Late start this morning. I was up at 5, like usual, but instead of immediately sitting down with my coffee and diving into writing, I sat down in my recliner with my coffee and read a chapter of Monsters In The Archives by Caroline Bicks — and it was lovely. Bathrobe and slippers, hot coffee, roaring fireplace, cat on my lap. Only thing missing was a cigar, but 5am is too early for one of those, and Mary will glare at me if I smoke one in the house.
Bottom line… retirement is suiting me well.
Yesterday I finished the last of the short stories I owed people for this year. The rest of 2026 will be spent focusing on the novel Laurel Hightower and I are cowriting, an anthology Chris Golden and I are editing, laying plans for the anthology after that (which I’ll be editing by myself since Chris wants to write a story for it), and the first draft of The End: The Labyrinth Book 5 (currently being serialized on my Patreon as I write it).
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Women In Horror Year: Day 143
The Quiet Ways I Destroy You by Jessica McHugh
Paperback - eBook - Signed Paperback
Women are expected to suffer in silence. Throughout history, myriad weapons of oppression have been launched at their intelligence, sexuality, compassion, & strength. Still, they endure.
And in secret, the sisterhood grows.
While trauma transforms, love germinates, and hope expands their power, women everywhere are united by something deeper than blood, affection, or pain. Quiet as mycorrhizal fungi, immortal ink colonizes their roots, branching from the iconic characters of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, & Marmee March and connecting them to a diverse web of women with appetites only destruction can quell.
Paying homage to the 155th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” 2x Bram Stoker Award Nominee Jessica McHugh’s “The Quiet Ways I Destroy You” examines Alcott’s timeless literary brood through 155 pieces of cosmic horror blackout poetry and celebrates the unapologetic & ever-evolving symbiosis of sisterhood, feminine rage, and the joyful vengeance that spreads in women’s whispers.
Published as an absolutely gorgeous oversized softcover (that looks great on a coffee table) The Quiet Ways I Destroy You is not just a book, but rather a complete and transfiguring work of narrative and visual art. To describe it accurately to a reader, one struggles to find a comparison. House of Leaves and Alan Moore’s Jerusalem are sort of in the same ballpark, (with the former’s hidden nooks and surprises and the latter’s reliance on the prose shifting over time) but they aren’t really apt comparisons. No, what Jessica has done here is create something that really has no equal in horror fiction — a wholly transformative and inventive work, using blackout poetry to chip away at Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women like a sculptor chisels away at a block of stone, revealing a sculpture of blood and dark magic and absolute cosmic horror in the best sense of the term.
As a writer, I’m in awe of her ability to do this. If you’d like to learn more about her process, I highly recommend this interview with Jessica, conducted by Stephanie M. Wytovich (another writer who I’m in awe of).
The Quiet Ways I Destroy You is available in paperback and eBook from Apokrupha. Signed paperbacks are available from Vortex Books.
