Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
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rlsummerling.bsky.social
Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
@rlsummerling.bsky.social
600 followers 410 following 850 posts
Writer and reader of the strange.
Assistant editor at Seize the Press. Associate editor at Violet Lichen Books
My stories can be found in The Dark, Nightjar Press, Interzone, ergot.
www.rlsummerling.com
Banner art by John Chrostek
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rlsummerling.bsky.social
Rebecca Summerling (she/her) @rlsummerling.bsky.social · Nov 7
I made an awards eligibility post! I always feel a bit embarrassed doing these, but I'm really proud of these stories and extremely grateful to the editors who've published them
A medieval style heart surrounded by devils. Inside the heart reads: R.L Summerling 20205 THE Dancer’s Dozen ergot. - Jan 2025 His Most Feared Constellation The Dark - April 2025 Through Narrowing Veins Nightjar Press June 2025 Vanitas Interzone - June 2025
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
bronteschiltz.bsky.social
I’m very excited to teach a free online class on Robert Aickman and the art of the artifice ghost story as part of @romgothsam.bsky.social’s brilliant Romancing the Gothic series on 21 February!

Join me: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/robert-aic...
January 2, 2026 at 3:38 PM
rlsummerling.bsky.social
Signed up for this the moment I saw it!
bronteschiltz.bsky.social Brontë Schiltz @bronteschiltz.bsky.social · 15d
I’m very excited to teach a free online class on Robert Aickman and the art of the artifice ghost story as part of @romgothsam.bsky.social’s brilliant Romancing the Gothic series on 21 February!

Join me: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/robert-aic...
January 3, 2026 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
seizethepress.bsky.social
We're open for fiction submissions!

We publish unsettling bad time stories that straddle the horror, fantasy, and science fiction spectrum. But genre is made up so if you have a dark weird horrible story that could be a fit, send it in and let us worry about it.

No closing date, open indefinitely.
Submissions - Seize The Press
Submissions Guidelines Submissions are open for fiction. We publish dark, unsettling, dislocating stories that straddle the horror, fantasy, and science fiction spectrum, but genre is made up. If you ...
www.seizethepress.com
January 1, 2026 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
johnchrostek.com
In my newsletter, I talk about 2025 books, movies and shows I loved, but also short fiction! You can find the list with links in the back half, with great work by
@ivygrimes.bsky.social @kristinaten.bsky.social @kjy1066.bsky.social @rlsummerling.bsky.social @rpmirabella.bsky.social & more
20/25 Vision: Looking Back (Thoughts & Lists)
It’s the 29th of December as I write this newsletter. Believe it or not, it’s snowing here in Buffalo. On top of that bit of normalcy, winds are hitting 70...
buttondown.com
December 31, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
johnchrostek.com
I was inspired by everybody being thoughtful and looking back on the year, so I did the same thing with my infrequent personal newsletter.

Talked about the year as I lived it, and put together some lists of books, movies, shows, and short stories from pals that I wanted to share.
20/25 Vision: Looking Back (Thoughts & Lists)
It’s the 29th of December as I write this newsletter. Believe it or not, it’s snowing here in Buffalo. On top of that bit of normalcy, winds are hitting 70...
buttondown.com
December 29, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
rlsummerling.bsky.social
Sneaking one last story into 2025! I've got a new piece up at The Archive today! The Monument is about art and memory and was inspired by "The Matter of Time" installation by Richard Serra I saw at the Guggenheim in Bilbao this year

www.sanspress.com/the-archive-...
"The Monument" by R L. Summerling. Picture depicts an abstract shape against a blue sky with clouds "It was a comfort, the professor said. Just for a while, no one could remember who was alive and who was dead."
December 29, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
faithallington.bsky.social
Beautiful piece, so visual and immersive. Sadness like flowers sprinkled through it.
December 29, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
scumbelievable.bsky.social
i will never stop. i will never moderate. i will never treat anyone forcing this shit down the world's throat as though they are anything but antisocial wreckers divorced from even the most cursory understanding of beauty and joy
December 29, 2025 at 1:22 AM
rlsummerling.bsky.social
Sneaking one last story into 2025! I've got a new piece up at The Archive today! The Monument is about art and memory and was inspired by "The Matter of Time" installation by Richard Serra I saw at the Guggenheim in Bilbao this year

www.sanspress.com/the-archive-...
"The Monument" by R L. Summerling. Picture depicts an abstract shape against a blue sky with clouds "It was a comfort, the professor said. Just for a while, no one could remember who was alive and who was dead."
December 29, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
indrapramitdas.bsky.social
TOKYO GODFATHERS (2003), for a Christmas movie, surprising echoes of PERFECT BLUE & Satoshi Kon's darker work, the cruelty of the world fracturing people's selves, leaving jagged edges that wound others. Making our 3 broken heroes putting themselves between the world & a baby all the more moving.
Still from Tokyo Godfathers, showing a woman in a dark coat and skirt, black hair blowing in the wind, stark against a snowy rooftop. She is holding a baby, and looks alone against the blankness of the snow, her feet making a small path in the white. We cannot see her face.
December 27, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
g0blinegg.bsky.social
I've spoken alot about my grandad, but I've rarely discussed his battle with Dementia.

