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hidden roads secret stories hidden roads secret stories menu skip to content home selected publications about contact search search for myfirsthorror tm october 14 2025 october 14 2025 jtglover leave a comment something wicked this way comes wasn t my first encounter with horror but it did leave a mark as i ve written elsewhere my earliest encounters with monsters came courtesy of mercer mayer scooby doo where are you and the like a major next step was finding issues of creepy at the library around age five followed by years of a fairly undifferentiated stew of ghosts hobbits gently spooky vampires ookla the mok rebel forces and transporter accidents etc 1983 however was apparently a watershed for me when i watched the film that inspired this post why apparently for the first time something wicked this way comes is streaming on disney that news has been all over social the last week among a certain cohort to which i belong by age and interests and so last friday i sat down to watch it i d rewatched it many times as a kid but i don t think i d seen it since high school reader my experience watching it was a parade of old sense memories and faint chimes at the back of my mind from camera shots to bits of the soundtrack to expressions on the actors faces core memory unlocked is a meme but i did repeatedly have that same feeling watching it that i ve had when re experiencing stories from childhood perhaps strangely and perhaps not i also think the film is good it s sometimes described as a gateway horror film which is both accurate and also reifies a certain view of horror as for adults gory violent etc that s at odds with the genre s history in addition to the elements mentioned above i thought the pacing was exceptionally good and likewise the dialogue it s a rare film from one s childhood that stands the test of one s own changes as a viewer but in this case i think it s even better than i remembered bonus related content also from 1983 my first issue of starlog this wasn t my first encounter with commentary on art as i d had book of the movie type kiddie books already seen the highbrow comedy of mad and started to appreciate metatextuality thanks to j r r tolkien something about this issue clicked for me however continuing the arc that led to my being primed not only to appreciate h p lovecraft but almost immediately to be interested in his letters and nonfiction and here i am today a few decades later circling back and learning in the process james river writers 2025 october 6 2025 jtglover 2 comments another year of the james river writers annual conference in the books 2025 was a blast and i met so many new people and caught up with old friends that i don t even know where to begin i always walk away from the conference re energized and full of plans for the year to come and 2025 was no different i had the pleasure of paneling with some big guns about short stories lamar giles and r r virdi moderated by ty phelps of style weekly fame i had the pleasure of moderating a panel about research featuring three authors working in different areas with a wide range of resources and i learned so much laurie gwen shapiro vanessa riley and annabelle tometich finally i took the last shift in the lucy booth answering questions in ask a librarian mode you d think i d have more photos to show for this great weekend but in a shocking display of internet incompetence i have but one photograph to show for it all mugging with clay mcleod chapman and vanessa riley at the pre conference panelist moderator shindig see you next year it s been 84 years august 24 2025 jtglover leave a comment while it has not in fact been 84 years it has been three months what did i do this summer traveled in may i went to london environs for two weeks at the end of july i went to new york city for four days i d never visited either though i d passed through nyc often enough and each was a magnificent experience i could write more and perhaps i will but it s all already making its way into the rest of my writing life from poems to an unexpected memoir essay wrote it s been an odd writing year and i ve tried out this project and that i m working on multiple scholarly projects have written a bunch of poems and have some essays on the go is there you ask a novel in there yes yes there is i ll talk more about that when i have a completed first draft as i m trying something off my usual beat ascended on july 1 my promotion to professor went into effect as anyone who s gone through the academic promotion process knows it s a big deal and an increasing amount of time and effort as you go up the ranks i m proud to have made it to this point and in fact the aforementioned trip to nyc was a long planned celebration of the promotion witness the dignity of a fully promoted librarian visiting fao schwarz letterboxd i need more social media accounts like i need a hole in my head but i m using letterboxd to nudge me to watch more of what i ve long wanted to watch as well as discover good related films it s already been helpful with the real surprise thus far being how many short films it s helped me discover and put into the mix like robert eggers early work feel free to follow me there if you like ghosted yesterday i closed my metafilter account i ve written here about metafilter before and if you re an internet user of a certain age that name may spark memories for you i was active there for 18 years lurking for years before joining yesterday when i visited the site i looked around had a think about how the site s culture has changed and decided it was time to go after i d done the deed buttoned in metafilter speak i was hit with waves of melancholy and relief neither was a surprise given how much a part of my life it s been at times as well as how challenging it s been to participate in a community where there are lately as one user observed a thousand mousetraps on the floor just waiting for you to take a step opinions vary as to whether said mousetraps are malicious or inducements to care and i think there s no one answer on that either way though it s no longer my concern godspeed metafilter and all you mefites past and present and future thank you for the years of conversation the laughs and the constant provocations to think they re here already you re next may 24 2025 jtglover leave a comment lately i ve been consuming 1950s alien invasion pod people stuff like so when i ve mentioned these works people have asked if i ve noticed similarities to our current moment and the answer s complicated as i noted a while back i ve been consuming more f sf classics lately so these sorts of narratives are easy to reach for given how much they re part of genre history i first watched the 1956 film adaptation of invasion of the body snatchers many years ago and it s a classic if not as well received in its time a couple years ago i finally watched the 1978 version and i both enjoyed it and appreciated why it s not as influential from the more complex thematic take to its simply not having been made during the 1950s red scare the silent invasion has been around a long time but i only got around to reading it this year the affect is flatter than finney s story or its adaptations and it goes into greater detail about family life politics the working world etc a quietly understated masterpiece the vast of night is a 2019 film that feels tailor made for the pandemic a slow burn oddball with a 700 000 budget the plot is rudimentary and not at all the point of the film which goes far beyond the smack of nostalgia you get in a stranger things or house of the devil and moves fully into let s halfway recreate a 1950s training video territory i didn t particularly like it but i did enjoy watching something different and trying to engage in good faith with what the filmmakers were trying to do it raises the specter of an alternate reality where streamers use the full power of algorithmic suggestion and second screen watching to convert americans into accidental art house film nuts what do these works have to do with our current moment well i didn t go down this accidental rabbit hole to explore anything about these trying times the parallels are all off kilter at best but as i ve said elsewhere nostalgia kills even if you love it it kills right now much of the country is trying to create a version of america that has never existed and claim that it s what we always were even in my cynical heart i hope that s not true you have until midnight to find the house on haunted hill april 20 2025 jtglover leave a comment okay i lied today is the final day to vote for glowing in the dark for book of the year nonfiction in the rondo hatton awards you can click on you have until midnight to find the house on haunted hill posts navigation older posts follow blog via email enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email email address follow join 208 other 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