iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 14h

This was a departure from my usual reading but I adored it. Grann writes in a wonderfully compelling style and I found myself eagerly turning pages to learn what happened next. He brought this wild true story to life with empathy, honestly, and understanding for all the key players. So good #booksky

Cover art for The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann. The cover shows a painting of an old wooden sailing ship being battered by waves in a stormy sea.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Now that we’re a month out from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time rerelease, I want to try and get my thoughts in order as to why this game is so meaningful to me. I’ve always said it’s my favorite game of all time and there are a lot of reasons for that. This is going to be long.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I loved this book. I loved it because it’s a brilliant look at mental health through the lens of folk horror. I also hated this book because I recognized a bit of myself in the MC that I found very unsettling. But if you like folk horror, I truly cannot recommend it enough. Fantastic read.

Cover art for the novel Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist. The background fades from red at the top to off-white at the bottom. There are two sheep’s heads on the cover facing front. Each staring at the reader with an unsettling grin. The words “the house isn’t haunted. She is.” Are printed in white near the top.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

THE CARROW HAUNT X THE SEPTEMBER HOUSE 🏚️ during a trip to a reportedly haunted house on an island 👩🏻‍❤️‍👨🏻 a skeptic, Zoe, meets Forrest, an intriguing professor of the paranormal 👻 unfortunately, the ghosts keep turning romance into horror as they don’t want anyone to leave #DVPit #A #H #R #DIS #ND

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

THE CARROW HAUNT X THE SEPTEMBER HOUSE What happens when you don’t believe in ghosts, but become the center of attention of a scary spirit, plus the center of attention of an intriguing professor of the paranormal? Zoe is about to find out while trapped in a haunted house #DVPit #A #H #R #DIS #ND

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Zoe is not convinced of the existence of ghosts or the practicality of modern love, but finds herself grappling with both spirits and an intriguing paranormal professor after agreeing to be the necessary skeptic on an expedition to a haunted house in this horror romance #DVPit #A #H #R #DIS #ND

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

DVParty Day 5 My WIP is best described as a dark faerie tale about what happens when intergenerational family trauma becomes tangled up in Irish mythos. #DVParty

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

DVParty - Day 4 The Haunting of Crescent Moon Isle as a meme. Sometimes characters are smart and don’t do the genre stupid thing. Doesn’t always help them. #DVParty

A meme that shows a stick figure with a hat on the right. The words on the left read “this is Bill. Bill didn’t go toward creepy sounds in an abandoned house that was said to be haunted. Be like Bill.”

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

DVParty - Day 3 Opening line of The Haunting of Crescent Moon Isle: Zoe’s lack of belief in ghosts was not a conscious decision she had made. #DVParty

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

DVParty Day 2 - Zoe is 36, a professional pianist, a skeptic of the paranormal, and 2 years out from a nasty divorce. She hopes to find love again, though she’s as skeptical of that as she is of ghosts. So falling for a guy at a supposedly haunted house will be fine. She thinks. #DVParty

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My wonderful and talented friend @allymation.bsky.social made these absolutely lovely sketches for me of the first time my main character, Zoe, sees a ghost in The Haunting of Crescent Moon Isle. Never seen my words translated to images before and it’s a pretty amazing feeling #DVParty

A sketch of a ghost at the a window. She’s in an old fashioned gown and wrapped in chains. Her eyes are pure black yet her face is distraught

A sketch of a living woman seeming a ghost at a window. The ghost wears an old fashioned gown and she is wrapped in chains. Only the back of the living woman’s head is visible in the image yet it is clear the ghost is staring straight at her.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Finally started Dredge and I have to purposefully stop myself from playing too long at a time. This game is delightfully addictive. Which isn’t surprising. Lovecraftian nightmares from the deep is pretty much always a winner for me.

Title screen of the video game Dredge. It shows a lighthouse on a rocky island filled with trees as the sky behind turns to twilight. A distant island can be seen in the background. The loading screen has four options, “new game,” “settings,” “credits,” and “downloadable content.”

