This week on The Ghoulish Gazette...

Achivements, poetic spotlights and call outs...what's been going on at The Ghoulish Gazette?

Jun 24, 2024

Good afternoon one and all, things have been slow going here at The Ghoulish Gazette as my motivation to do much of anything has declined. There are many themed newsletters planned but for the life of me I haven’t had the energy to work on them, so this will be a somewhat general additon (but that does not mean it won’t have substance)

On June 6th some of my dear friends joined me to celebrate the launch party of Haunted Girlfriend’s UNMADE BED photobook!

(These photos were taken on an instax polaroid!)

It was an evening of good fun and socialising (and forcing my friends to get photos taken on a massive blow up bed.) This is my first experience of diving into modelling and it was scary to start with I’ll admit but Dougie, the wonderful photographer made me feel so comfortable and excited to be involved in future projects. Ever since I’ve been parading my pages of the photobook around to anyone and everyone.

If it interests you, you can buy your very own copy of Unmade bed right here.

One more small achivement is that my poem Fontanna Neptuna (a poem written about the statues at Neptunes Fountain in Berlin) has made the shortlist for The Heroica Poetry Prize ! I have never been in the running for awards or prizes before, so to have made the shortlist of 11 out of 1500 entries has felt so exciting. There will be three winners, 1st, 2nd and 3rd so I am feeling confident and hopeful in my chances. When I first applied I submitted with no real hopes of having a chance, but when I made the longlist I was happy but still not hopeful…but now, though I won’t get my hopes too high I am far more excited.

Even if my poem is not a winner, to get this far feels amazing and it’s boosted my confidence to appy to more contests in the future.

heroica.co

A post shared by @heroica.co

☆ Someone new
Yesterday I stood in the sun
and felt like I could change my life.
I wanted to give up this life here and run
move far away and become a new someone.
reinvent myself into a girl no one has met
live a life in a place where no one knows my name.

Today I lay in bed listening to the pouring rain
curled up crying in a ball, all my will
to be someone better flooding down the drain.
I felt like nothing and no one
because there's nothing left to replace
I am gone, swallowed whole by all this pain.

I wrote this poem on one sunny day at work. Like on most sunny days, I get a sudden urge to change my life and be a better person. But as soon as I get back home and step back into a suffocating dispair and lack of will and motivation, all that urge to become better than I am vanishes. A disappointing cycle I am tryng so hard to break.

☆ Poet Spotlight

That’s enough about me (for now.) Next i’d like to shine the spotlight on two poets featured in this weeks newsletter.

Paula Werdnik
Lewis Galloway

Paula Werdnik (she/her)

Paula is a copywriter and poet. Her creative writing is informed by her academic background in Arts & Culture Studies (BA) and English Literature (MA). Originally from Berlin, and having grown up across various countries - she draws on her personal life experiences as a third-culture kid to explore themes in her work such as identity, belonging, in-betweenness, the self, healing and feminism. She is currently based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her work has been featured in the 2023 Dichtober digital poetry bundle, TendernessPress, RevUU Magazine, Raffia Magazine and The Carried Away blog. You can discover more of her work at @paulasbooksandpoems on Instagram or via her Linktree

Paulas Poem ‘Mother Dearest’ was reccently featured on The Ghoulish Gazette blog, you can read it here! 'Mother Dearest' explores the taboo notion of the "bad mother" and toxic relationships between mothers and daughters. It aims to shed light on one of the most important relationships that shape our sense of self for life, the relationship with the mother, and offers a look into a darker exploration of this theme.

Lewis Galloway (He/Him)

Lewis and I go way back (well, a couple of years) we met in out first year of college and he has been one of my closest friends since.

Lewis Galloway started writing poetry a few years ago as a way of releasing emotions he couldn’t put words to verbally, and since then has been developing his abilities. He went to college for both Media and Communications and Professional Writing Skills, and currently study English Studies and Film and Media at the University of Stirling. His writing is highly personal, combining cryptic symbolism with candid detail. Topics he explores includes loss of innocence, growing up and mental health amongst many more.

Lewis’s poems Blue Light and The Chair has also been featured on TGG, you can read it here!

Blue Light follows a narrator in search of escapism, no matter how risky or destructive it is before finally begging for the blue light to take him back home In The Chair, the narrator reflects on the things he has lost since childhood, and how growing up has changed his relationships with different concepts.

