Thanks for giving me this poster over a decade ago, Pam!
Heretic Parfum kindly sent me their A Very Gorey Holiday collection, aromatic spritzes for your space evoking the somber pageantry and whimsical gloom of this beloved artist’s work. Here are some of my initial thoughts on this ominous quartet of room sprays, and yes, I actually did just happen to have this framed Gashlycrumb Tinies poster tucked away in the corner for years, just waiting for its moment to shine!
O Tannen Baum: A skeletal whisper of winter forests, brittle fir needles mummified with age, spiced clove dust, spectral resins eerily whistling on the wind.
The Evil Garden: Candy-sweet florals grown under bell-domed glass, sugared petals and crushed green stems, confectionary chaos cultivated in a Victorian conservatory.
The Haunted Tea Cosy: Sharp, tart citrus flesh, bitter peel and tannic black tea possessed by a poltergeist, soft stone fruit tossed dementedly at your head during afternoon service, pulpy bonks.
Fruitcake: An invisible man at the party taking up impossible space, scuffed leather jacket creaking and crackling, sharp brandy drunk sloppy, straight from the bottle, candied citrus peel and scorched nutmeg smoke clinging to his swaggering, unseen form.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have shared, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Noir Kei Ninomiya’s Spring 2026 collection opened with Japanese poet Aoyagi Natsumi’s voice reciting the names of sea creatures, but what emerged on the runway looked less like anything from the ocean and more like someone’s childhood bedroom ceiling come to life : goth Syfy channel creatures wearing the cosmos.
Star-shaped metal frameworks sprouted from bodies in geometric sprawls, crusted with crystals and glittering elements that looked like Ninomiya had raided several glamorous aunties’ jewelry boxes, plucked out all the most aggressively bling and sparkly bits, and used them to bedazzle the night sky.
Tulle dresses exploded into impossible three-dimensional structures – one resembling a tutu crossed with a full-body loofah – while sharp blazers and crystalline pentagram bralettes anchored the more sculptural experiments. Harnesses extended into sprawling wire halos, and dresses grew pointed, silvery tinsel-esque extensions that swayed and bobbed with movement.
Shinji Konishi’s molded headpieces looked like they’d been constructed by alien insects, wasp nests made from something inorganic and vaguely sinister, bulbous forms painted in midnight hues with surfaces that suggested secretion rather than craft. The Jimmy Choo collaboration brought loafers studded with star-shaped grommets which seemed oddly practical footwear for otherwise celestial beings!
The designer said he wanted something playful, “like childhood, the first drawing,” and you can see that impulse in garments as modular systems where fabric and metal build wardrobes for a dimension where midnight skies walk around on two legs and the stars from a pulpy Ed Emshwiller comic book cover illustration have developed their own sartorial obsessions, complete with Lookbook.nu accounts and everything.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have shared, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Santa Maria Novella Quercia I know I talk a lot about grey overcast skies and thunderstorms and fog and mist and loving the glooms, but even I can appreciate an objectively beautiful day. Quercia is that day…clear clear air, clean clear water, when people say fresh air or water is sweet, this is what they mean, a sharp lucidity you can taste. Something green but not heavy, not dense forest green, lighter than that, the pale spring green of new growth and tender stems crushed underfoot releasing their watery juice. A cloudless, cool spring morning that makes you genuinely think “I am glad to be alive,” the kind of day that feels like a gift you didn’t ask for but accepted anyway. Dappled light pooling through ancient oak branches, the tree itself barely present except as shadow, as the reason for this filtered sun, this meadow existing in its patient protection. Lying in the grass eye-level with buttercups and bluebells, yellow and blue blooming heads, their petals hold that papery, delicate sweetness, barely-there floral, more like the idea of flowers than their actual heavy perfume. They’re good-natured about being trampled. They know they’ll be growing on your grave one day, gentle and insistent, reclaiming everything with the same cheerful persistence. For five hundred years, the oak has stood watching smaller things bloom and fade and bloom again, and you’re just another small thing, bright and brief and beautiful. Studio Ghibli sunlight, that glowing animation warmth where death exists but doesn’t overshadow, where graves get flowers and flowers get walked over, and it’s all the same turning wheel, all the same dappled afternoon. The shadow is there – hence the coolness, the morbid turn – but that’s the way of things. Just keep enjoying the flowers while you can. (Many thanks to my dear Flan for bringing this back from her recent travels for me!)
