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John Chrostek

@johnchrostek.com
2.8K followers 1.9K following 4.1K posts

Co-owner @eveninghouse.bsky.social Writer: FEAST OF THE PALE LEVIATHAN BOXCUTTERS EIC @cold-signal.com Buffalo, NY johnchrostek.com

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Reposted by John Chrostek
Richard Mirabella 🐝 @rpmirabella.bsky.social · 21h
Today, @bleakhousing.bsky.social's new novel, The Ship of Death, was released, and my dude is on a major label. Some thoughts: bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
bookshop.org
The Ship of Death: A Novel
“Mind f*cking melting.” —BENJAMIN PERCY“Cosmically creepy as hell. A nightmarish experience.” —DAN CHAON"Every turn of the page is a creepy as f*ck critical success D20 roll. Winkler warmed my nerd he...
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 28/09/2026
Last week my mom suffered another small stroke and had some other subsequent health issues. Things are super tight atm but making a trip to visit her next week because I need to and want to. This year has been struggles and joys, all rapid fire with no letting up on the gas. It’s really derealizing
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 27/09/2026
Crazy full moon tonight
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 26/09/2026
seeing "iced coffee is a dealbreaker at job interviews" on my stupid phone in 2026 like getting getting zapped with a cattle prod my opinion on this shit is boring and obvious but it's so enraging. I know the game. I know I'm the mark, the fool, the glue of the glue gun, but fuck, man
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Whitney Curry Wimbish @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The youngest person his pager attack killed was 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah, who had just started 4th grade. The pager was on a table when it went off and she picked it up to take to her dad. It exploded in her face and reports said it covered the room in her blood. She wanted to learn English.
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 24/09/2026
the end goal of capitalist technocracy: creating the means to turn everyone into disoriented micro-CEOs "managing" a cabal of drunk machines, building society atop a billion invisible mistakes until everything collapses or worse, somehow continues on as it is, only far worse and degraded
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Misha Grifka Wander @mishagw.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Ancillary Review is looking for more editors! Message me if you're interested in copy-editing, dev editing, or graphics creation for a Hugo finalist magazine of spec fic criticism! It's volunteer-based and fits with your schedule <3
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 21/09/2026
Yesterday a family came into the shop with their perhaps one year old baby boy, and when he saw Stella Luna he started screaming STELLA LUNA!!!! STELLA LUNA!!!!!!!!! So they had to buy him a second copy. The mother said she hides the book at home because he wants to read it so much kid loves bats
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Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"He is a minor; it's traumatic enough for an adult — for something like this to happen to him is really tough," said the mom of one of the teens. "It was eight hours without hearing from him; they wouldn't give me any information — they behaved very badly."
krgv.com
‘Justice must be served': Family outraged after viral video shows ICE detaining 17-year-old in Alamo
A mother demands answers after a viral video captured ICE agents detaining her 17-year-old son in Alamo, sparking conflicting accounts between the family and DHS.
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Thomas Ha @thomasha.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
some news!
Publisher's Marketplace Deal Report, Sons  of Nod by Thomas Ha Imprint: Tordotcom, Imprint: Tordotcom. Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Thomas Ha's SONS OF NOD, a novella about a group of boys laboring to build machinery for a reckless corporation on a strange and desolate island, to Avery Davis at Tordotcom, with Ann VanderMeer editing, for publication in fall 2027, by Michael Curry at Donald Maass Literary Agency (world English).
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 17/09/2026
Finished a flash fiction horror yesterday for the first time in a while! Most of my stuff runs shaggy, so when I can keep a piece tight and refractive as flash demands, it feels like a little marvel
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Cynthia Gómez @cynthiasaysboo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
And now I get to say that Muñeca won the Octavia E. Butler award! And I got to be there in person:) This is the first time I've won anything for my writing, and I'm so happy.
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 16/09/2026
Fun update!!! Reading with Adam Voith for the October 2nd event is gonna be myself & fellow Malarkey writer & general superstar @ljabouttown.bsky.social
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JMWW Journal @jmwwjournal.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Flash Fiction: Friar’s Table by Alex Rost It's the son's birthday and they are headed to a steak restaurant and the dad is talking about steaks.
jmwwblog.wordpress.com
Flash Fiction: Friar’s Table by Alex Rost
It's the son's birthday and they are headed to a steak restaurant and the dad is talking about steaks.
