldn't be more gorgeous. For a horror film, there is no shying away from daylight or color. Every detail of the landscape found in northern Ontario is laid out for the viewer to take in, from the distant, rolling mountains to the bright greens and yellows of the forest itself. Night time scenes are shot with minimal lighting gear, as the crew attempted to minimize what they would need to move through the location, which creates perfectly stark contrasts between bonfires, porch lights, and the inky darkness of the woods beyond. You are always immersed in this place. Of the look of the film, director Chris Nash says they wanted to create an environment “where you almost feel the threat of being alone in the woods by itself, without a big, old monster man with an axe hunting you down.”

This effect is honed in on in the lack of a musical score. The only thing you hear in the film is what Johnny hears. The crunch and brush of leaves, the flow of water, the whistle of birds. The revving of a truck, the distant argument between the cast of survivors, and muffled music coming from the radio inside their cabin. Or, of course, the crunch of bone. 

Word-of-mouth says that in the screenings of this film, audience members vomited from the gore. It’s an age-old rumor that accompanies any film with a body count, but it might be understandable, if true. With a director like Nash- who has a slightly longer history in special effects than he does directing- the film could only turn out adequately gory. The kills are brutal, disgusting, sometimes absurd, and a fantastic time all the way through. Anyone with an appreciation for the practical side of gory special effects will get a kick out of the moments that Johnny settles on a weapon and gets to work. 

The other joy of In a Violent Nature is in its performances. Caught only through brief glimpses of stories around the campfire or conversations out on a dock, the core cast of survivors (played by Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Liam Leone, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Alexander Oliver, Charlotte Creaghan, and Sam Roulston) share an incredible chemistry that instantly gives a sense of their relationships and their corresponding parts to play in the slasher narrative. The roles filled by Timothy Paul McCarthy, Lauren-Marie Taylor, and Reese Presley are no less fantastic when they step onto the scene, conveniently looking elsewhere until it’s their time to face down Johnny. 

And speaking of Johnny, Ry Barrett never says a word in the role, but never does the character fall flat. There are sparks of personality hidden underneath his mannerisms, from the things that catch his curiosity to the casual way he slings an ax. The way he carries himself is both imposing and perfectly natural-- for him, if not for anyone else. Barrett was recast in the role after the previous star had to step back, and a large chunk of the film had to be reshot. Nash states in an interview for Points of Reviews that there was an initial belief that, because the character is in costume and rarely viewed from an onwards angle, that some of these shots could be worked together, but that wasn’t wholly the case. He says, “There are so many things with the performance that are important, in just how they carry themselves, the gait of their walk, just the weight of their footfalls.” That importance shows through in the final cut of the film, which is a phenomenal piece of performance on the part of Barrett. 

In a Violent Nature is, in many ways, exactly what it calls itself. The concept of a slasher film from the slasher’s point of view might be a simple one, but in its execution, it becomes a standout piece of filmmaking. The care put into every second of its runtime shows through in a viewing experience that will leave you looking a little closer at the woods you drive through on your way home from the theater; partly because they’re beautiful, and partly because you never know what they could hide. 

-

Some articles referenced in this review (that I recommend reading!):

In a Violent Nature Film Review (with Director Chris Nash)

Sundance: DP Pierce Derks on In a Violent Nature

Sundance Slasher In a Violent Nature puts Northern Ontario Front and Center

[serial-serializednovelreader]

What other novels to your inbox do you recommend? I have done Dracula Daily for years and I want to expand my horizon. War is pretty much the only thing that I don't like. Thanks

Hi!

So funny story, contrary to my username and bio…I have not been keeping up with the classic novels in my emails lately. BUT. That does not mean I don’t have some recommendations for you!

Also, since you did mention you don’t like war, I made sure not to recommend any novels that heavily involve war (War & Peace & Emails, for instance). However, I do know some characters in these recommendations have history with war (e.g. Watson was a war doctor) and I’ve made sure to make mention of that wherever possible. So, I apologize if that comes off as annoying or stating the obvious, I just want you to be fully informed before you read. I’m also listing general content warnings as a rule to inform anyone who might be interested in these Substacks. :)

On to the recommendations!

