July 2026.
Summerween, as they say.
Don’t look now, little ghosties… FALL APPROACHETH.
I mean it! It really is gunning for us, and with it literary festivals, conventions, flea markets, panel talks, and more! I am eyeing our upcoming calendars and watching them aggressively populate with a ton of FUN horror themed programming that we are so so happy to curate and/or be part of and that includes…
LITTLE GHOSTS FESTIVAL (2)! Sept. 26 & 27th at the Tranzac Club in Toronto.
An annual FREE showcase of 20+ Vendors, Panels, Tarot reading, and fun with pals. A celebration of the community that makes the indie horror scene in Toronto so fun. We are stacked this year with VHS creators, artists, zinesters, comics friends, small presses, and more. The weekend gets capped with..
Little Ghosts’ SHORT FILM SHOWCASE.
A small ticket price gets you a seat in the showroom for a dozen independently made short films curated by the ghosts team, and you can expect some filmmakers in attendance! A finale to the festival horror fans won’t want to miss.
Got a short film sitting on your shelf you want to share with us? QUICK! The submissions are still open for a couple weeks.
Putting together our annual festival is always a treat, and I am so happy to welcome returning friends to the vendor’s room and see some fun new faces. Full panel schedule will get released in August so you can plan your day(s) at the fest!
As for summer, we are busy here in the bookshop as always…
August Events… with Phi!
Hot, squelchy horror to end the summer right!
Friday, August 7th, 6-8pm… WORK IN PROGRESS NIGHT!
Are you a Local Author? Come by and share your latest and spookiest with a room of writers and supportive folks. Read your own or summon a reader from the room if you’re feeling shy and receive valuable constructive criticism before your work gets sent out into the publishing wilds.
All attendees MUST bring work to read! It only works if we are all vulnerable- but don’t be scared. Your bookshop Dads are here and believe in you.
Saturday, August 8th, 1-3pm… Signing: “Blackmouth: The Witch’s Mark” by Katie Sawatsky & Kyle J. Smith
Blackmouth: The Witch’s Mark by Kyle J. Smith and Katie Sawatsky is the first chapter in a haunting tale of witchcraft, ancient curses, and dark legacy. When an age-old evil resurfaces in the isolated town of Blackmouth, a young man is forced to confront the ghosts of his past while uncovering the truth behind an eldritch Witch whose influence has plagued the town for generations. Blending atmospheric storytelling with haunting visuals, Blackmouth: The Witch’s Mark is a chilling gothic fantasy perfect for fans of folk horror, dark fantasy, and supernatural mystery.
WIth special guest and moderator, Ricky Lima, to host a Talkback!
Friday, August 21st, 6-8pm… Little Ghosts Book Club Presents: “Overgrowth” by Mira Grant
Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she’s an alien disguised as a human being, and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has believed her.
Now, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realize that it’s already been warned, and it may be too late. The invasion is coming, Stasia’s biological family is on the way to bring her home, and very few family reunions are willing to cross the gulf of space for just one misplaced child.
What happens when you know what’s coming, and just refuse to listen?
Saturday, August 22nd, 1-3pm… Signing: “Pit of Eden” by Malcolm Derikx
Outside a small town somewhere in North America, a seemingly bottomless pit filled with an unidentified liquid has been discovered. Experts are baffled, and as the Eden substance spreads, strange incidents begin to occur: voices sing in dead languages, bodies morph into unexpected forms, old gods arise and make themselves known…
Witness the horrors and marvels of the Pit of Eden through fourteen linked comics of ancient Babylonian body horror written by Malcolm Derikx, featuring the artwork of fourteen amazing creators: Alina Wahab, Brenna Baines, Evan Worm, Félix the Rover, Ferro, Hannah E. Smith, Jackarais, Kaz Fantone, KIDSID, KJ Martinet, Luce Northstar, Luke Humphris, Michael Robinson, and Olga Wieszczyk.
Friday, August 28th, 6-8pm… QUEER FEARS! A Little Gay Book Club Presents: “Saltblood” by T.C. Parker
A remote island. A group of prisoners. And an evil as old as time.
Robin didn’t mean to break the law. Didn’t know at first what law she’d broken. And now she’s on her way to Salt Rock — a new-model prison for a new kind of criminal, way out in the remote Northern Isles of Scotland.
