Author Archives: amandamblake

Cinnamon and chocolate: Friday Update

19 Friday Dec 2025

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I’m going to spend most of the day making Christmas treats: chocolate fudge, Christmas crack, and snickerdoodles. For some reason, my fudge has been too dry for years, and I still don’t know why. I’ve been making some changes to the recipe, with no luck. This year, I’m using different chips. If that doesn’t work, I might try using different chips and proper butter (basically, wondering if the candy doesn’t have enough fat, due to recipe changes in chocolate chips and standard butter). If that doesn’t work, I guess I just accept that it’s going to be dry. It’s still really tasty.

News:

“Weed Killer” is featured in the first e-book from Horrific Scribes, Invasions of World, Home, Body, and Mind. No paperback, because they don’t have the contract rights for that, but a full anthology.

Works in Progress:

Quite unexpectedly, I finished the edits for In the Dollhouse We All Wait yesterday. The second half had the book’s natural momentum going in its favor. Among smaller issues, I tend to start too many sentences with ‘and’ and ‘but,’ and I write very long sentences (just how my brain works). These are known flaws. I get rid of a lot of them in my own edits, but apparently not enough.

So not only did I get the Dollhouse edits done well before Christmas, I can work on the Dracula reimagining fixes and May Cooler Heads Prevail edits. And just generally, I can take it a little easy for the rest of the month. Good, because work will probably be more demanding through Christmas Eve. I plan on taking some work days off next week, though, in addition to Christmas Day and at least part of Christmas Eve.

I’m not sure when May Cooler Heads Prevail will come out, though, because my cover artist’s house burned up. If you want to help someone really important in the indie horror community, check out that link to the fundraiser for him.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King
The Shining by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Single All the Way
Is It Cake? Holiday series (finished)
9-1-1: Nashville series
Ghosts (US) series
Transplant series
CSI: NY series
Twelve Dates ’til Christmas series
Holiday Baking Championship series
Sweet Empire: Winter Wars series
Great British Baking Show series

Poem of the Week:

So I stand before
a row of sins as salty
as the remains of Lot’s wife
sprinkled on Eve’s first fruit.
They snap and snarl
and surround me with a crowd,
but all I know how to do
is surround them back in hungry arms,
because they know not what they do
or why they weep to be held.

With bells on: Friday Update

12 Friday Dec 2025

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This week has been chaotic, car-wise. My car radio hasn’t worked since October, when my car battery died and I had to have a new one put in. I didn’t know how to fix it, so I’ve been listening to iHeartRadio here and there, but mostly nothing. Car people told me how to put in the code to get the radio back. Damn, I’ve missed having music in the car when it turned on.

But I mainly brought the car in to get my headlights replaced. I drive four to five hours in the dark on working days, so it’s really important to have working headlights. They actually tried to get me to believe that my daytime running lights were the headlights and they were very convincing. If they hadn’t known about cars, the logic would have totally made sense. But they do know about cars, so I don’t know how they couldn’t see that the daytime running lights and the brights weren’t headlights.

Had to go to another service center, which I’m pretty sure overcharged (which is why I like my usual one), but now I have headlights, and it makes such a difference. I feel much better. I have pretty good night vision (mild astigmatism notwithstanding), but side street and neighborhood driving was way too dark, even for me.

Anyway, going to a service center is hard enough to do one time. Two really took it out of me.

News:

Char’s Horror Corner reviewed Question Not My Salt. They have the review on Goodreads and Amazon, too, but I’m just really excited that she took on the story of her own accord and that she enjoyed it.

Works in Progress:

As promised, I finished Never & Forever (Meridian Book 8) on Friday night, pushing through 5K words to hit 141,538 words total. I was exhausted and collapsed to bed afterward. Then I got myself some chocolate chocolate-chip muffins, because that was hard and I’m proud I accomplished it. I’ll be taking on my usual double edits in January, as soon as I finished a few other things.

Took some time off to work and rest and do my car things, then dove right into edits of In the Dollhouse We All Wait. I have my weaknesses that the editor pointed out, but otherwise, it’s been a pretty smooth edit. I’m trying to take care of my mental health while working on it, because I can take on the despair of my character, but so far, it’s been manageable.

