Each week we have a book group on Mondays and Tuesdays. There are two slots: 10 am Tuesday and 7 pm Monday (BST) and you’re very welcome to either, wherever you are in the world and however much you’d like to participate. To sign up get in touch with @RomGothSam on twitter or send an email to sam@romancingthegothic.com
From April, meetings will be held at 7pm on Mondays and then 10am on Tuesdays
SIGN UP for individual author visits here
19th/20th January
This week’s talk focuses on queer archives (and vampires) so what better excuse to read a queer vampire novella?
Araminta Chase is a fuck-up. Falling out of a window to avoid someone? Life as usual. Landing on a vampire? That’s a new one. And the vampire wants to know exactly why Minty was where she was, when she was. “I’m afraid of commitment” won’t cut it.
When Minty’s accused of murdering that same vampire, shit really hits the fan. She’s nabbed by the very people she works for, an agency that acts as a go-between for monsters and the human world. Killing a vampire is a no-no for non-agents. Worse, Minty’s body count is supposedly at two.
Minty didn’t kill anyone, but she doesn’t want to clear her name. What she wants is her kid brother, a thirteen-year-old werewolf named Sid. But a mysterious research institute called Better Choices, Better World has been looking for him for a long time, and Minty’s “crime” was all they needed to sniff him out. They wanted him, now they’ve got him.
Well, Minty wants him back. And she’s got new teeth.
26th/27th January
This week’s talk looks at the ‘Final Girl’ in three modern films so we’ll be watching all three over the course of the week! The films are:
Ready or Not (2019)
You’re Next (2011)
Death of a Unicorn (2025)
2nd/3rd February
This month’s topic is ‘Writers of the Ghostly’
Seventeen-year-old Li Lan lives in 1890s Malaya with her quietly-ruined father, who returns one evening with a proposition – the fabulously wealthy Lim family want Li Lan to marry their son. The only problem is, he’s dead. After a fateful visit to the Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also her desire for the Lims’ handsome new heir. At night she is drawn into the Chinese afterlife – a world of ghost cities, paper funeral offerings, monstrous bureaucracy and vengeful spirits. Enlisting the help of mysterious Er Lang (a dragon turned clerk) Li Lan must uncover the secrets of the ghost world – before she becomes trapped there forever.
10th/11th February
This week’s read is an unusual short story collection. Published in Household Words in 1859, The Haunted House is a related collections of stories by different authors in the same house. It includes works by Charles Dickens, Hesba Stretton, George Augustus Sala, Adelaide Anne Procter, Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell.
You can find and read each story here
17th/18th February
We’re going back in time to explore what the early 19th century thought about ghosts with some ‘true’ stories and tales…
You can read this short chapbook here.
24th/25th February
For the last week of ghost writing month, we’re reading Nuzo Onoh’s Where the Dead Brides Gather
Bata, an eleven-year-old girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin’s door. Her skin, hair, and eyes have turned a dazzling white colour, which even the medicine-man can’t heal. Her cousin is to get married the next morning, but only if she can escape the murderous attack of a ghost-bride, who used to be engaged to her groom.
Through the night, Bata battles the vengeful ghost and finally vanquishes it before collapsing. On awakening, she has no recollection of the events. And when the medicine-man tries to exorcise the entities clinging to her body as a result of her supernatural possession, Bata dies on the exorcism mat. There begins her journey. She is taken into Ibaja-La, the realm of dead brides, by Mmuọ-Ka-Mmuọ, the ghost-collector of the spirit realm. There she meets the ghosts of brides from every culture who died tragically before their weddings; both the kind and the malevolent. Bata is given secret powers to fight the evil ghost-brides before being sent back to the human realm, where she must learn to harness her new abilities as she strives to protect those whom she loves.
Romancing the Gothic 