On Salt Rock, she’ll meet other prisoners like her — men and women from all over the world, spirited away from the lives they knew for crimes they didn’t know they were committing.
She’ll uncover the complex web of conspiracy that connects them all, confronting some of the darkness of her own past in the process.
And she’ll come face to face, finally, with an evil as old as the land itself.
It’s hell in those waters.
Saturday, August 29th, 5-7pm… Signing: “Queeird” & “Child of Hameln” by Max Turner
Join friend of the Ghosts, Max Turner, for a special signing event!
Queeird: Androids and aliens, werewolves and vampires, furries and... tentacles? Queeird is a collection of unusual, and at times monstrous, erotica, ranging from the ridiculous to the romantic: expect kinks, quirks and tropes. All fourteen erotic short stories feature trans masculine main characters with a variety of cis, non-binary, trans female and trans male lovers.
Child of Hameln: This supernatural mystery and light horror is a dark fable set in 1980’s small town USA, and is a retelling of the German folktale The Pied Piper of Hameln. Elk Pass is a town cloaked in darkness and plagued by an unknown evil, where twenty years earlier all but one of the town’s children were stolen. That remaining child, now the deputy sheriff, is left to unravel corruption and cover up when his mentor, the town sheriff, dies unexpectedly. The mystery unfolds as a snow storm blows in, threatening to isolate the town, leaving Deputy Bobby Taylor to deal with a plague of rats and the monsters, both human and fae, that follow.
KRISTIN’S KOZY CORNER…
Home sweet home… ?
Homecomings can be fraught with emotion, with expectation, with hopes and dreams; in movies they often start a story or provide the device upon which the plot turns. In horror it’s always a bad sign, “I never should have come back…” etc. There’s even the saying, “you can never go home again,” as a warning against looking back, trying to make something what it was when things have changed. However, not all homecomings have to come with a warning label; that first time you come home after a long trip (your bed!), or after visiting family (good or bad, family can be a lot), or being away for work, can be SUCH a relief. Your shoulders drop, you feel tension you didn’t know you were carrying melting away- that’s what the good version of a homecoming should feel like.
That’s what it’s been like being back at Little Ghosts after being away on my business trip (of sorts) to Union Station for all those months. In the few weeks since we closed the pop-up and I’ve returned back to our store, every regular I’ve seen & my friends and family have asked, “what’s it like being back?” The answer, quite simply is: It’s great! I can sleep in my own metaphorical bed, go up and down the familiar stairs, chat with the ghosts, pick a movie to watch (though we’ve all been just watching the OG Scream on a loop), and look outside onto Dundas West so content. Little Ghosts is home, and while Union Station was a nice place to visit, I wouldn’t want to live there.
All of this ruminating on the nature of home got me thinking about whether a book (or books), can evoke the feeling of home. For me the answer is a resounding yes! I can look at my shelves and and make so many emotional connections to when and where I got them (or had them gifted to me), and they take me back to my past; to a home I no longer have, to a snapshot in time of a moment, to family or solo trip and a feeling of contentment. Now I realize that I LOVE (always in all caps) books. I always have. Others may not feel quite as strongly - though I suspect if you’re reading this newsletter, you feel the same. Anyway, books are important to me on every level - and those books that feel like home? There’s the copy of “The Divorce Express” that my aunt gave me when my dad and mom split up - to this day I marvel at how the author seemed to truly know what I was going through and it honestly helped me cope. There’s the “Bedside Book of Adventure” (from the Readers Digest Bedside Editions) that my first stepdad gave to me, as one of the things we bonded over was books. I have to mention my “Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll” that my dad gave to me not long after he and my mom split up; I look at it on my bookshelf and remember the summer I spent memorizing “Jabberwocky” - it is one of my prized possessions. I have stories like these for so, so many of my books…
Can a horror book bring about that same feeling? Again, I say yes. Because horror books (movies, comics, shows), evoke emotion, memory and connection like every other. I often talk about Shirley Jackson’s seminal short story, “The Lottery” and how it scares me to this day, regardless of how often I’ve read it. I can remember reading it in English class in high school and the number it did on my brain. But it also opened up a door, and again that time and place feel like home to me. It’s a comfort to have that moment etched in memory, carried forward with me through the years, knowing that those words impacted me so deeply, that I could wrap them around me like a blanket if needed. What books are home to you? I know for many it’s their first Stephen King, or that Goosebumps title you read over and over. For others it’s V.C. Andrews (come on, those are pure horror). These are authors and series I hear over and over from customers and friends as ones that have stuck with them, that they can go back to in their memory. The beauty of books and people is that every experience is different, every page turned can hit differently, often depending on when and where you read them.
