IT’S THISTLEFOOT DAY!!! 🏚🍗🍗
Meet siblings Isaac and Bellatine Yaga — & their strange, living house on chicken legs.
I’m so proud to launch my debut novel into the world. I hope it serves as a mirror. A lantern. An ember to lead you through the dark
Me: what's in this food, how do I cook it
Every Recipe Site: This is my husband's FAVORITE, whenever I make it he GOBBLES it UP my SWEET betrothed BOY he calls for this dish in his SLEEP, all day and DUSK I cook this meal, and O my hungry MAN he licks plates, bathes in SAUCE, he
Hey Brooklyn friends--want to spend part of Autumn in Vermont?? Let's trade! You come live in my big Victorian house by a sprawling cemetery, and I'll stay in your room in the city. DM if you're intriiiigued
SOME PERSONAL NEWS 🎉🖤🎉
I am weeping with excitement to announce my fiction debut with TWO full-length books (a novel and a short story collection), officially forthcoming from Knopf's
@VintageAnchor
!!!! And I get to work with my *dream* editor
@annakirgo
! Eeee! ✨
More lesser known means of divination:
Arachnomancy: by spiders 🕷
Fructomancy: by fruit 🍉
Iridology: by eye color 👁
Macharomancy: by knives 🔪
Oromancy: by mountains⛰
Roadomancy: by constellation ✨
Uranomancy: by sky 🌦
Thumomancy: by your own soul 👻
#FolkloreThursday
Some exciting news: I’m now Associate Producer of
@Grimandmild
— aka, makers of
@lorepodcast
with
@amahnke
! My job is to conduct tons of supernatural folklore research, so get ready: I’m about to become chock full of spooky facts and absolutely unbearable to be around 👻🖤
I just wrote (not just researched, WROTE) my first
@lorepodcast
episode. Which I think makes me the first person other than
@amahnke
himself to have *ever* penned a Lore ep?? As a long time fan of the show, it’s quite an honor to leave a mark like this on something I love 🖤👻
Magical realism / slipstream / surrealism / weird fiction do not need defined magical systems. They are about *dismantling* systems and arbitrary order, and expanding the possible
I swear if I see one more person complain about a magical realism book having an “undefined magic system” I’m gonna go on a crime spree the likes of which this world has never known
Happy paperback day to THISTLEFOOT! Ready to toss into a beach bag for a real goth sunbathing experience, or slip into a coat pocket with dreams of autumn—available wherever books are sold! 🖤👻
I swear if I see one more person complain about a magical realism book having an “undefined magic system” I’m gonna go on a crime spree the likes of which this world has never known
Can we all take a moment to celebrate librarians for the brilliant dorks they are? This is Sara from the Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro, VT. For my reading there, she dressed up as Thistlefoot 💙🏚🍗🍗
@hollyblack
!! This is the best! Reminds me of my 13th bday, when my dad sent me into the forest to find a group of "witches" around a campfire, told to dig, and unearthed a box of letters written by all my loved ones the year I was born, addressed to me THEN, at age thirteen
COVER REVEAL!!!
My debut novel THISTLEFOOT--rattling with living houses, Jewish myth, sweeping adventure, and the hauntings of the past--is coming to you September 27th from
@VintageAnchor
🏚️🍗🍗
Every year my dad stages some sort of microsoft word sign based installation art on my childhood bed for me to find when I get home for the holidays. This years offering:
A guy at the bar was mansplaining to me about the history of Tarot (I literally have a degree in supernatural ethnology).
When he left, a woman wearing a fur boa came over from across the room, leaned over my shoulder, and said “I made this for you.”
My favorite example of how extra the Victorians were: mourning vials, which they would weep into during funerals and bottle the tears. Then they'd either pour them on the grave a year later, or wait for them to evaporate-- at which point the time for mourning was done
COVER REVEAL!!!! 🐐🌸🌿💀
Say hi to FIFTY BEASTS TO BREAK YOUR HEART and other stories — ft cover art by
@swanbones
and designed by Mark Abrams !
Coming to you Feb 2024 🖤
Pre order heeeere ⬇️⬇️⬇️
"The deaf do not believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing."
Coming three years late to this essay, but my God what a stunner by
@ilya_poet
At a writing retreat with friends, and one of us just finished drafting her VERY FIRST NOVEL, longhand, right next to me?!?! The ocean collapsed below our balcony and she put her pen down and said “I think…it’s done…” Such an amazing moment to witness
If ever there was a piece of mine to read, it’s this one. I’ve been wanting to write this essay for years—and
@lithub
finally gave me the chance. On ghosts, longing, and a very real haunted house in which I spent a long, strange night 🖤
This is my dad, Michael. Knowing I just went through a breakup, he came to my house today—and washed my dishes. Swept, dusted, and cleaned every room. Scrubbed the floors on his hands and knees. Just to make sure I felt refreshed and cared for. Shoutout to this man and his love
Two weeks since THISTLEFOOT met the world! Writing it was a long journey—often racked with self doubt and isolation, just me and my laptop. So when I finally opened a box of my books for the first time? Well—I signed one to myself. “You did it. Be proud.” And you know what? I am.
A teenage girl just screamed at me though the closed glass window of a cafe “YOU’RE REALLY PRETTY” so that’s it, I need no other affirmation from this world, bye ✌🏻
Can we stop saying “I know I’m super late on this one, but…!” about books we’ve read that aren’t hot off the presses? Books don’t expire! It’s not morally superior to read a book sooner than later. As writers, we WANT to know our books continue to matter beyond their pub year
@monicabreen
I cannot express how exciting & electric it would be to meet a new slayer! To allow the world in which Buffy lived to EXPAND rather than be re-done. Thank you for this note, we can't wait to see what you dream up!
