Meet the Maniac The Chronicler

Today, our maniac is ! Join us as we discuss speaking our truth, science fiction, fantasy, and his inspirations.
Enjoy!
~
Your Weekly Horror Directory
The Alchemists (Original Fiction)
“Guilt Eats Away at Me” by
“Wrath” by
“Scumville - Part 7” by
“Some Infinities are Bigger than Others” by
“An Echo in the Bone (Audio)” by
“Microdosing - 70mg of Bones” by
“The Heart Knows What the Eyes Deny” by
“Flesh and Blood: Chapter 9” by
“Dark Waves - Chapter 2” by
“The Magic Show” by
“Hank” by
“Tail” by
The Detectives (Original Non-Fiction)
“The Great Stink” by
“March 2024 Wrap-Up” by
“Wait—Bram Stoker said Van Helsing was BASED on Someone?” by
“but my name was Elisa Day - the musical horror storytelling of Where the Wild Roses Grow” by
The Muses (Poetry)
“Drip” by
“Skin-Deep” by
The Collectors (Boom/Film Recommendations)
“April Fools Day” by
“Carnel” by
The Dissectors (Book/Film Reviews)
“Cinemuse | Secret Window (2004)” by
“The Salt Grows Heavy” by
The Loudmouths (Notes)
“Ties” by
“Throwback to Youtube” by
“Terraria” by
“A Tale of Poison and Annihilation” by
“What Horror is Hiding in the Fog?” by
“Stephen King’s Dirty Birdies” by
Found Footage (Videos)
“Manslaughter Demo (FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING)” by


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit macabremonday.substack.com

Today, our maniac is the very lovely ! Join us as we discuss Tolken, vulnerability in writing, and the importance of community here on Substack.
Enjoy and in the wise words of Kathrine herself: “stay weird”!
Mentioned on this episode:






Your Weekly Horror Digest
Sessions with Dr. Botgoreshared the first 6 chapters of their—quite grotesque-story called, “Lenny”. Fair warning, if you get squeamish easily, keep a trash can nearby!
was kind enough to give everyone a book recommendation that made quite the impact on him. Nuclear destruction, nihilism and dwindling hope are sure to make this one a worthwhile read.
The Midnight Blue Seagave us the first look at the labor of love they’ve been working on about H.P. Lovecraft’s rise to fame in horror culture. I’m sure you’ve seen authors look into Lovecraft’s work before, however this one is meticulous in its analysis and a stellar read!
talked about music that uses macabre imagery to really drive it’s message home. What music videos have you seen that serve to amplify the message that the writer was trying to convey?
shared an original work titled, “Amis” for their first ever Macabre Monday post. Go on show their work some love!
shared a twisted tale based on the true story of serial killer Donald Harvey, a nurse that killed 100+ patients. Truly chilling.
Naptime Novelist gave us a ghost story inspired by her childhood home. I’m not sure what is creepier…the story the inspiration behind it!
bestowed upon us an exceptionally well-written article that delves into analog horror and its recent increase in popularity.
That’s all I have for you this week! Check back in next Monday to once again visit the Cemetery!
Don’t forget about the upcoming deadline for the Wicked Writing Contest - March 18th! Read more about it here for all of the grisly details.
Join the discussion on Notes here on the Substack platform every Monday!
Stay Spooky.
If you are looking for people to follow on Notes for Macabre Monday, check out all the people participating (We periodically update this list. This is the latest, trimmed list!):John Ward Andrei Atanasov Shaina Read Lloyd Miner Andrew Smith Honeygloom Macey A. B. Frank Leigh Parrish Jenovia John Coon The Chronicler S.E. Reid Edward Rooster Jessica Maison Buck Weiss reinancruz Patricia J.L. 👻🧶🖊️ Michael S. Atkinson Maribel Jennifer Morrow Stirling S Newberry Susan Earlam Author Michele Bardsley Daniel W. Davison Daniel O’Donnell Nicolina Torres Michael P. Marpaung Jon T L.L. Ford Olivia St. Lewis EJ Trask Anna C. Webster Skyla Lucas Mangum Redd Oscar Alec Worley Jay Rothermel Hannah V Kelly-Sibley Kathrine Elaine Josh Tatter The Man Behind the Screen Hamish Kavanagh Kay Moulton The Brothers Krynn Chris Well Brian Martinez Miguel S. sleightsofheart Scoot Travis Blake C.J. Heath Jean Marie Bauhaus Erin Rose Latta Macy Lu Sean Thomas McDonnell Targeted Nightmares Walther Cantu Lorne BronsteinMichaela McKuen S Tallett Cobol Rene Volpi @Tjpatton


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit macabremonday.substack.com