So when I say that Little Ghosts is home, I mean that on so many levels, and I see it on the faces of so many of you dear readers, when you come through the door of the shop and realize that you belong: That a part of you is on our shelves and that you’re always welcome.
Summerween! Apologies for the sudden sharp turn everyone, but if I don’t talk about at least a few books, the newsletter ghosts get a bit grumpy and no one wants a grumpy ghost! This year everyone is really embracing Summerween and it’s been such fun suggesting titles for you to enjoy for your spooky summer reads. Here are a few that I’ve talked about, and some that I think would be perfect summer horror reads:
Summer Fun Massacre by Craig DiLouie: The first in a new series from DiLouie, giving you all the retro summer camp vibes. Set in the 90s, flashbacks to the 80s - pull your Jason mask out of the closet for company and settle in.
Slasher Summer by E.L. Chen: I know I’ve raved about this book before - but now it’s officially out! And (at the time of this writing), we have signed copies having just hosted the author in store. You need this book in your life all my slasher lovelies!
Abyss by Nicholas Binge: A book that is maybe TOO on the nose given the current hellscape, but I do love existential horror, especially spilling out from the blender of late stage capitalism and creeping liminal spaces.
Summer of the Monsters by David Sodergren: A little extreme horror never hurt anyone, right? Except for maybe Lucy Brannigan and her father after they move to the small, Scottish town of Helsbridge. Sodergren takes you on yet another roller coaster in this sad, sweet, yet brutal coming of age tale.
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle: The latest from the delightfully out there pen of Chuck Tingle, is just right for your summer spooky read; grave robbing, rock ‘n’ roll, fashion and lots of carnage - what more could you want?
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey: Celia is desperate to be better, to be the version of herself she imagines, to stop messing up; so she journeys to Kindred Cove, convinced that all the stories are true, that in this reclusive community that only opens its (metgaphorical) doors to outsiders but once a year, will fix everything that’s wrong. So desperate is Celia, that the cracking facade of wellness and togetherness in Kindred Cove doesn’t dissuade her from believing, from knowing that she will be transformed.
Happy reading Little Ghosts family - stop by any time for even more recommendations!
ON WRITING… with Jay!
Comparison is the Thief of Joy.
As a guy who directed his first non-distributed movie at 20, directed a distributed (albeit impossible-to-find) movie at 25, and is still struggling to get things greenlit at 40, how do I feel about the success of things like The Backrooms and Obsession? Well, reflexively, terrible. I can’t say it doesn’t suck. I have a bunch of stories I believe are worth telling, but I have to come to terms with the fact that no matter how hard I try or how well my work is received, most of my projects won’t see the light of day. That’s a harrowing prospect when you have to consider not only the time and effort that went into the scripts but also the mental real estate invested in stories that won’t exist. That energy and focus could have gone into volunteering at a soup kitchen, but no, I had to write an ambitious ’90s thriller that no one was asking for and would cost millions of dollars to produce.
Unfortunately, success in the artistic field is not a meritocracy. I feel like, given the opportunity and proper marketing strategy, many of my talented colleagues would be overnight successes. Timing, social trends, environment, politics, and way more variables that I can’t even fathom play a factor in the success of an artist and their craft. And that’s not even accounting for marketing campaigns (love our one wish willow, but the Obsession coffee at the Toronto premiere was terrible). Does it make me feel any better that art is at the whims of an ever-changing and unpredictable corporate landscape? No. Absolutely not. If anything, it makes me feel worse and further isolated from the human race.
Wow, I feel inspired. Thanks, Jay. Sorry, I’ll set aside my jaded bitterness and get to the good stuff. With cited sources! But first, financial and/or popularity should not be the main priority in your creative endeavors. If it is, there are way easier ways to gain cash and fans. Self-discovery and fulfillment are ultimately why you should pursue your craft. Everything afterwards is a bonus. Sure, but I need a place to live AND eat, and if I can do that through my time, focus, and energy-consuming art, that’d be great. Unfortunately, that’s a rare occurrence. But it isn’t impossible.
