Ellie Marney's Blog

Halloweeeeeeeeeen

It’s the time of ghouls, spectres, and horror books – huzzah!

While we don’t go as hog-wild for Halloween here in Australia as people do in other places (*cough* the USA *cough*), there are still a few benefits in celebrating the eve of All Hallow’s Day.

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Who are the “hallows”, you may ask? They’re Christian saints, of course! All Hallow’s Eve is the beginning of the celebration and recognition of dead saints, martyrs, and believers called Allhallowtide (aka Hallowmas, Allsaintstide, Hallowtide) in the Christian liturgical tradition.

But Halloween probably has older roots – in the pagan Gaelic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or “dark half” of the year. Samhain was considered a time when supernatural beings called Aos Si walked the earth. In Wales, these “spirit nights” were called Ysbrydnosau, and people used to carve “spirit lights” out of turnips or rutabaga to keep evil spirits out of their homes.

A genuinely terrifying traditional Irish jack-o’- lantern – if I were a spirit, I would stay away (pic by Rannpháirtí anaithnid at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7788068 )

A lot of Halloween traditions like jack-o’-lanterns, bonfires, and trick-or-treating (once known as “guising and souling”) most likely came from Samhain practices. And the name “jack-o’-lantern” actually comes from the old Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a drunkard who was said to have made a deal with the Devil and was doomed to roam the earth with only a hollowed-out turnip to light his way…

Whatever the origin of Halloween and however little we may celebrate it where I live, I personally love Halloween because it gives me a chance to rec horror books and talk about macabre shit in this special Halloween Bumper Issue of the newsletter!

NONE SHALL SLEEP is the Kindle Monthly Deal!

One of the special things I get to announce now is that None Shall Sleep is on special for $1.99USD during this month’s Kindle Monthly Deal 🎃

If you haven’t grabbed it on digital and you want to, now’s an excellent time to do so (or maybe grab it for a friend/family member) because it’s usually priced at $9.99USD.

But get it before the end of October, as that’s when the deal ends – here’s the link!

NO ONE IS SAFE ARC team readers ahoy!

The other special thing I get to announce is that the call-out for ARC readers to join the No One Is Safe street team is now live 🖤

If you’d like to be involved in reading, reviewing, and spreading the word about No One Is Safe, this is your chance – drop me an email at elliemarney@gmail.com and ask to be added to the list.

I should point out that I don’t have as much leeway with ARC copies this time around – book copies are strictly capped, and only those applicants with platforms for sharing will be eligible for physical copies of the book. It’s very much “first come, first served” – although if I’m inundated with requests, I have access to a digital link (via Netgalley) for those who miss out on physical copies.

If you join the ARC team, you’ll be required to review across Amazon, Goodreads, and socials (Instagram and/or Tiktok) – but if you’re a public librarian, get in touch as there’s some wriggle room there. I’m also planning to create some nice thank-you gifts for participants who contribute their time, apart from just an early copy of the book. And remember, this is an adult crime thriller, so it will be a little more off the leash compared to my YA books!

If you’re still keen, email me at elliemarney@gmail.com with your name, socials handle, and postal contact. This call-out extends until the end of October, so get cracking!

Singapore Writers Festival

I’m delighted to announce that I’m joining the roster of authors at the 2025 Singapore Writers Festival! 😁

There are some incredible authors at this year’s event – including Neal Shusterman (!!), and RF Kuang (!!), and Ken Liu (!!) – and I can hardly believe I’m going, it’s going to be awesome. I’m appearing on two panels and also giving a masterclass seminar

LoveYour Bookshop Day

Hey, I’ll be at Dymocks CBD Melbourne on Collins Street this Saturday 11 October for Love your Bookshop Day! I’ll be signing booms and staffing the Adopt-A-Duck booth (it’s a thing, just go with it lol) a little after lunch on Saturday, so if you’re around, come say hi!

The Anatomical Venus

Okay, I know I’ve already mentioned my macabre-item-of-interest for this month, but I have to tell you about Anatomical Venuses, because they’re book-related and also completely fascinating.

So, the book connection first: this year, I read and blurbed a gothic feminist horror novel by A. (Allison) Rushby called Slashed Beauties – it’s really good! Highly recommend! – which is about ultra-realistic wax figures of women who come to life at night and seek revenge on men who’ve wronged them (you should totally read it!)

But reading Slashed Beauties sent me down a wild rabbit-hole in which I spent hours reading articles about such wax figures, which were first created in late-eighteenth-century Florence, Italy, as a way to teach about anatomy without the messy, smelly (and expensive!) problem of cutting up an actual cadaver. The Anatomical Venuses, also referred to as ‘Slashed Beauties’ or ‘Dissected Graces’, were used as a means to “entice” potential doctors (all male, of course) into the study of anatomy and physiology – “For men to be instructed, they must be seduced by aesthetics,” wrote one anatomical illustrator (very creepily) at the time. Writers like Italo Calvino were disturbed by the Graces, referring to them as “sadist surrealist fantasy”.