Hello listeners, welcome back to Macabre Monday’s Meet The Maniac.
I'm your host, , aka Maya, and today I'm joined by our maniac, Mr. , author of the tech noir series “Duel”, amongst other notable stories. Scoot is a Catholic writer on Substack, boasting several newsletters, namely the Peasant Times Dispatch, Gibberish, Stained Glass Catechism, and Bima Sakti. Did I pronounce that right?
Yeah, that's a collaboration with . It's a, I'm sorry, Michael, if I've mispronounced your name. It's apparently the Indonesian word for the Milky Way.
So Scoot, you are a man shrouded in much mystery—I'd say. So why don't we suspend some of that with a proper introduction from you?
All right. Hi, I'm Scoot. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else to say besides what you said. I write a bunch of things. I don't write a lot of things. And I'm kind of new to the Macabre Monday crew. Kind of, I didn't, I didn't feel right kind of putting my name in the hat for the lottery until I started like writing something scary. So, and it's, it's funny because like, I'm afraid of, or I'm not, I don't handle it very well. So I don't know. I don't, I don't know what else to say. I'm a human being. I have a, like an actual face. That's not like a heart in a Betsy Ross flag. And that's, I don't know. I've already figured it. I've already lost words. So there you go.
Don't worry. I'll have enough room, enough of them for the both of us.
All right.
I'm a chatterbox. So how did you get started on Substack?
So the, the Catholic endeavors were really the first ones. I was on WordPress for a while and Substack kept popping up. People kept on talking about it and there it would like, so in such and such writer is talking about this on Substack. And I was like, all right, let me, let me explore it. Let me check it out. Maybe kind of see what kind of trouble I can get into.
So Peasant Times Dispatch was kind of the first venture. And Substack makes it so easy to like go paid to like feel legitimate. Like, I don't know. WordPress feels like a blog and Substack feels like a professional newsletter. So like the idea was that I was going to start professionalizing my writing and you know, try to see what kind of an audience there is for it.
The fiction side of the house actually came. So Gibberish was originally supposed to be a language newsletter. It was because like I was getting into conlanging and like wanted to do more with that. But I just didn't have the time. And I, I started it, you know, I think a couple months after I started the Peasant Times Dispatch did nothing with it. So then January of 23, I rebooted it. I was like, I'm going to post fiction. I was trying to put fiction on Peasant Times Dispatch. And I just, it didn't fit with everything else that was there. So I was like, all right, let's separate it. Let's have fun with it. And the rest is history. It was, it's been a lot of fun to play around with Gibberish and kind of experiment with things.
It's been a lot of fun reading what you have. You mentioned Conlang. Do you use a lot of those skills for the Bima Sakti newsletter?
That one's, that one has just started like a couple weeks ago or maybe a month ago. So eventually, maybe. But I definitely, I, I love what Tolkien did with his languages. And I love the depth that they, that it adds to worlds. I, I think about just the name of things a lot. And like, it doesn't take a lot of effort to go and either like back rationalize words.
So an example of what, of what I've done is last summer, I posted a longer story called Blood or Flood, which is set in Atlantis. And, you know, I didn't think, I wasn't thinking about like inventing a language for it, but afterwards I was just thinking about it and so I posted a couple world-building articles on like how I might approach building a language based on what I've already done without thinking about it for the story. And so I was able to like, you, you back rationalize things and then you could

With the New Year, a new evolution of Meet the Maniac has emerged for your listening pleasure
Hello, everyone. I'm M.E. Beckley, but many of you know me simply as on Substack.
Today, I present to you Macabre Monday's first podcast episode, Meet the Maniac. Our first guest is the lovely , who writes Kindling. Kindling is a newsletter, as Shaina puts it, for people with boring lives and active imaginations.
Join us as we discuss how she joined Substack, Stephen King, horror, developing skills as an author, and who she's reading these days.
I hope you all have as much fun listening to this as I did when recording it. Feel free to tune in to the podcast above or read the transcription of the interview below—or both!
Enjoy!
Okay, so how about we get a brief introduction about who you are and what you do on Substack?
Yeah, so I'm Shaina Read and I have a Subtack called Kindling, where I, it's kind of a mixed bag. I review dark fiction. I cover issues of censorship, I write about authors and writing and I publish fiction.
So it's all fiction centered. Most of it's pretty dark, a lot of horror, but yeah, it's kind of my passion project, I guess you could call it.
So I'm a computer programmer by day, and, um, yeah, I have two kids and two dogs and I love the outdoors. I'm pretty funny, um, I think I like my jokes.
Thank you so much. Okay, so, I really like your Substack genuinely, but before we get into that, I would like to know how you got started on Substack and how long you've been on the platform using it.
Yeah, that's a good question.
I have, I have a couple of friends from high school, actually, and, you know, we don't see each other a whole lot anymore. but we keep in touch, and we were kind of like nerdy, artsy kids in high school. And so we've all gone on to, you know, we all have like our jobs that we have to do to support ourselves, but all of us are still doing art or writing or, you know, music, whatever it was, combination of those things.
So one of those friends, I had him over for dinner one night and he was talking about this new platform that he heard about. I think there were journalists that he liked that were writing on it and he said it's called Substack, and so I started getting his newsletter kind of just to support him and keep in touch with what he's been doing, and I got really curious.
So I started looking on the platform and I think I found L. Griffin, and saw that she was writing fiction. And I thought that sounds super interesting because at the time I'd been writing fiction for a couple of years, like I hadn't shared any story with anybody and wasn't really sure how to get kind of like feedback or a feeling of like how these stories would go over.
I was submitting them to magazines, but you know how that goes; it's a pile of rejection slips. So I thought I should just try this and see what happens.
So that was a little over a year ago, and I mean, I actually, I sat on it for about eight months. So I wanted to do it in January of 2022, and then I got really scared. So I finally published last August, I think was my first, my first time publishing, and I thought about quitting a handful of times since then. Just because it's the nature of the beast, I think.
But it's the people; I love the community of people on there. There's so many good writers. There's so much good fiction. So I'm kind of around just because I've made these really cool connections with other horror writers and horror fans and it was something that's missing from my everyday life.
So yeah, so I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
It feels like being a part of a kind of the club you always wanted to join and in college or high school.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, so how did you get started writing?
Yeah, you know, I'm I, I always wrote like I had journals as a little kid. I was pretty shy so I read a lot and I think I started writing.
I read the Diary of Anne Frank in third grade, like didn't understand the majority of that book, but I