If you’re looking for mystery…

Learn about the greatest detective of all time from his faithful partner — that’s right! Read Letters from Watson to get the scoop on Sherlock and solve mysteries alongside the legendary duo. I thought this was such a cool concept and I wish I had been able to keep up with it. But it was very fun for the time I did. It goes through the entire chronology of Sherlock stories (which is a lot, by the way) and they just started going through the “more complex cases” (aka, the 4 Sherlock novels) back in January. So, it might be a good time to start! There isn’t war in these cases (at least as far as I know, each email does have a list of content warnings for specifics), but Watson was a war doctor and this does come up frequently, just as a heads up.

If you’re looking for epistolary stories…

Literary Letters takes obscure epistolary novels from the public domain and puts them into your inbox! Right now they’re reading The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is about a guy who’s in love with a girl who’s betrothed to another and writes very passionate letters on the subject.

For a content warning, I’ve included the publisher’s note on this one: “There are passages where the book discusses Werther’s depression, despair, rationalizations for suicide, and the suicide itself at length, so please take whatever precautions you need to read the book safely, which may include buddy reading, mental health breaks, or skipping it altogether.”

So with that being said, the reason I got into this email chain was actually for their first novel they emailed - The Lightning Conductor. I absolutely loved this novel and I heavily recommend going back into the archives to read it and its sequel if you can (that one is in the “Side Stories” archive). It’s a very lighthearted read and a romance, told in epistolary format! Basically, it’s about this smart (yet a bit scatterbrained — not judging, because, same) woman who goes to Europe for the first time and she ends up meeting a gentleman when her car breaks down. Said gentleman is mistaken for a chauffeur and he goes along with it, just because she’s dreamy and he’s already smitten with her. Then there’s her “best guy friend” and her mom trying to throw a wrench in their plans. It’s utter chaos and I love it. I could go on for hours about this novel, but I won’t! I do highly recommended reading it if you ever get the chance.

If you’re looking for a read in verse format…

Check out Divine Comedy Weekly! It’s telling Dante’s Divine Comedy every Tuesday and Thursday. There’s not much to say about this one because I dropped out pretty early in the game, unfortunately. For some reason, stories told in a lyrical/verse format don’t seem to be my thing, but maybe they’re your thing! I think it’s a great concept and for that reason, I will recommend this.

If you’re looking for an all-new read…

North and South by Jane Austen is coming to your inbox this June! It’s apparently a bit like Pride and Prejudice but with the Industrial Revolution and labor relations. I actually just subscribed to this one and I’m excited to see how I enjoy it!

If you’re looking for a long haul read…

Buckle in! It’s time for Whale Weekly! That’s right, you’re in for a THREE YEAR TRIP with this bad boy because Ishmael is emailing you the tale of Moby Dick. Life has gotten in the way and I’ve fallen behind (though this is motivating me to catch up again), but this is actually really good as an email read because this guy goes on so many tangents, it’s more fun for me to absorb his thoughts in spaced out emails, rather than if I tried to read the book.

The memes are very fun with this one, but please keep in mind there is racism and foul language in this, as well as other heavy topics I can’t remember off the top of my head. Also, this does not take place in a war setting, but I do believe some characters have been in war in the past, so that is probably something to keep in mind with this one!

This one is coming to an end fairly soon (I didn’t realize we were on chapter 113/135 OOF), so I don’t know if they’re going to do another round after this or leave it. I imagine it would probably be hard to catch up at this point, but I’m going to link it anyway because I typed all of this up before realizing how far along we were and I do still recommend the read in email format rather than a novel format.