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Trans folks deserve the same rights, respect, and equality that everybody else deserves. If you are willing to through them under the bus for political expediency, what that tells me is that you’d do the same to any other minority group without hesitation. Equality cannot be handed out piecemeal

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Take gorgeous prose. Add in a modern fantasy based in Buddhist teachings. Center it on a protagonist who constantly rejects himself and his destiny and you have this riveting and unique book #booksky

Cover of the book The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. A bronze door is set against a dark blue sky dotted with stars. Which is set against a bright yellow splash of color. Which is, in turn, set against a pattern evoking blue and white porcelain. It gives the impression of multiple layers of reality.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Some movies I’ve really enjoyed recently: Colony Coyote vs Acme Dear You Each of them totally unique but doing their own thing incredibly well.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

My phone just attempted to autocorrect “friend” to “drone” and I think that says everything about our tech overlords

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Fascinated, disturbed, moved, none of these words seems adequate to describe this book. The way Jones rewrote vampire mythos to serve the themes was brilliant. And I always love a story in a story in a story. A lyrical and difficult read at times but definitely worth putting in the effort #booksky

Cover art for the novel The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. It has an off white background dominated by the neck and shoulders of an American buffalo facing to the right. The title is in red while the authors name is in black.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Thoughts on movies I’ve seen recently: It Ends - interesting meta liminal horror. Not scary as much as broodingly existential. I liked what it had to say and the ambiguity it lived in The End of Oak Street - a delightfully fun throwback summer blockbuster. Bring on more scary but fuzzy dinosaurs!

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Quick rundown of movies I’ve seen in theaters lately: Train to Busan rerelease - remains a masterpiece Six: The Musical - excellent The Rivals of Amziah King - unexpectedly great Wrong Girls - delightfully funny Your Name rerelease - still one of my favorite movies ever

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Finally picked up a used copy of Stray for my PS4 and started it. First impression - oh how cute. I’m hanging with cat friends and being a cat. A few minutes later - no!!! Why is the cat hurt? I’m not sure I can play this. #stray #straygame

Box for the game Stray on the PS4. The box art shows an orange cat with a small tech style pack on its back. The cat is lit by red neon lights on its right and green neon lights on its left.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Did a double feature of I Want Your Sex and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma on Monday. Both great in different ways! Bring on more movies that aren’t afraid of exploring sex and sexuality given that most the mainstream movies come off as terrified of both

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

It’s hard to articulate what I thought of this book. A deeply dark and disturbing tale, blending a faerie story with the devastating effects of childhood trauma and an unreliable narrator. It’s a book without clear answers that I will be thinking about for a long time to come #booksky

Cover art for the novel You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce. The cover shows a woman’s face in blue light. She’s expressionless, unsettlingly so. A few bare tree branches are in the foreground of her face. Overall the cover gives off an unsettling and cold feeling, appropriate for the book’s content.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Enjoyed this Irish mythos based epic fantasy. At times it felt like an elongated fairy tale (complimentary) and I was impressed that the author pulled off an epic fantasy where the main character was silent for the vast majority of the book #booksky

Cover art for the novel Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. There is a multi-colored swan on a green background shaded to look like a fall forest. White text reads “love is the strongest magic of all…”

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Did a double feature of The Odyssey and Hadestown today. Because why see one adaptation of Greek mythology when you can see two?

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Loved The Invite. What a funny, awkward, and in the end, deeply poignant movie. Sometimes the best movies just put a handful of actors in a handful of rooms and let them go and The Invite did it brilliantly. I’m super curious to see the movie it’s based on.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I really enjoyed Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. It was genuinely hilarious in places and turned out to be a brilliant send up of The Wizard of Oz at the same time. Also always nice to get the reminder that wonderful movies are being made outside of the franchise / IP space

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Really enjoyed watching Widow’s Bay. It perfectly captures the present feeling of, well yes, the horrors surround us, but we still have to pay rent and go to work. Sure, the monsters come but so do those bills. Nothing else I’ve seen recently has quite understood that tone

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Finally read this masterpiece of post-apocalyptic fiction. A brooding meditation on love and what actually makes us human, it’s a compelling novel that answers no questions about its world, but grapples with some of the most fundamental questions about existence #booksky

Cover of the novel I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. Done in a modern art style, the cover shows a white ladder coming out of a dark rectangle on the ground. The ground is represented by green fading into purple while yellow mountains are seen in the distance against a sky that suggests a sunrise. A crescent white moon is seen on the left side of the ladder while a yellow diamond is placed above the ladder. The entire image is surrounded with a red boarder.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

