Welcome to SEASON 2 of Read Me A Nightmare!
We are shifting the focus of this podcast a little and focusing on interviews and insights to help YOU sell stories in 2026.
The Last Girls Club is OPEN for submission right now.
Prefer video? WATCH the interview here.
Horror - Theme for Spring’s Issue: Haunted - Jan 1-15 - 2500 words or less - pay .015 cents per word, $15 USD max - sub sims welcome - no reprints.
Haunted. In the night; in the dark. We’re going old school Shirley Jackson “and the furniture laughed” creeping dread. It doesn’t have to be a house, it could be a submarine, a tent, a treehouse, a rabbit warren, whatever. Save the monster until the very end. We want growing shadows, days lost, locked doors that are suddenly ajar, lost journals in random cabinets. Do your worst, but give us your best.
More about this market: I want stories from the female gaze (think Aliens, Resident Evil, Hereditary, Tank Girl). I’m tired of reading what men want to do to us. I want to read what we want to do to them. Bring me smart female protagonists whose first inclinations are not to seduce the guard to get out of situations; they’ve got skills, they can get violent easily. I’m fine with them developing over the course of the story into someone like that, but please don’t revert to clichés unless you have your tongue firmly in your cheek. Please don’t use graphic rape for fridging purposes. If it’s part of a character’s backstory or development, fine, but don’t shoot the damn dog just to piss off your main character.
My focus is horror, supernatural, and creeping dread. I’m not averse to extreme/slasher horror. I always love a bit of sci-fi or dystopia, but it’s not our focus, so if it’s your venue, make it scary. If you spackle a layer of women’s issues into it, even better; such as disenfranchisement, slut-shaming, violence against trans people, racism, misogyny, sex work exploitation, inequitable emotional work and housework, whatever exists in this world that pisses you off, feel free to put a metaphorical ax between its eyebrows.
(Listen to the podcast to hear more about this particular call.)
I volunteer my time helping the short story world for free. But if you could join the next tier, not only will you get free books (with market insights), you get extra content to accelerate your fiction career!
My Insights: I sold a story to Eda for the Fall 2021 issue, The Gay 90s,and through the editing process became fast friends with this truly gorgeous human being. There is only one Eda Easter in the world, and I don’t know if that is a blessing or a curse. I just know I absolutely love her. Lucy and the Cosmic Comet ride was my way of processing the Heaven’s Gate mass cult suicide. As always, I like to take something dark and put a positive spin on it.
At the bottom of this post, you’ll find links to the last two episodes I recorded in Season One with Eda. This includes little excerpts from her writing, including a chapter from Killer RV.
Cool things referenced in the interview.
Angelique: I’m here today with one of my favorite people, Eda Easter of Last Girls Club magazine. Let’s chat.
Eda: We’re live!
Angelique: You wanted to talk about the spring theme for Last Girls Club, which is “Haunted.”
Eda: Yes—and haunted can mean a lot of things. Haunted treehouse, haunted suburb, haunted warren—I don’t care. I wanted to do something lighter, because the winter issue was secret police, ice, and desperate times.
Angelique: Very dark. Very serious.
Eda: Very boots-on-the-ground. So I thought, let’s shift toward something more Shirley Jackson–style haunted. Let’s lighten it up—which is funny, because that’s what counts as light for us.
Angelique: I love it. Ghost stories are the most fun. The Haunting of Hill House is one of my favorite books and movies of all time.
Eda: My favorite line is “and the furniture laughed.” That moment where you realize everything is coming for you—even the ottoman. An evil ottoman!
Angelique: Now you’re staring at your ottoman, aren’t you?
Eda: Absolutely.
Angelique: So tell me, what is it about Last Girls Club? You really embrace the feminine gaze. Punk rock feminist.
Eda: Angry women. I realized that’s the core of it. Angry women are not crazy. So many of my favorite characters are women who would burn things down—or had to be killed off or “fixed” so they could be happy and get married.
That’s why I hated Cruella. They framed her as evil because she was ambitious, great at her career, and didn’t want to give it up for a kid. That really got under my skin.
Angelique: Okay, note to self: don’t watch if I don’t want to be enraged.
Eda: You should watch it because it’s enraging. Disney is insidious about enforcing norms for girls.
Angelique: And we’re all Tank Girl around here.
Eda: Always.
Angelique: I love evil heroines. They’re my favorite. I spent so many years caring if people liked me, if I was “nice.” Now I’m like—no. As long as I’m fair and I can live with myself, that’s enough.
Eda: That’s how they hobble you—by making you afraid of being disliked. And people think I don’t edit myself, but believe me, there’s a lot on the cutting-room floor.
Angelique: I can’t even imagine an unedited Eda Easter. This planet couldn’t contain it.
Eda: We’d need another reality. But I’m learning something interesting through this villain challenge: villains aren’t the bad guy. They’re the mirror to the hero. They’re organized. They have a plan. A vision. The hero just stumbles along improvising.
Angelique: And the best villains are sympathetic. Everyone is the villain in someone else’s story. Their motivations make perfect sense to them.
Eda: Exactly. Once someone decides you hurt them, everything you say becomes loaded. Suddenly you’re cheerfully malevolent.
Angelique: “Cheerfully malevolent” is an incredible phrase. I might adopt that for 2026.
Eda: Think about how many mothers kept their daughters in line that way. Cheerful malevolence is powerful.
Angelique: That’s horrifying—and not how I’m mothering my kid, but I can see how it can happen.
Eda:
For this issue, I want creeping terror. Lost days. Hidden journals. Urban legends. The lights dimming when someone enters a room. I don’t want the monster upfront—I want it unfolding slowly. Old-school haunted.
Angelique: You’re inspiring me. I might finally write another story for you.
Eda: Do it.
Angelique: Let’s talk about your own writing. Where are you taking it this year?
Eda: I want to finish my grief book. It started as Widowed: Two Stars, Do Not Recommend, and now it’s Widowed: Five Stars—Rocky Start, Excellent Ride.
It’s not self-help. It’s about how unhinged you get—and how you survive it.
And I’ve outlined a few books already. One is called SS Mother. It’s about a cruise ship full of retirees—and when they descend on islands, the locals are like, “Oh no, not again.” Cheap, cranky, eating dinner at four… but also mafia, drug running, all of it.
Angelique:That sounds amazing. Also, I still want Killer RV 2. People ask me about it all the time.
Eda:Killer Cruise.
Angelique:Yes! Killer Cruise. We just planned your future.
Eda:Now I have to write it.
Here are Eda’s last two interviews if you want more of this marvelous creator.
