The curtains in our Aunt Charlotte’s study came from a Victorian funeral parlour, I kid you not, they smell of dust and incense and lilies. Her apartment has taken on a permanent chill now that winter is setting in, and we keep the dusty curtains drawn most of the time just to try and keep [...]

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We are bereft with stress and summer clothes and feel that our only cure would be some chilly vampire fiction, but where to start? Not only are we are fortunate enough to have a friend who is an expert near by, she is also the author of three pivotal novels herself, Nancy Baker. (she also [...]

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We all came from the sea, that much is known, and in fact we haven’t actually left as sea water, saline, courses through us and even bathes our eyes. My family came from the land by the sea, and when you live that close to that which you had only recently (relatively speaking) crawled out [...]

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The films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien
The soundtrack to Somersault by Decoder Ring
The hours between midnight and 3 a.m.
Our cat Monster
The sound of bells
Moon Kana
Bicycles
Crisp elegant fiction written by super smart women
Super smart women
Blood+
Found beautifully bound books on arcane topics
Chandler Burr writing about scent (or gay holiday cruises)
Makiko Sugawa
People who aren’t “normal”
Stripy stockings
Gray tights and short black [...]

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White is the absence of colour, black is all colour combined. Colour is pigment. Pigment is a material that changes the colour of the light it reflects as a result of selective colour absorption. Red food colorants cochineal and carmine are made from ground beetles. (Vegan’s take note!) Prussian blue contains animal remains and blood. [...]

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How To Keep A Vampire At Bay
Important steps in avoiding unpleasantness in the future
1. Rub windows, doors, keyholes, chimneys and pets with garlic.
2. Do not invite alluring strangers in, no matter how attractive, well dressed and/or buxom they are
3. Strew thorns, poppy seeds, grains of salt, or grains of rice on the floor; a vampire [...]

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“NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee”
-Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Forward
There are a gazillion earnest “histories of” out there on the topic of Gothic and Lolita and it’s fashions and origins, just Google, you will see. So rather than recap, rewrite or plagerize from them, I encourage you to go for [...]

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When I Was A Cat, And You Were A Raven
A Poem for Mr. G.
I sat in a tree with you
When I was a cat
And you were a raven
And you took me in your firm claws
And said
It’s time for us to go
And so in to the inky black night
we went.
I
Hanging there
The warm night air
passing through my [...]

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A small green bird lands on the window ledge of a lovely apartment in Osaka-city. The west facing window uncharacteristically is left open and the tiny bird, following the trail of early summer light hops in the apartment and on to the blond pine wooden floor. The room smells of oranges.
The bird hops gingerly across [...]

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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
(as Mr. Wilde says)
We drift in and out. We sometimes stay up here in our attic for days, only going downstairs for books or food. We get lost in sensation when the snow piles upon the skylights and the light that [...]

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