eldritchhobbit

October is here! This year for my Halloween countdown, with the invaluable assistance of my husband (and resident expert on all things Appalachian), I will be bringing you a spooky, Halloween-appropriate song with a twist of mountain flavor. I’ve chosen one version of each of these songs to share, but some have been recorded and reinterpreted many, many times. If you like “Boograss” (or Spooky Bluegrass), Southern Gothic tales, traditional murder ballads, ghost stories, and/or Halloween chills, I hope you will enjoy each day’s post! Song: “O Death” Quote: O Death, O Death in the morning, O Death, spare me over ‘til another year. Listen to Rhiannon Giddens’ performance… View the full post.

I’m delighted to be taking part in this conference, and I’m looking forward to the other presentations very much. View the full post.

dramyhsturgis: Dark Academia I’m delighted to share the details of my Fall 2022 online Dark Academia class at Signum University! I’m also thrilled to add that 3 of the brilliant authors whose works we’ll be studying in the Dark Academia course will be holding live Q&A sessions with the class! Peadar Ó Guilín for THE CALL (‘16) Elisabeth Thomas for CATHERINE HOUSE ('20) R.F. Kuang for BABEL ('22) View the full post.

RetroRockets With Amy Sturgis | The RetroRockets Podcast This conversation was so much fun! View the full post.

morganstuart: Cassian Andor-Centric Fic I am SO excited for Andor!!! Before it arrives and gives us new backstory, here are three Cassian-centric fics written after Rogue One and based on the film and its related books. Fic: “My Best Invisible Boy” at https://archiveofourown.org/works/9383699 Cassian Andor gave his life for the Rebellion while on Scarif. He gave his life to the Rebellion twenty years earlier. Fic: “Up the Alleyway” at https://archiveofourown.org/works/9252659 K-2SO didn’t expect him back until daylight. Cassian Andor had to survive until then. Fic: “Make the Lay of Long Defeat” at https://archiveofourown.org/works/10070996 Things might have gone very differently at Saw Gerrera’s hideout on Jedha. (AU) View the full post.

RetroRockets With Amy Sturgis | The RetroRockets Podcast This conversation was so much fun! View the full post.

Dark Academia I’m delighted to share the details of my Fall 2022 online Dark Academia class at Signum University! I’m also thrilled to add that 3 of the brilliant authors whose works we’ll be studying in the Dark Academia course will be holding live Q&A sessions with the class! I’m thrilled to add that 3 of the brilliant authors whose works we’ll be studying in the #DarkAcademia course will be holding live Q&A sessions with the class! Peadar Ó Guilín for THE CALL (‘16) Elisabeth Thomas for CATHERINE HOUSE ('20) R.F. Kuang for BABEL ('22). View the full post.

Dark academia novels + candles. View the full post.

I’m excited to share more information about my Fall 2022 online class for Signum University. The course page is coming soon. I’ll be posting links and details! View the full post.

I’m delighted to be giving a talk on “Finding History in Star Wars” for Morse Library on Thursday, May 12 at 6:30pm Eastern. The event is online, registration is free, and everyone is welcome! VIRTUAL - Finding History in Star Wars View the full post.

In my “Looking Back on Genre History” segment on the latest episode of StarShipSofa, I discuss resources and recommendations for reading Ukrainian speculative fiction in translation. 🇺🇦 StarShipSofa No 683 Paul Alex Gray | StarShipSofa View the full post.

Watch Now: Race Massacre graves researchers need DNA, genealogies to tie burials to victims Utah Cold Case Coalition Intermountain Forensics is seeking DNA help from anyone who may have relatives from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Researchers think DNA is the best chance for the case known for now as “burial 27” to be the first conclusively identified victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. In a project update Wednesday with reporters, University of Oklahoma archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck expressed optimism the team’s efforts could possibly have “successfully located the first victim of the massacre” after a young Black man was exhumed with two bullets from a potter’s field corner of Oaklawn Cemetery. View the full post.

dramyhsturgis: Happy Valentine’s Day to all! Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is, All the air is thy Diocese, And all the chirping choristers And other birds are thy parishioners, Thou marryest ever year The lyric Lark, and the grave whispering Dove, The Sparrow that neglects his life for love, The household bird, with the red stomacher; Thou maks’t the black bird speed as soon, As doth the Goldfinch, or the Halycon; The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped, And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed. This day more cheerfully than ever shine, This day, which might enflame thy self, old Valentine. Till now, thou warmd'st with mutiplying loves Two larks, two sparrows, or two doves, All that is nothing unto this, For thou this day couplest two Phoenixes; Thou mak'st a Taper see What the sun never saw, and what the Ark (Which was of fowls, and beasts, the cage and park,) Did not contain, one bed contains, through thee, Two Phoenixes, whose joined breasts Are unto one another mutual nests, Where motion kindles such fires, as shall give Young Phoenixes, and yet the old shall love. Whose love and courage never shall decline, But make the whole year through, thy day, O Valentine…. - from John Donne, “An Epithalamion, Or Marriage Song, On the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine Being Married on St. Valentine’s Day” View the full post.

https://wemadethisnetwork.com/2022/01/10/37-star-trek-discovery-in-conversation-or-the-emotional-beats/ View the full post.

I’m delighted to talk Star Trek at an event by Licking County Library on Jan. 18, 2022 at 7pm Eastern. This event is live, online, and free to everyone. My presentation: “Empowered Minds: How Star Trek Changed the World and Why It Still Matters” Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Empowered Minds: How Star Trek Changed the World and Why It Still Matters. After registering, yo View the full post.

Mythgard Movie Club: Dune - Mythgard Institute: I’ll be a part of this conversation on Friday. Everyone is invited, and registration is free. View the full post.

Mood. View the full post.

dramyhsturgis: Happy birthday to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (11 November, 1922 – 11 April, 2007)! View the full post.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! October 31: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818) Quote 1: My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine. Quote 2: But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone. View the full post.

October 30: The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (2021) Quote 1: And when you’re truly scared, there’s nowhere to hide - no private school, no popularity, no trust fund. It’s just you and your most base emotion. Fear is where the truth lies. Quote 2: But there was something wrong with me. It clawed at my insides, desperate to get out. Quote 3: If you want this to be over, just make sure she screams. View the full post.

October 29: Genesis by Bernard Beckett (2006) Quote: In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. View the full post.

October 28: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy (2003-2007) by Libba Bray Quote from A Great and Terrible Beauty (2003): What frightens you? What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged? Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire? Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you’ve glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside? View the full post.

October 27: The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino (2021) Quote: Demons. Dark magic. The devil. These were the things he searched, muttering under his breath and dead to the world around him as dawn broke; as something grappled at the door of his office and found itself forbidden. View the full post.

October 26: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (2005) Quote: As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws. View the full post.

October 25: S.T.A.G.S. Series by M.A. Bennett (2017-2021) Quote from S.T.A.G.S. (2017): I think that’s when I realised he was crazy: he was still being chivalrous, waiting until I was quite ready for him to kill me. View the full post.