Air & Weather Paris, 5 A.M. Gourmand, but make it runway, through a filter of sheer delectation. You could bite into it theoretically, but you wouldn’t; it’s the expansive, exultant feeling right before you laugh with unexpected joy at something beautiful. Amber laminated like a croissant, all those folded layers, but impossibly light, airy where it should be heavy and resinous. Hollow chambers of golden fluff, bird bones that shouldn’t be able to support flight but do. Plumage structured in tiers, soft but strange to the touch, not quite what you expect when you reach for them. Phoebe Buffay as amber confection as a trilling Bjorkian lullaby swan dress. Wearing something ridiculously elegant and beautiful and warmly nourishing all at once. Playful spectacle of soft golden resin folded over and over into itself, sweet baked warmth and downy impossible lightness, earnest and gorgeous and committed to the charm of taking pleasure seriously without being serious.
Arcana Wildcraft Black Death There’s a particular kind of gothic imagery that Black Death calls to mind: baroque church architecture in shadow, where stone angels tucked into dusty alcoves have awakened hungry, wings once outspread in reverence now twist inward in sacrilege, enfolding flesh in the dark. A century’s worth of prayer-stained marble suddenly weeping blood; an inverse of holiness; the stony flame of the frozen heart. Black Death is cold where it should be warm. Clove should read as warming spice but here it’s numbing, that sharp eugenol prickling before the needle’s sting, tingles cold and strange. The smoky haze of offerings burnt to forbidden names. Sweetness emerging from the dry smoke and numbing spice, out of place, a lure you know better than to follow but follow anyway. Temptation heavy and inescapable, smooth and terrible in its certainty, the sweetness of something you were always going to do. Desolation and eerie stillness, the chilled moment of being found by what you’ve forever been circling. This is what it smells like to stop praying for the shadows to spare you and call them closer instead. Fear and desire meeting in the same alcove, two faces of one shadow. The darkness was coming regardless – might as well open the door to it yourself.
Hellenist À l’Ombre d’Artémis The wild goddess of the hunt peeling citrus in a mossy starlit clearing, an unlit Baies candle wafting blackcurrant and dewy rose from her pocket. In another pocket (cargo pants, lots of pockets): crushed mint, pale green sparks, cold mineral facets. Retinal ghosts when you close your eyes after staring at something bright. The quality of light more than light itself. Green stems snapped, leaf sap on fingertips. Petals pressed between glass slides. Forest floor dampness clinging to knees. Atmospheric, solitary. Citrus as quartz as starshine, crystalline and remote. Grains of light-fall suspended. Psychic gossamer, sour afterimage. Florals at dawn, night’s lingering chill. The moon in your mouth, its clear eye sees all.
Epichron Nightchild When I first sampled Nightchild months ago, I thought it smelled like an epic ballad by a Finnish heavy metal band, all Nightwish operatic drama and intensity, soaring vocals over crushing walls of reverb and distortion, cathedral-sized forests rendered in smoke and electric guitars, everything amplified and enormous. After purchasing a full bottle, I realize it’s something equally intense, but different: not operatic shrieking but guttural chanting, throat-singing incantation, Heilung summoning spirits in a clearing. Green-earth-smoke, tangled and inseparable. Coniferous sap weeping, clinging in translucent filaments. Forest floor moss, rooty, dark, and creeping, peeled away in damp handfuls, exposing Xenolithic scars. Loamy sweetness and soil, minerals apothecary-bitter. Cedar knife-edge, incense cutting sharp, clean and cold. Herbs twisted and wrung, citrus peel, crushed pine needles, and black pepper ground fresh. Less actual smoke than the drama suggests, more breathing near where smoke was, its ghost hanging in frigid air. A ritual performed for an audience of one. Maybe you’re dreaming—the clearing, the figures circling, the intranslatable incantations carved on gold, the owl cries, the wolf howls, the gods laugh like thunder, that kind of thing. Dry ice fog rolling low across the stage floor, backlit for maximum atmosphere and vibes. Hazy incense shrouding stark forest, ancient spells you mouth without understanding, throat-singing layered with crystalline chant, the ceremony private and enormous simultaneously. You’re watching from inside the dream, close enough to smell the vapor, far enough to know it’s performance. The ancient forest rendered, amplified, made devotional, and only for you.