But what I found curious is that, far from being purely a great example of historical medical misogyny, the Anatomical Venus was also useful (and was always intended to be employed) as a way of educating a general audience about health. The first Venus was created as the centrepiece for the first public science museum, founded by Hapsburg prince Leopold II. The displays were meant not only for male medical students, but for women and children as well – and were sometimes sponsored by the Church. Women were, in fact, “encouraged to visit the museums and learn anatomy both to better take care of themselves and their families.” The Venuses were meant to inform people about childbirth, the mechanics of the body, and matters of public health and hygiene, and also to act as a religious reflection on the way our complex bodies are a creation of God.

Drawing on the fine art “Venus” tradition, which the audience at the time would have understood was not meant to be erotic, the Anatomical Venus was not modelled on a real person but from idealised illustrations in an anatomical atlas, and was created with real hair, eyelashes and eyebrows. While male models were typically depicted flayed, to show the muscular system, female models were shown reclining as if asleep, with skin intact, which “created tension between beauty the grotesque”.

I’d like to encourage you to follow the links and read the articles for this one, because the details are fascinating. And please do pick up a copy of Slashed Beauties, which was not only a great read but was certainly sufficient to kick off my interest!

The Horrors! The Horrors!

Yes, I’m still reading a lot of horror, as you may have guessed, and if you’re looking for something to read for ghoulish month, allow me to pass on some recs!

Anything by T. Kingfisher, but especially her Sworn Soldier series, starting with What Moves the Dead (Miss Marple gothic! An enby protag and fabulous House of Usher vibes)

Stephen King’s original and the best – Carrie. If you haven’t read it yet, now’s the perfect time.

Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby (see above, lol)

House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage (what if your little daughter was a sociopath?)

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito (what if a Jane Austen character was a psychopath?)

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas (true gothic literature – vampires and romance!)

They Lurk by Ronald Malfi (short stories by a master)

…and one of the scariest books I’ve read this year…

Last Days by Adam Nevill

Enjoy! (I think)

Watching New York on Instagram

Omg I’ve become completely obsessed with the Watching New York IG account – the style of people on the street is just fabulous! Most of the pics appear to be candid snaps, which is delightful. I aspire to being fashionable but I am most definitely not – but there’s no law says I can’t admire other people being fashionable and stylish as hell.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, have a look here.

Wayward

This one I’ve lined up to watch, for a bunch of reasons – a) I love Toni Colette (Aussie actors ftw!) and will watch her in almost anything (except I haven’t seen her in Hereditary, because I’m too scared to tackle that one yet), b) I’m totally here for an enby protagonist, and Mae Martin looks great in this, plus c) I’m intrigued by the “teens in a cultish rehab camp” vibes, because culty stuff is very much in my wheelhouse.

Have a look at the trailer and see if it might float your boat:

Halloween giveaway

To celebrate Halloween, I’m giving away a signed copy of None Shall Sleep to a random subscriber!

Congratulations new subscriber Joana from Portugal, you’ve won! Please get in touch with me via email (elliemarney@gmail.com) with your postal contact, and I’ll get your parcel off to you soon!

Happy Halloween and happy October! How can it be October already? I actually don’t know, but here we are.

Good luck to all the Australian students and teachers returning to school for the final term of the year – I would say I’m sad in sympathy, but considering that it means I finally get the house to myself again after the holidays, I cannot tell a lie, I am thrilled.

Spring Happiness to all the birds flying around my house making nests! Hello to all the daffodils and jonquils and asparagus in my garden! Hello to the new shoots on my grape vine! While the weather here is only occasionally sunny and more occasionally blustery/rainy, I can use this moment – before the summer sun starts blasting us into an inferno of despair – to say that I’m hoping we get a little more warm weather soon. I’m looking forward to wearing T-shirts (without cardigans) again.

And good luck to us all this month, especially to people like me, getting over health stuff, and especially to US friends, who are living through the worst timeline. May the hallows give us good health, good fortune, and good government all around.

Until next time, all best and happy reading!

xxEllie

The Black Hand is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A BLOODTHIRSTY TALE: Researchers show that stem cells from menstrual blood have huge potential, who could possibly have anticipated this LOL

I am BIG MAD that this wasn’t thought of before? Like, scie…

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Crime news in a minute – first, book news

Yes! At last, the Sekret Book News that I’ve been holding onto (since goddamn November last year) can be shared with the world 😁

Actually, NO ONE IS SAFE will be released 10 February 2026 – it’s already up for preorder and I have all the goodies about it to share with you!

So I can tell you right now that this is my first ever adult book. It’s the start of a projected series. It’s pitched as Dexter meets The Bourne Identity and it’s set in 1987 NYC.

