6/25/26
Writing this at 3:08am because some YouTube channel devoted to crafting that Mary left on when she fell asleep woke me up, and now I can’t get back to sleep. Given that I only had a few hours of sleep total, and given that those few hours were mostly spent in a dream about a weird guy beneath a highway overpass who was trying to break into my truck and stream it on Twitter, and I couldn’t drive away or reach the gun I keep under the console because the seat was like flypaper and I couldn’t move, I might cheerfully stab the YouTuber were he to materialize in our home right now. In fact, I’m pretty sure Theodore Kaczynski was mostly warning us about the dangers of YouTube in his manifesto. Maybe he lived alone in that hut because he didn’t want others to leave random YouTube crafting channels on before falling asleep.
But I digress. The above is a joke. The Unabomber bit, I mean. Not the part about wishing my wife wouldn’t leave YouTube channels on when she falls asleep.
In 2026, you now have to qualify all jokes lest you be visited by the FCC and possibly a swarm of ICE drones.
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For the first time ever, ENTOMBED — my gonzo novel of human madness in a zombie apocalypse — is available in audiobook on Apple and Audible, narrated by Michael T. Bradley. It is also, as it has been for a long while, available in paperback from Amazon - B&N - BAM - Waterstones and eBook via Kindle. Here’s the new audiobook cover.
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Women In Horror Year: Day 65
She Said Destroy by Nadia Bulkin
A dictator craves love--and horrifying sacrifice--from his subjects; a mother raised in a decaying warren fights to reclaim her stolen daughter; a ghost haunts a luxury hotel in a bloodstained land; a new babysitter uncovers a family curse; a final girl confronts a broken-winged monster...
Word Horde presents the debut collection from critically-acclaimed Weird Fiction author Nadia Bulkin. Dreamlike, poignant, and unabashedly socio-political, She Said Destroy includes three stories nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, four included in Year's Best anthologies, and one original tale.
In two months, my youngest son heads off to Colgate to major in Political Science and minor in Writing. 100% of the family is excited by this, but we had to explain to one of his great aunts that Colgate is a university and not a toothpaste fatory, and his great-grandmother is confused as to what Political Science actually is, and few of the cousins have wondered “What can one do with degrees in Political Science and Writing?”
The answer to that last question is She Said Destroy — the 2017 debut collection by Nadia Bulkin. That’s exactly what you can do with degrees in those things.
Collecting thirteen stories, many of which were nominated for various awards, She Said Destroy itself went on to garner Shirley Jackson Award and This Is Horror Award nominations, and a host of rave reviews from contemporaries such as John Langan, Gemma Files, Nick Mamatas, Paul Tremblay, and many more. And deservedly so, because Nadia — perhaps moreso than any writer currently active in the field — has moved weird fiction and cosmic horror firmly into the new century and away from the stale trappings and tropes of the pulps. Some of these stand wholly on their own, such as the quirky, surreal, and deeply symbolic “Intertropical Convergence Zone”. Others are more blatant, but no less powerful, such as the wonderful “Red Goat, Black Goat” which involves (it may come as no surprise) the oft-used Goat With A Thousand Young, or the absolutely masterful “Violet is the Color of Your Energy” — easily my favorite of the collection, and a staggeringly great reimagining of Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” as a tale of a small farm versus a colossal corporate agricultural operation. Given that many members of our family have to contend with the ever-present danger of agrifarms looming on the horizon of land that’s been farmed by us for generations, and given that my son is very aware of that plight, I say again, this is what you can do with degrees in Political Science and Writing.
She Said Destroy debuted with the concussive power of an atom bomb, but it’s been almost a decade since then, and there’s both a new generation of readers who perhaps aren’t aware of it, and a scattering of older readers who have it on their TBR piles but, for one reason or another, never got around to reading it. Unfuck that today, people. This is an important collection — easily one of the ten best horror books of the decade 2010 to 2020.
She Said Destroy is available in paperback and eBook from Word Horde.