Brown Sugar Babe Wildcard (BR540 dupe) Wild Card smells posh, polished nonchalance, elegance carrying a slight edge. The dryness of unlit cigarettes, tobacco-adjacent without being tobacco. Something golden and floral threaded through, warmed with spice, woods that feel cosmopolitan rather than earthy. Smart, savvy, confident, plugged-in – an It-girl who knows everyone, goes everywhere, looks expensive doing it. No interior life to speak of, but she doesn’t need one. A pack of Gitanes tucked in a Parisian model’s handbag alongside a perfect lipstick, a vintage Hermès wallet soft with age, a dog-eared French paperback, loose euro coins, and keys to an impossibly chic old apartment. (I don’t know if it smells anything like BR540; I had a little sample ages ago, but it didn’t leave much of an impression. Probably a little too sweet, though. No matter how much or how little Wildcard resembles that scent, it is by far a better purchase.) Over on Patreon this month, I share a favorite layering combination involving this scent!
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have shared, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
A few days ago, I wrote about realizing I need to talk about my books more. Since then, I’ve been spiraling through strategy conversations, brand consultations, and existential dread about what it means to shift from “person who writes about lots of things and also has some books” to “author who writes about lots of things.”
And here’s my real fear, the one keeping me up at night, that’s super scary to admit: What if the pivot pisses you off?
Many of you have been here since the beginning, or at least since before the books. You followed Unquiet Things because I write about perfume and obscure art and horror films and whatever other weird rabbit hole I’ve tumbled down at the moment. You found me through Skeletor Is Love, or Coilhouse, or Dirge or Haute Macabre, or Rue Morgue or that time I helped track down the Wrinkle in Time cover artist. Maybe you’re here for the perfume reviews and couldn’t care less about art books. Maybe you followed me on Tumblr in 2011 and never even knew I did any of these other things, let alone that I wrote books.
This little ecosystem has always been eclectic and sprawling because I’m eclectic and sprawling. I have too many interests to devote myself to becoming a guru in any single one. I like knitting and cooking and tarot art and weird fashion and Japanese stationery and a thousand other things, and I don’t want to pick just one to be “my brand.”
But I did write four books. They’re some of the most meaningful work of my life. And when my day job eventually ends (it will), I need those books to sell well enough to matter.
So how do I make the books more central without abandoning everything that brought you here in the first place?
Look, I know this is all very “watching me work through my shit in real time.” I know I’m being an extremely whiny baby about having to talk about my own work. Most authors probably don’t air their marketing anxieties on their professional websites…but this has never been a professional website, has it? This is where I work through things. I’m deeply annoying and deeply uncool, but that’s the deal here. I put it out there, what I’m pondering, what I’m worried about, what I’m trying to figure out. Writing my thoughts helps me organize them, find connections, work toward solutions. And sharing them is, as cheesy as it sounds, when the magic happens, because you weigh in with your own thoughts and perspectives. Which is very awesome and very helpful.
So here’s what I’m thinking:
I don’t need to stop writing about perfume or art or any of the other things that interest me. I don’t need to turn this blog into a book promotion machine. What I need is to make the connections more explicit between all these interests and the books. The books aren’t separate from what I do here. They’re not some side project I did once. They’re the concentrated, curated form of everything I share here in smaller doses—the deepest expression of all these obsessions I’m constantly writing about.
