4/21/26
Good morning. Just so you’re aware, Prego, the pasta and pizza sauce brand, is releasing a device designed to record everything said around the dinner table for posterity. We don’t have Prego in our house, because my wife comes from a big Italian family, and they view Prego the way I, as a comic book collector, view the way Rob Liefeld draws feet. But even if we did have Prego in our home. This is just so absurd, and smacks of “Grampy wanting to get into AI”. Not everything needs to be tech. I don’t need my spaghetti sauce to record my conversations or post on TikTok for me or let the government and tech corporations know how many hours I slept last night. I have a phone that can do all of those things. I don’t need my plate of macaroni to back it up. I just need it to taste good.
Also, for my fellow firearm enthusiasts, Ruger and Beretta are in a shoot-out.
I felt seen with this article: “Even if you’d somehow spent the last 20 years completely oblivious, avoiding anything related to The Devil Wears Prada, it’s likely that you’ve been thrust into this world of high fashion and huge egos by the massive marketing push for the film’s sequel.”
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Women In Horror Year: Day 18
Crossroads by Laurel Hightower
WINNER - This Is Horror Award - Novella of the Year
"Refreshingly nuanced... Crossroads will sincerely move you." —Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
How far would you go to bring back someone you love?
When Chris's son dies in a tragic car crash, her world is devastated. The walls of grief close in on Chris's life until, one day, a small cut on her finger changes everything.
A drop of blood falls from Chris's hand onto her son's roadside memorial and, later that night, Chris thinks she sees his ghost outside her window. Only, is it really her son's ghost, or is it something else—something evil?
Soon Chris is playing a dangerous game with forces beyond her control in a bid to see her son, Trey, alive once again.
Named one of "10 Must-Read Horror Books This April" by Bloody Disgusting.
Every decade of horror fiction, there are a canon of books and stories that eventually come to be seen as the touchstones of that era by readers, academics, historians, and reviewers. A snapshot of what was going on in the genre at that time. From 2000 to 2010, for example, the works often cited are Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts, J. F. Gonzalez’s Survivor, Tom Piccirilli’s A Choir of Ill Children, Mary SanGiovanni’s The Hollower, Carlton Mellick’s The Baby Jesus Butt Plug, and my own The Rising and all the zombie novels that followed it.
In the years to come, when people talk about 2020 to 2030, Crossroads by Laurel Hightower will be a consistent part of the canon. First published in 2020, this novella — an utterly ruthless and unforgiving mix of grief horror and psychological horror — was heralded by Bloody Disgusting, this Is Horror, and others as one of the best books of that year. In the six years since then, it has gone on to steadily earn more and more accolades from other media venues, reviewers, peers, and fans. It’s that fucking good — a book that I love to put in people’s hands and say, “Here. Read this.” It is extra gratifying to do so for fans of Tom Piccirilli, who lament that there will never be another like him who’s able to so deftly meld grief, surrealism, psychology, and terror with poetic, whip-crack prose. Because Laurel does that very well. I speak with some authority as one of Pic’s best friends as well as an admirer of his work when I say that Tom piccirilli would have been in awe of this book. He’d have been a fan. This novella hurts in all the right ways.
A new edition of Crossroads is back in print today with a brand new cover in paperback and eBook from Shortwave, and audiobook from Fireside Press.