Here’s the blurb:

A gritty thriller about the unkillable past, the first in a pulse-pounding new series from New York Times bestselling author Ellie Marney.

Simon Noone is a serial killer…but he doesn’t know it. Pulled from a river in Guatemala in 1982 with nothing―not even his memories―he returns to America five years later, looking for answers. He finds work at an NYC meatpacking plant and meets rebel ex-cop turned private investigator Nomi Pace. But she has problems all her own.

Nomi agrees to help Simon, if he lends his mysterious talents to solving a child kidnapping case. The two team up and make headway on both investigations, growing closer with every step. But when Nomi discovers the dark truth about Simon’s murderous past, he quickly turns from asset to liability.

Nomi contemplates her next move. Meanwhile, the weight of Simon’s deeds hangs like a dripping carcass on a meat hook. Were his homicidal urges erased along with his memory, or is there a sinister reason why his deft hand itches for the butcher’s cleaver?

Questions?

I’m sure you have them! And my answers are: YES and YES 😁

If you have other questions, hit me up in the comments here or on socials, and I’ll do my best to answer without spoilers.

Want to see the cover?

It’s right here – and feel free to preorder at this link!

When does it release again?

💀10 Feb 2026💀

Also, can I say that I’m absolutely stoked that No One Is Safe is going out to readers so freaking soon! There are certain things in life that are very satisfying – but there’s nothing more satisfying than getting to finally share new-book news, and then to also point out that we don’t have to be patient for very long, because it’s arriving in 4 months.

Nailbiters crew, you already knew this was coming – thank you for keeping my secret, you little rascals. You folks really do rock 🖤

(And can I also point out that getting to hear about new releases well in advance of official announcements, as well as behind-the-scenes stuff, and excerpts from upcoming books, are some of the perks of being a Nailbiters subscriber – here is a button if you’d like to level up…)

Subscribe now

I freaking love this cover

So indulge me a second while I share it one more time, heh.

What else is happening?

Whaaa – what do you mean “what else is happening”?? I just pulled a brand new book out of a hat, what more do you want?? 😂 lol KIDDING, I’m KIDDING.

Dept. Q

I actually have been doing some other things – I watched Scottish-set crime series Dept. Q, for instance, and I enjoyed it a ton. There’s excellent twists throughout, it’s not grim-as-fuck viewing (I do appreciate the occasional touch of acerbic humour to leaven my crime dramas), you get all those delightful Scottish accents, and the performances are genuinely brilliant.

I will offer mild critique, as I think it could easily have been a tight 6-parter instead of a 9-parter. But honestly, by the time it was finished, I wanted to immediately watch a second season, so I can’t really complain about the show’s length.

Also Matthew Goode is one of those mysterious people who get more good-looking with age? (I’ve discussed this before in Nailbiters, I believe – other contenders are Noah Wyle, Josh Hartnett, and Gillian Anderson.) I remember seeing Goode in Watchmen and glimpses in Downton Abbey, but it wasn’t until he got a scruffy beard and played curmudgeonly bastard DCI Carl Morck that I sat up and paid attention (or maybe I just like curmudgeonly bastards – also a possibility). Anyway, here’s the trailer:

I’m still sick

Yeah, it’s been a whole thing, I’ll tell you about it in boring detail some other day.

But not today, which is just for celebrating the No One Is Safe announcement, and using loads of unnecessary emojis 😁

That’s it for September! Sorry to bail on the macabre/crime news this month – I promise I’ll give you something juicy next month. Until then, please enjoy the info about the new book! I’ll share more details about the writing of No One Is Safe, and the upcoming release, over the next few months.

I hope you’re having an excellent September! It’s the start of Spring here, so I’m no longer freezing my bollocks off (if I had bollocks) and we’re getting the occasional sunny day (along with a lot of rain, because the weather in south-eastern Australia is nothing if not unpredictable). Daffodils are blooming in my garden! The ones that the echidnas didn’t eat, anyway – and if you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, this is an echidna:

Gonna leave you with that lovely pic. Hope you enjoy the new book! I’m very happy I finally get to tell you about it! See you next month – stay well and happy reading.

xxEllie

NEW BOOK, NEW BOOK!

Huzzah! Finally, we can unzip our lips – the Publisher’s Weekly announcement of the new book is out, so at last we can talk about it!

Before I spill all the beans, can I say a massi…

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Can you believe we’ve reached 50 editions?! Wild stuff! Go team!

