Eldritch Girl: Weird Gothic Stuff & Nonsense

The final two days - and my top 5 from the whole list! You can find all the list and links on romancingthegothic.com and individual daily posts on my Ko-Fi and at cmrosens.com . Get the OCCUPYING BODIES anthology , out now! My top 5 #AScareADay stories: October 27th – Helen Stubbs – ‘Uncontainable’ (2016) – Read it here October 28th – Nibedita Sen – ‘Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on...

Only 2 days to catch up with now, so this is a shorter episode! I tried my hand at fragment writing, and also a web comic style story with photos I took, and stock photos I found in Canva. So these two days are both a bit experimental! You can find them on cmrosens.com and all the challenge stories listed on romancingthegothic.com if you want to find them. CW for body horror Intro/Outro Credits: "...

I loved these stories/poems, and highly recommend them. Get ahead or do the challenge day by day: https://romancingthegothic.com/2025/09/21/the-scare-a-day-challenge-october-2025/ My creative responses vary from Changelings to Beverley Wend & Eglantine Pritchard, and more... Intro/Outro Music Credits: "Danse Macabre - Busy Strings" Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com ) Licensed under Creative Comm...

Have a read of the stories for these days and join in with your own thoughts - here are mine, along with media recs, and creative responses! Go over to cmrosens.com for all my #AScareADay posts, and to find all the links mentioned in this episode. Intro/Outro Music Credits: "Danse Macabre - Busy Strings" Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com )Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licenseht...

Today we've got more vampire fiction, sapphic fiction, and domestic horror. Let's dive in! Follow the challenge list: https://romancingthegothic.com/2025/09/21/the-scare-a-day-challenge-october-2025/ Read the posts on my website and on my Ko-Fi. Intro/Outro Credits: "Danse Macabre - Busy Strings" Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com )Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp:// cr...

I share my thoughts and creative fiction and nonfiction responses on the 3 poems and stories on the #AScareADay 2025 challenge list for Oct 14-16. Check the full list out on www.romancingthegothic.com and check out the daily posts on my Ko-Fi and my website. Intro/Outro Music Credit: "Danse Macabre - Busy Strings" Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com )Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0...

More new-to-me poets and authors, courtesy of the romancingthegothic.com A Scare A Day reading challenge running through October. Join in on social media with the tag #AScareADay. Here are my thoughts on, and creative responses to, the next few days of the challenge. You can find all my posts so far on cmrosens.com - I'm posting every day of October at 6:30PM UK time. My Ko-Fi posts, open to all,...

MINI SEASON! Catch up with the reading challenge list on romancingthegothic.com and all my posts on cmrosens.com and ko-fi.com/cmrosens . Days 08-09 are here, with my thoughts on the 2 stories for these days, but beware as spoilers abound - I give full summaries of these 19thC short tales. One is a new-to-me author (Rhoda Broughton), the other is not new to me, but I've never read this short story...

MINI SEASON! Days 01-07 of #AScareADay, featuring my thoughts on each of the challenge reads and summary (with spoilers) of the stories and poems. We go from the 1600s-1800s this week! Additionally this year I'm posting some creative responses, using the stories and poems as prompts. Some of these pieces are brand new for the challenge, and I've had a lot of fun with them. Find all my posts on Ko-...

Yelena, Yelen, and Velna must all come to terms with the situations they are in, and face some very difficult decisions. CW: on page suicide, threatened execution, body horror. Music Credits: Kevin McLeod ( incompetech.com ) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Intro/Outro : Quinn's Song: The Dance Begins Soundtrack: Quinn's Song - A New M...

An hour special chatting with Rob Mitchelmore about worldbuilding on hard mode, so if you're up for some full nerding out on constructing fictional ancient cultures, playing with mythology, and some of the pitfalls to be mindful of in the process, join us for this special worldbuilding chat! We read a small segment of The Marriage of the Fire Under Water and Gale , for two voices, as a jumping off...

Yelena confronts the Mortress and learns what she must do to save her world. CWs: death, some depictions of bones and impalement. Music Credits: Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com ) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Intro/Outro: Quinn's Song: The Dance Begins Soundtrack: Gregorian Chant, Devastation & Revenge, Morgana Rides

Jackson P. Brown (she/her) is a writer from London, an anime and manga enthusiast, and the founder of Black Girl Writers — a mentoring programme for aspiring Black writers. She won Penguin Random House’s #WriteNow competition in 2020, and signed a 3-book deal with Del Rey UK for her debut adult fantasy series, GETHSEMANE. We chat about the British class system, worldbuilding, and her debut novel T...