The person who loves my perfume reviews might not realize there are 175+ artworks in The Art of the Occult exploring the exact same mysterious, symbolic thinking I respond to in fragrance: alchemists and mystics, Tarot readers and occult practitioners, all working with the visual language of transformation and hidden meaning. The person who followed me for Skeletor might not know I literally wrote the book on artists obsessed with darkness and the macabre: Victorian mourning culture, Gothic painters rendering beautiful terror, contemporary artists making work from their demons. The sci-fi art mystery nerds might not have connected that The Art of Fantasy is packed with visual worldbuilding across centuries: medieval illuminators dreaming impossible creatures, Symbolists painting myth as truth, modern artists constructing entire universes through paint and brush and canvas.
And the fourth book (not yet officially announced!, this is just me hinting and winking!) is all about artists who pursue mystery itself. Artists who document the inexplicable not to solve it, but to honor it. Spirit photographers capturing the impossible. Medieval painters depicting angels like personal acquaintances. Contemporary artists exploring parallel dimensions and threshold spaces, and that old chestnut, “liminal space.” David Lynch died while I was working on it, and the timing felt weirdly, sadlariously perfect—the master of the unexplainable vanishing just as I’m wrestling with how to write about mystery without trying to explain it away.
And now I’m gearing up to do it all over again, promote a new book, talk about it endlessly, make people care, while trying not to neglect the three books that came before or the space I’ve built here or the people I’ve invited into it over twenty years. Writing about embracing uncertainty while being profoundly uncertain about how to do any of this right.
You’re already here for the aesthetic. The books are just… more of it. Deeper dives. Curated collections of exactly the kind of art and artists I’m always sharing pieces of.
I’m not pivoting away from you. I’m trying to make sure you know the books exist as resources for the things you already love about what I do here. I’m trying to be more intentional about weaving the books into what I already write about. Not “BUY MY BOOKS” in flashing lights, but simple connections, making those threads visible instead of assuming you’ll just… figure it out on your own. I’m trying to build on the long game I’ve been playing all along—where the perfume enthusiasts, the Skeletor fans, the mystery nerds all eventually find their way to the books through whatever tentacle of interest brought them here. Because I value the community we’ve built here over 20+ years. Because I’m betting that most of you who love the blog would also love the books if you knew they existed and understood they’re made of the same stuff.
I don’t have it figured out! But I am working on it! I’m sitting with the discomfort of not knowing exactly how to do this without it feeling weird or false or like I’m betraying the eclecticism that makes this space what it is. Maybe some of you have thoughts. Maybe you’ve been wondering why I don’t talk about my books more. Maybe you forgot I even wrote them (no judgment, truly, I’m crap at marketing myself, which is the point of all of this whole monologue!). Maybe you have ideas I haven’t thought of. Maybe you’re navigating something similar in your own creative work.
But …maybe that’s where I always seem to do my best work anyway? In the not-knowing, in the questions without clear answers, in the mystery of what comes next? Hm.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have shared, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I am feeling a little self-conscious about everything I wrote yesterday (although I really appreciate everyone’s comments! It’s both weirdly depressing and heartening to know there’s so many of us in that same boat) but anyhow, I thought I’d share some other stuff real quick so that won’t be the most recent post on this blog for people to see. Silly, I know. But it will make me feel better!
We took a little trip to Asheville this past weekend. My sister was doing a Friendsgiving type thing, and though we hadn’t initially planned on going anywhere for the holiday, plans changed! One thing about me and travel is that I get weirdly excited when I see the stores in our fridge dwindling, and I get to think up creative (though sometimes bizarre) uses for our remaining meals so that we eat everything up and nothing goes bad while we are gone. There were a lot of strange curries on the table before we hit the road! Kidney bean and cabbage curry sounds a little off-putting (and farty), but it worked!
I packed us some snacks in the form of tuna onigiri, roasted Japanese sweet potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and apples because I was trying to ensure that we didn’t eat too much junky stuff while we we traveling. Plus, I have an inner snob who thinks “…am I …BETTER than everyone??” when I eat an apple instead of gas station food. I’m not proud of that. But it’s true.
