Andrew Careaga

Saturday Six: get your creep on

Some scary tales to keep you up at night

No Friday Five this week. Instead, and in honor of spooky season, here are six short and scary reads for Halloween.

1. “Vampires,” by Sarah Wolfe

A part of you relaxes. Ignore that whisper in your ear: you will bleed. Intrusive thoughts—a ride you didn’t buy a ticket for.

A macabre micro via Gotham Literature.

2. “Dolly Builds her Brother out of Butter in the Room her Mother Grew,” by T.J. Burgoyne

Butter does for flesh, but not bone. For that, she cuts hardwood from fallen oak, takes Father’s knives to carve ulna and radius, tibia and femur, scoops out hip sockets with the hook-blade and slots the bones together at tallow-greased joints. She scavenges the rest: the spine of a stag found rotting under stooped willows; the finger-bones of a thief; her mother’s skull, plucked from the pyre in the grazing field after Father was sure there was no flesh left to burn.

This story took second place in Fractured Lit‘s 2026 “Ghosts, Fables & Fairy Tales” competition.

3. “Gator Empire,” by Nadine Rodriguez

“Kelsey,” Angie calls out from the shore, and slowly, Kelsey turns to swim to her. When she’s near, she peeks her head out of the water, red hair flattened atop her skull. Angie stares as Kelsey’s clear, third eyelid blinks away to reveal moldy, amber eyes staring back at her through reptilian slits.

Good stuff from Be About It Press.

4.. “The Lantern,” by Jennifer Ostopovich

I felt as though a strange fever had overtaken me. I shivered, at once hot and cold, and drew the lantern nearer to my chest as though the small flame might warm me. Another wail resounded through the forest sending a tremor through me.

The man must have sensed my distress because he asked, “Is something the matter?”

“It’s the Bean Sídhe. It wishes to cross the threshold, to bathe me in the darkness. I must get to the sacred bonfire before my flame goes out.”

One of Apocalypse Confidential‘s featured Twelve Nights of Halloween stories.

5. “Fitting In,” by Verity Mason

Every October, the literary magazine Spillwords publishes haunting stories for its “13 Days of Halloween” feature. This one’s a story you might call gripping.

I kicked out frantically as another tendril wrapped around my ankle. Then another. They climbed my calf, sliding beneath my trousers. I grabbed hold of one and pulled. It was warm.

6. “Candy Bars With Razor Blades Inside Ranked By Johnson Street Address“

A throwback literary listicle, more humorous than horrific, from The Gorko Gazette.

There is no name on the mailbox, but I heard this guy takes big black trash bags out the back after midnight and once a lady that Jesse knows went into his house and never came out. He always leaves a bowl of M&Ms on a chair outside his front door that are gone in about 5 seconds and might as well be mustard gas for all we care.

Cover image via Pexels.

My nine books …

… and why I think they matter

If you travel in writing circles on social media, you’ve probably seen the “nine books that shaped me” meme that has been circulating in recent weeks. On the website myninebooks.com, you can enter the names of your nine favorite literary works (or any other book) and it will pull up a cover image of each of the books, arrange them in a three-by-three grid, and allow you to save and download the image if you wish, or share a link to your grid on your favorite social platform. (Make your own book grid.)

I put together my list from memory in a few minutes, and if I had it to do over again I might remove one to make room for The Grapes of Wrath, but it would be tough to decide which to cut. Anyway, here’s my grid and, because I can’t just blithely post a grid without presenting an argument for why I think these books merit my attention, below the image is my summary of why these books matter to me.

A grid featuring book covers of nine selected titles, including 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Geronimo Rex', 'The Complete Stories', 'The Things They Carried', 'Invisible Man', 'The Brothers Karamazov', 'The Illustrated Man', 'A Confederacy of Dunces', and 'Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition'.

Something I’ve been itching to tell you

My responses to 10 questions from The Itch Lit

Last week, The Itch Lit published a 10-question interview with me about memory, inherited beliefs, storytelling, and what I’ve learned from writing nonfiction, among other things. You can read it here.

The Itch Lit is relatively new to the online literary scene. On its about page, the editors describe it as “an online literary magazine devoted to the stories, poems, and essays that won’t leave us alone. We believe the best writing follows readers home, tugs at their sleeves, and demands another look.”

I’m grateful to The Itch Lit for publishing my creative nonfiction piece “Killing Machine” last June. This up-and-coming magazine is publishing some captivating writing. Check it out.

Paying homage to the ‘old daddy of rebel writing’

Remembering Missouri writer Jack Conroy, instigator of the proletarian writer movement of the Great Depression

Who could imagine, in these times, that my beloved deep-red home state of Missouri once harbored one of the leaders of a radical, left-wing literary movement that gave rise to some of the late twentieth century’s most acclaimed writers?

A man sitting in a chair, reading a paper, with a thoughtful expression, in a room with a window showing a cityscape. — “Jack Conroy in Repose,” photograph by Wayne Barker, Works Progress Administration Photographer – https://collections.newberry.org/asset-management/2KXJ8ZS9NT6VZ, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=157761215

In the heart of Little Dixie, a self-taught writer’s words took him from the rubble and rabble of Monkey Nest, a coal mining village just outside my hometown of Moberly, Missouri, to literary fame during the Great Depression. Jack Conroy‘s novel about the working class, called The Disinherited, took him to the pinnacle, but too quickly he fell into neglected writer status. Too independent for Communist Party orthodoxy, Conroy butted heads with what he called the “New York intelligentsia,” and eventually his brand of Heartland socialism fell out of favor. I hope my recent essay about Conroy will help raise awareness of his crucial role in creating an important literary movement in America.

Friday Five: crime and mystery writer Keith Roysdon

The author of ‘That October’ and ‘Seven Angels’ discusses his craft, pop-culture influences, and more

One of the more pleasant outcomes of having a story published in the crime fiction collection Bad Intentions: A Crime Fiction Anthology Based on the Music of Warren Zevon has been the opportunity to get acquainted with the works of some outstanding writers of crime fiction. Keith Roysdon is one of those writers.

A man with gray hair and glasses stands outdoors, wearing a blue floral shirt with flamingo patterns, surrounded by greenery. — Keith Roysdon

I was acquainted with Keith and his work from social media, but since the publication of Bad Intentions, I’ve dug into much more of his phenomenal writing. Following a 40-plus-year career as a newspaper journalist that started when he was in high school, Keith turned to the world of fiction writing in 2019. That background no doubt contributes to his talents as a fiction writer, and his experience as a crime reporter provided him with ample training as a writer of crime fiction.

He’s the author of two mystery/crime novels: That October, a 1980s-era coming-of-age novel published in 2025, and Seven Angels, published this summer, about a young woman who returns to her hometown to run the family funeral home business and discovers how much it’s changed–for the worse. He’s also the co-author of the true crime book The Westside Park Murders: Muncie’s Most Notorious Cold Case, which, as he notes in a recent blog post, continues to attract attention five years after publication. He’s a regular contributor to the crime/mystery/thriller hub CrimeReads, and has had short stories published widely, including as part of a new anthology, Daydream Believer: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of the Monkees! from Shotgun Honey Books.

Like others of his vintage (including me), Keith grew up in the golden age of Baby Boomer/Generation Jones pop culture, the pre-internet era of 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s TV, movies, comics books, and music. His interest in horror movies and magazines, true crime, haunted houses, and other strange phenomena heavily influence his writing.

As we enter spooky season, it seems fitting to feature Keith in this venue. Read on to learn more about his writing origins, influences, and projects.