I’m going to stray away from art for a moment and delve into the exciting world of published academic studies, you lucky-so-in-sos! While salaries showed a steady increase with age in the education sector, publication rates declined considerably among older adults (over 50). Researchers from Academic Analytics discovered that professors peaked in authorship within 10 years of their last degree and experienced a 90% drop in publications within the 20 years before retirement. That’s terrifying. The neat thing about this was the number of attempts to publish in the latter twenty years. Those professors who remained active in their publishing pursuits had roughly a 60% success rate in the back half of their career compared to the 65% success rate of professors in their peak years. That ain’t bad.
Now there’s a wide spectrum of differences between art and academia, but it does go to show you can’t succeed if you don’t try. And if you do try later in your career, your chances of success are as good as any. And guess what: others’ breakthroughs are also your breakthroughs. I’ve had an existential liminal horror thing I’ve been looking to pursue for a while, and now I have the Backrooms to point to as proof of concept. Also, trends come and go with the wind, so maybe the world is just catching up to your particular aesthetic. No art is made without an affect on the craft overall, so even your least acknowledged work helped sharpen your skillset. You also got to spend time doing your favorite thing, and that is by no means time wasted.
Write on, Weary Travellers.
Retail Therapy:
xviii. Letting go of “Should”
It might be surprising information to the folks who read far enough down on the newsletter to read “Bossman” ghosts’ thoughts that I am plagued often by ideas of how things should look. This idea, this type of doubt and constraint, is rarely associated with the tiny trans punk who does things like organize community action, speak out against societal norms, reject traditional aesthetics, builds a goddamned horror bookstore… and yet. I wake up in the morning heavy with the weight of not being where I should be, about the shape of my life not looking like it should look, of thing not progressing at the rate they should go.
I don’t know what terrible demonic goblin I imagine is regularly assessing my life and finding it wanting, or what part of me IS that awful toothy thing, but when things go wrong it certainly makes it easy to wallow or turn these sharp little shoulds in on myself. I wasn’t doing things in accordance with the made up laws of how shit is supposed to be done, and therefore! It is all my fault somehow. Even when what is going wrong is arguably an “Act of God” (pandemic, recession, ecological crisis, war, flood, fire).
This year was spent shaking off a TON of entrepreneurial shoulds. In this absolute deathtrap of an economic system focused on endless growth, it is easy to be swept up in the Should of Expansion. In a similar vein, sleep is for the weak and no rest for the wicked, so the Should of Hustle is real. On top of all this, there is the ever-present Should of (financial) Success. All of these seem reasonable for a Capital-B-Business-Owner. All of these seem necessary. If I am not doing all this, am I even invested in the survival of myself and the bookstore and the staff and the community etc etc etc?
The answer, my friends, is yes. Of course. Almost every waking hour of my weird, queer, creative, challenging little life is spend in pursuit of making sure that the things I build have longevity and that the people who help them go are safe and comfortable and happy in all the ways I can control. Holding myself to absolutely impossible shoulds is not doing anything but injecting shame into circumstances that aren’t mine to own. Society says we Should Expand, but when we did, we found there was only more pressure to pay more bills and appease more people who weren’t even the people who love, understand, and support our goals. Society says we Should Hustle but when we did, we were impatient with each other and less able to bring a kindness and care into the space and to our creative community, less available to offer the free programming that creates connection and reminds us of the positive impact the work here has. Society says we Should have more (financial) Success, and yes, a pile of money would be nice, but stabilizing the business and making sure everyone is compensated fairly should be prioritized over profit. I’m moving forward without these, knowing what we want is a quieter, simpler, and more radically decent thing than we see in the world.
The truth of it all, small business or personal, is that the presence of Should is a Sign of Expectation. If those expectations don’t align with what you actually want… What you should do is tell them to fuck off. While the expectations of friends and family and outside eyeballs might be borne of experience and a desire to make sure you’re taken care of, that doesn’t mean they fit you- the direction you’re going, the life you’re building, the values that drive you. Hell, the world is so vastly different than it was even a decade ago, those expectations were forged in a fire we couldn’t even imagine in this moment. Folks can throw those shoulds at you, but you don’t have to hold them to yourself and let them eat you alive. I, for one, am trying not to.