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 16/09/2026
I feel like I have to say this more frequently than I do, but Amanda is the primary architect of the store. I’m happily second fiddle. We are life partners + we both work very hard at it, but if you always default to treating me as the primary/solitary authority, we both notice + it is a shitty look
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 16/09/2026
Beyond hype about these events, come out!!!
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Matt Bell @mdbell79.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The very first entry in my commonplace book.
“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” —Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 16/09/2026
Beyond hype about these events, come out!!!
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Matt Bell @mdbell79.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This is crushing news. Dillard is so incredibly important to me, as both a person and a writer. I’m so insanely grateful to her for her body of work.
nytimes.com
Annie Dillard, Meditative Author of ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,’ Dies at 81 (Gift Article)
Her Thoreau-like account of journeys in the woods, published when she was 28, was the first of many ruminations on life and nature, good and evil.
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Kyle Winkler @bleakhousing.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
For those in the NE Penn. or Western NY state area, I will be doing an event at @eveninghouse.bsky.social on Oct. 17 at 4pm for THE SHIP OF DEATH. Come out, say hi, buy a book! Can't wait to meet @johnchrostek.com in person and dig Buffalo.
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 14/09/2026
Had our first Strange Short Story Sunday bookclub today, discussing Liliana Colanzi's excellent collection YOU GLOW IN THE DARK, then got sushi for lunch and came home and watched IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS It was a nice, fun day. Still working on my blood pressure after last week, but getting there
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Thomas Ha @thomasha.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
also releasing work as a writer in 2026
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 11/09/2026
Will always cherish stories that suggest more than they dramatize. A dream is a figment of thought that purifies the mind and abides no laws and so too is a story
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 11/09/2026
I'm at Endorphin Port level today
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Evening House Books @eveninghouse.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
If you’ve been interested in ordering books from us to support the shop but have struggled to use the website, it is currently running smoothly in a defensive mode protecting it from spam traffic overloading the servers Eveninghousebooks.com We’d love to connect you with great books
eveninghousebooks.com
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 11/09/2026
We’ve been having serious issues with our website, especially in the last few days after the robbery. People wanting to support us being gated out w/ an unusable site. So we went to tech support & they are saying we seem to be getting targeted by unusual traffic slamming the servers???
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 10/09/2026
increasingly understand the wolf mother from Princess Mononoke who hung on to life as a head in order to get one really solid final bite in
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 09/09/2026
Learning how to thread the line today between my core nature of "it is what it is" and "yes, my bookstore getting robbed did suck, thank you for supporting us" we call this painful but necessary growth
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Joe Koch @horrorsong.blog · 09/09/2026
A reminder that a few brilliant friends & I did a completely free Ligotti tribute anthology. Download free to read my story "Jar Of Arms" and other fine scribblings. dl.bookfunnel.com/zum1k2dg9b
dl.bookfunnel.com
Get your FREE copy of We Will Speak Again of the Red Tower
“The ruined factory stood three stories high in an otherwise featureless landscape…” With these words, Thomas Ligotti begins one of the most influential short stories in the canon of horror and weird ...
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 09/09/2026
Guys I am afraid that indie literature is going to be the end of the world
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Kristina Ten @kristinaten.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
It's my birthday and I'd love for you to gift yourself (or a friend) a copy of my first book child, TELL ME YOURS, I'LL TELL YOU MINE. Nathan Ballingrud calls it "creepy, touching, grotesque, and beautiful." Stephen Graham Jones says it's filled with magic tricks!