We stayed in an adorable cottage at the top of a terrifyingly twisty driveway with instructions from the hosts to not leave food in the car with the car doors unlocked…because the local bears have figured out how to open the car doors!
We didn’t really have time to do much of anything, but we were able to spend some time at the Arboretum and find more Thomas Dambo trolls (we saw them on Vashon Island late this past summer, too!) We also sped through the beautiful bonsai garden, and even typing that out feels like a crime. But we really only had about an hour at our disposal, and we had to be brisk and efficient about it!
One thing that was paramount was taking a moment to drop by the Dripolator and get a T-shirt. I’m not much for logos and such, but theirs is so cool, and I’ve been obsessed with the idea of grabbing a t-shirt from them for years. But anytime we are in the area, I always forget. Not this time, though!
I arrived home to a beauteous package! I know it’s a whole six months away, but I needed the floweriest frock for my evening with Florence (and also an audience of several thousand, I guess, but I like to pretend she’s just singing to me.) I will pair it with beads and a velvet choker and my stompiest of boots.
I sobbed to “What the Water Gave Me” when I turned 40, watching her whirl and careen madly across the stage. I plan on screaming this time a decade later, loud enough to break time backwards and forwards, loud enough for every version of myself there ever was to hear.
What am I screaming about? Everything, nothing? Maybe just the fact that I got a really pretty dress?
– I am still watching Alien Earth, albeit very slowly. I think I like it, but I’d love to know the general opinion of the show. Did people love it? Were they mad about it? I don’t really care for how the alien actually kinda looks like a person in an ill-fitting alien suit. It somehow looks too human to me?
…okay, so I guess that’s it. Like I said, just a few tidbits!
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have shared, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
I had a conversation recently with a marketing and brand strategist whose work I genuinely admire. I reached out because I’ve been watching authors and creators in my orbit work with her, and the results are absolutely freaking gorgeous. Thoughtful, strategic, and clearly effective. I came to the conversation thinking I knew what I needed help with, but I left feeling deeply unsettled.
My main takeaway, at least initially, was that the problem was me. That I was getting in my own way. That my resistance to certain language and frameworks—”content creator,” “personal brand,” “monetizing my platform”—was holding me back from turning what I do into a sustainable income. That if I wanted people to take me seriously, to move beyond “hobby” into “career,” I needed to start thinking differently about all of it.
It freaked me out. A lot!!!
But after a day of sitting with the discomfort, I realized the problem wasn’t me, and it wasn’t her either. The problem was that I muddied the conversation by bringing up everything I do….my books, my perfume writing, my Patreon, my blog, my day job that won’t last forever…and accidentally framed it all as a question about comprehensive monetization when what I actually needed was much more specific.
Here’s what I should have said from the beginning: I need my books to sell better.
Not “I need to monetize everything I create.” Not “I need to build multiple revenue streams.” Not “I need to charge brands for perfume reviews.” I need the books—three published in my Art in the Margins series, with a fourth on the way—to reach more people. I need the audience I’ve spent over twenty years cultivating to understand that these books are where my work lives most fully. And when my day job eventually ends, I need book sales to be a meaningful part of my income. That’s it. That’s the actual problem.
But I guess that’s where things get complicated. When you go looking for help with visibility and sales, you often get handed a complete toolkit: personal branding, content strategy, monetization frameworks, influence-building tactics. And embedded in that toolkit is a false choice:
Either you stay small, keep it as a “hobby,” remain invisible and unsuccessful—or you embrace the full apparatus of modern creator culture. Monetize everything. Think of yourself as a brand. Turn every piece of writing, every bit of expertise, every fragment of your creative practice into a potential revenue stream.
Those feel like the only two options. But they’re not, right?! That can’t be it!
I write about perfume for my Patreon, Midnight Stinks. My patrons get the deeply personal reviews, the first glimpses, the sneak peeks before I share things with the rest of the world. They also get scented notecards from me every month. It’s intimate, reciprocal, and appropriately monetized for what it is—a creative practice I want to sustain without compromising its nature.
