Total Skull: May, 2026

Things that brought me delight in May, 2026:

Hokum

A belligerent American author (is there any other kind?) travels to Ireland to dispose of his parents' ashes at the hotel where they spent their honeymoon. As it turns out, the hotel harbors a few dark secrets that the writer finds himself inextricably drawn into. I really liked director Damian McCarthy's previous film, Oddity, and while Hokum is a little more reliant on jump scares than I usually go in for, it's a worthy follow up with some truly tense moments and a plot that takes some turns you probably won't see coming. I absolutely loved the horrible little horror host man who shows up on the television at one point; when is that guy getting a spin-off movie of his own?

Hannah Whitten, The Foxglove King

From the standard-issue cover art, you probably wouldn't expect that the premise of Hannah Whitten's The Foxglove King is that a busty drug-running necromancer is recruited by the church to spy on the maybe-traitorous crown prince and investigate how entire villages are being destroyed by unknown magic. However, The Foxglove King does quickly settle into a familiar groove of love triangles, power plays in the upper echelons of society, and strange destinies about to unfurl. Even so, this was a fun read with strong characters, a compelling setting, and plenty of potential for this to develop in interesting ways in the rest of the trilogy.

Is God Is

Is God Is had a really intriguing trailer, but I wasn't really sure what to expect from it--which left me way open to being very pleasantly surprised by it in the theater. In Is God Is, twin sisters who were scarred by their father as children are summoned by the dying mother and given a quest: find their father and kill him. What follows is a Southern Gothic revenge tragedy that is a little but arthouse and a little bit psychotronic. It splits the difference by being unrelentingly violent--and often laugh-out-loud funny. I really loved this one; it's in the running for best new movie I've seen in 2026, for sure.

 

Kylie Lee Baker, Japanese Gothic 

Japanese Gothic is another thing that surprised me in May. A friend read Kylie Lee Baker's Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng and was disappointed by the execution, so my expectations were low going into this novel. Japanese Gothic is a tale of two traumatized people reaching across the deep chasmic divide of time, desperate to feel whole. One timeline is set in the modern world, the other is set after the downfall of the samurai. In the "modern" time line, the protagonist is on the run after committing a murder he dimly remembers--and he's haunted by the disappearance of his mother when he was a child; in the "historic" time line, the protagonist is the daughter of a samurai whose father's failed rebellion has doomed the family. There were some moments in this novel that I thought suffered from the usual "horror novel credibility problem," but the ending somehow ties up the dangling threads in such a way that even the moments of narrative strangeness make sense. 

 

They Live

It's been a long time since I've seen They Live, but my girlfriend hadn't seen it before so we gave it a watch recently.  My god, They Live is even more relevant now that when it was originally released; it definitely feels like a Cassandra-style warning to the future that went unheard. They Live is absolutely and deservedly one of John Carpenter's masterpieces. And that fight in the alleyway that feels like it takes up a third of the movie!! Amazing. This is an essential PLANET MOTHERFUCKER movie, of course.

 

Molly Tanzer, And Side by Side They Wander

A new book from Molly Tanzer is always cause for celebration. And Side by Side They Wander is an incredible, heart-breaking novella about an art heist in space that is secretly a riff on Orpheus and Eurydice. The book is highly recommended if you want a small dose of non-technical sci fi that meditates on art and authenticity versus mechanical reproduction. And Side by Side They Wander is a short, quick read, but it grapples with some pretty heavy ideas in its relatively short page count. It also has some stuff for the shroomheads--oh wait, are we supposed to call them sporror fans now? 

 

Dimmu Borgir, Grand Serpent Rising

May was a strange, difficult month for me, but Grand Serpent Rising helped get me through. Dimmu Borgir makes meat and potatoes symphonic black metal--but sometimes what you need is comfort food. What else there to say? This album is their first in about eight years--it doesn't really have any surprises, but it's definitely better than the one that came before it. I know that sounds like faint praise, but this is a solid record worth check out if you like the style.

 

The Ghost

In May, I got a chance to revisit one of my favorite Euro Gothic flicks: The Ghost aka Lo Spettro. Starring the incomparable Barbara Steele, The Ghost is the story of a crippled man whose wife has been seeking comfort in the arms of another. When the scheming duo off the husband, he begins to get his revenge on them from beyond the grave. But is this a story of supernatural vengeance or has someone deviously arranged circumstances solely to benefit themselves? This is one of Riccardo Freda's best; truly a master of the genre making it look easy.

