Michael G. Williams 🏳️‍🌈

Do you love signed paperback first editions of weird, queer horror? Well, you're in luck! Mine is available right now: 💙📚 🌈📚 📚🩸 #writingcommunity www.michaelgwilliamsbooks.com/product/chil...

I want an hour by a campfire with Vincent Price in the dead of night. I want to hear the bugs grow still around him, the owls cease their hooting, the forest grow still. I want to sit there, entranced, while he scares my pants off. (A story would also be nice.) #HorrorWritersChat

In my current WIP, the main character would dress up as a warlock. He's a laboratory researcher who needs to understand the world as a reproducible relationship of causes and effects. Magic, as a seemingly (to him) arbitrary power with no reliable reproducibility, is terrifying. #HorrorWritersChat

Cosmic horror is often about both violated traditions and unwholesome presences and thus can just as easily be used to strengthen prejudices as to question them. Put conscious thought into what you say is "right" or "wrong" via your story. Do not slide into comfortable biases. #HorrorWritersChat

I'm Michael, I write queer cosmic & supernatural horror! My university's most secretive secret society (complete with their own castle on the edge of town) would march, robed and chanting, through campus before dispersing into the woods. It was an event. We went LOTS of times. #HorrorWritersChat

A little bit past fall peak up on the Escarpment.

I just voted early in person in Ohio (one location per county), and it's genuinely a pleasant feeling to see all my broadly-defined neighbors and the people who work or volunteer at the BoE. Wholesome civic duty!

M*A*S*H* x Machen: compiling a detailed diary of his time working triage in a field hospital, John records rumors a mercy-killer stalks the wounded. Convinced his own writing has called something forth from beyond, he struggles with how life continues when fed so much death. #HorrorWritersChat

I want both. Let much of the horror be entirely human-made: artisanal, physical, believable, real, but let that violence open a rift to Someplace Else. Let the things beyond it see the rotten fruit of humanity's worst ingenuity, take interest, and intrude to inspect and instruct. #HorrorWritersChat

The narrator would tell us they meticulously avoided doing harm, meditated & prayed, kept their hands clean even as a companion reveled in violence, then reveal they were alone the whole time. The monster by their side was the self they escaped by dissociating. #HorrorWriterschat

Hi, I'm Michael, I write queer cosmic horror. I'm a day late. Sorry! I was writing! Mine's the Alien universe. We see no battlefields, but xenomorphs are cultivated as weapons. Among war's many horrors are those who think weapons are playthings only ever used on other people. #HorrorWritersChat

Revisiting Highbanks Metropark for the first time in six years. 1. Sleeping bee on sneezeweed. 2. Teenager on the Olentangy. 3. Leaf in hand. 4. Small waterfall in the ravine.

The first of my Indie books is officially in the black! And the second one only needs to sell one more print copy to get there. Not bad for nine months in! Check out the details over on Substack: samanthabwriter.substack.com/p/going-indi...

The Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering teams are unionizing! You can sign here to show your support: actionnetwork.org/forms/uwotcp...

boycott it so your trans friends don’t get a sick feeling in their stomach when they come over to your house for a party & see a stack of HP merch on your bookshelf, politely excuse themselves a bit early without saying anything, and then go home feeling just a little degraded

This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead

Sting of Death was such a rollicking good time in a theater! Looking forward to the rest.

I can. Not. WAIT. for this event in December! Seven of NC's finest horror writers reading their own ghost stories in the shadow of the holidays? This will be SO FUN! (And it's online, so it's an easy drive no matter where you are!) 💙📚🩸 #writingcommunity #hwa www.wake.gov/events/ghost... 👻

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Had the most amazing time joining the @queerolinaorg.bsky.social book club tonight! Kind, thoughtful people in community is a balm in anguished times.

