Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, I’m off to StokerCon! Instead of our regular programming, we’re recapping a few awesome projects crowdsourced from our subscriber community.

Can you believe another month has flown by? It’s somehow June already, and that means it’s time for another installment of our monthly Subscriber Spotlight.

This week, we’ve got new books, newsletters, and a queer podcast takeover just in time for Pride.

Let’s dive in!

Thanks for reading Scare Me! Our monthly Subscriber Spotlight is coming up fast. If you’ve got a project to share with our community, now’s the perfect time to send it my way.

A few weeks ago, I received a really fun package in the mail: My first physical ARC since I started covering horror! My pal Mitch Hull from Rapture Publishing sent me Arson by Design, a new short story collection by Tyler Jones.

The stories sound cool as hell: Mysterious artifacts wash up on the beach. A group of cryptid hunters seek evidence of the unknown. A gathering of the families of missing people becomes the site of a disturbing encounter.

But as if that’s not enough, it’ll be available as a deluxe hardcover edition complete with an intro by Brian Evenson and artwork by Chris Panatier. (You can buy a trade paperback version too, if your budget can’t swing the special edition. The stories will be just as great either way!)

When I finally read Nat Cassidy’s Rest Stop earlier this year, I loved the way the gory, absurd story engaged much deeper questions about Jewish faith and cultural heritage. That’s exactly the kind of horror The Poison Well is exploring, too.

From The Poison Well’s About page: It’s a new literary magazine “dedicated to Jewish-themed stories from the horror, mystery and thriller genres.”

And what does “Jewish-themed” mean exactly? It’s the outlet’s most frequently asked question and explained in thoughtful detail here. The short answer is that, like many other diasporic cultures, there’s a lot of room for diversity within the global Jewish experience.

Shoutout to subscriber Becca for sending this recommendation my way! She’s a librarian and horror lover in Washington, DC (my old home!).

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I really do love my friend Maya Rector’s weekly newsletter, The Weird Girl Edit.

There’s a lot of “weird girl” discourse out there, and so much can feel gender essentialist in a way that doesn’t land for me. But in Maya’s world, everyone is welcome to partake in the weirdness, regardless of gender. Weird girl is a state of mind.

It might seem like a subtle tone shift, but to me it really embodies how liberating queerness can be. In the newsletter, Maya connects the dots between fashion, literature, media, television, and everything in between. Her recs place pop culture I’ve heard of right alongside things I’d never think to look up in a million years.

It’s truly a treasure trove and the highlight of my week!

Last weekend, I had the joy of participating in my fellow Macabre Daily colleague Brian Finnerty’s Pride podcast takeover! Brian organized a conversation with three amazing queer writers—Luke Dumas (Nothing Tastes as Good), Sara van Os (Decomposition Book), and Avery Curran (Spoiled Milk)—to discuss the relationship between queerness and horror, and how each author explores queer identity in their work.

You’ll be able to listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

A few months ago, I started noticing an uptick in subscribers. You guys were all finding me from the same place: Shane O’Neill’s brilliant heavy metal newsletter, The Chug.

This actually makes so much sense to me. The Venn diagram of heavy metal fans and horror fans might not be a circle exactly, but there’s definitely some serious overlap. And as a subscriber of The Chug myself, I can totally see how Shane and I share similar journalistic sensibilities. There’s a shared curiosity in our style, a hunger to dig into the deeper story of WHY and HOW and WHO.

If you’re looking for a great music newsletter, The Chug should definitely become part of your weekly rotation.

By the time this goes out, I’ll be at StokerCon! I’m scheduling this in advance and hoping my social anxiety isn’t getting the best of me.

Next week, I’ll share a little travel diary about the event: The good, the inevitably awkward, and my honest take on whether I think it was worth emerging from my hermit cave in the woods.

If you’re at Stoker today, please say hi!! I’m going to be masked up but friendly, with plenty of zines to share.

For the many horror fans who can’t make it to Stoker, the interviews themselves are all completely free in the newsletter archive. As for the physical zine, I’d love to find a way to make it available after the event—hit reply if you’re interested to help me gauge whether this is something I should look into!

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.