 

Live from the Succubus Club 

Live from the Succubus Club is a supplement about playing vampires involved with the music scene for the fifth edition of Vampire: The Masquerade. Surely, this book was inspired by the upcoming season of The Vampire Lestat, but the material in the book is of such high quality that it's impossible to call it a cash in. This is the kind of supplement that makes me want to run a Vampire campaign, despite the obvious hurdles that poses--like learning the mountains of lore that seem to adhere to the game like non-metaphoric leeches. Still, the temptation is mighty.

Double or Nothing

This is a recap of the third session of the current Krevborna campaign.

 

Characters

Dario Diego Durant, swashbuckling swordsman

Doctor Anastasia Nadya Strahov, a gun-priest who says strange thing about blood

Ulu, the party's urska mom

Varro, a young snow elf bearing a magical sword

Morwenna, a carrion-eating harpy

 

Events

When we last left our heroes, they had lost a contest of arms with Lady Devanya's champions aboard The Vulpine, and now Dario's life was forfeit. 

The group posed an offer to Lady Devanya: a double or nothing wager. She responded that if the group could entertain the majority of her party guests, she would give them Raenessa's ring. If they failed, she would take Dario as a plaything and select another member of the group to serve at her whim for the rest of their life.

The characters then began the task of wandering this strange fey party, looking for guests to entertain. 

(Johanna was pulled aside by the musicians in the ballroom and asked to join them--her player was absent for this session.)

One of the first rooms they explored was full of obscuring steam--everything was dank and dripping. The room housed a large, warm swimming pool currently occupied by a mermaid, a nereid, and a rusalka who splashed at them after their initial offer to join them in the pool was ignored. Everyone went in, except for Morwenna, who despises being wet. Ulu cannonballed her way in. What these three water fey wanted was stories; nothing else would entertain them. Dario recounted the tale of daring that had brought them to The Vulpine; Anastasia told a harrowing story of her own origins in a corrupt orphanage; Ulu spoke of mythic love. Thoroughly moved by the stories, the three fey let the group go on their way. 

In another room, they found a tea party in progress. The folk gathered around the table were a collection of raccoon-like creatures who were busy pouring tea from a samovar and passing around plates of little sandwiches. What these creatures wanted was gossip--which ended with the supposition that Dario, Johanna, and Sabrine could be engaged in a bizarre love triangle. (The Rue sisters and Commander Kaul were also gossiped about, satisfying the raccoon people.)

Deeper in the The Vulpine's uncanny twists and turns, the group found a gaggle of swanmays playing a violent version of croquet--actually, what they were doing was hitting wooden balls at a trio of human men who were buried up to their necks in the green. Morwenna was all too happy to smash a ball into the face of a man pleading for help; Varro joined in as well. This scene degenerated into a competition between Dario and Varro to see if they could launch balls at each others faces to make the other flinch. They both flinched, in fact, and both came away bruised--much to Ulu's disappointment. The swanmays, however, were extremely excited by the violence and wouldn't have minded if Varro and Dario injured each other further. 

They discovered a small chamber had nothing but a long-limbed "man" in a loincloth chained to the wall. For some reason, this creature could not speak, but he carved messages into his forearm with his very sharp nails. He wanted to be released and given clothing so he could leave the party on the The Vulpine. Morwenna was able to pick the lock on his manacles, even though the keyhole kept shifting and moving, and the group created a makeshift outfit. Ulu attempted to keep the creature from leaving the chamber, but was easily thrown aside--no small feat, given her size. 

The creature made his way to the feasting hall, and the party instantly heard the sounds of violence--furniture being overturned, screams, glass breaking. They were about to investigate that further, but were approached by Sabrine, who was there to summon them before Lady Devanya.

Lady Devanya explained that they had held up their end of the bargain and sufficiently entertained her guests; she gave them Raenessa's ring and, having no desire to remain at The Vulpine any longer, quickly retrieved their equipment and left the river boat behind.

Back in the cave in the Felken Woods, they found Raenessa with all her belongings packed. Once given her ring, she shucked the hag body like an ill-fitting garment and emerged as a gray-skinned cave elf. On the way out, they asked her what she would do now. She dropped to her knees, said she desired to repent of the things she had done, and offered to serve the Charnel Hounds for ten years and a day. They accepted her offer, installing her as their resident alchemist in the Kaul House's basement.

Striking the Bargain

This is a recap of the second session of the current Krevborna campaign.

 

Characters

Dario Diego Durant, swashbuckling swordsman

Doctor Anastasia Nadya Strahov, a gun-priest who says strange thing about blood

Johanna Albrecht, a lycan bard with a particularly keen nose

Ulu, the party's urska mom

Varro, a young snow elf bearing a magical sword

Morwenna, a carrion-eating harpy

Events 

When we last left the remnants of the Charnel Hounds, they were in trouble: they had found the child-eating hag in her dank cave lair, but she had mental control over Varro and Ulu. In fact, she had managed to deal Anastasia a grievous wound using Varro as a proxy weapon. 

