October is rapidly approaching…if you are looking for scares of the cosmic horror variety that come in easily digestible bite sized packages sure to induce those hits of existential dread you crave, then look no further. I’ve got 4 such stories out with more on the way. Check them out here: https://www.colintbates.com/books-1 Huge shout out to the amazing Steph Grossman for her wonderful edits and Michael Thompson Brown for his stellar audio performance which is coming very soon. I’ve attached a little taste to this post EXCLUSIVELY for this group and nowhere else. Have a great weekend, and never stop traversing the limits of reality and braving the unknown-able horrors that lurk beyond the veil. -CTB PS: giving away some Audio codes for my other stories to sweeten the pot. Message if you are ready to experience the madness for yourself.

I found out about this one from horror blogger Stacie Ponder and it is one of my favorites. Arletty, a young woman, comes to an isolated California town looking for her father, who has gone missing. The town's past is coming back in strange and unsettling ways. Arletty teams up with a trio of other outsiders to try and find out what is happening and where Arletty's father is. If you want something that *feels* like Innsmouth in the 1970s, this is it. There are some jump scares, but most of the movie is mood. It is designed to unsettle rather than to scare. Is it cosmic horror? Maybe. It is definitely Lovecraftian, and it ends with a pretty strong implication that the world as we know it is coming to a close. Right now, it is available free (with ads) on Tubi. It pops up on Shudder frequently, if you subscribe.

Just got my membership approved!!! Super excited to connect w other horror fans. If you've got for book recs please send them my way!

My first H.P. Lovecraft purchases were the Del Rey paperbacks. Nothing has ever come close to Michael Whelan's "Lovecraft's Nightmare" diptych that he did for the covers of those books. Just black, white, and red, the paintings are evocative rather than literal interpretations of HPL's stories. Some of the 60s and 70s pulp paperbacks had trippy covers (I got one from the library that featured Brown Jenkin and it was unsettling) but nothing like Whelan's. Do you have any favorite covers?