TALES FROM THE HAUNTING

a queer monster anthology

WHAT IS THIS?

My partner and I first bonded over a shared love of villains, monsters, and the macabre. We also both happened to be neurodivergent weirdos who develop OCs for fun. We started cowriting some scenes just to see how our various creeps would interact with each other, and ended up loving it so much that we... kind of never stopped?

Tales from the Haunting is our attempt to gather all of that writing in one place, because it would be nice to not dig through fifteen years of scattered docs, emails, and blog posts just to read everything in order.

WHAT'S IT LIKE?

Most of it takes place in a post-apocalyptic urban fantasy world. Humans think they have it tough, but most don't realize they're living alongside errant godlings, shapeshifting dragons, eldritch vampires, and a monster-filled nightmare dimension called the Haunting. The latter has been especially strange lately, causing more than a few unsettling distortions in time, space, and reality.

Because we literally just write to entertain each other, these stories are deeply character-driven, loosely plotted, and extremely self-indulgent. There are a lot of queer monster boys having complicated feelings about each other. There's a lot of humor, a lot of drama, and about twelve different flavors of horror. There are also MP3 players, chicken-bats, and weapons that are way cooler than they are practical.

WHY IS IT WRITTEN SO WEIRD?

These are written in the time-honored play-by-post style. We each write from our own character's perspective, taking turns and responding to each other as the scene unfolds.

It creates an ongoing, conversational narrative that bounces between perspectives—which is fun, but can be confusing if you're used to traditional prose. We've separated each response with horizontal rules to make those shifts clearer and easier to follow.

Someday we might convert these into a more standard format, but right now that would take far more editing time than either of us have.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

Each story will have a specific rating and warnings attached, but here are a few general notes that apply to most of our work:

• Characters often struggle with mental health and past trauma, and are dealing with anxiety, dissociation, depression, and similar issues.
• We enjoy writing deeply flawed characters who don't always behave in healthy or emotionally mature ways. Some are manipulative, self-destructive, or morally bankrupt in ways that make them very hard to root for.
• Because much of this is written improvisationally, some plotlines may never reach neat or satisfying resolutions. Character growth is usually slow and very messy.
• Everyone's kind of horny for murder. I'm sorry.
• Everyone's kind of horny for each other. I'm less sorry about this one.