Okay, I really want to write an entire thing for you all on the Erin Patterson Mushroom Murders, now that the trial is over, but that is gonna be like a 3-part series or something and I don’t have the bandwidth to create that just now (I’ll explain why farther down this newsletter). So instead, let me talk to you about two things…

Lowbrow Victorian gothic posters

First of all, I confess I have a great love for Victorian gothic – poetry, novels, fashion, the whole aesthetic (it’s one of those things where you’re like “this style of fashion does not suit me at all but I can love it from an admiring distance”). So when I saw these posters I thought, “Well thank you, don’t mind if I do…”

The posters (and other cool stuff! There are books, t-shirts! I cannot wear Victorian gothic fashion, but I can totally get behind a Victorian gothic T-shirt) are created by Ashleigh Talbot, also known as Madame Talbot, a self-described Extreme Artist with connections to the Mutter Museum, an American medical history museum in Philadelphia. I read this interview with Madame Talbot, who lives in a 140-year-old haunted house with her husband and five cats, and she seems like a woman very much aligned with my personal interests.

I particularly like that she has a Wall of Shame on her website – ie. a page in which she names and shames people who’ve used her copyrighted images to flog their own stuff on Etsy or whatever. Go get ‘em, Madame Talbot.

Micheline Pitt Collections

While we’re on the subject of sisters doing it for themselves, Micheline Pitt (whose “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”-inspired outfits I highlighted in a previous newsletter) has created a new range of retro gothic clothing.

First, this amazing selection of size-inclusive clothes inspired by Bride of Frankenstein is super cool. In fact, the whole damn Universal Monsters collection is super cool:

Second, Pitt has an initiative called #VixenNotAVictim which raises money and awareness for survivors of sexual assault, rape, and abuse. They’ve pledged to release new styles this year featuring guest artists and Pitt's original art – Vixen will donate a minimum of 30% - 40% of all sales from these items to RAINN, the rape, abuse and incest national network in the US that assists and supports survivors of sexual violence.

The weird body-brain gestalt

So what else has been going on with me? Well, I had a break from this newsletter last month so I could take a mid-year hiatus and go on vacation with my family, which was pretty nice 😊 I did the usual holiday thing, where you relax and suddenly you get sick (thanks, weird body-brain gestalt!), which was less fun, and then when I got back into freezing cold south-eastern Australian winter, I got a fair bit worse, which was also really not fun. I’ve kind of been recovering ever since. I mean, that’s why I have no bandwidth for Beef Wellington murder deep-dives – sorry!

But the beach was really good! And I guess August is going to be when I consolidate and take care of my health for the final big push toward end-of-year…For example, I’m getting a skin cancer check this month (if you live in Australia, you’ve got to get regular skin cancer checks because hey, we have no ozone layer!). Also as a woman of Irish descent, I suffer from all the same problems as Moira Donegan, to be sure:

A Small Deluge of Announcements

💀The None Shall Sleep Sequence is about to hit 30,000 ratings on Goodreads, hell yeah!

💀But I’m burying the lede here: Signed copies of All Shall Mourn are finally GO, baby!

My website manager and I managed to sort out the problem (it was me, I was the problem, just plain old user error), and now the link is live on the merch page so by all means, go nuts. For the record – all prices are in Australian Dollars; it was a balance between book price and shipping price, so I made a flat rate for shipping (ie. if you order more than one copy, it’s the same rate); all paperbacks are US-format (I’m looking into creating C-format paperbacks for Aus/NZ/Oceania readers, but that won’t happen until year’s end, soz).

I’m really glad signed copies are finally available! (it was driving me insane!) And sorry to be the cause of the hold-up, but phew, very glad that they’re ready to go now.

More announcements:

💀I’m presenting the 25th Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards in Melbourne on 5 September – I’ll be in conversation with Cate Kennedy, and tix and info are available here.

💀We have a title, and are getting close to a finished cover for EXCITING SECRET PROJECT and I’m hoping to have an announcement for you real soon!

Serial killers are always white

I saw this, and I thought it may amuse some of you (“White people are the only people that can get away with eight unsolved murders in a row,” – I mean lol and fair call) and it’s so rare that I see serial killer comedy!

Don’t harsh my Thursday Murder Club vibe

I am legit excited for this – before Murderbot became my go-to comfort read, I would pick up these books by Richard Osman. If you haven’t read them, I highly recommend! They’re extremely English, and it’s like watching the crew from British Bake-Off solve a murder mystery? Or something like that. Anyway, it’s about a bunch of older people living in a retirement village who get together to puzzle over cold cases, until they get a real homicide to deal with – it’s a hoot, and the trailer looks good:

Scarlet Stiletto Young Writers

Hey! Are you a female-identifying Australian crime writer under 19 years old? Or do you think you fit in that category and could turn your hand to writing a crime story? Because this year’s Scarlet Stiletto Awards are open now, and the prize for the Young Writers category is 1000 DOLLARY-DOOS. And I have it on good authority that they don’t have a ton of entries this year, which could put you in the running to win…

In fact, whatever age you are, have a look at the entry info and see if you want to give it a shot. The Scarlet Stilettos has the largest cash prize pool of any short story award in the country, and you never know what might happen if you try your luck.

