Trusted by 650+ fans to find the fun in the funereal, the absurd in the macabre, and delight in the darkness. Join fiction author Morgan Delaney three times a week for genre-bending stories of cozy horror, dark fantasy and a brain with mind of its own...
Chew On This
 Names are damn important. Consider the hyrax. Wikipedia describes the hyrax as a “well-furred, rotund animal.” Now look at the pictures! What Wikipedia is trying to say is that these are cute, fluffy, squeezable cuddle-chums! There’s just one problem. Not that they are genetically closer to elephants than to other rodents. Who cares? If anything, that makes them cuter (watch the video of them chewing on Wikipedia if you’re not smitten yet). It’s their poor marketing. Come on. Hyraxes. They sound like Skeletor’s evil sidekick. Meanwhile, pandas (aww!), koalas (aww!), and bunnies (aww!) are regarded as the last word in cuteness. Because they sound cute. Even wombats – small, homicidal Australian rocks – feel the love, because it sounds like they must womble when they walk. (Cute!) Names can make or break you. Consider my two uncles. Big Daddy Delaney and Sweet Lollipop Delaney. They both went to prison for the same crime. But one of them had it much easier than the other. That’s why I spend a lot of time hand-picking names for my characters. There’s a reason Mrs Champion is called Mrs Champion, despite having a pain in her Big Toe. -> She’s a winner. And why the most exclusive club in town is called OWCHH (The Official Women’s Club of Hawkinge-By-Hythe). -> It’s actually a pain. If you want to know more… Consider buying The Forgotten Creatures, available here now! Chat soon, Morgan P.S. More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter |
Dark, Strange and Fantastic Fiction
Trusted by 650+ fans to find the fun in the funereal, the absurd in the macabre, and delight in the darkness. Join fiction author Morgan Delaney three times a week for genre-bending stories of cozy horror, dark fantasy and a brain with mind of its own...
Are you sporty? On a scale of one to 1-100, I’m 0. I know balls and things, but want no part of them. I mean, I’ve played on the company soccer team, and I do stretching and stuff to keep my spine from curling right over my keyboard. But watching sports? Get off, that’s my leg you’re pulling. Have you heard of “music anhedonia”? That’s when people don’t enjoy any music. Well, I suppose I have sport anhedonia. I’d pay to watch a UFC match between Elon Musk and, er, whoever is currently really...
I took a huge risk at the cinema this week. I went twice. Backrooms and Obsession. Backrooms received good reviews, but Obsession got better reviews. So we went to Backrooms first. Saving the best for last, a trick I picked up from Jesus in the Bible.* But Backrooms was fantastic. So I was terrified! That Obsession would disappoint me. I’m fussy about what I like. Ask Nadine if you don’t believe me. So two good films in a row seemed like asking a lot. But I loved it, too! Even the young ‘uns...
This might be controversial, but I prefer Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently books to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I re-read them this week, and couldn’t believe it when I saw 1987 on the copyright page. So I bought Dirk Gently’s Detective Agency when it first came out… 39 years ago! Which makes me 21-plus and a bit, I suppose. Luckily, we’ve aged well, for the most part. There’s a joke about not being able to get pizza delivered in London, which might have been cutting-edge at the time, but...