If you’re looking for horror…

I would recommend “The Beetle Weekly”. I wasn’t able to finish this one because LifeTM got in the way, but it is, for sure, one of the reads of all time. Probably the best and worst thing you could read ever tbh. It’s not very enjoyable and I’m not pitching it well at all, but for some reason, I am legitimately recommending this because it is hilarious to read with Tumblr memes by your side. As a heads up, this book does include racism, gore, sexism, transphobia (iirc?) and likely more content warnings I can’t remember. The reason I’m recommending it at all is because it does carry some of the same themes as Dracula and the characters are interesting. Plus, love it or hate it, I reacted while reading this book - a lot. Did I mention I have a bug phobia? Also, fun fact: it was published at the same time as Dracula and was actually MORE POPULAR than Dracula for a while before fading into obscurity.

The only thing is, it did just end last April so you might have to wait until December for it to crawl back into your inbox if you’re interested.

If you’re looking for a thriller…

Jekyll and Hyde Weekly. I absolutely LOVED THIS ONE!!!! Very much vibes of Dracula Daily. Immaculate stuff right there. This one has a lot more comedy than you’d think and was very enjoyable. Content warnings for violence against a child (mentioned, not shown), body horror, and there is one more I can’t say without spoiling the book (feel free to DM me if you’re interested in knowing).

Again, this is pretty short and it’s not currently active; it runs November through January, so that’s when you can look out for it!

I was hoping to recommend some more via a masterlist, I know someone made a post waaay back in 2022 when this serialized email novel thing first got started, but it looks like it got deleted, so if there is a new one, I would love for anyone to share it just for future reference!

I do have a couple of honorable mentions I’ll link that I haven’t read and know next to nothing about, but just so you can have even more recommendations. Please feel free to share your favorites!

[kritischetheologie]

🔥 Academia

for all that the numbering at bethelehem is a very Light Academia fic in terms of genre and aesthetics, it is quietly an extremely anti academia fic.

academia is the thing that tears lewis and nico apart; it's the thing that destroys seb's sense of self; it's the thing that's so astronomically awful for daniel that I couldn't even write the fic from his pov. of course, the fantasy of the academy gets the last word: lewis giving a shakespeare lecture that changes pierre's life (and charles's), seb learning to accept his position within the institutional hierarchy, they all live happily ever after and get tenure. but before that, we get one of the greatest "maybe the villain has a point" monologues I've ever written (not that it has a lot of competition?):

“Great paper,” Lewis tells him, and means it. He always means it. Nico’s queer reading of A Midsummer Nights Dream is going to end up in a book that’ll win prizes, and Lewis will see the announcement and remember what it felt like to be there as Nico presented the paper for the first time, in New York. “You always say that,” Nico says. “I’m getting sick of the shtick. Here’s a classic, now it’s gay. It’s the only thing I know how to do to literature. I think I might quit. Start a substack, or a podcast, or something.” The aviation in his hand must not be his first. “It’s important work,” Lewis reassures him. “Gay people have so little heritage to call our own that every act of reclamation is an act of revolution. You’re the one who taught me that, remember?” Lewis remembers the first time Nico told him about Hamlet and Horatio and the double meaning of goodnight, sweet prince . He might never have gathered up the courage to kiss him, otherwise. “This shit matters, man.”  Nico scoffs. “This shit pays. Woke universities that have no conception of aesthetics or tradition pay me to fuck up their old classics because it makes them feel better about not assigning them to kids who lack the reading comprehension skills to read them. We’re the last fucking generation of Shakespeare scholars and you know it.” He looks pleased with himself, like he’s imagining how good he’ll look peddling this bullshit on Tucker Carlson. Lewis sighs.

now, my actual critiques of the industry tend to include words like "neoliberalization" and "precariat" and focus on things like the labor structure, etc. but I'll admit that nico's little villain speech was a hell of a lot of fun to write, because I've often found myself wondering what the purpose of the humanities actually is--and especially, what the point of humanities scholarship is. does the world need another book on shakespeare? does expanding the canon to include more diversity, whether through new readings or the classics or the addition of more diverse authors, actually do anything about the material inequity in our society? if your students are going to go on to do something more practical, of course it's lovely for them to spend some time reading some books before they do it, but if you're just a lovely, entertaining diversion for tomorrow's stockbrokers, is that worth devoting your life to? I have a couple of friends in academia, and I have a tendency to ask them these questions, and then they get mad at me, lmao.

and yet, the idea that the humanities are dying and/or deserve to is so overplayed at this point that the idea that there's even anything worth saving might be my truly unpopular opinion.