What I don’t want to do is charge brands $5,000 for a sponsored post where I say something smells “like, so bomb” and call it a day. I see influencers do this, and that’s a completely legitimate business model for people building that kind of platform. But it has nothing to do with the kind of writing I do or want to do. Turning my perfume writing into billable brand partnerships would fundamentally change what it is—and I don’t want that. When the consultant suggested exploring that revenue stream, she wasn’t wrong. For someone building an influencer business around fragrance, that’s exactly the right advice. But I’m not building that business. I’m a writer who happens to write about perfume as part of a broader creative ecosystem.
So here’s what I’m actually trying to solve: How do I make sure the audience I’ve cultivated over 20+ years—people who follow Unquiet Things for the art, the horror, the perfume, the darkly beautiful cultural ephemera—understands that my books are the primary work? How do I reach new people who would love these books but don’t know they exist? This isn’t about becoming a brand or monetizing everything. It’s about making the books more visible within the world I’ve already built, in ways that feel authentic to that world.
The consultant asked good questions. She gave thoughtful, professional advice based on what she heard from me. The disconnect happened because I came in talking about sustainability and multiple income streams, which naturally sounds like “I need to diversify and monetize my creative output.” But what I actually meant was: “My day job is temporary, and when it ends, I need my books to be selling well enough to matter. Everything else can stay exactly as it is.” Those are very different problems requiring very different solutions.
The conversation was valuable, though, because it forced me to articulate what I actually need…and just as importantly, what I don’t need. I don’t need to hustle in ways that feel gross. I don’t need to perform a version of myself that isn’t true. I don’t need to turn every creative practice into a revenue stream.
I need to talk about my books more. I need to make it clearer that they’re The Thing. I need to build better pathways between all the things I share and the books that come from the same place.
I’m going to work through the materials the consultant sent me. I’m going to talk to other authors who’ve worked with her. And I’m going to stay open to the possibility that there’s a way to work together that serves what I actually need: not the comprehensive brand-building package, but the specific question of book visibility.
But I’m also realizing something else: maybe one of my mistakes was framing this as a branding problem in the first place. Maybe what I actually need isn’t a marketing/brand consultant (or at least, not only a marketing consultant.) Maybe I need to be talking more with other writers and creators who are doing similar work. People who got similar speeches about selling more and turning everything into income, and who struggled with whether to listen. People who create beautiful work around their books and somehow manage to keep them central without losing the expansiveness that makes their work interesting. People who are navigating this same tension between wanting their work to reach people and refusing to perform a version of success that feels hollow.
Maybe we should be having regular conversations (working calls, even! GASP!) where we bolster each other, share what’s actually working (not what the marketing industrial complex says should work), and remind each other that we’re allowed to do this our own way.
Because here’s what I know: I am an author! I have written three books with another on the way! And dangit, you’re going to be hearing a lot more about them! Not because I’ve embraced “being a brand” or overcome my stubbornness or learned to monetize everything. But because these books deserve to be read, and I deserve to claim the work I’ve already done.
I just need to figure out how to do that in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m performing someone else’s version of success. And maybe (probably?) I need to do that in conversation with other people who are asking the same questions.
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have shared, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
Many years ago, I wrote on this blog how I loathed bathing (because I hate being wet! Not because I hate being clean!) But a strange thing occurred toward the end of October. I felt myself longing for the tub. And not even a tub filled with bubbles and bath bombs and all of the frou-frou paraphernalia that I sometimes use to trick myself into the whole moist, soggy production, but just a tub full of clean, clear hot water. I’m not sure what I can attribute this to; it’s so unexpected! I eventually added a scoop or two of the bath flakes I had sitting around, and before I knew it, I had emptied the little bag, so I bought a big bulk container! Anyway, for the past three weeks I have been having a little bath every night and it’s really lovely.