I'm standing at the bottom of a set of outdoor stairs with lush foliage all around me and a flagstone path leading behind me, wearing a poofy-sleeved black dress with embroidered pink icons across the chest and down the left side of the skirt that mimic traditional tattoo designs. Also mustard-colored strappy clogs and dark sheer frilly socks. I have wavy auburn hair and am looking off to the side, caught mid-sentence. I'm holding a black purse.My book, TELL ME YOURS, I'LL TELL YOU MINE (yellow cover, pink text, brown rabbits sprinting around the edges), sits in front of a brown leather armchair next to a Beanie Baby–esque stuffie handmade by a good friend of mine in its image: yellow fuzzy body, pink satin ears and button eyes, a Beanie Baby–like tag with my initials (KT), and a beaded necklace that reads "Tell Me Yours" with hearts and smiley faces between the words.A five-star Goodreads review reads as follows:

"When I got this book, I was in the beginning stages of a (long) reading slump, and I wish I had picked it up sooner because it's the book that got me out of my slump. This is exactly the kind of horror I love; subtle at first, very unsettling, not reliant on gore for the sake of shocking the viewer. The language is also excellent; it's very clear that each word was deliberately chosen to maximize the effect of the horror elements."
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Will Musgrove @willmusgrove.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Yesterday I got my first blurb for my book, After Last Call, which is coming out from @malarkeybooks.bsky.social next April. If you haven't already, you can preorder my book here: malarkeybooks.com/store/afterl...
malarkeybooks.com
After Last Call by Will Musgrove — Malarkey
April 2027 Preorders will be signed by the author. After Last Call is about those who linger long past closing time, who bum around the bar’s parking lot to trade stories about a time when t...
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 08/09/2026
Here’s our post about this and also our hardcover sale What a fun day 😮‍💨
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 08/09/2026
This is my favorite detail of this terrible fucking situation
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 08/09/2026
Fun new experience: someone stole hundreds of dollars of tarot cards and a customer’s special order from the shop (and left an open bottle of wine and broke stuff) :))))))))
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merritt @merrittk.com · 08/09/2026
i dont know how to get this through to the true believers but i simply do not want to ask a machine to do my work for me. i dont want it to communicate with other people for me. i dont want it to plan my vacations or make my agendas or anything because all of that IS my life
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 07/09/2026
Cannot recommend this essay enough. It's incredible
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Jordan S. Carroll 🌹 @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
even if meritocracy were true and everyone ended up in the position warranted by their abilities, it wouldn't follow that people in working-class jobs deserve less political power or control over their labor.
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 07/09/2026
September in Buffalo
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 03/09/2026
Why not grab a book from your friendly downtown Buffalo indie bookshop? (we wanna give you the literature)
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 02/09/2026
DAMN. This short story feels like a Slaughterhouse Five for this bleak American moment. Sci-fi, comedy and heart dancing between humanity and the lack of it. Really something special. Deserves a huge readership. @kayv.bsky.social is consistently excellent, as is @seizethepress.bsky.social!!
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Friend just pointed out to me that the Claude trademark represents a rectum.
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 03/09/2026
Why not grab a book from your friendly downtown Buffalo indie bookshop? (we wanna give you the literature)
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 03/09/2026
look, it's fine that my ereader limits the amount of pages I can read in a day & plays ads directly into my cerebellum. Good books are a high-computational server load. If I want to see these characters level up over time faster, I can just deposit some excess plasma into the bloodweb and point up
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 03/09/2026
Been reading THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH and gotta say I really love the description of PKD on the back by Village Voice as a "poor man's Pynchon." would love to be a poor man's version of another author, just about anyone. all I know is I am not a rich man's version of another author lol
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Thirty West Publishing @thirtywestph.com · 03/09/2026
It is 2026. Amidst all the AI slop, shady MLM’s, inflation, and global unrest, there are still people that value the arts and humanity. You could’ve spent your money on anything else, but you decided to pay for a quality book from Thirty West. Thank you, on behalf of our authors.
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HAD @havehashad.com · 03/09/2026
Here's the link, which will be live in a little over an hour and a half, at 9pm central (and will then be dead once it hits 150 submissions) havehashad.submittable.com/submit/36697...
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 02/09/2026
DAMN. This short story feels like a Slaughterhouse Five for this bleak American moment. Sci-fi, comedy and heart dancing between humanity and the lack of it. Really something special. Deserves a huge readership. @kayv.bsky.social is consistently excellent, as is @seizethepress.bsky.social!!
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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 02/09/2026
If you want new fiction to get excited about, this thread I’m reposting is a list of work I love You can also check out the two books I wrote myself and pub’d with indie presses (BOXCUTTERS & FEAST OF THE PALE LEVIATHAN) or shop at the indie bookstore I run w/ my partner, @eveninghouse.bsky.social
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