I keep telling myself that, however bad I write something, what actual people do with state-sanctioned blessings are worse. That doesn’t make me feel better, but it gives me some perspective. Very depressing perspective. What these last ten years and especially this last year have shown us about the worst people with too much power…

I’m aiming for reaching halfway through edits today or tomorrow.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King
The Shining by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
A Cinderella Christmas
Christmas at the Catnip Cafe
Is It Cake? Holiday series
9-1-1: Nashville series
Ghosts (US) series
CSI: NY series
Holiday Baking Championship series
Great British Baking Show series

Poem of the Week:

you will find me under the color-fading oak
food for roots and food for thought
a cautionary tale untold until uncovered
but perhaps it is best i remain remains
unspoken and forgotten except in whispers
wondering what my ghost wants
and that we let the tree thrive where
i fell before the fall and rest
undisturbed by the turning of leaves

Fuzzy pink socks: Friday Update

05 Friday Dec 2025

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News:

Nothing to share today.

Works in Progress:

I’m going to just sit down today and try my absolute best to finish Never & Forever (Meridian Book 8). I’m at 136K words now, and I’ll probably cross 140K by the time it’s done. Anything over 110K is just exhausting, and it certainly pushed back all my plans.

I won’t be able to get May Cooler Heads Prevail out before the end of the year, because I’ve received my edits for In the Dollhouse We All Wait, which takes precedence. I’ve promised to get it back to my editor by the end of the year or a little after, and I always overestimate how fast I can do edits these days while working full time, although editing is much less mentally strenuous than writing, thank goodness, and I become less forgetful and absent-minded. On top of that, I’m in real need of rest and holidays demand that I slow down a little, for the good of myself and my family, so I have to balance everything properly. (And the week before Christmas is probably going to be just as stressful for grocery shopping work as the week before Thanksgiving.)

I’m simultaneously looking forward to working on Dollhouse and bracing myself for the way it’ll make me feel. A sensitive soul and extreme horror don’t always mix, and Dollhouse doesn’t have the same relief points that Question Not My Salt did; it’s not funny or flirty. I’ve had sympathetic reactions to a number of my other stories that are designed to be upsetting, like Puppeteer and Crooked House. Dollhouse is no different. Maybe listening to Christmas music while working on it will help, although it’ll be quite the contradiction in tone. Even I realize that listening to music of hope while editing torture is kind of weird.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist
Instrumental horror movie soundtracks

Things I’m Watching:

Ghosts (US) series
Matlock series (finished)
CSI: NY series
SWAT series (finished)
Great British Baking Show series

Poem of the Week:

what warns the witch?
a light in the unlit lantern
a twitch of the familiar’s tail
in silhouette to the cauldron fire
the broom falls from ensconced in the corner
the book parts to a cautionary spell
what warns the witch?
what warns the stranger?

Waking up tired: Friday Update

28 Friday Nov 2025

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News:

Good things happened, but nothing to share yet.

Thanksgiving went well. We had tacos, but I still made my sweet potato casserole, as is required of me. It came out really well, not quite as sweet as usual.

Works in Progress:

I’m in the penultimate section of Never & Forever (Meridian Book 8) and slowing down in general, really ready to be done. I think if I can get through this section, the rest will be gravy. I haven’t planned this section very well, but the hard part is just convincing myself to work on it. I wanted to be finished by today, which isn’t happening, in part because the novel definitely turned out much longer than anticipated.

I also can’t watch anything new or listen to Christmas music until I get this done, because I’m in an established pattern I don’t want to break (semi superstitious, related to sensory associations). I think a stressful week of grocery shopping for other people during the holiday rush (which I expected on Wednesday but not Monday and Tuesday) hasn’t helped. Before working for IC, I rarely went anywhere near retail during peak holiday shopping days. I don’t think I anticipated how it would affect me. The weekend shopping starting tomorrow should be calmer, even though I’m still bracing for impact as though it’ll still be as bad. It’s usually the busiest time of the week, but the pressure not to ruin people’s holidays won’t be there anymore.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist
Instrumental horror movie soundtracks

Things I’m Watching:

Thanksgiving
Matlock series
CSI: NY series
CSI series
SWAT series
America’s Got Talent series (finished)
Great British Baking Show series

Poem of the Week:

staggering the streets
no one comes out at night
maybe it’s the screams
crackling like dead skin
from my deteriorated throat
they lock their doors
against the dead
walking famished
in the dark

As we know it: Friday Update

21 Friday Nov 2025

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A beautiful king cobra at the Dallas Zoo

I’m late today because I went to the Dallas Zoo as a belated part of my birthday celebration. I enjoy learning more about the animals, but it’s a bit overstimulating, so I needed to unwind to feel more like myself and less like I needed to sleep for twelve hours.