He is my motivation for signing up for the 50 miles in January challenge. I will be sharing folklore along the way. Please share or donate if you are able. Thank you!

fundraise.dementiauk.org/s/27334/2788...
Amy Boucher
Hi there, This month, I’m walking 50 Miles for Dementia UK – a cause close to my heart. Just £10 could pay for the telephone costs of two families calling its free Dementia Helpline, so any sup...
fundraise.dementiauk.org
December 24, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
rlsummerling.bsky.social
What an honour! Incredibly grateful to Paula and Locus magazine for shouting out my work, it really means so much to me!
locusmag.bsky.social Locus Magazine @locusmag.bsky.social · 22d
2025 Stories We Loved: “His Most Feared Constellation” by R.L. Summerling locusmag.com/2025/12...
December 27, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
locusmag.bsky.social
2025 Stories We Loved: “His Most Feared Constellation” by R.L. Summerling locusmag.com/2025/12...
December 26, 2025 at 11:07 PM
rlsummerling.bsky.social
What an honour! Incredibly grateful to Paula and Locus magazine for shouting out my work, it really means so much to me!
locusmag.bsky.social Locus Magazine @locusmag.bsky.social · 22d
2025 Stories We Loved: “His Most Feared Constellation” by R.L. Summerling locusmag.com/2025/12...
December 27, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
jacquiwine.bsky.social
New on the blog today, Part One of my BOOKS OF THE YEAR, 2025 - favourites from a year of reading.

Featuring books by Edith Wharton, Barbara Pym, Caroline Blackwood, Vivian Gornick and more! #BookSky 💙📚 #BooksOfTheYear #Books #BOTY

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/12/16/m...
My Books of the Year, 2025 – Part 1
I seem to say this every year, but 2025 really has been a great reading year for me. From new releases to treasures from the TBR to brilliant reissues and rediscoveries, the books have been excelle…
jacquiwine.wordpress.com
December 16, 2025 at 7:14 AM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
seizethepress.bsky.social
New author interview up on the Patreon today! We spoke to Christine Lai, author of the fascinating hybrid novel Landscapes

We talk about violence in western art, writing about the climate crisis outside of genre fiction and Christine gives us some art gallery recommendations around the world
Christine Lai on thinking beyond the self, the veneration of violence, and making art in a collapsing world | Seize The Press Magazine
Get more from Seize The Press Magazine on Patreon
www.patreon.com
December 15, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
ivygrimes.bsky.social
ICYMI!
apexmag.bsky.social Apex Magazine and Book Company @apexmag.bsky.social · Dec 9
"I loved both of my grandmothers, but I never fully knew them. [...] I was the one who was afraid to look in the dark places. Of them, of myself, of everyone." 🌌

Wonderful new feature article by CELLAR BELOW THE CELLAR author @ivygrimes.bsky.social for @gnofhorror.com! ⬇️
Ivy Grimes: The Deep Freeze Of Memory: What My Grandmother Kept In The Dark - The Ginger Nuts Of Horror Review Website
Ivy Grimes: The Deep Freeze of Memory: What My Grandmother Kept in the Dark
gnofhorror.com
December 10, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
thisisguan.bsky.social
An eligibility post for 2025! I was lucky enough to have five things published this year. 🧵

- I would love you to consider Whalesong, published by the lovely skeletons at @thedeadlands.com. This one means a lot to me, and I hope it might to you as well.

psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...
Whalesong - PSYCHOPOMP.COM
The whalesong hits when she’s on the highway. Up until that point, Hailey had just been driving, foot tensed on the pedal, hoping velocity would turn into an answer for a question that she didn’t know...
psychopomp.com
December 5, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
hexliterary.bsky.social
hex editor / genius, Joe Aguilar, is back in @havehashad.com today with Three Tinies! Go get it!
three tinies by Joe Aguilar
Rot in Hell On the sidewalk is a crumpled yellow wrapper that says, in red letters, “Rot in Hell.” Looking closer, I see it now says, “Cheeseburger.” The wrapper can’t fool me: I know as soon as I ...
www.havehashad.com
December 1, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
johnchrostek.com
I missed this yesterday, but @nmwhitley.bsky.social wrote up this goddamn gangbuster review of Feast of the Pale Leviathan.