Find out more info here – and do it quick! Because entries close 31 August, so hop to it.

Sorry, this has been a bit of a quick update this month, but while I’m still in recovery I’m going to keep it short! If you’re interested in more details about what’s going on behind the scenes with my books and writing and so on, can I suggest you subscribe? (Or you could upgrade! Upgrading is good too, my Nailbiters folks get a lot of perks) Not all my monthly missives are this short - I will no doubt be more long-winded in my next edition.

Subscribe now

Either way, if you’re here to stay or just dropping by, I hope you’re having a good week and you’ve found something to pique your interest, whether that be a great book or something else…Take care until next month! I reckon I might have a new book announcement on the horizon soon. And if you’re keen for a signed copy of All Shall Mourn, go for your life 😊

xxEllie

The serial killer who wouldn’t shut up

If you do any research at all into serial killers, one of the things you realise pretty quickly is that they’re attention seekers. Ed Kemper (played by Cameron B…

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(There’s no edition of The Black Hand this month, as I’m having a short break! Instead of my normal routine, I’m sending out this compact edition of Nailbiters, with a new cut scene from ALL SHALL MO…

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Wicker Man crime

Last year, a documentary called The Last Sacrifice (dir. Rupert Russell) was released which explored links between the apparently sacrificial murder of a 74-year-old farm labourer, Charles Walton, in South Warwickshire in 1945, and the genesis of a series of seventies films in a new genre called “folk horror”.

Walton’s death was clearly an odd one – he’d been stabbed through the face with a pitchfork, partially undressed, and had his throat cut with his own trouncing hook (a kind of hooked scythe). He had symbols carved into his chest, and according to some reports, his body was surrounded by dead toads.

A Scotland Yard detective called in to assist the Lower Quinton village constables failed to solve the murder – although he apparently knew the perpetrator, but had insufficient evidence to make an arrest. A renowned Egyptologist called Margaret Murray visited the site and declared that Walton’s killing was “a blood sacrifice carried out by a coven of witches”. Most of the people in the village seemed very blasé about Walton’s ritualistic murder, and there was more talk that the killing was a sacrifice to replenish the village’s soil after the previous year’s bad harvest and undrinkable beer. Local newspapers began describing the crime as the “Whodunnit witchcraft murder”.

I mean, ritual sacrifice to replenish the harvest is, most definitely, a thing. Ritual fertility dedications that kill the old to make way for the new, or return the first and/or best fruits of the earth back to the ground, are considered a way to replenish the potency of that ground for the year to come - and are maybe an early, unrecognised way of providing healthy green compost to re-nitrogenise the soil. If the only food and drink you’re going to get in the year ahead comes out of the soil around you, keeping that soil healthy is critically important, right? Fertility rites have almost always involved blood sacrifice, and in agrarian cultures, this was (and remains, in many cultures) the cost of doing business with the earth.

Russell’s documentary suggests a direct connection between events like the murder of Walton in the UK, the upswell of interest in occultism in the seventies, and dark rumblings around class consciousness in Britain that birthed the “folk horror” genre and brought films like The Wicker Man (dir. Robin Hardy, 1973), Witchfinder General (dir. Michael Reeves, 1968), and Blood on Satan’s Claw (dir. Piers Haggard, 1971) to public success.

I absolutely love The Wicker Man (there’s a great article about it here) so I’m curious to check this new documentary out, and if there’s chat about the lineage of folk horror – including contemp folk horror films like Midsommar and Men – then all the better 😊

State High School visits for Book Week 2025 (18-22 August)

Hooray! This is something I’ve always said I wanted to do, and this year I finally get a chance to do it! I have space in my Book Week schedule this year to offer some cheap sessions for state high schools.

If you are a student, a librarian, or a teacher at a Victorian government high school, particularly if your school is in a low socio-economic area, and you would like me to come visit your school this year for Book Week, please get in touch with me via my email (elliemarney@gmail dot com) and we can hopefully schedule something.

I’m offering 1-hour sessions for $150 plus travel – each session will be a 30-40min talk about authoring, publishing, books, and more + 20-30min of question time with students.

Travel = $50 per hour of travel (I live in Castlemaine, Vic, so if your school is in Ballarat, for instance, my each-way travel = $100; if your school is in South Werribee, that’s about 4 hours of travel = $200).

Here’s the deal:

*I can do a maximum of 1 session per school (single-class, whole-year-level, book club…whatever suits)

*I’m afraid I cannot travel in excess of 4 hours per day, so this offer is not available to schools outside of that radius (so Geelong, yes, but Frankston, no – if you’re not sure, get in touch, maybe we can figure it out or mash two nearby school sessions together in one trip).

*These are the lowest possible rates I can offer – less than a quarter of my regular rates – and they are only available for open-entry public high schools that are run by the state government. These rates are not available to private or select entry schools.

