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


Just writing to let you cool cats and kittens know that I had a recent interview with Game Developer magazine for Candlebook Island. COOL. I talk about programming, about what I was trying to accomplish with the game, all that fun stuff. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/candlebook-island… Read More


So, the amazing author Silvia Moreno-Garcia commissioned me to do pixel art based around her novel, Mexican Gothic, as a thank you surprise to her fans for Christmas. This was a lot of fun to do, I re-read the book, as well as looking at other art she commissioned to figure out how it will… Read More


Wow. A lot of cool stuff happened in 2023. A LOT. And here I thought I had a good 2022, what with creating the best selling game (Bad Writer) and getting Skinless Man Counts to Five published, and then on the Stoker Recommended Reading List for that year. So let’s see what happened! I released… Read More


Yes, you heard that right! I have a new short story collection coming out March next year. It collects all of my horror short stories dating all the way back to 2006, and my first few publications. All of them are surreal, and strange, and very uniquely Paul Jessup. This will be published by Underland… Read More


Hey all! Awhile back I went and did a guest spot on If This Goes On podcast. Great stuff! A really fun interview with the two hosts, were we talk the entire gamut of things. From Horror, to Weird fiction, to my video game Bad Writer. We dig deep, have some fun, really a fantastic… Read More