News:

Nothing to report this week.

Works in Progress:

I received my edits for May Cooler Heads Prevail, and I think I’ll need to sit with them a while to figure out what to do to fix a few of those issues. I also noticed that I gave her the penultimate rather than the final version, because I am a bobo brain, so maybe I’ve already fixed a few of the issues. I’ll get to this one either before I edit In the Dollhouse We All Wait or after, depending on when I receive those edits.

I’m at 118K words today on Never & Forever (Meridian Book 8). Because of the zoo visit, I’ll probably not do a whole 3K words today, but I’ll shoot for hitting 120K. I don’t know what the scenes after this long one will take… Might have to expand the end count to 135K or 140K. I don’t think the denouement is very long, but the next big scene is significant. Still looking to finish around Thanksgiving weekend. I’m really ready to be done, though.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist
Silent Hill playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Matlock series
CSI: NY series
CSI series
SWAT series
NCIS series
America’s Got Talent series
Great British Baking Show series

Poem of the Week:

the shadow right behind
the back of my sordid mind,
a tenebrous reflection
of my moral dereliction.
shall we dance the waltz
on every last one of my faults?
or would you rather sip tea
with the two-face you see?

A little night music: Friday Update

14 Friday Nov 2025

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News:

“Zombie Lesbian Bed Death” is a zany short story featured in the Savage Realms Press anthology Necro-Sapiens, the third in their Anthologies of Horror series, this one focusing on the undead. I didn’t think it would ever find a home, so I was thrilled when it was selected, because it was perfect for this anthology. And it’s got a great cover, if you want to check that out at the link.

“A Swirling Light” was posted yesterday for this month’s Shallow Waters Flash Fiction contest at Crystal Lake’s Patreon, for their Halloween encore theme. The characters may or may not have been inspired by my niblings. ($5/month tier to read and vote)

Works in Progress:

Still going on Never & Forever (Meridian Book 8), not out of this long scene yet. I’ll hit 112K by tonight. End count has been amended up to 130K words. Sigh. Keep in mind that I cut about 20-25% of a book in the initial edits.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist
Silent Hill playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Jurassic World: Rebirth
The Pale Blue Eye
Red Dragon
Matlock series
CSI: NY series
CSI series
SWAT series

Poem of the Week:

the ritual of the clock
of the tick tock commanding me
when to move when to rest
when to eat when to run
when to work when to swallow
check the numbers check yourself
measuring the days by the
ding dong ringing on the hours

Have a heart: Friday Update

07 Friday Nov 2025

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News:

Finally have the links to some of these released stories, plus one more.

“Chrysalis in Chrysanthemum,” my hardest-to-type title and a historical pregnancy body horror story, was chosen as an Editor’s Pick on Gavagai, a new site for horror writers and readers. You can read it for free at the link.

“Come In From the Cold,” another story in my “Lullaby” universe, is available now in Cemetery Songs Vol. 1 through Eldritch Cat Press. It’s a quiet, cozy kind of horror story, like the original. I loved revisiting this cemetery. The theme of the anthology is a cat, a song, and a graveyard. It’s free through KDP.

“Glory to God,” my grimy, irreverent novelette about a goddess and a gloryhole, is out now at Amazon in Dark Paths: A Queer Horror Romance Collection. This is one of my favorites, so don’t sleep on it.

Works in Progress:

Never & Forever (Meridian Book 8) is still chugging along. I should cross 100K words today. As soon as I’m done with this admittedly long section, the end will be in sight, thank goodness. What’s curious about this story to me is that there’s not a lot happening, but I’m still enthralled because so much of it is character friction rather than plot friction. I’m still not sure how much it works, but hopefully I can smooth out the sharper or wandering edges in edits.

