Trusted by 500+ 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...
Dirty Duck
 Made you look, you dirty duck. Made you look for nothing. That’s the version we sang as children after tricking someone into looking at nothing. Or “gnaw-tin” with the proper Irish accent. Different places around the world have different versions of the song. Perhaps you were a dirty crook rather than a duck. Or at risk of being turned into turtle soup. But the game is best played in Germany, where they don’t seem to know it. When we moved to Heidelberg, our flatmate Anne loved to suddenly stop while walking down the street and look up. She’d wait until several Germans also stopped to look up, then she’d move on and laugh herself silly. Building sites where nothing has been built yet (i.e., holes in the ground) are also popular for looking at in Germany. They’re usually saved for Sundays, though. So the whole family can enjoy the hole together. But what do you look at? 2026 is the Year Morgan Grows His Newsletter and Sells Some Books. To celebrate, I’d love to hear what fantasy/horror/genre websites you look at to keep up with the latest news, and which book reviewers you trust for recommendations. Because if you like a certain website, and you like this newsletter… other readers of that website might like this newsletter, too, right? I’ve already started compiling a list, but there are so many! So, I’d love it if you left a comment or replied to let me know which genre sites and blogs you read? Chat soon, Morgan Read more – and get two free ebooks – here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.  |
Dark, Strange and Fantastic Fiction
Trusted by 500+ 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...
I’m reading sci-fi at the moment, though I probably shouldn’t. I’m Irish, and we’re not used to it. When I was growing up, we had six television channels. Four English ones, and two Irish wans. In twenty years, the only sci-fi was Red Dwarf and Doctor Who. Both on the English channels, of course. After all, we Irish only recently started believing in the present. Back in the eighties, we didn’t have roads; we had strips of potholes. Condoms were prescription-only, and six of the island’s...
My mother didn’t have it easy. She didn’t even have a sense of smell. And while the rest of 1980s Ireland had miraculous moving statues, we made do with mysterious margarine. Back in those days, butter was bad and margarine was good, so young Morgan et al. all ate margarine. Sometimes my breakfast toast tasted fine with it. Some mornings the margarine was weird. A brand new tub. Just opened the previous night. I had put it on my evening toast. My mother had put it on her evening potatoes. No...
Families are great. But a lot. If you’ve had about enough of yours, tell them this is a very important email you have to read. I’ll back you up. And it is important, as I present some crazy New Year traditions, that will make your party go with a bang! Killer List of 10 Bread-Based New Year Traditions. 1. At a party, wait until the countdown to the new year starts before throwing a bread roll over your shoulder. You might hit the person you one day marry in the face with it. 2. Villages used...