*Please contact me by email no later than 10 July 2025 – I will reply to every email, and if it’s possible to fit your school in, I will make it happen.

I would really love to visit more government high schools! I myself went to a government high school, and I’ve spent most of my teaching career in government high schools, and in my experience, authors are rarely invited to visit these schools because of budgetary constraints. Let’s change that this year: If you would like your school to receive an author visit, please hit me up!

ComicCon

I went to OzComicCon Melbourne this year, and it was really rad 😊

(Seriously, I have never met so many people or sold so many books, it was amazing. ComicCon folks, I love you 🖤 I’m hoping to make it again in June next year – fingers crossed!)

Good excuses, and Take-a-break July (not Nailbiters)

Friends, this edition is late – soz – mainly for two reasons. The first reason is: I was deep in the editing trenches on a new book! (it’s coming early next year! Announcement is on its way! Huzzah!) The second reason is: I’m pooped. Spent. Knackered. Bushed. Fatigued.

You may (or may not!) be aware that I usually take a hiatus break from Christmas to the start of February every year. Well, this year, because of All Shall Mourn’s release, I wasn’t able to do that, plus I’ve been busting my butt for the last five months to get this new book finished, and I gotta confess, I’m feeling kind of beat.

So listen – I’m not sending out an edition of The Black Hand in July (I’m still sending out Nailbiters, but that’s a different thing).

I’m going on winter holidays with family in July, so I figured it’s a good time to give myself a mid-year break. Then I can return (recharged! Refreshed!) to do word-battle once again.

So just to reiterate, you won’t receive an edition of TBH in July, but I’ll be back before you know it in August. Cool? Cool.

Solstice

My little pagans, it’s the solstice this month! (for me, on 21 June but ymmv)

Remember to throw the paper with your list of things to banish into the fire on the night of the Longest Night (or if you’re in the northern hemisphere, the Longest Day).

You can even jump over that ole fire, if that’s your pleasure, just remember to wear non-flammable clothes (or no clothes at all?) if you give it a go!

What I’m reading/listening to

I listened to the absolute craziest podcast interview with Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, The Killing Joke) the other day.

I had no idea Moore was a practising magician? As in, a pagan-type ceremonial occult magician? (and an anarchist?) Honestly, he kind of looks like a practising occult magical anarchist, now you mention it.

Moore had some quietly amazing things to say on the podcast, and he was intellectually engaged and fascinating to listen to (plus he has that lovely Northampton accent). Anyway, it’s a good interview, have a listen.

Song of Kali is one of the few books in Dan Simmons’s oeuvre that I hadn’t read until last month – it was his debut so I wasn’t expecting miracles, but I should’ve known better. He actually won the World Fantasy Award for Song of Kali in 1985, so yeah, it was a ripper.

As someone who’s recently travelled in Kolkata (Calcutta), I can definitely say that he pretty much captured the vibe of the place (especially if – like the narrator – you’re a freaked-out American tourist who’s a bit full of himself). The area in which the book is set is also the area where I stayed last time I was there, and honestly it was wild to see it described on the page – and to realise that it hasn’t changed all that much since the late seventies/early eighties.

Simmons got kinda slammed because of the way he depicted India in this book, but I honestly thought the depiction vibed well with the personality of the book’s lead character (see, freaked-out American, above). Also, Simmons definitely took liberties with the use of Hindu mythology/iconography, but I’m not personally offended by that, just like I wouldn’t be offended if someone depicted a horny, gun-toting Jesus in a book – I’m not that bothered by warped depictions of religion, but if you are, then give this one a swerve. Otherwise, dive into the murky waters of Song of Kali, because it’s tense and freaky af.

Unhallowed Halls

Look, I maybe haven’t mentioned this one before? But if you’re into gothic YA/dark academia stories, and you like stuff that goes very sinister, maybe give Unhallowed Halls by Lili Wilkinson a try.

It’s about a girl who, after being expelled from her old school for Reasons, is given a scholarship to a creepy and elite boarding school called Agathion College in the Scottish moorlands. If you enjoy things like secret societies, demonic influence, dark magic, cups of tea in front of a roaring fire, dusty books in old libraries, boarding school pals, soaring filigreed gothic architecture…Basically if a cross between Crimson Peak and The Secret History is your jam, you might find this book a rocking good time

(I’m biased because I know Lili, and I was the one who sent her an article about an elite boarding school for troubled teens that inspired her with the idea for this book, lol. But I still reckon you might enjoy it!)

Random giveaway – put your name in the hat!