Okay listen, if one more G**dreads review complains that Isaac is unbelievable as a present-day character, and would never exist outside the 1930s, I'm going to start giving out my train hopping, blues playing, hobo ex boyfriend's phone number
Ummm… THISTLEFOOT is a finalist for the New England book awards!?! This is such a dang honor, thank you so much to
@neibabooks
— and among such good company, too. Verklempt!!
Woke up this morning to find that
@nprbooks
selected THISTLEFOOT for their 2022 "Books We Love" list -- and not only that, but they chose it for the category "Seriously Great Writing" !!! How wild is that?!
In this weeks inspo on asking for whatever nonsense you want and letting the world decide what to do with you: the haunted 1930s art deco cinema in town HAS agreed to give me, for free, a hovel beneath the stairs by the concession booth to turn into my own private writing studio
A very exciting package arrived at my door today! Tomorrow morning, my incredibly sweet dad—who fostered my lifelong love of writing—will come over to film me opening this. In the meantime…it will be a very long, suspenseful night of staring at a closed box 😳
The Wall Street Journal
@WSJ
named Thistlefoot as one of the TOP FIVE sci fi/fantasy books of 2022!! Wild.
If you're stuck behind the paywall, this is what they wrote:
Just got back from an INCREDIBLE night at
@bookofthemonth
where they interviewed me, threw a party in my honor, and then all put on Thistlefoot temporary tattoos before light-as-a-feather-stiff-as-a-boarding my book like some kind of cult
My dad called to let me know he'd seen a "cursed-looking doll for free on the street" not far from my house. Touched that my family is so supportive of my lifestyle choices 🥰
@chenchenwrites
Also the odd idea that a person can only be their "true self" if it's publicly performed and presented? As if knowing who we are internally isn't validated until outside forces are aware of it
I spent the last two years researching and writing a book about a vilage outside Kyiv, where my family comes from, that was massacred by Russian soldiers. The year was 1919.
Ghosts are real—they are the histories we repeat
Maybe it’s gauche to post but… this is an excerpt from the VERY FIRST Goodreads review for my novel THISTLEFOOT, from a total stranger who got it through NetGalley this week… and I just… 😭😭😭
Please wish a happy 30th to my friend who, for her birthday, rented a cabin for a five-day long Fuck Kaylee Chouinard themed slumber party-- Kaylee Chouinard being the middle school nemesis she *made up* for the occasion, who's "throwing a pool party we weren't invited to"
Would have made a crossroads deal for this ARC, but luckily the fine folks at
@penguinrandom
mailed it to me before it came to that.
@haszombiesinit
is, imo, the greatest short story writer of our time. I cannot express how excited I am for this book 🐕🦺🤍
Just got the photos back from my visit to
@bookofthemonth
headquarters…and uh, suffice to say I had a Good Time
…there were bottomless Thistlefoot themed cocktails 🥂👻
In two hours, I will be hosting a potluck where all five guests have been asked to bring the same dish: a recreation of Robert Pattinson’s iconic 2020 monstrosity, piccolini cuscino
Wish me luck, and forgiveness in the eyes of god
Thought I was excited to rejoin society--until a guy walked into the first bar I've been to in fifteen months, pointed to Fleetwood Mac playing on the jukebox and said, "HA what is this, it's like a worse version of Steely Dan"
Remember last winter, when I became obsessed with inventing otherworldly marshmallow flavors to evoke a time or place or feeling? Welp… this year, it’s evolved into this
Wtf I went to my dentist today and they warmed this rock up and gave it to me during my cleaning cause it “feels nice to have something good to hold onto” 🥺🥰
Just played a game where the board is literally BUILT OF LIGHT!! One of the most unique and magical ideas I’ve seen in ages by VT artist
@LumoAmuzo
— so enchanted
(& thanks Kirk and Vivian Cutpurse for being worthy opponents)
So when my novel THISTLEFOOT drops on Sept 13, I’ll be spicing up my book tour with a shadow puppet show animating select chapters—and here’s a couple storyboards my collaborator Maria Pugnetti just sent 🤯😍 These will be hand cut paper on a panoramic scroll, lit from behind
I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: if you hate puppets, I'm begging you, for your sake, don't read my book. It's not for you. This is a puppet-positive zone, people 😂🙏🏻
THISTLEFOOT — a modern fairytale of walking houses, talking dolls, and the many hauntings that follow us no matter how far we run. Out Sept 2022 from
@VintageAnchor
— or preorder now!
My cat caught a mouse, but it escaped into my closet. I (and my cat) searched the closet, but it had vanished, poof, so we give up. Settle back into bed. And man, my shirt's tag keeps poking me, has been for a while...
...reader, it was no tag. It was a mouse. Hiding in my shirt
Disability activists: dragged out of wheelchairs by police
BLM protesters: riot gear, rubber bullets, tear gas
Women protesting Kavanaugh hearings: handcuffed, arrested
White terrorists attempting a coup: "Nothing we can do!"
New author photo just dropped! We decided that every good portrait should have a secret, just out of frame—so my secret here is that I’m actually crouching on my rooftop like a gargoyle.
📸 cred to absolute all-star Kirk Murphy
A map of strange
#Vermont
legends & histories (pinned to the door of my local car mechanic)— featuring train wreck ghosts & giant eels & a Dickens novel written via spirit medium
#FolkloreThursday
Old man at the pharmacy greeted another by howling “how you doing you old buzzard! ‘nother day above the ground!” So fyi that’s how I’ll be making all my entrances from now on