Most of our garden died this summer. The eggplants and peppers got infested, the sunflowers were constantly droopy, none of our zennias or dahlias even bloomed! We are still getting a lot of this fuschia/magenta/scarlet flowering vine, though, so I am just madly clipping it every day and sticking it in every vase I own. The woman who used to live in this house (she still lives in the neighborhood, and her sister lives right across the street from us) told us it was called Love-Lies-Bleeding and that she planted it where she buried her cat. So one, there are pet remains in our backyard somewhere, which is fine I guess, but two, I don’t think she is correct, because none of the images look like this plant when I try to google it. Do you recognize it?
Two little guys that did not perish over the summer are Patty and Selma, my pitcher plant and venus flytrap! I got them from the Lowes garden section and they looked pretty awful when I brought them home. Pale and shriveled and sickly. I read that they like it boggy and sunny, and that you shouldn’t repot them in amended soil or give them tap water. They want soil with no nutrients and water with no minerals or extra stuff, so basically rainwater or distilled water. So I just left them in the vessels the came in, put them in a pie plate and left them out in the garden, let them get rained on, and hoped for the best. And six months later, they are doing great! The Selmas insides turned a nice fleshy pink, and Patty’s pitchers are now threaded with veins, and they both continuously sprout new growth. Finally, a plant I have not failed!
When we moved into this house 3.5 years ago, one of the things we knew we were going to have to tackle was the back screened porch, which was old and leaky and falling apart. Late summer we finally got the contractors in to tear the whole thing down, and the rebuilding has been happening in agoninzingly slow increments. First the concrete slab was poured, then the walls and ceiling went up the next month, and finally yesterday we got the glass windows and door. Whew!
We obviously need to do something for the floor (like what? I don’t know. I just know we do!) and get some furniture, but I am really bad at decorating or even envisioning how a space should look, so I need some help! Any ideas for me? All I know for sure is that Yvan wants to put a rowing machine in there somewhere, and that I desperately want a COSMIC EGG CHAIR. So definitely share some inspiration if you’re good at this kind of thing!
I’ve somehow picked up a nasty cold this week. How?! I don’t go anywhere! So I’ve been taking it easy, listening to music (pictured here: A Blessed Unrest from The Parlour Trick) (not pictured but also and of course I’m madly, incessantly listening to Everybody Scream just like all the rest of you are I bet) and reading and drinking lots and lots of tea.
Not actual tea, if we’re being precise; this particular concoction is a combination of dried lemon and orange slices steeped in boiling water with a dollop of the cranberry compote that my father-in-law made, and strained into this marvelous little tea set that a friend surprised me with.
Sometimes a gal’s gotta get herself some ridiculous treats. Sometimes it’s a cursed toy sold at a Mexican grocery store counter, sometimes it’s jams and syrups and chocolates flavored with lavender and rose.
Sometimes it’s a new phone case with a beaded little wrist strap and a strange mantra that your camera won’t even focus on because it’s so silly. “the btack lulips nothing and the charm charmnight queen cama.” Indeed! Indeed.
Other things of note…
– I finally watched Frankenstein! That malachite dress, gosh! I made a cocktail for the occasion, which I’ve named “Strangely Are Our Souls Constructed.” With a Japanese Whiskey, Lillet, Amaro, Maraschino liqueur, and a dash of absinthe, it was appropriately…pretty monstrous.
– I thought I might be brave and buy a cropped top. But I didn’t take into account that being a short-torsoed person just makes this a regular top.
– I made a good soup! With pork belly, white onion, lotus root, and kobocha squash, flavored with dashi, mirin, soy sauce, and miso.
-Have you been hearing about this “personal curriculum” trend? I love the idea of creating your own little structured study plan for topics you’re curious about…like designing your own course with books, videos, and assignments, instead of just randomly reading or scrolling. I’m already putting some ideas together for my winter and spring semester!
– I love hacks and shortcuts, things like “you won’t believe what this 60-second X thing will do for your body/mental health/finances/whatever!” I like doing things that feel good for me, but I don’t want to spend too much time on them because fuck that! So I am definitely going to give this 60-second jumping routine a try. What are your quickie good things?