I’m giving away a signed Australian paperback copy of None Shall Sleep this month, just for fun 😊

If you’d like to be in the running, please drop a comment at the end of this post, and I’ll add your name to the hat – I’ll draw a winner and email them about postal deets before the end of the month. Welp, you need to be a Black Hand subscriber to enter! (that’s how I get your email to contact you)

Signed copies of All Shall Mourn

They are coming, but I’m going to be away from my desk (and therefore unable to post things) for all of next month, so…

Keep your eye out for signed copies of All Shall Mourn arriving August 2025!

You’ll be able to buy them via my website (which is a thing that exists, if you were unaware), and basically I’ll just sign your books, parcel them up, and send them your way – ie. all orders will be fulfilled by me.

And that’s it! Hope you’re having a good month, my friends 🖤 If you’re in Australia, stay warm! If you’re in the US, congrats on the massive No Kings rallies, they looked awesome even from this far away – and I’m just going to leave these links to The Activist Handbook and How to Win a Fight right here, for no reason at all. If you’re in the UK or Canada or another lovely place, I trust you’re doing well and I send you lots of love.

If this is your first time reading The Black Hand and you like it enough to stick around, you can add your name to the subscriber list here:

Subscribe now

(You can also sign up for my paid newsletter Nailbiters – which has more juicy stuff and extra perks and deep cuts of my books etc – if you want. Just remember that Nailbiters will be arriving in July like usual, but TBH won’t be cluttering your inbox again until I get back from hiatus in August.)

That’s it from me for June. Until next time, be cool, happy reading, and enjoy this short video of Big Bird rapping over The Birds:

xxEllie

Bletchley Park codebreaker, Betty Webb, has passed

Good morning, friends – I wanted to give you a macabre crime fact here, but I was looking through my collection (yes, I have a collection of them! Be…

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Antipope ahoy

So the Catholics (amongst whose number I once counted myself, many decades ago) have elected a new pope, which is fine – I don’t have much personal investment in it, being more of the Hamilton Nolan school of thought regarding religion these days. But good for the Catholics, I guess. Mainly, I was amused at how a kind of weird fandom appeared to spring up around the papal conclave, and then I was bemused at how the selection of an arguably ‘liberal’ pope kicked off a lot of shouting online.

Oh, Laura…smh

Then I read that some people felt that if the newly-elected Catholic pope was too liberal, they should elect their own pope, and I got distracted by Jay Hulme’s post about the Antipope, so I decided to dig deeper and find out what happens when folks go hog-wild with choosing their own pope. Let’s see how that usually turns out, shall we? Brace yourselves, because this is going to get weird.

Apparently, there have been a number of schisms in the Catholic church over the years (particularly between the 3rd and mid-15th centuries) that have resulted in certain factions breaking away and declaring that they’re making their own rules, and nyah-nyah, have elected their own pope. Historically, there are actually a ton of guys who claimed to be pope, but the modern claimants are the whackiest (or the funniest, if you want to look at it in that light).

The Palmarian church, for instance, is a traditionalist Catholic breakaway sect (almost universally described as a cult) which claims that the Holy See, the Papacy, and the headquarters of the Catholic church were actually moved to El Palmar de Troya in Spain in 1978 (seems legit). The church is located at the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Crowned Mother of Palmar, which looks like this:

This is not made from LEGOs, this is a real place

The Palmarians elected their own popes, as they felt the Roman Curia was packed with masonic infiltrators (who were – among other things – allegedly drugging Pope Paul VI and holding him hostage in the Vatican. I told you it was whacky). A lot of Palmarian doctrine seems to be based on some dude declaring that he’s had a vision of the Virgin Mary telling him to do something or announce something, and that something is almost always weird.

Anyway, here’s an amusing and bizarre bit of detail about the Palmarians: In 2016, the Palmarian pope Gregory XVIII abdicated the papacy after losing his faith and having an affair with an ex-nun, whom he married. Gregory was declared an apostate and accused of stealing the popemobile and embezzling from the church. He also did a bunch of media interviews with his new wife, which included some photoshoots with wild images like this:

The former pope of the Palmarian church with his ex-nun wife, posing basically nude as Adam and Eve for a magazine article, which is a completely normal thing for a pope to do

Soon after his abdication, there was a break-in at the Basilica in which “two would-be thieves in balaclavas scaled the walls of the compound with a telescopic ladder, armed with a knife, two clown masks, cable ties, duct tape, two pairs of pliers and a crowbar.”

Who do you think the thieves were? If you guessed Gregory and his wife, you would be absolutely correct.

There was an altercation with some other bishops inside the Basilica (I am visualising bishops in their robes doing martial arts moves. Seems fine!) and Gregory was injured with a knife he had brought along. He was airlifted to hospital and subsequently charged and sentenced to six years jail.

I’m going to leave it here, as I think that’s enough to be going on with, but honestly, I could keep talking about this all day – there is so much completely bizarre shit about Antipopes! if any of it is interesting to you, check out this article about the Top 10 Historical Antipopes, but I also highly recommend that you read the Wikipedia entry on the Palmarian church, it’s just one whacked-out thing after another.

