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...
Go On, Sport. Break My Heart
 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 good at UFC. But that’s a political preference, rather than a sporting one. So consider my amazement when I read about skeleton racers this week! I love horror and skeletons and things. I have an original Death Race 2000 (1975) poster on my wall. Brilliant! Skeletons in cars! Going really fast and crashing! Then getting up and driving some more! Imagine! I clicked the link and apologised to God for my lack of faith thus far while the page loaded. That’s why I asked if you were sporty. If you are, you know what I found, right? Skeleton racers are normal people (ha!) who ride a tiny sled. Which is called a skeleton bobsled for its resemblance to a ribcage, I DON’T THINK. They are not undead speed freaks. Proving yet again that the real world will only break your heart. I’ll be sticking with fantasy for a while; after that disappointment. Look, the real world can’t help being the way it is. But sometimes you need a break. Which is what books are for. Or you could retreat to a mysterious abandoned village with nothing but a graveyard and an ominous cloud of… something for company. That’s what Professor de Glube does in The Forgotten Creatures, when he needs to be alone. But you can join him right here! 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...
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...
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...