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...
it’s been all bloody go here at the HQ of the Official Hawkinge-By-Hythe Historical Society. First, I had those man sniffles, then a sudden change in weather gave me a migraine. And then I got lumbago. Look, I hate making a fuss, but I’m putting my foot down – carefully, because of the lumbago – whoever has the Morgan voodoo doll, could you stop now, please? The internet tells me “lumbago” is an “outdated term for lower back pain”, and I agree. We should all be using the more evocative German...
Listen. Do you hear that? Numbers, floating in the air around us. Trying to tell me something. Listen. It can’t be a coincidence because in my next book, The Cat Wore Black, radios come to Hawkinge-By-Hythe. People love them. Radio gives them all sorts of things. Music, news, entertainment. And when the station stops broadcasting at night, the radios transmit strange random numbers. Which gives them the willies. Then I read in Wired that plastic surgeons use the formula of the Fibonacci...
as the days contract, leaking inky night into the cold evenings, we need more music. And there’s a final Bandcamp this year, on December 5th, so here’s what I think you should get. AVTT/PTTN is The Avett Brothers (American folk-rock) with Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr Bungle, etc.). And that’s exactly what you get: Mike Patton doing things to rock songs. Sold, but I still want that next Fantomas album, please. Next! There’s something very wrong with a world where the Sleaford Mods...