One of the things I love about getting old anthologies and collections is reading over the introductions and prefaces. Not just for Year’s Best anthologies, but for ones that are like a survey and overview of specific subgenres, too (Space Opera Renaissance, Modern Classics of Fantasy, The Big Book series, The Weird, etc, etc). These… Read More


That’s right, over at the Reactor blog Skinless Man Counts to Five and other tales macabre was listed as a Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for March and April 2024! Here’s what they had to say about it “There’s a lot that could be said about Paul Jessup—from the breadth of his fiction to… Read More


That’s right boils and ghouls and nonbinary vampires! We’ve set aside the date to celebrate the amazing launch of my short story collection, The Skinless Man Counts to Five and other tales of the Macabre, being released March 28th from Underland Press. The location? Werner Books in Erie, PA! The time? 6pm-7pm. The date? March… Read More


That’s right boils, ghouls, and nonbinary vampires! I woke up early Saturday morning this last weekend to a nice surprise. StarShipSofa decided to buy my sword and planet bonkers weird scifi story, The Glorious Tunnels of Our Gravity Dragons. This one is a lot of fun. It has psychic trees, a giant bear named Mister… Read More


That’s right, on April 7th, I’ll be teaching a webinar at Reach Your Apex, all about how to push your imagination to the limits. Imagination is a muscle, and I can help you train it to perfection. I’ll run you through my brianstorming methods, how I feed my mind and gather ideas, and the different… Read More


the key the lock the broken song

You know it when you feel it. When you read something and it just floors you. Something about it sticks under the skin, twirls around for a bit and won’t leave you alone. Horror seems especially suited for iconic imagery, the kind of thing that will haunt the reader long after the book is closed… Read More


I’ve been a huge fan of Midnight Pals, even way back when we were all still hanging out on twitter, before Musk bought it and x’d it out from existence. Always hilarious, with lots of horror in jokes that I loved so much. Where I would be like “Hey! I got that joke! I know… Read More


I’m not sure why Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link and Under the Pink by Tori Amos are linked in my mind. I came to them years apart, almost a decade. I was in two completely different stages of my life, one I was in highschool with a crush on a girl that had leant… Read More


A few weeks ago I was re-reading my favorite short stories in the Shirley Jackson inspired When Things Get Dark anthology. Tiptoe, of course, being one of the top horror short stories I’ve ever read. It’s use of dread, of language, of slippery ambiguity is interesting, and it does so many things that most readers… Read More