Daniel Carpenter

thread: how I built the magic system for the red sacrament

Never forget the guy who had been waiting half an hour for his food in the pizza place I ran, who RANG THE FUCKING RESTAURANT FROM HIS TABLE to ask where it was.

cover of Teenage Girls Can Be Demons by Hailey Piper, art by Julia Lloyd, on a twinkling pink background, bracketed by the words Bram Stoker Award Finalist and Splatterpunk Award Finalist

Realized my @titanbooks.bsky.social demons are finalists for both the Bram Stoker Awards and the Splatterpunk Awards. I'm proud of this book, both as a fiction collection and because of the personal connection readers have shared about, whether in their demon days or remembering them.

Thank you 🖤😈

Listen to Premee! I don’t make the rules!

The Red Sacrament by Sara Hinkley: 9781835410820 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books A savage, hypnotic dive into the lives and deaths of a coven of vampires living in 19th Century Paris on the cusp of revolt and revolution, perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Laura Purcell and ...

Hi quick reminder :) If you do not preorder THE RED SACRAMENT by @boneysoups.bsky.social I will come over to your house and bite you myself :) And I am not a vampire so it will be horrible and painful and messy :)

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/817973...

There's been a change of cover for my new novel THE CRACKS!

Written under the name T. H. Huddleston and published by @titanbooks.bsky.social on Oct 6, it's a satirical Gothic thriller all about class, inequality and the enduring power of punk rock.

More here: www.tomhuddleston.co.uk/the-cracks

We’re delighted to share the new cover for THE CRACKS by @tomhuddleston.bsky.social, coming in October 2026! 🖤🏠

This funny and delightfully scary novel is a love letter to the power of punk, in which a woman clashes with an ancient English manor hell-bent on upholding tradition…

@ICELEVEL = obi-wan kenobi: I fought in a galactic war and watched my pupil become a fascist. The most evil people imaginable are in this airport bar

Had an amazing time, as always, at the Ghost Story Festival. Still the best genre event I go to every single year.

Happy birthday! Welcome to the 40 club!

Who wants a ghost story these days? These people totally have the answer…

@dancarpenter.bsky.social @unheimlichmanvr.bsky.social @willmclean21.bsky.social

I was bleary-eyed and Not Quite Awake but after @dancarpenter.bsky.social’s workshop on experimental fiction I am not only energised but also might have an inkling of how to tackle structure challenges in the novel?!

This morning I finally wrote a sentence in the novel that I have had in my head since I wrote the very first sentence about three years ago. The big, big reveal. Feels very satisfying to have done that... now I've just got to finish the damn thing.

Today!!

A ghost

Getting serious at the ghost story festival...

Hunting by the River, by the pool!

The artist pictured with a ghost.

En route to the UK Ghost Story Festival.

Appearances at the Ghost story festival

Here's where I'll be over the weekend at the UK Ghost Story Festival in Derby.

The kids watched IF yesterday, and not the good one. My takeaway from it is that I'm now absolutely convinced that John Krasinski has never seen a film in his life.

The Gorton and Denton result is fantastic for several reasons, but easily the funniest one is that the Tories got so few votes that they LOST THEIR DEPOSIT.

In a word: yes!

In several more words, Joel Lane on Cornell Woolrich:

Appearances at the Ghost story festival

Here's where I'll be over the weekend at the UK Ghost Story Festival in Derby.

YouTube video by MUBI TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA | Official Teaser | In Theaters August 7

"There is a hole at the bottom of the lake, where the movies come from."

I AM SO IN.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA5N...

I've been running workshops recently about horror, but one of the things I've tried to impress on people is that prose is a form that has distinct advantages over movies and TV, and as writers, we should be exploiting those advantages.

This is a really good piece about that very thing.

What does an artist do, mostly? She tweaks that which she’s already done. There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly we’re adjusting that which is already there. The writer revises, the painter touches up, the director edits, the musician overdubs. I write, “Jane came into the room and sat down on the blue couch,” read that, wince, cross out “came into the room” and “down” and “blue” (Why does she have to come into the room? Can someone sit UP on a couch? Why do we care if it’s blue?) and the sentence becomes “Jane sat on the couch – ” and suddenly, it’s better (Hemingwayesque, even!), although … why is it meaningful for Jane to sit on a couch? Do we really need that? And soon we have arrived, simply, at “Jane”, which at least doesn’t suck, and has the virtue of brevity.

See also, George Saunders' essay "What writers really do when they write" which has maybe the definitive paragraph on editing I've ever read. www.theguardian.com/books/2017/m...

I've been running workshops recently about horror, but one of the things I've tried to impress on people is that prose is a form that has distinct advantages over movies and TV, and as writers, we should be exploiting those advantages.

This is a really good piece about that very thing.

Congratulations to all of the 2025 Bram Stoker Award® finalists! It’s so wonderful to see so many Titan authors on the list! 🎉

I know a guy, but he's constantly shifting.

My copy of 'Farewell, My Lovely' has the inscription "Ignore the title darling, I'm not going anywhere".

A+ State of the Union counterprogramming by TCM.