I found the movie The Death of Robin Hood fascinating. After a viscerally brutal first act, the film turns into a mediating reflection on cycles of violence and how we confront our own legacies at the end of our life. Going to be thinking about it for a while.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Saw the movie Leviticus last night. Fantastically disturbing film that brilliantly uses horror as a metaphor to talk about the deadly trauma religious homophobia can impart on teens

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I really enjoyed this dark exploration of the trad wife trend, performative social media, mental health, and the general hatred in the US towards women for simply existing. I went in thinking it would unfold one way, but I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong #booksky

The cover of the novel Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. The cover shows a somewhat distorted traditional farm in front of mountains and behind a field of either wheat or golden grass. The sky fades from green to orange as it goes from left to right. Overall it leaves you with a slightly uneasy feeling, like everything is just off kilter.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Interesting book written from the point of view of a changeling. I’ve always been fascinated by changelings as a concept and it was neat to read a book that treated them with compassion, and not just fear or disgust #booksky

Cover art for Cuckoo Song by Frances Harding. The cover is dark and shows the face and neck of a porcelain doll with a crack running down one side of her face.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Really enjoyed this creepy folk horror novel. I’m always drawn to stories that explore mental illness in women and dangerous religious fervor and The Lost Village covers both. Big takeaway? Don’t go exploring unexplained abandoned villages without a logical escape plan. It never goes well #booksky

Cover are of the novel The Lost Village by Camilla Sten. The image shows a dark abandoned looking building against a cloudy gray sky. A lone bare tree with no leaves stands next to the building. The entire vibe is foreboding and unsettling.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

I was utterly engaged with this book from start to finish. Equal parts creepy — evil puppets always get me — and compelling, it was a great story about grief and inherited family trauma. Plus a very creepy evil puppet. I can’t emphasize the creepiness of the evil puppet enough #booksky

The cover art for How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix. The background is dark and then is a pixelated house in the center. All the windows are dark but light is spilling out of the open front door.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I thought this book was going to play out differently, but it surprised me in the best ways. I love ghost stories that shift and give you a mystery to unravel along with the haunting. Unsettling, atmospheric, and romantic, I always enjoy a Simone St. James book #booksky

Cover art for the novel The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James. It shows a creepy barn at sunset surrounded by black crows.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Darcy Coates writes horror with cozy elements and her books always hit. The Carrow Haunt was fantastic. It was equal parts scary and uplifting with characters you just enjoy hanging out with — minus the serial killer ghost. As usual with Coates, I had a great time and devoured it quickly #booksky

Cover image of The Carrie Haunt by Darcy Coates. It shows a spooky old fashioned staircase with a woman in a long dress floating above it on her back.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

I’m not sure what I was expecting from The Silent Companions, but this book was wild. Eerie, creepy, atmospheric, it was everything I want in a period set horror novel #booksky

Book cover for The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell. It shows a repeated image of a young girl in an old fashioned dress.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

After much prodding from my sister, I read this remarkable thriller. Horrifying subject matter, but handled well and with respect. The twists and turns were both brilliant and devastating in their execution. Reading about awful truths is important to remind us how much work there is still to do.

The cover for the novel False Witness by Karin Slaughter

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Finally read this absolute masterpiece. Butler will always be one of the great American writers. As always, she walks a gorgeous line between devastation and hope. A critical and almost prophetic work examining a potential collapse of America and how to keep your humanity alive #booksky

The cover art for the book Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about redemption. Not in any sort of religious sense, but in a moral one. Who gets it and how? When do we accept the redemption of people who have done or supported great evil? I don’t know the answers, but I think everyone needs to figure out where their line is and soon.

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

On the lookout for any haunted house books with strong romance plot lines set in the modern era. I’m all ears for any suggestions. #booksky

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Finished Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon as my first book of the year. While the gender politics are rooted in the time it’s written, the atmosphere and building sense of dread are top notch. If anyone has recommendations for similar atmospheric folk horror, I’d love to hear them. #booksky

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Evie, a less-than-content thirty-three year old struggling with both her mental health and the pressures of American capitalism, encounters a series of strange and horrifying events during a weekend trip to the woods. Is it her anxiety? Or is there true evil in the forest? #DVPit #A #H #DIS #MH

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Lauren Miller @lkmiller.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

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