-I sold a whopping 20 bottles of perfume from my perfume collection! Many thanks to everyone who reached out and helped me pare down. I am trying not to fill those empty spaces back in too soon, or at all…but…there is a perfume I have my eye on. I sniffed a sample of Nightchild from Epichron, and it smells like a Finnish heavy metal song. Seriously, it’s the olfactory equivalent of these sounds.
Anyhoodle! I am sick and snotty, and I hear the bathtub calling my name, so that’s it for now!
If you enjoy posts like these or if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
High Uintas, Utah USA by Sally Underwood, via milkywaychasers on Instagram
From the Midnight Archives: Slumberhouse Norne – a cult favorite that’s nearly impossible to find these days. In this post for paid members, I share alternatives that might scratch the same itch, and why I think some of them actually do it better.
I talk about winter’s chilly dreams of sun-dappled forest paths, tart winter berries and Yuletide cemetery strolls, arboreal crystalline orb visions, witchy speakeasies in midnight woods, even a holodeck simulation shortcut.
This is what paid membership gets you: deep dives into how fragrances connect and evolve, how one scent leads to others, how sometimes the thing that showed you what you wanted isn’t the thing you end up keeping. With a paid membership, you get access to the full Midnight Stinks Archives: years of reviews, musings, and fragrance philosophy spanning rare indies, niche darlings, and mainstream favorites you’ve been sleeping on. Or that I’ve been sleeping on! Monthly marinades where I pull overlooked bottles from my cabinet and find unexpected connections. Perfume reviews that read more like atmospheric prose than product descriptions, because I’m more interested in what a scent evokes than what it’s “supposed” to smell like.
Join me for smoke and silk, resin and ruins, moss and myrrh, vanilla and velvet…olfactory reveries, aromatic meditations, perfumed darkness that feels like coming home (if your home is an abandoned chateau full of glamorous vampires or a lighthouse keeper’s cottage colonized by spores and mutating under the moon, or the cabin in the woods where you definitely will speak aloud the words from the flesh-bound book).
I just wrapped up 31 days of horror writing. Daily movie reviews throughout October —free, written because I genuinely love doing this. That’s not a complaint; nobody asked me to write any of it. I do this because it’s what I’d be doing anyway, thinking about movies and books and perfume and occult art, and the blog is just where I put those thoughts so other people can enjoy them too. Everything here has always been free because that’s how I want it.
This blog and its accompanying newsletter are completely passion projects. I have a day job that pays the bills, and this is what I do with the rest of my time because I love it. But every now and then, I need to gently remind you that if you enjoy the things I write, there are some ways to support that work.
My Perfume destash: I’m selling some bottles from my personal collection over on Facebook. Indie and niche scents, good stuff, much cheaper than buying new. If you’ve been curious about any of the perfumes I’ve reviewed over the years, this might be your chance.
Signed copies of my books: All three titles are back in stock, The Art of the Occult, The Art of Darkness, and The Art of Fantasy. If you’ve been meaning to pick one up or want to complete your collection, now’s the time.
My Pango bookshop: Fully restocked with lots of new titles. Horror, Gothic fiction, folk horror, art books, occult and esoteric subjects. I’ve been adding books steadily, so if you’re looking for something specific or just want to browse through my extremely specific taste in literature, go take a look.
New! Postcard sets: Over the years, I’ve created and posted silly mashups of words and images on social media that, as they say, “went viral.” People thought they were a hoot and a holler. The public’s pickle was tickled. I teased the idea over the summer. Well, now you can own them as actual physical postcards. Send them to your friends. Confuse your relatives. Stick them on your fridge. Whatever brings you joy. (Pssst…if you purchase one of my books, The Art of the Occult, The Art of Darkness, and The Art of Fantasy, I’ll include all four postcards for free!)
That’s it. Just wanted to remind you these things exist. If you can support the work, I appreciate it. If you can’t, that’s fine too. The blog will still be here either way.
And remember, if you have ever enjoyed or been inspired by something I have written, and you would like to support this blog, consider buying the author a coffee?