Looking forward to sitting down on 10/15 with @samanthabwriter.bsky.social and @charliemewshaw.bsky.social to read from our works and talk about horror & folklore as a space to safely cope with difficult feelings and learn resilience, courtesy of Chatham Community Library! bit.ly/4juqMzN

At RSM this year: Approaching local businesses, organizations, etc can feel daunting. @cloviseditorial.bsky.social @klnoone.bsky.social @mcmanlypants.bsky.social & @vriccithode.bsky.social will discuss ways to collaborate RSM is a free, virtual queer SFFH con! Details: rainbowspacemagic.org

Rereading Asimov's FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE (1952) about hegemonic powers which, convinced of their own infallibility & propped up entirely by manufactured nostalgia, anti-democracy themselves to death. Ah, yes, these must be the "good old days" when "sci fi wasn't political" one hears so much about.

Had an absolutely amazing time hanging out with Charlie, talking research into folklore and legends, and chatting with folks last night courtesy of South Carolina State Library's Speaker at the Center series. Also: a successful remote viewing experiment, and a visit with the lions from Lausanne!

What is common knowledge in your field but shocks outsiders? If you live in NC, you may apply for a library card with the State Library of North Carolina (statelibrary.ncdcr.gov) and have access to JSTOR (and a lot of other cool databases).

My queer Appalachian cosmic horror novel CHILDREN OF SOLITUDE is out now in all kinds of formats and all kinds of places (including audio!). Does it have parasites? That depends on whether extended families count! michaelgwilliamsbooks.com/where-to-buy... #HorrorWritersChat

Oooh good question. I’m a sucker for the siren song trope. Characters fighting something, but then being lulled into a false sense of security bc the thing luring them sounds soothing. I’d first depict their POV, being comforted til they relax, then cut to the body horror. #HorrorWritersChat

My arm defies me, lifting scalpel instead of stake. One slash & my other lifts the largest flask. The vampire, stone-steady, smiles as he bleeds. "If you could find me," he murmurs with ventriloquistic stillness, "so can others. Time to wear *your* face for a while. Now drink." #HorrorWritersChat

When someone must have what they do not want? That's *the good stuff*. That's the only time the physical body horror works for me (e.g., "Slither," which is AMAZING). Knowing someone has been overtaken by an invasive craving is terrible in the most enticing way. #HorrorWritersChat

Mental, every time. I love stories in which people wonder whether the thoughts they hear are their own--and discover they are not. I love invasive minds, psychic assault, spiritual wasting. I don't find physical suffering entertaining. At best it leaves me bored. #HorrorWritersChat

I'm Michael, I write queer cosmic & supernatural horror! Vamps seem an obvious answer, but my favorites are from the 1998 BBC series "Ultraviolet," about a team of vampire hunters who very clinically treat Code V's as a public health risk, a terrible slow-motion pandemic. #HorrorWritersChat

Hello I’m Ell and I write ace horror! I heard SPREAD ME by Sarah Gailey is hilarious. I also like the Youtube parody “Kiss Me (Kill Me)” which arguably features an eco-horror parasite taking over, and I have a T-shirt of the worm in your brain from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. #HorrorWritersChat

She-Ra > Sheeran

What kind of panels do we have at #RainbowSpaceMagic this year? We have Group Marketing! With @duckprintspress.com @edalelane.bsky.social @authoralexharvey.bsky.social @mcmanlypants.bsky.social & @kitauthor.com RSM is a free, virtual queer speculative fiction con! Details at rainbowspacemagic.org

Last year, I went to a very disappointing Worldcon panel which reminded me how privileged a lot of writers are and how we inherently associate community access with wealth. So anyway, if you DON'T want to just be told how you need to go on a retreat for the 5000th time, check this one out!

1. Jack-in-the-pulpit berries. 2. White snake root. 3. Turkeytail mushrooms and lichens. 4. White wood aster.

go.bsky.app/H8e4DSB

Today seems like a really excellent day to avoid social media (he said, in a post on social media).