Luckily, she seemed open to negotiation. 

In fact, she wanted to strike a deal: if the characters were willing to fetch a ring that had been stolen from her, she would release Varro and Ulu, give back the abducted child from Braelin, and cease her child-eating activities. She explained that the hag they saw before them was not her natural form; she had been cursed with a hunger for children by Devanya, the Fairy Queen of the Summer Court, for beseeching aid in finding her own missing children one time too often. If Raenessa got her ring back, she would be returned to her original form and be cured of her murderous impulses. The party agreed to her terms, which were sealed as a blood oath between Johanna and Raenessa. 

The group returned the child to her parents, then rested at Kaul House before they set off again in search of Raenessa's ring. In the morning, they all opened bank accounts with the beautiful and imperious Arabella Godwin at the First Bank of Braelin--but the less said about that, the better.

After three days of travel following the river south from the Felken Woods, the group arrived at where a paddle boat called The Vulpine was moored at the riverbank. After crossing the gangplank, the group found a trio of fey creatures--one a alligator-headed man, another extremely androgynous and moth-winged, and the third a cat-headed woman--who told them they weren't properly attired for the party happening on the second floor of the boat. They were sent to see Lyanthor, the boat's resident satyr tailor. 

Lyanthor unleashed a swarm of flittering fairies upon them to take their measurements, then miraculously produced a series of garments that fit their whims and tastes. He also took their adventuring equipment, including their weapons, which left some members of the party feeling distinctly naked even with their new finery.

After traversing the stairs, the group discovered that the second floor of The Vulpine was far too large for the dimensions of the boat; they rightly suspected fey strangeness afoot. They passed through a feasting hall, where they saw an impossibly odd assortment of creatures eating and drinking with abandon, then crossed a long hallway in which more fey beings milled, before ending up in the black-and-white tiled ballroom.

The dance floor was filled with whirling, madcap creatures of the Summer Court. At the other end of the room sat Lady Devanya, perched on a wooden throne that continually bloomed with wildflowers that immediately withered only to bloom again. Lady Devanya was a tall fey noble with lightly green-tinted skin and pointed elfin ears. She lounged on her throne, clearly bored with the proceedings. Upon her finger was an emerald ring--Raenessa's ring, in fact. 

Dario and Johanna were waylaid on the dance floor by an elf in tree-like attire who aggressively danced up on them. Dario was far more receptive to this treatment than Johanna. The elf's name was Sabrine, and she helped orientate them to what was going on aboard The Vulpine. 

When the character approached Lady Devanya's dais, with Anastasia taking the lead, she looked to them to alleviate the tedium of her eternal party. They made it clear that they wanted Raenessa's ring, and it was resolved that a contest might be just the thing to enliven the fey party: Varro and Dario were to square off against two of Lady Devanya's champions in the fighting pit--because of course The Vulpine had a fighting pit ready for use. If the party's duo won the bout, Lady Devanya would give over the ring, but if the fey queen's champions reigned, Dario would become a plaything trapped on the ship until his natural life expired. 

Down in the fighting pit, Dario and Varro learned that their foes were to be two trolls outfitted with steel claws. The battle was tense, but at the ultimate moment--Dario was bloodied by a viscous blow from one of the trolls. The party would not be leaving with the ring, and Dario's life was forfeit.

Until, at least, a double or nothing proposition was proposed... 

Ornamental Women is Now Available!

After a long, long road to get to this point, I can now say that Ornamental Women, my first novel, is available now at Amazon as a trade paperback and ebook!

Set in my long-running Krevborna setting, my novel is definitely in the dark fantasy/Gothic fantasy style, but with a few surprises. In lieu of writing the tradition back cover copy, this is how I describe the novel:

Death and Art
A grave robber and her automaton companion search for an absent corpse and a missing book of poems…

Heaven and Hell
A devil-worshipping bard plots the murder of an angel...

Love and Blood
A monster hunter and his witchy lover seek to thwart the rise of a pagan death goddess… 

 

Now, as a first-time novelist, you might have some reservations about giving me, a relative unknown, your time and money. Well, why not try before you buy? At this link you can read the first three chapters of the novel in full. 

If you're a reader looking for books informed by an author's idiosyncratic interests and obsessions, I think you'll find Ornamental Women to be chock full of my particularities rather than doing the paint by numbers trope checklist thing. While I won't say that my novel is a an entirely new kind of storytelling or anything like that, I don't know of any dark fantasy novels that have: 

• A plot inspired by the history of Pre-Raphaelite art
• A first date in an absinthe bar 
• Bards powered by the Gothic fantasy equivalent of black metal
• A grave robbing heroine who suffers from depression 
• A nunsploitation-inspired chapter set in a brothel 
• An automation discovering the joys of a little free library
• Freaks with mensur fighting scars, a different freak with a monstrous six-fingered hand, and yet another set of freaks with a fetish for redheads.

