I've been swamped with day job and class projects lately but I wanted to share the Kickstarter link to Death's Garden Revisited: Relationships with Cemeteries, which is an anthology edited by Loren Rhoads that I'm honored to have an essay in. It's one of 40 personal essays and knowing Loren's work and seeing who the … Continue reading Kickstarter for Death’s Garden Revisited
Author: joanne m. austin
Rabbit, Rabbit
I'm not giving too much away, location-wise, but there's a very real, very abandoned place in my town I visited two years ago that has inspired some work for a fiction writing class that I'm taking. And I can't share the images on my class website so I'm putting them here so I can share … Continue reading Rabbit, Rabbit
Ghosts in My House
I'm not really sure if there are any ghosts in my house. There are a few incidences that seem ghostly, on first sniff, but can be explained away. And some I just don't know. For example, the upstairs bathroom door will always slam shut if the window in the bathroom is open and the wind … Continue reading Ghosts in My House
Spooky Tales for the Halloween Soul
Paranormal Prowlers podcast host Tessa Mauro was kind enough to ask me to contribute a story to a special spooky story episode and the result is about a minute and a half in - though I highly recommend listening to the entire episode (as well as the podcast)! I picked the Doll House of Salem … Continue reading Spooky Tales for the Halloween Soul
The Singular Boot of Livingston
Weird NJ has a story about Richie "The Boot" Boiardo on its website, since Richie was very influential in the development of the character of Tony Soprano, for those of you who are excited about "The Many Saints of Newark." If you want to explore a side of Richie further, check out my story about … Continue reading The Singular Boot of Livingston
I wonder how she’s doing
There are a lot of things I remember from 9/11/2001. I can tell you about how nice the day was, how I found out about each plane crash, or how they let us leave work that day at around 11 because nobody was getting anything done. It was weird driving home on Route 287 North. … Continue reading I wonder how she’s doing
March 26: Penning the Paranormal
Tonight I'll be doing an author reading at the Oregon Ghost Conference's Penning the Paranormal event. It's from 7-8:30pm Pacific Time (10-11:30 Eastern). It's a Zoom event hosted by Jeff Davis (one of the Weird Washington and Weird Oregon authors) and you can sign up here. It's free, and looks like it will be fun.
Recycling drafts
I've been taking a lot of fiction writing classes, both before and during the pandemic, in the hope that maybe one story will not suck so badly that it could be revised into a publishable thing. So far that hasn't happened, but it has produced a lot of printed out/marked up drafts that I look … Continue reading Recycling drafts
Dirt Bike Memories of Richie the Boot
This interview originally appeared in Issue #43 of Weird NJ. The Livingston/Roseland area of the 1970s wasn’t quite what it is today. Where there are now office parks and pricey developments, there were once woods, trails, farms and open space—enough for the local kids to partake in long rides on dirt bikes. Among them were … Continue reading Dirt Bike Memories of Richie the Boot
Talking to Paranormal Prowlers
Yesterday I was on the Paranormal Prowlers Podcast, which is the first podcast I've done in ages. I talked a little about how I came across Weird NJ, the Weird Ghosts book, Clinton Road, and my experiences with sleep paralysis. And I did this while managing what is either the worst allergy season I've ever … Continue reading Talking to Paranormal Prowlers
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