[voyageofthenautilus]

Thank you, everyone!

This is Blue M. Hart, the creator of the Voyage of the Nautilus substack. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas has been a very important book to me since I first read it at 12 years old. I’ve gotten “Mobilis In Mobili” tattooed on me, daydreamed endlessly about writing a film adaptation, and now I’ve just finished running an online book club for it. I can’t thank you all enough for participating and making this such a rewarding experience! It’s been so much fun following along with everyone’s reactions. I hope everyone reading along had as much of a blast as the person running the thing!

Thanks as well to my friend @plutodetective for inspiring me to make this project a reality, and for co-modding this very blog. Thanks to Orca_Super_Cool on Twitter for making the lovely header image and icons for this project- his commissions are currently open if you’re interested! Thanks to Project Gutenberg for making the text of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas available and accessible, and finally, thanks to the Dracula Daily project for popularizing this “read a classic novel in real time via emails” format. Voyage of the Nautilus would not exist if Dracula Daily didn’t exist.

So, what’s next…?

Several readers have asked if I will run the Voyage of the Nautilus book club for a second year. Currently, the answer is no. As outlined earlier on this blog, midway through the project, I, a habitual fine-print skimmer, realized that the translation of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas that I had used for the project was under copyright, and while I wanted to see the project through to the end, I’d rather not take the risk of using the copyrighted translation for a second time. The only public domain translation that I’m aware of is unfortunately abridged and rife with inaccuracies, therefore I’d rather not use it. (If you’d like to read this translation in a serial format, Notes from the Nautilus has got you covered!) That being said, I would love to run the book club again and have been searching for ways to contact the translator to see if he will allow us permission to use his work, so if it ends up happening again, watch this space.

For now, feel free to go back through the archives of the Voyage of the Nautilus blog to catch up on readers’ thoughts, as well as browse the wonderful fanworks made over the course of this project- both fanfic, and fanart. (Pluto made an excellent masterpost of these works for ease of browsing!)

You might also like to know that Jules Verne wrote Captain Nemo into another book of his! The Mysterious Island is a tale of several castaways who become marooned on a remote island following their flight to escape the American Civil War. To mention Nemo’s involvement in the plot would be to spoil it, but he does make a significant appearance (which is strangely portrayed as taking place after the events of Twenty Thousand Leagues, despite that story being set chronologically after the Civil War). If you enjoyed Twenty Thousand Leagues, but desire closure for Nemo’s character, The Mysterious Island provides that in spades. (Perhaps we’ll do a book club for it in the future…?)

That’s all (for now)!

-Blue

[kaibacorpintern]

I really enjoy all of your writing, and especially appreciate the kind of analysis you put into your works. May I ask, is there anything specific you’d recommend to get as good at writing and more specifically *creating* as you? (besides just simply practicing lol) if this is beyond the scope of what you’re willing to answer, totally respectable as well ❤️

Thank you!! What a lovely ask!

Practicing IS the correct answer in my opinion, but on top of practicing, you also have to read - and not just read whatever, but real widely, thoroughly, and deliberately: seeking out really, really good books (not fanfiction), making a study of sentences and technique, understanding the craft itself of writing and what the author might've been thinking when they chose to put these words together in this particular way.

If the amount of books out there in the world feels overwhelming, or you need recs for books that are certified strong writing, the high school syllabus classics are worth a revisit (like Fitzgerald and Steinbeck), as well as looking up Nobel Prize winners, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, etc.

Off the top of my head, here are some of the authors who've inspired me lately: Ursula K. LeGuin, T.H. White, Cormac McCarthy, Shirley Jackson, James Baldwin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. All of them are worth reading for the power and skill of their storytelling, both their actual narratives AND their distinctive prose.