☆ Book Review - ♱ Mademoiselle Maupin by J.M Frost ♱

Now I am no expert in the ways of reviewing media, especially not books but I have an overwhelming amount of praise to show J.M Frost and his masterpeice that is Mademoiselle Maupin.

This book follows the story of real life historical figure Julie D’Aubigny, renowned opera singer and duellest turned vampire, and her companions Aida, and Saul N’Dour. As well as devout man of the cloth Arnold Brennan, as his jounrey into discovering the occult devilish creatures that share God’s earth leads him to become allies with the very creatures he sought to banish back to hell.

This book has an interesting cast of characters, each one somehow so fleshed out despite not having much of a background, or even screen time (or I guess…page time?) from Clayton, a bow street runner and brute, to Thomas Ashford, an excentric thearte owner, every character contributed to the comple world building. One thing I did not expect was to become so attached to the main characters. There are twists and turns, emotional scenes and close calls that had me on the edge of my seat. Often I was caught reading with my jaw on the floor, in shock and disbelief (even going as far as missing my stop on the bus because of the end of page 354)

This might have been an easier read if I were not dyslexic, the amount of mythological and historical words really tripped me up, but it was an extra bit of education and challenge I like when reading. The story I found was sometimes hard to follow due to how deep the lore ran, but also being able to uncover how deep the corruption was as the characters themselves did added to my experience of reading this book.

There were times towards this book where I thought ‘there’s no way these conflicts will be resolved by the end’ it was a tense read of every page, wanting to rush to the end but also savour what little was left. As I’d hoped, the ending, though sad, was so satisfying…but I am holding onto hope that this will not be the last I see of these amazing charcaters.

Rating- ♰♰♰♰♰ (5/5 crosses)

I had a lovely chat with Author J.M Frost in April at the Whitby Goth weekend. We talked about Mademoiselle Maupin, and his handmade props featured in the book, from guns, pickled eyes and of course, teeth. I could’t walk away without a small case of prop teeth (Strigori, Vukoolak, and Ghul)

After a string of recent rejections, something I shared writer to writer, Frost shared that before Mademoiselle Maupin was published it was rejected 20 times, and to never give up. Since then I’ve gotten almost as many acceptances as I have rejections.

He was kind enough to sign my copy with the inscription

For Kaci, Happy reading and best of luck with your writing

James Frost

☆ Longing
oh, I can't help but let the embarrassment
swallow me whole.
when the wanting, the longing
seeps through every pore.
answering a text within a second of the buzzing
from my phone.
holding onto your hug for as long as I possibly can
without letting you go.
If I could text every day and ask you to spend time with me
if I would, but oh...
I can't let the embarrassment through to
swallow me whole.
when the wanting, the longing for your company
shows.

To say I am a social butterfly is an understatement, though recently I’ve been quite secluded in my room in bed. I have still craved company, I’ve needed it more than anything really but there’s only so many times you can tell a person ‘I miss you’, there’s only so many times you can ask to hang out and get rejected or stood up. Asking even my closest friends to come see me feels like something so vunerable, because often I miss more than I am missed. It has been lonley in this isolation when eveyone is out living their lives not looking at their phone and checking messages.

☆ Trope of the week- The ‘5 Times/Things/ 5 v 1’ trope

This week I’ve been reflecting on my fandom and fanfiction days, I am very much still in most of my fandoms but have largely stepped away from reading fanfic, and stopped writing it all together. I was thinking about my favourite tropes- Found family, there’s only one bed, and of course a few non PG tropes, and I had forgotten about one- The 5 times trope.

This was not a trope I read often, but the premise always stood out to me. 5 times trope is where there are 5 separate scenes that concludes with a final scene that may connect. I have linked a more informational source but let me give you an example of my own (my favourite example) - 5 times (NAME) saved them Vs the one time everyone saved (NAME)

A character, usualy within an action setting, in my case, and the 5 induvidual times they saved a member of their team from danger, usually a nurturing character that does everything for everyone vs the one time everyone comes together to save them when they needed it. This is a trope that is close to me, as I am often the glue that keeps my groups together, I organise events I plan meet ups, but on the occasions where I am at my lowest everyone comes together to have my back it makes me feel so warm. It is a wholesome trope, with a lot of space for creativity.