In short, my ideal reader is a sicko who loves dark fantasy, the Gothic, and Victoriana.

Also, it's important to me that you know this: no AI technology was used in the creation of this book. I wrote it using ideas from my human brain and typed it up with my human hands. You deserve better than AI slop. 

I sincerely hope some of you pick up my novel and give it a read. I'm totally biased, but I think it's actually a really fun read with action, horror, magic, mystery, and a dash of romance. 

The Phantom Detective and Tomoe Gozen

Bad Books for Bad People, Episode 93: The Phantom Detective - The Vampire Murders and Tomoe Gozen

This month, Jack and Kate go into their stash of vintage paperbacks and engage in a little show-and-tell session. Kate brings The Phantom Detective: The Vampire Murders by Robert Wallace, a 1965 reprint of a pulp hero mystery from 1940, and Jack’s choice is Tomoe Gozen by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, a psychedelic 1981 trip through a fantasy version of Japan.

Who is the vampire of Vampire Mountain? At what point must a master of disguise admit he isn’t? Is it ever ok to wield a foreign sword? How many double crosses must be double crossed before a cohost’s brain actually breaks during recording? All these questions and more will be explored in this episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

Ornamental Women Cover Reveal

As some of you may know, my first novel is coming out soon! Take a look at the awesome cover designed by Becky Munich:

What a thing of beauty! Becky really hit it out of the park for me.

As I type this blog post, a proof copy is on its way to me. Once I make sure the internal layout is correct and give it one last proofread, Ornamental Women will be available for purchase. 

Actually, the proof arrived before I could even get this posted. Check it out, it's a real goddamn book!

The proofread is currently in progress. Maybe this is a gross thing to say, but I'm really enjoying reading my own book. I wrote the kind of book I want to be in the world.

I'm very excited to share this novel with all of you. Set in the world of Krevborna, Ornamental Woman follows three narrative strands that eventually interweave--a depressed grave robber and her automaton companion are on the trail of an absent corpse and a missing book of poems, a black metal bard plots to murder an angel, and a famed monster hunter and his horrible witch lover seek to thwart the rise of a pagan death goddess.

Watch this space for more.

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER: MONDO MONOCHROME EDITION NOW AVAILABLE!

You can't keep a good game down, and it turns out you can't keep a bad-ass game down either. PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is back in a brand-new edition that combines the core book with all four supplements in one very affordable, black-and-white package. 192 pages of psychotronic grindhouse post-apocalypse madness, baby.

Available here in my Big Cartel shop as both print+pdf and pdf versions.

What's it all about? PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is role-playing game set in an alternate-reality Earth where the worst fears of the Cold War came to pass in 1965—the Year of the Thunderkiss—when some fat-fingered bureaucrat pressed the shiny red button and set off Armageddon.

Instead of resulting in a grim, gritty wasteland where humanity struggles to survive, the atomic fallout warped the fabric of reality itself. America was twisted into a psychoholic grindhouse realm where mutant ratmen drag race hot rods against murder-minded robots, where lunatic wolfmans square off against brick house amazon princesses, and where doom nuns and foxy witches command the awesome powers of the bump ‘n’ grind occult. The mood and aesthetics of B movies, outlaw comics, and trash culture have bled into our world, creating a fucked-up melange of cartoonishly overheated sex and violence.

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is ultra-violent, maxi-trashy, supra-lowbrow, and über-depraved. The characters are larger-than-life and garishly hued in neon technicolor and greasepaint. Horror movie monsters prowl the wastes and clown gangs rampage through the streets of what used to be called civilization. Fuel up your chainsaw, pop a clip into your Uzi, and rev your V8 engine—it’s gonna get messy out there.

The rules have been tuned-up and turbo-charged to make the characters super-sized and about as competent as the morons in a low-budget action flick. Characters in PLANET MOTHERFUCKER might still die, but they aren’t failsons right out of the gate. That shit is as useless as tits on a tractor.

Contains all the rules you need to play: setting, character creation, action resolution, combat, enemies, adventure seeds, npcs, random tables, and more! Recommended if you like Rob Zombie, the Goon, Mandy, Joe R. Lansdale, Preacher, Big Trouble in Little China, Sin City, Escape From New York, The Venture Bros. Not recommended if you're allergic to juvenile humor, foul language, and bad attitudes.