I also suggest following this substack, by author Matt Bell: No Failure, Only Practice. Every month he sends out a new dispatch about a specific technique/approach to writing, analyzing examples that do it well and providing tips on how to do it. Magazines like LA Review of Books, Paris Review of Books, and Harper's Magazine are also excellent places to look for analyses and discussions of technique.

In terms of ideas/"creating," if I understand you correctly, I kind of think the other thing writers should do, as equally important as reading books, is go out into the world and fuck around and explore and say yes to as many different new experiences as you can safely tolerate and talk to all kinds of different people. Writing happens just as much out in the world as it does at your laptop - in the sense that ideas are born through experiences. (For example, my honda/kaiba fic is based on something I did in college.)

No idea just magically appears in the mind, out of nowhere. Something - someone you spoke to, something you witnessed, something you overheard, a strange coincidence, your friend's funny wild story about what happened at work, the way your mom talks about her parents, a scene from a movie that moved you, the color and smell of the afternoon, the vibe at your grocery store on a Sunday night - put the idea in your head, sometimes formed, sometimes unformed, and the work of writing is to take that idea and transform it.

And most importantly: HAVE FUN!! I firmly believe that writing is work, and it takes work to be any good at writing - but I truly love the work :)

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Interview with Jess Mahler, Part 1

Today's interview is with Jess Mahler, writer of serialized queer SFF fiction! You can find them and their work at the following:

Substack: https://jessmahler.substack.com/

Webserial catalog: https://jessmahler.com/webserial-catalog/

Author page: https://books2read.com/ap/nAEEOn/Jess-Mahler

A pre-sale for upcoming release: https://www.smashwords.com/books/presale/1154035/DJNG3G

Part One can be found under the cut, Part Two will be posted tomorrow!

You write serial queer SFF fiction. Why does that kind of fiction interest you, and how did you get started in it? Did you know Dickens – Charles Dickens, 'A Christmas Carol' Dickens, why the fuck are you making me read this hundred-year-old 'Classic' Dickens, wrote his books as serials? Serials fell out of fashion when novels became affordable. For a time, they were replaced by newspaper comics. The old comics like Prince Valient and the Phantom are some of the last survivors of the time when most long-form fiction was newspaper serials. When I started planning this 3 years ago, almost no one had heard of serials. You sometimes saw serials on Amazon where each chapter was published as a 99c ebook, and there was Tales of MU and other free fiction folks had shared for ages. But incredibly niche and nothing subscription based.

A few years ago, I had several problems:

I was struggling with long-form fiction – I kept having ideas for short stories that spawned sequels, so I tried to just write novels, and that… didn't go horribly but didn't work well either.

I had accepted that I was shit at marketing and needed to do something different if I wanted people to hear about my writing.

I needed a new blog topic.

I cannot work on one story at a time. I need at least two stories to bounce between. And after 3 months of focusing on a storyline, I need to take a break.

A friend and I were talking the mess over one day when something in the convo reminded me that Dickens' stuff was all first written as newspaper serials. One thing became another, and I launched Jess Mahler's Serials on January 1, 2021. Amazon announced its subscription serial service, Kindle Vella, a few months later, and I still say they stole my idea. wink

Why did you decide to focus on queer SFF?

Why queer fiction? Because I'm queer, and I like to queer shit. I never actually set out to write queer fiction. I originally described the serials only as SFF. But at one point, I realized that while most of the stories are SFF (there are two exceptions so far), all of them are queer.

As for why SFF – well, there's the fun reason and the practical reason. The fun reason is that I grew up burying myself in myths and legends and folk tales. Then in 7th grade, we read The Littlest Dragon Boy in English class. I asked my teacher where I could find more like it – I never looked back.

The practical reason is that I'm not that good at research. I tried doing a historical fiction story once and gave up a month in after realizing I'd never be able to get the setting accurate enough to suit me. I reworked it as a 'lost colony' sci-fi bit. It was one of the first serials I wrote, and it's on Smash and Amazon now as Bound by His Oath.