My editor for In the Dollhouse We All Wait is in the middle of his edits now, and my indie editor for the May Cooler Heads Prevail novella is getting started as well, so I may need to shuffle some things around my schedule to adjust for receiving those, which means delaying We Follow You in the Dark rewrites and the Dracula reimagining adjustments. And I still need to put A Nightmare For All Seasons out, but it may simply be better to wait for spring, which is the season that starts the collection.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist
Silent Hill playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Halloween II (2009)
Haunt
Muppets Haunted Mansion
M3gan 2.0
SWAT series
Hannibal series
Matlock series
CSI: NY series
CSI series
Great British Baking Show series

Poem of the Week:

bone scored and
sinew snapped
muscle a ragged ruin
caves and crevices
made of feast flesh
on a forest floor
left a claw behind
and fur in the cracks
and tracks of long paw
rat ventures into
savaged tunnel and
makes a brief warm home
where it can eat the walls

Back from the dead: Friday Update

31 Friday Oct 2025

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Happy Halloween! Thanks for bearing with me on the playlists. I won’t do something like that for a few more years. 🙂

News:

Bewilderingly, though I supposedly have two short stories out today, neither of them appear to be available yet, so we’ll try again later. There’s still more ‘today’ for them to be published.

Works in Progress:

I’m still working on Never & Forever (Meridian Book 8). I took a day off to pare down a story for the Shallow Waters contest call, and then another day off because my morning was taken up entirely by a doctor’s appointment. It was hard to get back into writing it, which tells me that I’m ready for it to be done. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near. I’ll hit 90K words by end of day, but I think I have at least 30K more to write, which will take me until about Thanksgiving. Sigh. At least I have a few really fun scenes coming up preceding the story’s climax.

Books I’m Reading:

Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Rose Madder by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Halloween playlist

Things I’m Watching:

The Addams Family
The Stepford Wives (2004)
Cabin in the Woods
SWAT series
Hannibal series
Matlock series
CSI: NY series
Halloween Wars series (finished)
Halloween Baking Championship series (finished)
Great British Baking Show series

Poem of the Week: (throwback to October 2023)

sugar high
sugar crash
cotton candy hair
of the dog that
bit her rabid
screamin demon
with a chocablock
pretty face

Halloween playlist: Add to Other Categories

29 Wednesday Oct 2025

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And finally, we have a playlist subsection of songs that belong in other categories, but I added them to the lists after I’d already posted the categories in question. Thanks for playing!

Add to other categories:

  1. “Vampire” – Olivia Rodrigo (Vampire)
  2. “Bloody Pleasures” – Blutengel (Vampire)
  3. “Darkling” – Sirenia (Demons)
  4. “Vampire Ecstasy” – Aural Vampire (Vampire)
  5. “Heart of Lilith” – Inkubus Sukkubus (Demons)
  6. “Alive” – Complete Jekyll & Hyde (Jekyll/Hyde)
  7. “Lady Geneva” – Inkubus Sukkubus (Witches)
  8. “Somewhere at the Edges of Creation” – Nosferatu the Vampire (Vampire)
  9. “Black Wings” – Tom Waits (Demons)
  10. “Big Beast Eat Little Beast” – Toledo (Beasts)
  11. “The Music Lessons/Phantom Fugue” – Phantom: The American Musical (Phantom of the Opera)
  12. “The Witch’s Daughter” – Ashley Serena (Witches)
  13. “The Miller’s Daughter” – Nosferatu the Vampire (Vampire)
  14. “Graveyard” – Halsey (Dead)
  15. “X-Files Theme” – Tina Guo (Movie/TV)
  16. “A Day for Ghosts” – Delain (Ghosts)
  17. “Moonlight and Madness” – Trans-Siberian Orchestra (Darkness)
  18. “Haunted (Michael Diamon Remix)” – Beyonce (Ghosts)
  19. “Burn Your Village” – Kiki Rockwell (Witches)
  20. “Evil Woman” – Electric Lights Orchestra (Witches)
  21. “Abracadabra” – The Steve Miller Band (Witches)
  22. “Black Magic Woman” – Santana (Witches)
  23. “Drink with the Living Dead” – Ghoultown (Zombie)
  24. “Your Ghost” – Kristin Hersh
  25. “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) – David Bowie (Monsters)
  26. “Monsters” – All Time Low (feat. Demi Lovato and blackbear) (Monsters)
  27. “Calling All the Monsters” – China Anne McClain (Monsters)
  28. “Beautiful Monster” – Ne-Yo (Monsters)
  29. “Tonight is What It Means to Be Young” – Fire Inc. (Vampire)

Halloween playlist: Miscellaneous

27 Monday Oct 2025

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This subsection of my horror playlist isn’t technically a subsection. It’s just a bunch of songs that didn’t fit into any of the other categories and didn’t have enough in their subject matter to justify a separate category. I posted these at Bluesky over several days, so I thought I’d wait until I could post them all here.