Find it in his newsletter, Short Story Rex (which always does a fantastic job of highlighting great fiction + dwelling on its craft and impact)

buttondown.com/shortstoryrex/
NOT-SHORT STORY REC: Feast of the Pale Leviathan, John Chrostek From the beginning, my temptation was to read this not as a novel, but as a “romance”. Now, by “romance” I mean not in the modern, HEA sense but in the Gothic sense, which was taken to mean simply an extended fictional narrative of marvellous or unlikely incidents. And by “from the beginning”, I mean the table of contents. Something about opening a book and being greeted by that lengthy list of chapter titles preceded by Roman numerals called to mind HTML versions of, like, Anne Radcliffe or Horace Walpole on Project Gutenberg, and certain passages here I could totally imagine an early 19th century reader getting super titillated over…but then again, it is at the same time a book which starts with some dude named Owen who takes some shrooms and goes tubing. It then occurred to me I might also call this “metamodern”, which is a term the YouTube algorithm has insisted I familiarize myself with recently. In a book about being swallowed by a sea monster, it’s no surprise to find some elements of pastiche: a certain old-fashioned solemnity, deliberate echoes of Melville, of Jonah and the whale. But then we wildly oscillate from mythic-adventure pastiche at sea into present-day satire on land, all radio ads and Powerpoint presentations and stale continental breakfasts and yes, eventually, a YouTube video (not about metamodernity but rather ‘You’ll Never Believe What Happened Next: 7 Impossible Survivors’). Meanwhile, inside the belly of the beast we discover a society of victims from different historical moments with their signifiers and values all coexisting at once, their backstories a mosaic of nautical epics and aristocratic drama and Cold War intrigues, overlapping dichotomies of good and evil, darkness and light, oppressors and oppressed, haves and have-nots. The cultural logic of cultural logics, embodied in a subacqueous humanoid giant. But as the story takes on its true dimensions, there is one thing which becomes perfectly clear, and that is: Feast of the Pale Leviathan is ultimately and unabashedly a Genre Novel, and it does not shirk its duties on that score. Vibrant cast, artful pacing, plot twists and escalations, eyeball kicks and mindfucks, moments of operatic pathos, it’s all here. It’s a “fish-out-of-water” story (ironic, maybe, i guess), a portal story of sorts, certainly a cosmic horror story, and for all its outré imagery, its evocations and provocations (post-/metamodern or otherwise), Chrostek never loses sight of his central characters, the relatability of their struggles, and the novel is so much the better for it. Available wherever rad books are sold!
December 1, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
seizethepress.bsky.social
New short story recommendation up today! We've got Andrew Kozma talking about "Sideswipe" by Soren Narnia on the Knifepoint Horror podcast. Elk horror gang rise up.
Andrew Kozma recommends "Sideswipe" by Soren Narnia | Seize The Press Magazine
Get more from Seize The Press Magazine on Patreon
www.patreon.com
November 24, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
seizethepress.bsky.social
A lawyer I know is trying to help an abuse victim client relocate to get away from their abusive ex. They have an infant child and they're really struggling due to SNAP being cut. Would be really cool if you're in a position to help a stranger out.
Donate to Help an abuse victim and her child relocate to safety., organized by Michael Wikoff
My name is Michael Wikoff. I'm a legal aid attorney in Franklin … Michael Wikoff needs your support for Help an abuse victim and her child relocate to safety.
www.gofundme.com
November 23, 2025 at 7:55 PM
rlsummerling.bsky.social
ICYMI!
rlsummerling.bsky.social Rebecca Summerling (she/her) @rlsummerling.bsky.social · Nov 7
I made an awards eligibility post! I always feel a bit embarrassed doing these, but I'm really proud of these stories and extremely grateful to the editors who've published them
A medieval style heart surrounded by devils. Inside the heart reads: R.L Summerling 20205 THE Dancer’s Dozen ergot. - Jan 2025 His Most Feared Constellation The Dark - April 2025 Through Narrowing Veins Nightjar Press June 2025 Vanitas Interzone - June 2025
November 23, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
ivygrimes.bsky.social
This is a thread of stuff that inspired my novella THE CELLAR BELOW THE CELLAR, out with Violet Lichen Press on Feb 18, 2026!

Thread updated weekly, maybe?

www.apexbookcompany.com/products/the...

www.goodreads.com/book/show/24...
The Cellar Below the Cellar
Preorder and save 30%! Release Date 2/18/26 A playfully dark folk horror inspired by the fairy tale "Vasilisa the Beautiful" and the mythology around Frau Perchta, set under the blazing sky of endless...
www.apexbookcompany.com
November 20, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Rebecca Summerling (she/her)
raynewman.bsky.social
‘Manchester City Council CCTV camera and advertising hoarding for the mobile phone network 3’ by David Dunnico, 2009.
A CCTV camera on a post lined up with the massive eye of a child on a billboard.
November 21, 2025 at 7:01 AM