Me+worldbuilding? Amazing stuff happens Me+research? Sad face So I play to my strengths.

How do you go about planning a serialized work of fiction? What helps keep you on track with a regular schedule of updates? 

Once I decided to go with serials, I wanted to have a firm word count goal for each episode. I aim for 1000-2000 words, which I figured is a good length for reading on a lunch break or waiting for the bus. I have several friends who are often frustrated with not being able to read because of a lack of time or trouble focusing. So keeping it short seemed like a good way to make the stories accessible.

Because of my own attention span, I decided to break stories down into 'seasons' of about 3 months long. ~1500 word episodes, for 12-14 episodes gave me a rough goal for each season. Two episodes a week, because most of the time I can write 3-5000 words a week, which meant (I figured) that I could write, edit and post 2-4000 words a week without too much trouble.

Some stories, like How NOT to Save the World or Planting Life in a Dying City, I have an idea for a full novel-type storyline. I'll sketch out the overarching plot and break it into sections and subplots that will work for season-length story arcs. Other stories, like Mighty Hero Force Epsilon or Last Lady of Lună, I have an idea for the characters. "What if this happened to these people?" I try to at least have a general idea for how a season will end.

I knew I wanted the first season of L3 to end with Nastasia and her sotii having a solid start to their new relationship. But I swear Epsilon's season 1 ending surprised me as much as any of my readers. I use a spreadsheet to track what's written, what needs to be edited, what's scheduled, when I expect to finish a season, so on and so forth.

On an episode level, I've learned not to plan too far ahead of my writing. What I expect to be 13 episodes always ends up being 12 episodes, or 14. But for stories and seasons, I've got a rough schedule worked out through the end of 2024. And a list of 7 stories waiting to join rotation after that.

Sadly, because of my health problems, I do tend to miss updates. This year I've missed about 8 updates, which works out to less than one a month on average. That wouldn't bother me, except they tend to come in chunks – when I'm healthy I try to write enough to create a buffer. Then I use up the buffer a bit at a time until it runs out. I have a 'snippet month' in September/October where I share story ideas and mini-fics. It gives me time to catch up or rebuild the buffer, but so far I've been running out of buffer around July. Which means there are often several misses over July and August. 

How do you approach writing a second season of a serial story? Is that something you plan from the beginning, or do you figure out you want more to the story as it goes along? 

I guess I got ahead of myself in question 2. ;-) But regardless of if I have a full story planned or not, I do have a feel for how many seasons a story will run. Epsilon has to be at least three seasons. The first had to introduce the characters and the world, the second will… well, I won't spoiler, but fix the mess the characters find themselves in, and the third will either resolve or extend the story. One is written, I have a very general idea of how two will go, and three… well, there will be a season three. Past that? There be dragons. (Figuratively, in this case.) Other stories I know will only be a single season – or even a mini-season. First Came Trust, I knew going in wouldn't be more than 8-10 episodes. It actually ended up shorter than that! It's something like an odd meet-cute. Sort of. You don't get a long story out of two people meeting and deciding to take a chance on each other. No matter how unconventional the meeting. (If you want a break from Christmas-everything, First Came Trust is out in ebook on Dec 21.) 

 If someone wanted to get into serial fiction, what advice would you give them? 