... Things go downhill. But not, we hope, for the lovely indie (and trad) authors who have a shout out at the end of the episode! Head over to cmrosens.com to check out my 2025 Author Spotlights and you'll find a whole host of books awaiting you. Don't forget to support the podcast on Ko-Fi ! CWs: loss of bodily autonomy, violence Music Credits: Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com ) Licensed under Cre...

Yelena discovers the downside of living in the castle for so long, and the Mortress begins to interfere. CWs: Nightmares of the rot, possession horror, autonomy, relapse Music Credits: Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com ) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Intro/Outro: Quinn's Dream: The Dance Begins Soundtrack: Bittersweet, Quinn's Dream:...

Velna arrives in the castle and meets the monster of the fireside tales, but is she the same woman Yelena knew? Stick around for my Indie Author Spotlights and shout-outs at the end, and head to cmrosens.com/author-spotlight-series to check them all out! CWs: Loss of agency and autonomy, depression themes - these increase from this chapter onwards. Music Credits: Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com )...

This interview is with author Jamison Shea on their duology I Feed Her To The Beast And The Beast Is Me , and I Am The Dark That Answers When You Call . Also a bit more on their upcoming summer 2025 release, Roar of the Lambs . We chat about monstrosity, monsters in media, and Jamison's work. cmrosens.com has the full transcript with links and images, and the plain text transcript is available her...

Part 3: The Rot Velna flees the village after a single act of defiance brings the soldiers down on them, but what is waiting in the forest is worse... Stick around to the end as Worldbuilding Part 3 is at the end of this chapter, and I talk about how I went about constructing my fantasy religions for this novel. CWs: eviction, animal death (an owl), mycelial body horror, fear of drowning/freezing...

Yelen and Yelena head down to the dungeons and the underground spring to do some blood letting, and Yelen begins to accept personal responsibility for his past. Stick around to the end of this shorter chapter for some behind-the-scenes worldbuilding chat, where I discuss my influences and how I used folklore and Beauty and the Beast adaptations to help shape the world and the characters. CWs: Depr...

S.R. Severn, a British dark fantasy romance author, blends steampunk and mythology in her works, focusing on morally complex characters. Inspired by her love for romance novels and Greek mythology, she self-published her debut in 2014, republished in 2024 as “Pirate’s Vow”, Book 1 of the Jackson J Tales. Book 2 is out now!

Yelena succumbs to the rot, but is Yelen's blood really a cure? CWs: emesis, fever nightmares involving a lot of mycelial body horror, and grim flashbacks of the time of the dead gods. Music Credits: Kevin McLeod ( incompetech.com ) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Intro/Outro : Quinn's Song: The Dance Begins Soundtrack: SCP-x4x, Redle...

Yelena is chased into the Chained Library, but the fun and games get darker, and they make a disturbing discovery relating to the Mortress and her realm. CWs: monster smut with primal play elements, reference to ritual self-sacrifice. Music Credits: Kevin McLeod ( incompetech.com ) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Quinn's Song: The Dan...

Jelena Dunato is an art historian, curator, speculative fiction writer and lover of all things ancient. She grew up in Croatia on a steady diet of adventure novels and then wandered the world for a decade, building a career in the arts. Jelena’s stories have been published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Dark , Uncharted and Small Wonders , among others. She is a member of SFWA and Codex. Her nove...

Chapter 10 is here! In which Yelen & Yelena perform some experiments in Yelen's alchemy tower, and Yelen makes some grisly confessions about his tyrannical past. Music Credits: Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com )Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Intro/Outro: Quinn's Song: The Dance Begins Soundtrack: Morgana Rides, Redletter

Caitlin Starling is the nationally bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence (2021), Last to Leave the Room (2023), and the Bram Stoker-nominated The Luminous Dead (2019). Her upcoming novels The Starving Saints and The Graceview Patient epitomize her love of genre-hopping horror; her bibliography spans besieged castles, alien caves, and haunted hospitals. Her short fiction has been publish...