Amanda J. McGee

Mostly automated account. Writer of dark fantasy and horror.

[literaticat]

Do you think the (possible) disappearance of twitter will effect publishing in a negative way?

Not really. I think that as humans we do like to socialize, and we will do so someplace else if twitter goes away. Just like we moved to Twitter when MySpace and LiveJournal ceased to be "things."

It will perhaps make publishers and authors have to re-think how they approach marketing and getting the word out about their books. But since I don't think "tweeting about it" was ever REALLY an effective method of selling books anyway, that might be a good thing to re-think. :-)

[dvnwild]

In folklore, a ghost (sometimes known as an apparition, haunt, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter or spectre, spirit, spook, and wraith) is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living. Descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to realistic, lifelike visions.

[ajmcgeewrites]

I am not really back here? But I may post more occasionally, since Twitter is performing a self-immolation. I’m also on Mastodon if that’s your jam: @[email protected]. 

[ajmcgeewrites]

Wakanda Forever

I talk about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which I loved.

I saw it. I loved it. One of the things I particularly loved about this Marvel movie was the fact that it didn’t quite feel like a Marvel movie. There was an emphasis on grief and the difficulty of grieving that I thought was particularly well paced, a hard, bitter shell around the soft, gooey action sequences. People who have read my work will not be surprised by this. I am fascinated by how…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

(A Very Belated) Reading Round-up: October 2022

(A Very Belated) Reading Round-up: October 2022

So fun story. I usually wait until the third week of the month to post my round-up, since I’m often still reading things I want to tell folks about. I was running a touch behind on polishing this post this month because of dayjob business, so it was actually going to be the week of. No problem, I had time, I could do it. Then I got Covid Round 2 and all that went out the window. So here, a week…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Writerly updates

I haven’t done a personal check-in post in a while, so I thought I would drop in to provide some updates. My wordcount has been pretty depressed this year, which isn’t really surprising. Some of the reasons for this are personal, some professional, but the big elephant in the room has been trying to get my current query project, TFK, ready to go out into the world. Luckily, I just finished my…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Infernal Salon

Hey friends! I’m doing a fun little improv event tonight with some friends. If you’re interested, you can stream it at twitch.tv/arvaneleron.

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Reading Round-up: August/September 2022

Since it’s almost spooky season, we’re going to go ahead and do our round-up for August and the first part of September. Our next post will be all Halloween themed, so if you’re looking for spooky reads I promise you, I’m reading them. This post, however, is predominantly urban fantasy and science fiction. A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers I got a little put off of reading end of…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Salt and Lemons: The Amalfi Coast

Salt and Lemons: The Amalfi Coast

When people talk about going to Italy, they travel for the art, the history, the landscapes and the pasta. And yet, what I most want to talk about is the lemons. After leaving Pompeii, we headed to Minori, a small town on the Amalfi Coast. The Amalfi Coast is the kind of place you film movies in, where you stage cinematic confessions of love, a landscape that feels like the quintessence of…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Reading Round-up: June/July 2022

Reading Round-up: June/July 2022

Witness me trying to catch up on my Reading Round-ups with this really long Round-up of all things June and July. I’ve organized it by genre so that you can just skip to your favorites there. If you can’t find something you enjoy on this list, I cannot help you. I read far too many books (and by too many I mean not enough, because THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH). Anyway, here we go. Science…

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Wandering the Ruins: Pompeii Scavi

Wandering the Ruins: Pompeii Scavi

There is perhaps no more famous archeological site than Pompeii Scavi, the excavation area for the buried city of ancient Pompeii. There is a modern Pompeii right next door, so be sure not to confuse them. One is an ancient city founded by the Etruscans, conquered by Rome, that ended in three days of fire and ash. The other has high speed rail. The obligatory penis art. It’s everywhere. We took…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Getting There: Travel kerfluffles

Getting There: Travel kerfluffles

Let’s start where things began. I’ve flown since Covid started, but I haven’t flown internationally. It’s not an easy lift at the best of times. Add to the ongoing pandemic a record-breaking hot summer with tons of storm cells dancing their way across the northeast, and you have a recipe for a real bad time. Luckily, airports have bars. I want to say before we start that we were in Italy for 14…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

The Impromptu Italy Adventure

The Impromptu Italy Adventure

Earlier this year, a friend from college reached out to me to say she was getting married. I was excited! Where was the wedding? Italy, she said. As some of you may remember, I took three months away last year, an exorbitant amount of time that required more than a bit of finagling, to explore the US, specifically the Pacific Northwest. So when my friend said she was having a destination…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

ARC Review: Wake the Bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne

ARC Review: Wake the Bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne

Hello my dears, it’s time for an ARC review! This week I’m happy to bring you Wake the Bones, a lovely Appalachian horror tale out on July 12, 2022. I want to write something to describe this book that is as lyrical as the prose itself, but I will not in any fashion manage. Kilcoyne makes descriptions of the utterly familiar Appalachian setting sing whether she’s talking about the menacing…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Reading Round-up: May 2022

Reading Round-up: May 2022

May has been very busy, but I got some good reading in. There were so many titles I didn’t get to this month that I’m very excited about, so look forward to the June post (assuming I can read a little faster!) The Lotus Palace by Jeannie Lin I loved this book. The Lotus Palace is a fast-paced murder mystery, but the star of the show is a realistic romance between two complicated people from…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Last Exit and Choosing Hope

Last Exit and Choosing Hope

Sometime in the past couple of years someone said, in an Instagram Story or a Tiktok or some other ephemeral medium, something that stuck with me: “You can’t see the end of the path until you walk it.” The person in question was talking about the environmental movement, about how it seems impossible to adapt to the changing world we find ourselves in, how every proposal for change is met with the…

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[ajmcgeewrites]

Reading Round-up: April 2022

Reading Round-up: April 2022

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske I did enjoy this book, but I don’t think it is quite what I was expecting. It opened with a pretty gruesome murder. It was in fact dotted with murders, and abuse, and a lot of really grim things. But that was layered over with a romance that was, at its core, very sweet. At the time I read it, I was more into the murdery bits than the romance bits, which veered…

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