Well, definitely stay off of Vella. Amazon is evil, but beyond that – if you go through Vella you give Amazon control of your writing and audience. Don't give evil people control of you or your career. You need to know yourself as a writer – how fast do you write, how often, and how quickly do you edit? It does no good to commit to writing three episodes a week if you can't reliably write more than one. Think about what audience you are writing for. I know, I know, trite advice. But here, we're coming from a different direction. Remember what I said before about how I know folks who don't have time to read, so I stuck with short episodes? I went with a newsletter format for the same reason. Quick and easy reads in your inbox. I went with multiple stories running concurrently so new readers would always have a story they could jump into without a huge backlog. What are the reading habits of your audience? Do they want to curl up with a long chapter each week? Do you think they care how consistently you update? (Long-term fanfic readers won't care about consistency, mainstream readers probably will.) Will they prefer to read on a website? Email? App? "Fast, Good, and Cheap, pick two" is the business maxim. I think the serial equivalent is "Frequent, Good, and Word Count." You can post good stories frequently. You can post high word counts frequently. You can write good stories with a high word count per episode. But posting good, high-word-count episodes frequently? Not so much. Put your writing habits and audience together, and pick two. I picked frequent (twice a week) and good. I know of folks doing serials that only post once a month, but when they post, it's a lot at once. You can do whatever works for you – but unless you are a full-time writer, you can't do all three. 

Can you tell us more about some of your favorite stories you've written, and why you decided to write them? 

Oh geez, I have to pick? Tell you what, let's talk about the 2023 schedule instead of making me pick between my babies. I've got 4 stories I'll be posting in 2023. The Bargain and Planting Life in a Dying City are two of my older stories. I started them both as novels and actually published the Bargain. (Please don't buy the ebook, it wasn't properly edited, and I'm embarrassed. The publisher is supposed to pull it soon.) The Bargain – so, I'm aro-ace, though I didn't even know the words when I started writing this one. I'm also kinky. The Bargain began as me writing the kind of kink story I wanted to read. It's got heavy queer platonic/chosen family vibes and focuses on the bond between people in a power exchange relationship. With fae, magic, a bit of court intrigue, self-discovery, and a few other things. Planting Life is a world-building project that spawned a story. Hopefully several stories. The original idea was 'how would tech and society have developed if magic existed as a kind of natural force.' So, of course, I had to define my magic, build my world, etc. Planting Life is set in a Bronze age society before anyone has learned to control magic. In fact, magic barely exists in the story. Instead, the story is about a group of traumatized individuals creating a new family and a new start in a stagnating society. But there will be spin-offs and sequels. The next story will focus on an Archimedes-like character who is one of the first to begin understanding and harnessing magic. Last Lady of Lună is my newest story and grew out of my finally understanding and accepting that I am aromantic. I just don't understand WTF romance is and that comes out in my writing. See, I write a lot of love stories, but while they meet the technical criteria for romance stories (stories about love and relationships with an HFN or HEA ending), they don't register as romance with a lot of people. So… I challenged myself. I love romance stories, especially paranormal romance stories. Last Lady of Luna is me making a conscious effort to write a why choose romance story. It's about a vampire and the humans who agree to be her companions, food, protectors, and (eventually) lovers. Slow burn, but I'm told that so far I'm nailing the burn. Mighty Hero Force Epsilon started as a dream. Literally. There's this one scene, about halfway through the first season, where the Big Bad's lieutenant– anyway, yeah. So I dreamed that scene. And when you read the scene, you'll understand why I had to figure out what happened after. Which meant I had to figure out what came before. Which is how we got here. Folks familiar with the genre will recognize it as a sentai story (think Power Rangers if you aren't familiar with anime). 

When it comes to writing serial fiction, finding a place to host it can be a challenge. Why did you decide on using Substack, and what advice can you give others who want to check out that platform for themselves? 

I went with Substack because it's a good newsletter platform. It doesn't make me pay to have a subscription set up when I have less than 50 subscribers and allows 'adult content'. I'm looking at alternatives because the navigation is a pain. (New readers should start on the website to get caught up.) And I'm hearing things about the folks running it being transphobic. Turns out my web host, Dreamhost, has built-in newsletter functionality now. So that's a thing I'm looking at. But yeah, finding hosting can be a challenge, which is why I'm still here. Just… try not to stress the stats. I've had days where Substack told me I had 0 views, 1 like, and 1 comment. I've had it tell me that I had a like from a subscriber who supposedly has never opened a single email. You should never take numbers (other than number of subscribers) too seriously if you can help it – you never know how they're calculated. But extra don't take Substack numbers seriously. 

Part 2 to follow!

