The High Holy Fire Feast of the Summer Solstice

StokerCon, Mandatory Reading List from Black Women in Horror, and some Triple-Chocolate Goblin Ball Truffles

Dear Friends,

June! And the longest day of the year. I can feel it like a brightness in my chest, with no dread of the winter to come.

(Back when I lived in Chicago, after a few years, I’d start panicking about winter starting way back in July. But New York is gentler. And global warming is… warmer.)

We recently got back from StokerCon—the premier horror literary convention, run by the Horror Writers Association. This year it was in Pittsburgh, PA. Which means… ROAD TRIP!

Carlos and I don’t write a LOT of horror (I mean, I sometimes do on accident) (okay, and sometimes on purpose), so we went purely as fans, for fun. No panels! No readings! The first time in years since that happened. (Okay, I did go to the Poetry Open Mic, but EVERYBODY in the room read at that wonderful event!)

I attended LO THESE MANY PANELS and some awesome readings, and I took so many notes.

We stayed at a nearby AirBnB with Mike and Anita Allen of Mythic Delirium, my youngest brother Desi Cooney—who has lately finished his first horror novel!—and our friend Elijah Woodruff, a poet and writer of our recent acquaintance.

Both Desi and Elijah got to pitch their novels to small press editors, and both got requests for full manuscripts, and we about burst with pride.

To celebrate, Carlos took us to The Melting Pot: The Original Fondue Restaurant.

(To be honest, Carlos Hernandez, AKA Doctor Husbandpants, would have seized any excuse to go to The Melting Pot. Apparently, there is little he loves more than vats of melted cheese, and cauldrons of broth for cooking meat and mushrooms in. He was giddy the whole time. I made a mental note, friends. It takes very little to make Carlos happy, and onto that long list goes “The Melting Pot.”)

The good people at the Raw Dog Screaming Press table graciously allowed Mythic Delirium some of their limited table space to feature two of our books, my own The Twice-Drowned Saint, as well as Yukimi Ogawa’s brand-new collection Like Smoke, Like Light.

Highlights of StokerCon for me were:

• The panel on Weird Pittsburgh

• The panel on Anomalous Architecture (I learned about “spite houses”)

• The Cannibal Panel

But MOST ESPECIALLY:

• The Poetry Open Mic run by writer and poet Linda D. Addison.
  
  (I feel like whenever our friend ZigZag Claybourne talks about “church”—which he defines as everything from a certain kind of sky, to a walk in the park, to a visit to a bookstore—he was talking about the way Linda D. Addison runs an open mic.)

• A reading by my friend Christa Carmen for her forthcoming debut novel The Daughters of Block Island

• A reading by some of the authors of The Unquiet Spirits, Essays by Asian Women in Horror.
  
  This moved me very deeply—several times almost to tears. There were more people at the reading than listed in the program. I will include those I remember as well as the names on the list, but the following names might be incorrect or incomplete: Lee Murray, Lisa Krüger, Ai Jiang, Yi Izzy Yu, Rena Mason, Frances Ippolito, Geneve Flynn. Several of them choked up while reading their beautiful essays. Ai Jiang read from her book Linghun.
  

  

  • The A Decade of Black Women in Horror panel was also just stunning. It was one of the largest panels I’ve seen, including both Black women and non-binary people: Tamika Thompson, Kenya Moss-Dyme, Sumiko Saulson, Linda D. Addison, Rhonda Jackson Garcia AKA RJ Joseph, L. Marie Wood, Paula D. Ashe, and Jewelle Gomez.
    
    I wrote down their “Mandatory Reading List” just as fast as I could, which I will include here. This panel made me cry several times. These artists were shining suns. The room was full to bursting, resounding with applause, and got a standing ovation at the end.
    

    

    The Mandatory List of Black Women in Horror:

• Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories.

• Erin E Adams’ Jackal: a Novel

• Linda D. Addison’s How to Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend?

• Sumiko Saulson’s The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry, as well as 160 Black Women in Horror

• Kenya Moss-Dyme’s Daymares: A Disturbing Little Collection, and The Mixtape, as well as Forever Vacancy: A Colors in Darkness anthology

• RJ Joseph’s Blackademia Podcast (“genre literature, film, and television commentary from the Black academic perspective”), as well as Hell Hath No Sorrow Like a Woman Haunted

• L. Marie Wood’s The Promise Keeper, also mentioned: Under Her Skin: A Women in Horror Poetry Showcase, Vol. 1, and The H Word: the Horror of Hair

• Paula D. Ashe’s We Are Here to Hurt Each Other

• Tamika Thompson’s Unshod, Cackling, and Naked, as well as Salamander Justice.
  
  We returned home from Pittsburgh full-replete with art.

And then, this morning, when I woke up, a friend of mine (@MelodyAdAstra on Instagram) revealed her “Triple Chocolate Goblin Ball Truffles” to Twitter.

These were mentioned in my book Saint Death’s Daughter, and recreated to celebrate the High Holy Fire Feast of the Summer Solstice—one of the four major holidays in any necromancer’s life.

…well. My necromancers, anyway.

That’s all for today! Thank you so much for reading—and have a splendid and delicious longest day of the year!

Yours truly,

C. S. E. Cooney (but you can call me Claire)