4/24/26
We got our move-in date for my son’s college yesterday. It collides with Dark Ink in Doylestown, so regretfully, I’ve had to cancel my appearance there for this year.
Our landlord informed me last night that she’s showing the house next week. The original timeframe for all of this was after the kiddo headed off to college, we were going to move to our retirement phase, with plans to be settled by the end of the year. I suspect that timeframe is about to become far more fluid. Which is her right. She owns these properties and is staring down 70 and wants to retire as well. I don’t begrudge her any of that. I’m just stressed about balancing writing, these two anthologies Chris and I are editing, the kiddo’s graduation and college transition, plans for DEAD FORMAT and a second production project I’m hoping to announce and start on by September, as well as a little something Joe Hill, C Robert Cargill, and myself have planned that might jump off early next year, plus being a responsible son to two aging parents, and a decent (if sometimes frustrating) husband… with the now added rush of keeping the house super clean so it can be shown and speeding up the packing process just in case we have to move sooner rather than much later, as originally planned. Plus, the place we are moving to isn’t ready yet, so there’s an added stress factor with that.
All this to say, no, I’m not doing blurbs or Introductions or Afterwords. if I say something nice about your book here or in my weekly newsletter, feel free to crib a blurb from it. But otherwise, I’m battening down the hatches on such things for a while. I’m also not adding any more signings for the year.
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Women In Horror Year: Day 21
Sing Me Your Scars by Damien Angelica Walters
In her first collection of short fiction, Damien Angelica Walters weaves her lyrical voice through suffering and sorrow, teasing out the truth and discovering hope.
Sometimes, a thread pulled through the flesh is all that holds you together. Sometimes, the blade of a knife or the point of a nail is the only way you know you're real. When pain becomes art and a quarter is buried deep within you, all you want is to be seen, to have value, to be loved. But love can be fragile, folded into an origami elephant while you disappear, carried on the musical notes that build a bridge, or woven into an illusion so real, so perfect that you can fool yourself for a little while. Paper crumples, bridges fall, and illusions come to an end. Then you must pick up the pieces, stitch yourself back together, and shed your fear, because that is when you find out what you are truly made of and lift your voice; that is when you Sing Me Your Scars.
Damien Angelica Walters was one of Dave Thomas’s favorite writers, and he positively vibrated with joy and energy every time we had her as a guest on THE HORROR SHOW WITH BRIAN KEENE. I bring that up for two reasons. One, I wish Dave was here to write this, because he’d do a much better job than I can. Two, many of you who were listeners always enjoyed and swore by Dave recommendations for books, movies, and music. Were he here, he’d be recommending this one. (In fact, I think he did recommend it on the show back in the day).
Damien’s prose is literate but accessible, haunting and poetic, and has a song-like quality to it, which makes the title of this, her first collection, quite apt. If you enjoy Peter Straub, Paul Tremblay, or Sarah Langan, then you’ll enjoy this. She doesn’t deal a lot in tropes or mining what’s come before, preferring instead to till fertile, all-new ground. It’s a fucking shame that much of her other work is apparently now out of print, but this first collection — which is an absolute banger — is still available, so snag it in paperback from Apex or audiobook from Beacon.