[evelinaeveryday]

Written three months after the last, in which time Mr. Villars has been in ill-health, Letter 3 arrives! 💌

Subscribe to read along in real time! 

[grandhotelabyss]

A little late in the game, but had you received a Sight and Sound ballot, what would be your top 10 (I was reminded of the list because Paglia’s ballot was floating around Twitter recently, relentlessly mocked, but I mean, they're all fine films, and cinema is a populist, bourgeois medium...)

My list will be more controversial than hers. People reacted against her campy historical picks, but as a gay-male-identified lesbian she's entitled to them. Even her Italian-American self-assertion via The Godfather is unexceptionable, and most of the rest were revered Euro art films. Network TV used to play The Ten Commandments annually around Easter—do they still do this?—and as a kid I watched it every single year, religiously as it were, relishing its ludicrous maximalism. Does that count for nothing? But still, I came of age in a different era than Paglia, learned to ask different things of the form, and anyway am not the all-around cinephile the Silent and Boomer critics tended to be, bowled over as they were by the thing's novelty. (I made some notes on my taste here.) I find refreshing John David Ebert's assertion that cinema before about 1970 doesn't interest him much; he says the same about comics, and there's more truth in that, too, than people want to deal with. The point is not to disparage the early masters in either form but to observe that the whole standard of the art rose, as well as its technical capacity. I could argue by application the same for the novel: it doesn't get good until about the middle 19th century, admirable as Cervantes may be. I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said that the later entrants in any genre tend to be the best, not the earlier. (Shakespeare, whom Shaw disliked, might be an exception, unless we consider him the epilogue to classical rather than the prologue to modern drama.) Here, then, is my admittedly idiosyncratic list, in chronological order. The favorites are crowded into a 30-year period, possibly the high point of the art form; as announced recently on Substack, I'm in my middlebrow era, so I tried to avoid both wholly personal "comfort-watch" choices of a trashy nature (sorry, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) and extremely high-minded selections I am "supposed" to admire (I do admire Tarkovsky, but do I love him?); I hesitated to put anything very recent because the test of time is a real test.

Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943, Maya Deren

Breathless, 1960, Jean-Luc Godard

The Exorcist, 1973, William Friedkin

Blade Runner, 1982, Ridley Scott

Videodrome, 1983, David Cronenberg

Wings of Desire, 1987, Wim Wenders

Nixon, 1995, Oliver Stone

Magnolia, 1999, Paul Thomas Anderson

Mulholland Drive, 2001, David Lynch

Lost in Translation, 2002, Sofia Coppola

[see-arcane]

An idea: make it a substack ala classic substacks like @stjohnstarling does for their novels, or when you have reached like 250 pgs of draft start releasing it on Tumblr into chunks/chapters

A good idea to keep on the back burner 📝

[spider-xan]

I don't mind weekly literary substacks too much bc it does give more time to write analytical posts without feeling like a race against the clock, but anyway, I need to get off my ass actually write my post about the use of 'troglodyte' in Chapter 2 of Jekyll and Hyde bc while you could read it as a word to mean ugly rooted in classical thought, if you read it through the lens of evolutionary theory and scientific racism, which are both relevant to the text, there's a whole thing about troglodytes as a now debunked 'missing link' of humanity as proposed by Linnaeus in the 1700s, in which Hyde being pale and ape-like is very relevant, etc., but yeah, that's a post where I need time to write it out and parse my thoughts properly.

Also, lol I've actually only read the book like, a week ago, so I'm technically an extremely new fan, but I just really being overly analytical, even if I'm not saying anything new that I'm sure hasn't already been said by professional literary critics.

[im-a-freaking-joy]

How does one sign up for dracula daily? I've heard of it but have no idea what it actualy is

Its an email subscription that you can sign up for by going to this website and entering your email! Dracula is an epistolary novel, meaning its written via letters and journal entries, so Dracula daily send you the entries on the day they were written! We're about 2 weeks in, so you'll have to catch up a little bit but it's really fun!