Enjoy!

ALL SHALL MOURN hitting milestones

Okay, back to the real (made-up book) world!

All Shall Mourn is about to hit 1000 ratings on Goodreads, which is amazing! It’s always really lovely to see your babies soaring 😊

Usually, once a book is out in the world, I don’t check in on it much – unless there’s some sort of problem, I tend to leave well enough alone. But I guess because All Shall Mourn is one I published myself, I’ve fussed over it a little, and now I find myself delighted that so many people have read it and made the effort to leave a rating/review 😊

If you were wondering, there’s nothing much authors can do to help a book succeed: It’s mostly word of mouth which does that. At the end of the day, if you’ve read All Shall Mourn and then told someone about it, you’re part of the reason why the book has done so well – so thank you!

Signed copies

We’ve had a lot of hiccups with this (sigh), but I will make an announcement about it soon. Stay tuned!

It’s actually been kind of okay not to have orders for copies pouring in right now, as I’m in the middle of edits and I’m barely keeping up with email, let alone postage. But I apologise for any frustration, and I’ll announce on socials and here when we’re ready to go.

Events: Melbourne ComicCon

I’m going to be at Melbourne ComicCon again this year! Come see me if you like!

I’ll be in Artists Alley with a full complement of books – I’ll have copies of All Shall Mourn available, and even a few rare things (a few complete sets of the Circus Hearts trilogy, for instance) – so if you’d like to drop by on either Saturday or Sunday, I’d love to sign your books and have a little chat.

It’s also not out of the realms of possibility that I’ll be wearing my FBI cosplay outfit (definitely on the Saturday, at least) so I’ll be easy to spot 😊

The con is on June 7&8 at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, and there’ll be a ton of other amazing creators plus TV/movie star faves (Giancarlo Esposito will be there! Catherine Tate will be there! Renee O’Connor will be there!) and loads of cosplay and fandom stuff. The vibe is extremely welcoming and inclusive, which is one of the reasons I keep returning – if you’d like to join in, you can grab tix here at this link.

We had a national election

Yes, we certainly did. Australia had an election, and we all went off to vote in it, which looked something like this:

If you have any interest at all in the Australian political system (which has preferential voting, and compulsory voting, and holds its elections on a Saturday so everyone can attend, and has an impartial electoral commission that controls electorate boundaries, among other things), feel free to check out this primer here.

But basically, I’m happy to say that election day in my country is usually a day of warm community feeling. People gather at local schools and town halls to cast their vote, and everyone buys a democracy sausage to support whatever local service is being supported (usually the school where the poll station is set up), and everyone is really polite and friendly, and someone will probably hold your dog for you while you go inside to drop off your ballot. Then, later that evening, you sit down with your friends and/or family and watch the election results roll in.

Australia is really lucky in this way, I feel. Having a free, fair, transparent election in which everyone feels good about voting, and the atmosphere is kind of like a school fete is super nice. Australia elected a (reasonably) progressive centre-left government once again, which was also super nice.

I saw Mariana Enriquez at MWF

She’s Booker-shortlisted! She wrote the amazing Our Share of Night, and A Sunny Place for Shady People, and many more!

Anyway, she was super cool. She used to be a rock journalist, and honestly she has a kind of Stevie Nicks raspy voice. In the panel I saw (which was packed, by the way – note to Melbourne Writers Festival organisers: program more horror) which was Enriquez plus Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, who wrote lesbian possession horror Feast While You Can, she spoke about her experiences as an Argentinian woman writer and how her country’s history informs her work. I enjoyed it heaps, and fangirled a little in the signing queue 😊

Escapist Routes

Speaking of fandom: A friend of mine, Liz Barr, has been writing a newsletter called Escapist Routes in which she makes insightful and snarky commentary on media of many kinds – even with the stuff I haven’t watched, she somehow makes her notes amusing enough for me to enjoy reading the whole thing.

Her commentary is often spoilerific, so fair warning, but if you’ve ever wanted to take a deep dive into Andor’s treatment of women, how bad narrative pacing is not a good kink, The Pitt as competence porn, plus commentary on everything from Bosch to White Lotus to The Last of Us (and – for bonus points – a squinty look at Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn), this newsletter might be your jam.

Hey, thank you for hanging around, and thank you especially to folks who signed up for Nailbiters when I shared the open edition last month! If you like this newsletter, or would like to support my work with a Nailbiters subscription, please click on this little button and sign up.

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I don’t have much else to report this month (except, you know, edits), but I should point out that a book announcement (as in, for my next book!) will be coming soon, and also that MURDERBOT TV IS OUT IN 2 DAYS, so obviously I’m in the middle of stress re-reading all the books.

Until next time, have a great month, hope your tv shows make you happy and that you read lots of excellent books!

xxEllie