Miscellaneous:

  1. “Time for Tea” – Emilie Autumn
  2. “Welcome to My Nightmare” – Alice Cooper
  3. “Fears Become Wishes” – Lily Kershaw
  4. “Severed Veins” – Fractured
  5. “Doll Parts” – LVCRFT
  6. “Creep On Creepin’ On” – Timber Timbre
  7. “Kill or Be Killed” – New Years Day
  8. “Running for Your Life” – UNSECRET (feat. Butterfly Boucher)
  9. “Somebody’s Watching Me” – Rockwell
  10. “Crushed Dreams” – Tristania
  11. “You Better Run” – Unions
  12. “Hatred” – Novakill
  13. “Dragula” – Rob Zombie
  14. “Nevermore” – Beyond the Black
  15. “Scaretale” – Nightwish
  16. “Tourniquet” – Rasputina
  17. “Darker Things” – Lily Kershaw
  18. “Transylvania Mania Blues” – Young Frankenstein
  19. “Twisted” – Aron Wright
  20. “The Mountain” – Trans-Siberian Orchestra
  21. “Omens” – UNSECRET (feat. Neoni)
  22. “Circus” – Tristania
  23. “Dies Irae” – Beyond the Black
  24. “Sister Rosetta” – Noisettes
  25. “Crushed Dreams” – Tristania
  26. “Bite” – LVCRFT
  27. “Western Questions” – Timber Timbre
  28. “Superstition” – Stevie Wonder (I also enjoy the Siobhan Magnus American Idol version)
  29. “Take It to the Graveyard (Boo-Yeah!)” – LVCRFT
  30. “Blood” – Sonata Arctica
  31. “Secrets in Your Head” – UNSECRET (feat. Jillian Edwards)
  32. “If You Ask Me To” – LVCRFT
  33. “Skulls” – Halestorm
  34. “Gelatin” – Soren Bryce
  35. “Boadicea” – Enya
  36. “When the Mirror Cracks” – Xandria
  37. “Bad Moon Rising” – Creedence Clearwater Revival
  38. “Poison” – Alice Cooper
  39. “2012” – Nemesea
  40. “Building a Mystery” – Sarah McLachlan
  41. “Toxic” – Britney Spears (see also Melinda Doolittle’s Postmodern Jukebox version)
  42. “Insane Asylum” – Detroit Cobras
  43. “Hotel California” – The Eagles
  44. “Thriller” – Michael Jackson
  45. “Disturbia” – Rihanna
  46. “New Flesh” – Grendel
  47. “The Phantom Agony” – Epica
  48. “Finger or a Nose” – Twisted Insane
  49. “Candles (Live)” – Within Temptation
  50. “Children” – Huntress
  51. “Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches” – Emilie Autumn
  52. “I Think We’re Alone Now” – Hidden Citizens
  53. “Black & Silver” – Xandria
  54. “Calling” – The Birthday Massacre
  55. “A Stranger’s Home” – Jack in Water and Lily Kershaw
  56. “Obelisk” – Timber Timbre
  57. “Not Alone” – Sara Bareilles
  58. “Let’s Dance” – Delain
  59. “Sweet Dreams” – Jessica Sanchez
  60. “World of Glass” – Tristania
  61. “O Fortuna (Epic Trailer Version)” – Hidden Citizens/”Carmina Burana” – Trans-Siberian Orchestra
  62. “Beware” – Xandria
  63. “Heads Will Roll” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
  64. “Skin and Bones” – Ruelle
  65. “I Want to Be Evil” – Eartha Kitt
  66. “In the Air Tonight” – Phil Collins
  67. “A Little Priest” – Sweeney Todd OBC